The US Department of Human and Health Services’s Office for Civil Rights has recently declared Columbia guilty of failing to prohibit discrimination against Jews. It stated the Ivy League university had acted “with deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present”.
Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, issued a statement disputing this finding but so far the university has not appealed to any court. Rather she described the investigation and the verdict as part of ongoing negotiations regarding the restoration of $400m (£295m) worth of federal funding.
For a while media attention had focused on the Trump administration’s battle with other elite universities. The latest episode was the issuing of an executive order banning international students travelling to America to study at Harvard. There was also speculation that Stanford might be in line for cuts in funding alongside other west coast universities
However, in a shock announcement upping the pressure on Columbia the Department of Education has decided that the university does not meet its standards for accreditation. That verdict potentially makes it ineligible for grants and student loans.
Many insist the Trump administration’s moves against elite institutions have little to do with concerns over anti-Semitism. This view was expressed by some at a symposium held at the Center for Jewish History at New York University on “The end of an era: Jews at elite universities”. Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard was emphatic that, while his university certainly had problems with anti-Semitism, they were not of such a magnitude as to justify government interference. There is speculation that the administration trying force an Ivy League university to adopt new arrangements on a host of issues. These include allegations that they continue to pursue policies of favouring people of a racial background, such as Asian-Americans, in their admission policies. That is despite the fact that such affirmative action was deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court. The idea seems to be that if one university reaches an overall settlement others will do the same.
However, even allowing for the fact that the administration has ulterior motives for its actions, universities have to pay a price for allowing such a hostile environment to develop. It is worth remembering that the Brandeis Center, an organisation pledged to combatting anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, has launched a lawsuit against protesters at Columbia. The demonstrators assaulted two janitors leading to one of them needing hospital treatment. It is worth noting that those from Columbia participating in the symposium referred to above were much more critical of their university than Pinker was of Harvard.
Matt Most, who serves on the boards of Hillel and other Jewish institutions in Colorado, published an opinion piece in Haaretz linking campus anti-Semitism to violence. He blamed hostility to Jews and Israel at universities with the terrorist attack on a pro-Israel rally campaigning for the hostages in Boulder, Colorado. This connection does seem tendentious, and so far, nothing has emerged from the investigations into the attack at Boulder convincingly associating it with campus anti-Semitism.
However, Elias Rodriguez, who murdered two Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC, had links, to far left groups. Whether his extremism took hold during his time at Illinois university has not been confirmed.
Still anti-Zionist groups have celebrated his murderous acts. It is worth remembering at this point that the Brandeis Center lawsuit refers to the involvement of sinister outside groups in Columbia protests. The notion of campus anti-Semitism reinforcing hatred of Jews outside of academia and vice versa is one worth monitoring.
In the meantime, punishments should be focused on specific departments rather than universities. Recently Columbia consented to having an outside administrator take charge of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department. That is something that only happens when a department is too factional to function or when it refuses to cooperate in university programmes. In fact Columbia once put its English, political science and Middle Eastern studies departments into academic receivership back in the early 2000s. Another department worth investigating would be the gender studies department of the University of California, Berkeley which organised a panel denying, amongst other things, that sexual violence was a part of Hamas’s 7 October atrocities
A selective approach would be much fairer than cutting important scientific research which punishes departments not known for harbouring anti-Semitic attitudes. In fact, the cuts to funding have almost certainly hit Jewish student and staff researchers which would be a bitter irony. No doubt it has also provided conspiracy theorists with material to reinforce stereotypes such as Jews manipulating situations to gain advantage for themselves.
Cuts to government funding will have greatly increased the impact of the withdrawal of donations by Jewish philanthropists. The full extent of this will only be measurable over years and will depend, for example, on who wins the next presidential election. If the Republicans win it and pursue similar policies as the current administration, then universities will become even more dependent on wealthy donors.
Ivy League universities have also paid a price in the court of public opinion with only a third regarding them as valuable. That shift is not only the result of anti-Semitism but also other issues such as the acceptance of radical gender ideology. However, it is notable that the general public does not seem to be opposed to the Trump administration’s actions in this field.
There is little doubt that the administration’s actions are not always motivated by concern for the safety of Jewish students and staff. People associated with the federal government have hosted and promoted anti-Semites and white nationalists. It is nevertheless to be hoped that events have come as a sufficient shock to university leaders not to be complacent in relation to anti-Semitism.
Guy Whitehouse is a member of the Academy of Ideas and the Free Speech Union. His views do not necessarily reflect those of those organisations.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Radicalism of fools project.
PHOTO: "Columbia University" by InSapphoWeTrust is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.