AIM returns to Columbia, finds it’s worse than ever for Jews
March 11, 2024
Four months after beginning the Antisemitism Accountability Project at Columbia University, Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette returned to the campus to see if the situation had improved in any capacity for Jewish students.
The short answer is no.
Shai Davidai, a professor at Columbia’s business school stated that even though he’s 40, his “legs are shaking” every time he’s walking around campus. Davidai is a strong and vocal opponent of antisemitism, which has put a target on his back for antisemites. He called out the university, alleging that Columbia is not enforcing its suspensions of the radical student groups, Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice Palestine. As Davidai is made a pariah for advocating for the mere continued existence of the Jewish people, students are allowed to shout “Globalize the Intifada” and yell for the erasure of Israel without punishment.
One Israeli student, an IDF commander back home in Israel, came back from a deployment following the October 7th terrorist attack to students posting his name in SideChat calling him an “oppressor.” The student recalls a pro-Palestinian protestor at an event shouting into a bullhorn that “Nothing is more honorable than dying in a noble cause.” It’s an understatement to say that this is distressing to hear because his fellow students are “calling for the eradication of [his] family” because they have “nowhere else to go.”
These sentiments are widely felt among Jewish students, with threats of violence and harassment reaching a critical point in student housing and on campus.
One student, who wished to remain anonymous due to prior harassment, told Guillette that she was woken up by people banging on her door in the middle of the night in the months after October 7. At the end of the day this student “just wants to practice and be [her]self, and not be targeted,” which is not by any means a large thing to ask. The student felt that she had to move out of her accommodations because she didn’t know “what they were going to do to [her] in there.”
These stories are likely common among the Jewish population at Columbia, and with the lackluster efforts by school officials to establish law and order on campus again, the situation will continue to escalate. In order to protect Jewish students, the rabid anti-semites on college campuses must be held accountable for their views.