At Columbia, a new report details the orgy of anti-Semitism that consumed the school during the last academic year:
Jewish students at Columbia University were chased out of their dorms, received death threats, spat upon, stalked and pinned against walls, as the Ivy League school devolved into a cesspool of antisemitic hate in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 murderous raid on Israel.
The new and disturbing details emerged from the lengthy, 91-page document released Friday by the school’s faculty-led antisemitism task force, which revealed the extent to which the hate permeated the institution.
“Students described being shoved, pushed to the ground, berated for showing support for Zionist causes, and watching Israeli flags burned,” the task force’s authors wrote.
“They recounted seeing drawings of swastikas in their dorms, students yelling pro-Hamas chants, and being denied access to public spaces and opportunities simply because they were Jewish or Israeli.”
Testimony from nearly five hundred Columbia students informed the report, which found visibly observant Jews had been pinned to the wall and had their jewelry ripped off while coming and going from synagogue. Others recounted being spat on and having been called ethnic slurs on campus.
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One faculty member leading a class that delved into the Israel-Hamas conflict called a student who previously served in the IDF a murderer. Another professor extensively said a pair of Jewish donors to the university had “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money.”During the spring, as protests and encampments roiled the school’s Morningside Heights campus, protesters, including outsiders and members of the university community, bellowed death threats at Jewish students.
Columbia claims to be ready to crack down on anti-Semitism, but we will see what happens as the school year gets underway.
Many campuses across the country are not safe for Jewish students. This incident occurred yesterday at the University of Pittsburgh:
A man attacked two Jewish University of Pittsburgh students with a glass bottle as they walked through campus Friday evening near the Cathedral of Learning, according to authorities.
The suspect, 52-year-old Jarrett Buba of Oakland, had been sitting at a table across Forbes Avenue from where the students were walking when he ran across the street and attacked them about 6 p.m., police reported in a criminal complaint.
Police said Mr. Buba was wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional checkered scarf that has come to represent Palestinian solidarity amid the Israel-Hamas war.
One of the students had cuts on his face and the other was bleeding from cuts on his neck, according to police.
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Police said both students were wearing yarmulkes, the traditional cap worn by Jewish men.
The current round of anti-Jewish violence on campuses has, at least, brought a degree of ideological clarity. In recent years, Jew-haters have often gotten away with claiming that they are anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. That was always a transparent fig leaf, but now it is gone. Anti-Semitism is out in the open, loud and proud. The question is what university authorities are willing to do about it.
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