Press Release

Date: July 18, 2025

Contact: Sarah Stern

[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

(202) 601-7422

EMET Calls on President Trump to Stop a Weak Deal Between Columbia University and the Federal Government

Columbia University is an unsafe place for Jewish students. Since October 7, 2023, Columbia has consistently failed to address the pervasive antisemitism that is both within the campus and within the classroom. The United States Department of Health and Human Services found that Columbia has exhibited “deliberate indifference” to the hostile environment that Jewish students have been confronted with. Thus, it is troubling to hear that the Trump administration is reportedly considering making a weak deal that fails to make real and meaningful reforms within the university.

According to an article in The Free Beacon, the proposed deal would abandon previous stronger demands from the administration that would have made meaningful changes to the governance of the university, appointed three new trustees to a five member executive committee to oversee reforms to the school, instituted reforms to the University Senate (which has obstructed accountability for antisemites), and imposed a ban on masking while protesting.

Alarmingly, as these demands are reportedly being abandoned, the search for Columbia’s next president is also being conducted by an unbalanced search committee stacked with left-wing faculty likely to object to a leader committed to reform.

Jewish students at Columbia have often felt pressured to conceal their identities; they have been consistently maligned by faculty members and must often confront violence and harassment while crossing the campus or the quad. Many times, ideological debates about Israeli policy have devolved into antisemitic attacks on individual Jewish students.

Unfortunately, the consequences of these actions can only be described as profoundly lenient. Columbia, which has an endowment of $14.8 billion (as of June, 2024) must pay to the federal government a mere $200 million. This is so benign as to be risible.

Professors, such as the democratic front runner for mayor, Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of anthropology at Columbia has expressed sympathy for suicide bombers, considering them a category of the military; accused the Israeli government of “committing genocide”, describes the Israeli government as “settler-colonialist” and “apartheid”, and sits on the advisory council of an anti-Israeli organization that supports boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, Professor Mamdani’s views are not an anomaly, but constitutes the vast majority of slanted, biased agitprop that is a paltry substitute for a well-balanced education.

Tenured faculty, such as Joseph Massad, Hamid Dabashi, Nadia Abu El-Haj and the vast majority of others, have long hidden behind the term “academic freedom” to perpetuate their one-sided biases against the state of Israel, and harass and intimidate Jewish and Zionist students. There should be real consequences for professors who violate the standards of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, including termination.

There is no difference between challenging the right of the one Jewish state to exist and the extensive atmosphere of antisemitism on campus.

Unfortunately, this “negotiation” does not eradicate the entrenched antisemitism which has become Columbia University’s ethos. Jewish students at Columbia University are still intimidated, harassed, and bullied by both peers and professors.. There has got to be more real and meaningful reforms at Columbia, which should also amount to firing professors who have violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, just as would happen if any other minority group were subjected to such demonstrably prejudicial behavior.

Sarah N Stern is Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth
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