Columbia University may soon earn a dubious distinction in civil rights history — it may become the first American college so contaminated by antisemitism that it must sign a contract promising to remedy the affliction.

After October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist group launched its latest war on Israel, Columbia University became the epicenter of antisemitism in American higher education.

According to a 2024 Congressional report on college antisemitism, Columbia officials displayed “deliberate indifference” as pro-Palestinian students and faculty attacked Jewish students and faculty with physical assaults, vandalism, classroom disruptions, and harassment in breach of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Columbia’s leadership acknowledged the civil rights breakdown by the end of 2023, and took steps to correct it. Unfortunately, events since then have proven that the remedial efforts fell short.

Last semester, the school logged four more outbursts of antisemitism, including an illegal and antisemitic “occupation” in the school’s Belmont Library. In March, the US Department of Education canceled $400 million of Federal grants to Columbia based on its failure to address the antisemitic abuses. On May 22, a Federal government civil rights agency notified Columbia that it remained in violation of the law. In June, the government reported the legal malfeasance to Columbia’s accreditation agency. Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 Campus Antisemitism Report Card rated Columbia “D” for “Deficient.”

Columbia is now negotiating a settlement agreement with the government in which the university must improve its civil rights record in exchange for the restoration of its Federal funding. Observers predict the school will compensate the victims of antisemitic discrimination and make data disclosures designed to ensure that its policies of hiring, admissions, and donations from foreign governments do not cause future discrimination.

But the reasons for Columbia’s continuing noncompliance are obvious.

To begin with, the institution’s Board of Trustees lacks respect for the civil rights of its Jewish students.

In March, when they appointed board member Claire Shipman to serve as Columbia’s acting president, they must have known she had downplayed the college’s antisemitism crisis as a public relations headache. Her emails to colleagues from 2023 to 2024 recommended the creation of an antisemitism task force as “one of very few workable responses” to take the “pressure” off the school and “inoculate” it from government scrutiny, which she called “capital [sic] hill nonsense.”

She believed the widespread student fear of antisemitic aggression was “not necessarily a rational feeling.” Regarding a pro-Israel Jewish board member, she remarked “I don’t think she should be on the board.” She thought that the board should include an “Arab” or someone else from the Middle East. She pushed to “unsuspend” certain campus protest groups. And she wanted a brighter academic spotlight for a hardline pro-Palestinian professor. By elevating Shipman to the role of acting president, the board irresponsibly put a PR-minded inmate in charge of the legally imperiled asylum.

Columbia’s foot-dragging on the civil rights issue is not limited to the trustees. Certain Columbia faculty members attended the school’s antisemitic rallies and propagandized in favor of Hamas. In early March, dozens of the professors lambasted Columbia’s then President Katrina Armstrong for buckling under the pressure of President Trump’s funding cuts to enforce the civil rights of Jewish students. Apparently, they forgot that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had federalized National Guard troops to enforce the civil rights of African American students. Days after the internal blowback, Armstrong resigned.

A second deficiency in Columbia’s civil rights governance is its lax definition of antisemitism. Columbia declined to update its Rules of University Conduct with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been adopted by the student governments of major universities nationwide, as well as most US states, the US government, Canada, 26 EU member states, and many other countries.

Columbia crafted a narrower definition of antisemitism that creates loopholes for antisemitic invective while evading institutional responsibility for the resulting harm. For example, the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is considered antisemitic under the IHRA standard because it implicitly denies the Jewish right of self-determination. Columbia’s own former President Minouche Shafik admitted in 2024 that the slogan is antisemitic.

The offensive phrase was chanted by Columbia protestors at an illegal demonstration in 2024 and repeated by the Belmont Library offenders in May. Nevertheless, this hate speech is not antisemitic under Columbia’s limited definition, because that definition ignores denials of Jewish self-determination — and calls for the destruction of Israel (which “From the river to the sea” is).

Columbia doesn’t even use its minimized interpretation of antisemitism in civil rights investigations. The concept is expressly authorized only for training.

Radical Columbia opponents of the IHRA standard of antisemitism defend their Jew-baiting insults as expressions of free speech. But IHRA does not regulate speech. It only helps identify antisemitism, just as the “N” word helps identify racism. Even where speech is deemed antisemitic, it is punishable only to the extent it creates a “hostile educational environment” or serves as a heightening factor in determining the penalty for otherwise criminal activity.

A third failure in Columbia’s civil rights program is the lack of accountability. After the Belmont Library fiasco, Columbia’s Judicial Board imposed interim suspensions on 65 of the guilty students. The large number of sanctions was an encouraging sign. But because the penalty periods vary greatly in length and mostly remain undisclosed, their deterrent effect is weak. In February, after three pro-Palestinian lawbreakers were suspended for one to two years, they showed no remorse. On the contrary, they sued the university, swearing “We will not stop. We will not rest.”

All American schools must protect American civil rights. The job should not require the discipline of a government contract.

Joel M. Margolis is the Legal Commentator, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, US Affiliate of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. His 2021 book, The Israeli-Palestinian Legal War, analyzed the major legal issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previously he worked as a telecommunications lawyer in both the public and private sectors.

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