Columbia University president Nemat Shafik seems to have learned a few lessons from the congressional hearings that took down the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania in January. On Wednesday, Shafik sat before the very same House Committee that ran those hearings and when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Columbia’s code of conduct, answered affirmatively, “Yes, it does.” Unlike her former colleagues who answered that question by pontificating about context, Shafik was quick to label such language as out-of-bounds.
But while Shafik certainly survived the hearing, she seemed overwhelmed and confused – not knowing much about the employment of Columbia professor Joseph Mossad, who on October 8th wrote an article which called the attacks of October 7th “awesome”; backtracking after telling Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that there were no attacks on Jews at pro-Palestinian riots and struggling to explain how the university’s disciplinary system was better at dealing with violations around matters like alcohol use and academic misconduct than it was in dealing with hate.
Wednesday’s committee hearing revealed the immense uncertainty that college administrators have about how to deal with the rise of antisemitism on their campuses. Yes, they seem to have come to terms with the fact that calls for genocide should not be tolerated – but they still do not know how to deal with the uptick in animosity towards Jews, so often masked as “legitimate” criticism of Israel.
Of course, disdain towards Jews these days is not reserved to college campuses. The ADL’s audit of antisemitic incidents in the United States was released this past Tuesday and notes a 140% increase in antisemitic incidents from 2022, the highest number on record since the ADL began tracking in 1979.
The ADL explains that this enormous uptick is no doubt related to Israel and the war in Gaza. The fact that fifty-two percent of all antisemitic incidents from the last year have included references to Israel, Zionism or Palestine demonstrates how Israel has become an organizing principle for those who believe that Jews have too much power and influence in the world.
Some have argued that the congressional hearings are nothing more than an attempt to cancel those who have legitimate critiques of Israel and Israeli policy. But as we have seen on campus and well beyond, the line between reasonable criticism of Israel and vitriolic antisemitic harassment is crossed daily – with attacks on Jews and Jewish self-determination being the very core of argumentation.
We are not witnessing a public debate about the future of Jewish and Palestinian statehood. We are not beholding a meaningful public dialogue about peace in the middle east and the future of Jewish and Palestinian sovereignty. The argument that is occurring on our campuses and on our city streets is one which questions the very legitimacy of Jewish autonomy – one that effectively calls for the end of Jewish power and control – it is an argument that is rooted in antisemitic tropes and concerned most with the delegitimization of Israel wholly and completely. Until our university presidents and our political leaders recognize this fact, their confusion and uncertainty over how to deal with the current reality will go on…
