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Jewish Columbia University Graduate Employees File Complaint Against Anti-Israel Union
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
Jewish students employed as graduate workers by Columbia University have filed a federal complaint against their campus labor union — Student Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of United Auto Workers (UAW) — alleging that its bosses devote more energy and resources to pursuing “radical policy proposals” than improving occupational conditions.
The National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), a nonprofit organization which fights for worker mobility and freedom of representation that is providing the students legal counsel free of charge, announced the action on Monday. In a release shared with The Algemeiner, it said the students, who have formed the advocacy group Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression (GRADS), are subjected to abuses which magnify problems inherent in compulsory union membership — chiefly that they may be forced to accept as representatives of their interests union bosses who act in “bad faith” and hold offensive beliefs.
At Columbia University, this issue has manifested in UAW’s unrelenting effort to inveigle school officials into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and other measures, including abolishing relationships with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and Tel Aviv University.
“These and similar actions constitute bad faith bargaining … and violate the duty of fair representation that respondent union owes to all represented graduate students,” state the charges, which GRAFS filed at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“Far from facilitating a more harmonious relationship between graduate students and the Columbia administration, UAW union bosses are simply ramping up radical extremism at a university that has already seen more than its share of chaos,” National Right to Work president Mark Mix said in a statement. “While it’s wrong from the start that any student is forced to accept union boss ‘representation’ they oppose, it’s even less acceptable that UAW union officials are trying to use their monopoly bargaining privileges to enforce their divisive politics on the entire campus, including undergraduate students.”
Experts told the US Congress earlier this month that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Time to Stop’: Trump Vows Israel Will Not Annex West Bank
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, rejecting calls from some far-right politicians in Israel who want to extend sovereignty over the area where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-governance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced some pressure from allies to annex the West Bank, prompting alarm among Arab leaders, some of whom met on Tuesday with Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope, I will not allow it. It’s not going to happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now,” he said.
Trump made the comments as Netanyahu was arriving in New York to deliver an address to the United Nations on Friday.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks. Israeli settlements have grown in size and number since Israel took control of the West Bank, part of the ancestral Jewish homeland, in a 1967 war.
Trump met leaders and officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan on Tuesday to discuss the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Arab and Muslim countries warned him about what they described as the grave consequences of any annexation of the West Bank — a message the US president “understands very well,” according to Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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Jews, Israelis Face Death Threats, Business Bans Amid Rising Antisemitism Across Europe
The children’s bookstore in Sant Cugat, Spain, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and slogans, prompting outrage from the local Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot
Jews and Israelis across Europe continue to face a troubling surge in antisemitic abuse and discrimination — including death threats, exclusion from businesses, and harassment — amid an increasingly hostile climate that has only intensified in recent weeks.
In Germany, a well-known pizzeria has prohibited Israelis from entering and receiving service at the restaurant, marking one of the latest antisemitic incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community during the war in Gaza.
Pizza Zulu, located in Bavaria in southeastern Germany, posted a sign outside its shop stating that Israelis will no longer be admitted, while insisting the decision was neither political nor racist.
“We love all human beings regardless of where they come from. We believe children should not be harmed regardless of the circumstances. We are an international group, and we belong to civil society, and therefore we will not keep silent like the rest of the world,” the sign posted on the restaurant’s facade read.
“We decided to protest, and our protest is neither political nor racist. We will no longer accept Israelis in the place. We will welcome them back when they decide to open their eyes, ears, and hearts,” it continued.
Following sharp criticism and outrage from the local Jewish community, the sign was reportedly removed hours later, but it remains unclear whether local authorities have launched an investigation into the incident or if the restaurant is now welcoming Israelis back into the establishment.
Meanwhile, the Bavarian antisemitism commissioner, Ludwig Spaenle, reported that in a separate incident in Bavaria, a music shop demanded that an Israeli customer read a statement opposing the war in Gaza before being allowed to rent equipment.
These latest antisemitic incidents come amid a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes and anti-Israel sentiment across Europe and around the world since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, leaving Jewish communities increasingly alarmed over targeted attacks in a growingly hostile climate.
In Spain, a group of Jewish students received anonymous letters containing Nazi imagery, anti-Israel slogans, and a message reading: “Jewish rats. Palestine will win!”
After students in Madrid came forward expressing fear for their safety, local authorities opened an investigation into the incident.
Community leaders denounced the incident, saying that such messages reflect a troubling mix of deep-rooted antisemitism and modern-day anti-Israel hostility.
“This is not criticism of Israel or the conflict. This is naked, old-fashioned bigotry, designed to terrorize an entire community,” Madrid’s Chief Rabbi Moisés Bendahan said in a statement.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) also condemned the incident, urging authorities to pursue prompt, visible prosecutions to prevent further hate crimes.
“This is a chilling warning to all Western democracies that antisemitism remains a potent threat to safety, order, and communal belonging,” the FCJE wrote in a post on X.
The World Jewish Congress also denounced the incident, calling on Spanish authorities to strengthen protections for Jewish communities and reaffirm Madrid’s commitment to religious freedom and minority rights.
“We stand with Spanish Jews in demanding a clear public condemnation of all forms of antisemitism, no matter the guise,” the statement read.
In Switzerland, a kosher hotel in Davos recently received a letter containing antisemitic insults, Holocaust references, Nazi imagery, and explicit death threats warning, “we will come and kill you all.”
Local authorities have launched an investigation into the incident after receiving the letter.
The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) strongly condemned the incident, stressing its seriousness and noting that such threats were once rare in Switzerland.
“A death threat is not a verbal slur. It has a completely different nature and, above all, a completely different effect on the people concerned,” Jonathan Kreutner, SIG’s secretary-general, said in a statement.
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‘Shocking’ Rosh Hashanah Hate Crime at Syracuse University Leads to Criminal Charges
Crouse College at Syracuse University. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Law enforcement agents in upstate New York have filed hate crime charges against two Syracuse University students who they say forcefully gained entry into a Jewish fraternity’s off-campus house on Tuesday during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and heaved a bag of pork at a wall, causing its contents to splatter across the floor.
“This incident is not a foolish college prank and will not be treated as such,” local District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said in a statement addressing the alleged crime, which targeted the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, a registered organization of Syracuse University. “It will be treated for what it is, a crime directed against a group of Jewish students enjoying a celebratory dinner and seemingly secure in their residence.”
Allen Groves, Syracuse University’s chief officer of student experience, said a statement on behalf of the school that law enforcement captured the suspects just moments after they attempted to abscond to an unknown location in a getaway car. He added that they, in addition to pending criminal penalties, will face disciplinary charges brought by the school.
“The students involved have been referred to Community Standards pursuant to our Student Conduct Code, and pending the outcome of an investigation, will face appropriate disciplinary action through our established procedures,” Groves said. “Tonight’s incident as reported to us is abhorrent, shocking to the conscience, and violates our value of being a place that is truly welcoming to all. It will not be tolerated at Syracuse University.”
This is not the first time that a Jewish fraternity has been targeted on a day of significance to the American Jewish community.
In September 2022, a Jewish fraternity at Rutgers University (RU) was vandalized during Rosh Hashanah.
News of the incident was first reported by StopAntisemitism, a US-based watchdog, in a post showing the ground outside an entrance at Alpha Epsilon Pi’s (AEPi) house splattered with eggs.
“This is now the 3rd time the Jewish fraternity house has been egged,” the group noted at the time. “What is campus police and administrators doing to catch those responsible?”
Antisemitic hate crimes in the US continued to add up to record-setting and harrowing statistical figures in 2024, according to the latest data issued by the FBI last month, prompting calls by Jewish leaders for a society-wide intervention.
Even as hate crimes decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Antisemitic hate crimes kept federal and local law enforcement agents busy throughout 2024, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In November, for example, the US Department of Justice secured the conviction of a Massachusetts man, John Reardon, 59, who threatened to perpetrate mass killings of Jews. Over several months, Reardon called Jewish institutions across Massachusetts, proclaiming that he would kill Jewish men, women, and children in their houses of worship. His terroristic menacing included promises to plant bombs in synagogues in the cities of Sharon and Attleboro, as well as making 98 calls to the Israeli Consulate in Boston, a behavior which began on Oct. 7, 2023, and ended just days before his apprehension by law enforcement in January.
In New York City, meanwhile, the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn endured a violent series of robberies and other attacks. In one instance, three masked men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood. Before then, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. Additionally, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
The wave of hatred has not relented in 2025.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.