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Columbia University President Denies Deceiving Trump Administration Over Antisemitism Policies
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong on Tuesday strongly denied a Wall Street Journal report which said that she privately told faculty that school officials misled the Trump administration to believe that they had accepted its conditions for restoring $400 million in federal funding canceled by Education Secretary Linda McMahon earlier this month to punish the school’s alleged failure to quell “antisemitic violence and harassment” on its campus.
On Friday, the university issued a memo announcing that it acceded to key demands put forth by the Trump administration as a precondition for releasing the funds — including a review of undergraduate admissions practices that allegedly discriminate against qualified Jewish applicants, the enforcement of an “anti-mask” policy that protesters have violated to avoid being identified by law enforcement, and enhancements to the university’s security protocols that would facilitate the restoration of order when the campus is disturbed by unauthorized demonstrations.
The news prompted high praise from Trump administration officials, including McMahon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy. However, according to a report published by the Journal on Monday, Armstrong told faculty behind closed doors over the weekend that the memo was issued to buy the university time in which to explore other, potentially legal, options that could result in the school’s reclaiming the canceled grants.
During a mutinous meeting with angry faculty, Armstrong said, among other things, that the anti-mask ban — a policy that is widely supported by the Jewish community for achieving the same end as federal anti-Ku-Klux-Klan laws — will not be enacted, according to the Journal. In response, the paper added, some professors denounced what they perceive as a duplicitous public relations strategy in which Columbia makes commitments it does not intend to honor.
On Tuesday, Armstrong disputed the WSJ‘s account of her conversation with faculty, maintaining in a statement published on the university’s website that she will proceed with the policies enumerated in Friday’s memo.
“Implementation of these measures is fundamental to sustaining our academic mission without disruption and ensuring the safety of Columbia’s students and campuses. Let there be no confusion: I commit to seeing these changes implemented, with the full support of Columbia’s senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees,” Armstrong said. “We need to continue to restore the public’s faith of the fundamental value of higher education for the nation and the longstanding partnership between ground-breaking universities like Columbia and the federal government.”
She continued, “Any suggestion that these measures are illusory, or lack my personal support is unequivocally false. These changes are real, and they are right for Columbia.”
The statement came one day after anti-Israel students staged an unauthorized protest replete with keffiyehs, face masks, and demands that Columbia become a sanctuary campus for illegal immigrants. Demonstrators also hung a large “Free Palestine” sign from a building and reportedly chanted so loudly that they could be heard inside nearby buildings in which active classes were being held. Armstrong took no action against them.
The Trump administration has not yet commented on the Wall Street Journal‘s report or the latest unauthorized protest, which came after Columbia’s Hillel International chapter told The Algemeiner on Friday that Columbia’s agreement to combat antisemitism in higher education is “promising” and expressed hope that it “further moves us in the right direction.”
McMahon similarly praised the university.
“Columbia is demonstrating appropriate cooperation with the Trump administration’s requirements, and we look forward to a lasting resolution,” she said in a statement as part of a press release issued on Monday by an inter-agency task force on antisemitism. “I have been in communication with Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong over the last few weeks and appreciate her leadership and commitment to advance truly meaningful reforms on campus.”
Monday’s release also contained a statement by Kennedy, who said the institution is beginning to “restore itself as a garden of tolerance, reason, compassion, and respect.”
Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), an office which assists the federal government’s purchasing of goods and services, said, “Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign.” He added, however, that school officials in the Armstrong administration “must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end antisemitism.”
Columbia University has produced some of the most indelible examples of campus antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — among them a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. However, it is not the first Ivy League institution to allegedly pantomime a commitment to addressing antisemitism to repel public scrutiny and government action.
According to a May 2024 report by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard University allegedly conspired to achieve similar aims during a tumultuous 2023-2024 academic year which saw its students quote terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event and its professors share an antisemitic cartoon. The report claimed that Harvard formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show, refusing to consult it at key moments during an explosion of antisemitic incidents on campus. It also said that Harvard never took meaningful action to address antisemitic hatred and the flouting of school rules against harassment and discrimination, a policy failure that allegedly contributed to the eruption of a nearly three-week-long demonstration in which a group calling itself Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) commandeered Harvard Yard and refused to leave unless the administration agreed to divest from and boycott Israel
Writing to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky said that Columbia’s apparent playing both ends against the middle is a cause of eroding trust in the higher education system, which he says tramples on the true purpose of a liberal arts education in order to promote a far-left political agenda.
“There is a collapsing of public faith in the politics and costs of universities like Columbia, all necessitating immediate reform,” Romirowsky said. “Armstrong needs to understand that successfully rehabilitating its image requires a sincere, top-down driven approach that can serve as a model of reform for all university leaders. A conception of the liberal arts and sciences should be promoted in which the primary goal of learning is individual growth and exploration and the goal of research is the conservation and expansion of knowledge and thought.”
He continued, “Scholar-activism in the sense of politically aligned teaching and research or social justice in the sense of remaking society through undemocratic means cannot be goals, nor should they be publicly funded.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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German Court Overturns Ban on Annual ‘Quds Day’ March in Frankfurt Despite Authorities’ Antisemitism Concerns
Quds Day march in Hannover, Germany in 2024. Photo: Screenshot
A demonstration calling for Israel’s destruction will be allowed to take place in the German city of Frankfurt this weekend after an administrative court overturned the city’s ban on the rally, which had been put in place due to expected displays of antisemitism.
The Frankfurt Administrative Court on Friday ruled that the ban on the march, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday, was unlawful.
German authorities on Thursday had banned the annual “Quds Day” rally in Frankfurt, citing public safety concerns and its antisemitic symbolism, local media reported.
According to the city’s assembly authority, the decision was based on the “high probability” that the gathering “would serve as an openly visible symbol of antisemitism related to Israel” and that public safety would be immediately at risk.
Sponsored by the Iranian regime, the annual Quds Day commemorations event is held in Tehran and several other cities, where Iran and its allies organize marches in support of the Palestinians and call for Israel’s annihilation.
“The end of Ramadan is actually a celebration of inner contemplation and also of hope,” Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in a statement, as reported by German media. “It is almost tragic that Muslim fanatics – incited by Iran – repeatedly use this occasion to propagate hatred against Israel and Jews.”
He called on Muslim groups to “actively position themselves against this abuse of their faith,” adding, “Everyone knows what to expect from Al-Quds marches. They should be banned.”
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas, providing the Palestinian terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to invade and perpetrate a massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, months in advance.
Since 2015, demonstrations have been held on the streets of Frankfurt every year during the last weekend of Ramadan, marking the so-called “Al-Quds [Arabic name for Jerusalem] Day.” The event was introduced by Iran’s then-nascent Islamist regime in 1979 as the “Day of the Liberation of the Holy City of Jerusalem from Zionist Occupation.”
Frankfurt’s Public Order office said that between 500 and 1,000 people were expected to participate in the events this weekend.
Since last year, the official slogan of the event has been “Stop the War” — referring to the Gaza war, which began after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, during which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages.
Quds Day march in Frankfurt, Germany#gaza #GazaGenocide #FreePalestine #GenocideJoe #isisrael #GazaHolocaust #rafah #yemen #redsead #Iran #lebonan #Hezbollah #jordon pic.twitter.com/zAr5KTEDV1
— IMAM REZA SOLDIERS (@thelightwiz1) April 8, 2024
Frankfurt’s mayor, Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg, criticized the event last year as a “propaganda day for the [Iranian] regime,” stating that demonstrations with “clearly antisemitic slogans” and the display of images of terrorists should be banned.
During the rally last year, participants chanted slogans such as “Israel, child killer” and “Germany finances, Israel bombs.”
“Demonstrations that deny a state’s right to exist and call for its destruction cannot be peaceful,” Frankfurt’s Commissioner of Public Order, Annette Rinn, said in a statement. “Therefore, the decision to officially ban this year’s Al-Quds Day in Frankfurt is the only appropriate action.”
Rinn later said she accepted the court’s decision to overturn the ban, adding, “Our goal is now to ensure an orderly course of the assembly through appropriate conditions, especially with regard to possible counter-demonstrations.”
In 2021, Berlin became the first jurisdiction in Germany to allow the prohibition of gatherings promoting hate speech. It is one of eight federal states that have adopted this measure.
In recent years, “Al-Quds” demonstrations in the German capital have been canceled.
Ulrike Becker, director of research at the Berlin Middle East Freedom Forum, has called for a general ban on “this celebration of antisemitism.”
“It is a mistake to allow demonstrations that call for the destruction of Israel on the streets of Germany, whether in Frankfurt, Berlin, or anywhere else,” Becker said.
It is not “a peaceful protest,” but rather “a call for the destruction of the Jewish state,” a demand that “cannot be protected by the right to freedom of expression or the right to protest,” Becker added.
She also said the event is “not a legitimate expression of opinion” but “an instrument of the Islamist regime [of Iran] to spread hatred and hostile imagery.”
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Harvard University Pauses West Bank Program With Birzeit University
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University has paused a partnership with a higher education institution located in the West Bank, an area administered by Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA).
According to a report by The Harvard Crimson, Birzeit University will not, among other things, receive Harvard’s co-sponsorship of a “Palestine Medical Course” held on its campus due to “safety concerns of having Harvard students study in the West Bank.” This is the second change to the arrangement with Birzeit, as the course had already been transplanted to Amman, the capital city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The Crimson added that the decision to put the Harvard-Birzeit partnership into abeyance followed from an internal investigation of Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB), the institution directly affiliated with Birzeit. It is not clear what ultimately caused Harvard to discontinue the arrangement, but it is a move for which prominent members of the Harvard community and federal lawmakers have clamored before, The Crimson noted.
“There are some issues that should be complicated. Why can’t Harvard immediately dissolve its partnership with Birzeit University?” former Harvard president Larry Summers wrote on the X social media platform in July 2024. His post came on the heels of a letter in which over two dozen Republican members of Congress said that Harvard’s partnership with Birzeit was “extremely concerning” given alleged pro-Hamas sentiment expressed by the school’s student government.
“The university also has had a policy of barring Israeli Jews from campus. Shockingly, following the Oct. 7 attack, Birzeit University posted, ‘Glory for martyrs, recovery for wounded ones, and freedom for the captives.’ This type of behavior stands in direct opposition to the values Harvard claims to uphold,” the lawmakers wrote, led by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a rising star in the GOP whose nomination for United Nations Ambassador was pulled by President Donald Trump to protect his party’s majority in Congress.
Harvard University has rejected accusations that it harbors antisemites and supporters of jihadist terrorists since its students cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel, in which the terrorist group murdered, sexually assaulted, and abducted Israeli civilians.
Over the next year and a half, the university saw its students and faculty quote terrorists, share antisemitic cartoons, and illegally occupy sections of campus they refused to surrender unless Harvard initiated a boycott of Israel. The new Trump administration has placed the school in its crosshairs even as it takes steps to downsize, and potentially shutter, the government agency charged with investigating it.
Earlier this month, the Department of Education added Harvard University to a list of colleges and universities it will investigate for possible civil rights violations stemming from their alleged failure to address campus antisemitism. In announcing the action, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, “Jewish students studying on elite campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year.”
Meanwhile, Harvard has recently taken steps to allay concerns that it welcomes pro-Hamas extremists. It recently fired a librarian whom someone filmed ripping posters of the Bibas children, two babies murdered in captivity by Hamas, off a kiosk in Harvard Yard. Following the incident, which became a viral sensation on social media, Harvard diversity and inclusion officer Sherri A. Charleston denounced the perpetrator’s behavior as “hateful” and a violation of “the university and community values that unite us.”
In January, Harvard settled an antisemitism lawsuit it had initially fought to discredit, and in so doing pledged to “strengthen our policies, systems, and operations to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate.”
Per the agreement, Harvard will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies (NDAB), recognize the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity, and explicitly state that targeting and individual on the basis of their Zionism constitutes a violation of school rules.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Elise Stefanik to Remain in US Congress as Trump Withdraws UN Ambassador Nomination to Hold Narrow GOP Majority
United Nations Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will remain in Congress after President Donald Trump withdrew her nomination to become the next ambassador to the UN amid growing concerns over the Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Trump announced on social media on Thursday that Stefanik would rejoin the House leadership team, citing a need to “maintain every Republican seat in Congress” to help the president advance “historic tax cuts, great jobs, record economic growth, a secure border, energy dominance, [and] peace through strength.”
On Thursday night, a visibly disappointed Stefanik emphasized the importance of being a “team player” and vowed to continue fighting on behalf of Trump’s legislative agenda.
“I have been proud to be a team player. The president knows that. He and I had multiple conversations today, and we are committed to delivering results on behalf of the American people. And as always, I’m committed to delivering results on behalf of my constituents,” Stefanik said on Fox News.
Stefanik added that she is excited to resume “sharing my voice as I always have, being one of the top fighters and top allies on behalf of President Trump and behalf of the American people, and on behalf of my district.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who holds authority over special elections within the Empire State, had also indicated that she would push back the special election date as long as possible in an attempt to stymie Trump’s political agenda. The New York Republican Party had struggled to settle on a singular candidate around whom to coalesce for the special election to replace Stefanik if she were confirmed as ambassador.
“The reality is … Democrats, as we see in New York State, it is totally corrupt,” Stefanik said. “Kathy Hochul started threatening to move the ball on the election date. You see a highly, highly politicized radical left trying to do everything they can to defeat the president. And this is about stepping up as a team. And I am doing that as a leader to ensure that we can take hold of this mandate and deliver these historic results.”
Republicans are also facing the prospect of closer-than-expected special elections in the upcoming week. According to a recent poll, Florida Republican state Sen. Randy Fine holds a narrow 48-44 percentage point lead over Democratic opponent Josh Weil in a district Trump dominated by 30 points in 2024. A potential loss in the Florida special election would further diminish the Republican House majority, leaving the party with less flexibility for deflections within the lower chamber of Congress.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Thursday defended Trump’s decision to yank Stefanik’s nomination, arguing that “it is well known Republicans have a razor-thin House majority.” He added that Stefanik remaining in the House of Representatives will bolster the GOP by letting the party “keep one of the toughest, most resolute members of our Conference in place to help drive forward President Trump’s America First policies.”
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