Letter from faculty about anti-Semitism report

We hope to have more on the government’s bogus “notice of violation” to Columbia shortly, but in the meantime we present a critique from last September of the Columbia Task Force on Antisemitism, repeatedly cited by the government in their notice. This open letter was written by Jewish Columbia and Barnard faculty in the wake of the task force’s second report. See the original here.

Dear Interim President Armstrong, President Rosenbury, President Bailey, and Provost Olinto:

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in response to the Antisemitism Task Force’s second report, which documents a number of disturbing incidents and student experiences. We join the report’s authors in abhorring all instances of harassment, intimidation, and violence against students for being Jewish, and agree that at Columbia, “[n]o one should feel excluded, marginalized, disrespected, or unheard.” We are writing to demonstrate how the report undermines these fundamental values by subjecting the incidents described to analysis and framing that misrepresent their meaning and implications. We are troubled by the way the widely publicized report contributes to a hostile narrative about Columbia, which is used to justify interference in the institution’s governance and operations.

The report is marked by conspicuous neglectful omissions of context and climate that cast the real challenges it discusses in a political vacuum. A research method that conflates feelings with facts and uses conveniently slippery definitions of important central concepts – not just antisemitism, but also Zionism and anti-Zionism – also fails to represent with any nuance the complex motives and commitments of many parties on campus. In some cases, outright factual misrepresentations of specific incidents or speech call into question not only the report’s central narrative but its seriousness in confronting the problem of prejudice and bias. Finally, its policy recommendations in some cases threaten to damage the fabric of our community further, and seem unlikely to address the real needs of all parts of our campus affected by the conflict in Israel-Palestine. Nuance and precision matter as we seek to restore trust, openness, and free speech in a climate of open inquiry. Intellectual honesty and respect for all parties affected matter if we are to protect community members in a time of armed conflict. We cannot achieve these crucial goals with the blunt instrument of the Task Force’s report.

Neglect of context and climate

The alarming incidents reported by the Task Force and its far-reaching recommendations are already being widely circulated as evidence of Columbia’s horrific campus climate, of rampant antisemitism and long-standing bias on the part of students and faculty, and of administrative failure to address this problem. The report is thus already doing serious harm to Columbia’s reputation. But when the report is read closely, considerable flaws become apparent. In fact, the report does much more than detail incidents of alleged antisemitism: the Task Force is actually helping to build a case against our university, one aligned (even if unintentionally) with a broader right-wing movement to weaponize charges of antisemitism in the interest of not only suppressing political speech critical of the state of Israel but also of undermining the legitimacy and autonomy of democratic institutions, including universities, public K-12 schools, and unions.

We offer some detailed explanation of these flaws below but, at the outset, want to spotlight the fundamental deficiency of the report, one from which others inevitably flow: its egregious failure to recognize (save for a single fly-by phrase) Israel’s decimation of Gaza -- the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of universities, hospitals, mosques, sewage plants, homes, infrastructure, agriculture, and on and on. While the report rightly addresses the heinous Hamas attack of October 7, its failure to address Israel’s ongoing bombardment and siege of Gaza produces the impression that students protesting Israel are acting out of some preternatural Jew-hatred rather than responding to one of the most horrific humanitarian crises of their generation (albeit sometimes with rhetoric many of us find offensive). No communal trust can be rebuilt as long as anti-war protesters are treated as bad-faith, anti-Jewish troublemakers. Indeed, such unfair characterization is counterproductive, as it can make the protesters contemptuous of legitimate charges of antisemitism and less open to learning about it. A noteworthy study from Brandeis University recently found barely any overlap between college students with hostility toward the state of Israel and those with hostility toward Jews.

There’s another consequence to the lack of context in the report: It was the demonstrations outside the campus that contained much of the violent rhetoric. In our view, they were drawn there in the first place by former President Shafik’s suspension of two pro-Palestine student groups. This act escalated the protests and made our campus a flashpoint, in many ways creating the atmosphere that the Task Force was charged with investigating.

Method: conflating feelings and facts

The Task Force proudly claims that its conclusions are inductive, relying solely on the feelings and experiences that its members gathered in listening sessions with more than 500 students over a number of months. Though the invitation to these sessions came from an entity called the Antisemitism Task Force, it never offered a definition of the session’s topic: antisemitism. Yet it imposed one through its framing and implicit bias by asking students to share their “fears and concerns.” The invitation presented the foregone conclusion that, in fact, Jewish students were afraid and concerned – and implied that they had ample reason to be. In some cases, they certainly had, but the ill-defined terms of the Task Force’s solicitation, at a particularly divided and stressful moment on campus, turned their inquiries into a hammer looking for nails. And when some students took issue with the Task Force’s procedures, they were shouted down by its co-chair.

The testimonies cited in the report vary widely. Yet the report makes no effort to distinguish between discussions or chants that made some Jewish students feel uncomfortable or that they disagreed with, and incidents of genuine bias, discrimination, lack of safety or exclusion. While examples of these latter certainly did occur, they were less prevalent than the report suggests by misleadingly grouping them together with the former. The report fails to differentiate between qualitatively quite different examples, identifying all of them as “instances of antisemitism.”

Misleading definitions of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and Zionism

The report offers a “working definition” of antisemitism and cautions that it is “for pedagogy and training purposes only. It is not intended to be used in disciplinary procedures.” We appreciate the caveat about disciplinary procedures, but what, exactly, does it aim to teach and train? To our minds, some confusing lessons, especially in its assertion that hostility expressed against Israel during a time of war is necessarily antisemitic.

It reads (boldface added):

Antisemitism is prejudice, discrimination, hate, or violence directed at Jews, including Jewish Israelis. Antisemitism can manifest in a range of ways, including as ethnic slurs, epithets, and caricatures; stereotypes; antisemitic tropes and symbols; Holocaust denial; targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them; exclusion or discrimination based on Jewish identity or ancestry or real or perceived ties to Israel; and certain double standards applied to Israel.

Of course it is utterly unacceptable to “discriminate against” or to “target” any group on campus “for violence,” or to exclude anyone on the basis of identity or ancestry. But the reference to double standards represents a backdoor importation of the infamously controversial IHRA definition that, in its examples, condemns most criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitic, leading its author, Kenneth Stern recently to point out its unintended and dangerous consequences for Jewish students on college campuses.

The Task Force equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, opening a new conundrum: the meanings of Zionism and anti-Zionism. The report offers its own version of these terms that foreclose even scholarly discussion: It describes Zionism as supporting “Israel’s right to exist” (a buzzy phrase, but what does it actually mean to say that any nation-state has a right to exist?); it describes anti-Zionism as advocating “for the active dissolution of the world’s only Jewish state.” It utterly misses the pedagogical opportunity to explain that all these terms have been contested, notably among Jews, since the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and remain the subject of rigorous scholarly inquiry today.

Both definitions are skewed by their incompleteness. The report's description of Zionism as Israel’s “right to exist” leaves out the always-implied phrase, “as a Jewish state.” Zionism holds that for Israel to exist as such requires it to maintain Jewish political dominance, continue settling territory inhabited by Palestinians, and hold back what Zionist organizations call the “demographic threat.” For anti-Zionists (and let’s be clear: not all campus protesters would label themselves as such), the ethno-nationalism at the core of Zionism conflicts with principles of democracy and equality. This critique is not in itself anti-Jewish, so anti-Zionism, an intellectually broad and historically significant set of beliefs cannot be dismissed as antisemitic, as the report ultimately does. We can’t have open dialogue across differences on this difficult topic if students, faculty, and others are not free to criticize a modern state and its actions or debate a political philosophy like Zionism. Our Core Curriculum is based on open debates about any and all political philosophies. And our University Statutes affirm (§440) that the University “does not limit discussion because the ideas expressed might be thought offensive, immoral, disrespectful, or even dangerous.”

The “double standards” clause in the report’s definition of antisemitism raises a different slew of questions. Which double standards does it mean by “certain”? Some language later in the report offers some clues by repeating ideological clichés designed to shut down open discussion: “What is the justification for targeting Israel, but not China or Turkey—let alone Iran, Syria, or North Korea?” Do the authors really not know? In allegedly “singling out” Israel, protesters are aligned – just with a different viewpoint – with consistent American policy that goes back to JFK, who, like all presidents after him, extolled the US’s “special relationship” with Israel. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid; it received some $12.5 billion in military aid this year alone – and Americans’ tax dollars are paying for it. Second, unlike Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Israel touts itself as its region’s only democracy. It must be legitimate to criticize any state for not living up to its own stated principles.

The complaint about a “double standard” also implies that any time a critique of Israel is voiced, other state actors from around the globe must be called out as well, so as to create a “single standard.” It is also based on the erroneous insinuation that the call for divestment from industries that fund Israel’s war machine is unique, whereas it joins vociferous divestment campaigns against apartheid South Africa, fossil fuel industries, private prisons, and more. Isolating Israel from protest does, in fact, constitute a double standard and is therefore inappropriate and unsustainable in a university setting.

Misrepresentation of specific incidents

The report recounts repugnant acts of blatant anti-Jewish rhetoric on the Columbia/Barnard campus. Some of the most offensive taunts and protest slogans, however, came from non-community actors outside the campus. The report does not sufficiently make this distinction.

In addition, incidents of alleged antisemitism are presented as fact without in any way being investigated or verified. Some were falsely reported, such as the accusation that an Israeli student’s finger was fractured by a protester; the hate crime assault charges brought against her were dismissed for lack of evidence after the DA found that the incident played out very differently than first reported, and the students’ finger was not actually broken (like the misrepresentation of faculty described below, the report’s reference to this incident was deleted in an unannounced revision to the report days after its wide distribution; see Appendix).

Similarly, the report cherry-picks information to show the campus climate in the worst possible light. For example, it denounces “cartoons comparing Israelis to skunks” as antisemitic – leaving out the fact that the skunk cartoons in question referred specifically to an incident when pro-Israel students sprayed pro-divestment protesters (a number of whom were themselves Jewish) with what was thought at the time to be a noxious chemical called “skunk.” Similarly, the report denounces posters demanding “Zionist donors to keep your hands off our university” for promoting a pernicious trope about Jewish money and control – but neglects to note that, in fact, pro-Israel donors to Ivy league schools including Columbia were quite publicly pulling – or threatening to pull – funds if universities that didn’t crack down on protesters as they demanded.

The report inveighs against protesters burning an Israeli flag. Certainly students attached to Israel might object. Still, it is protected political speech. More important for the Columbia context – and the goal of rebuilding trust and fostering open exchanges of ideas – the university must be capable of imagining what that same flag represents to Palestinians on campus. If the report’s authors cannot grasp the extremely disparate meanings a national flag holds in times of war it is hard to trust their ideas for fostering better campus conversations about difficult issues.

The report deplores that student clubs whose purposes have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine signed on to CUAD and, in some cases, implicitly or explicitly barred pro-Israel students from participating in them. No evidence is offered about how widespread this was, beyond the much-publicized and shocking LionLez case.

Still, context matters. Instead of seeing these students grappling, perhaps sometimes clumsily and to unacceptable effect, with how to respond to a brutal war – one, according to international legal and human rights organizations that involves genocidal actions – the report sees only antisemites.

Despite claiming that it does not define critics of Israel as antisemitic, the report repeatedly states that to criticize Zionism is indeed to attack Jews because 80% of American Jews consider Israel to be “an essential or important part” of their Jewish identity.^[1] Therefore, the authors reason:

“Just as a ‘no Jews allowed’ policy violates anti-discrimination laws, the same can also be true of a ‘no Zionists allowed’ policy. Targeting a characteristic that closely correlates with a protected class can be an indirect way of targeting the protected class. So, in the same way that a group cannot say ‘we don’t accept members who eat only kosher food,’ it cannot say ‘we don’t accept members who are Zionists.’”

This analogy strikes us as staggeringly obtuse, or maybe just disingenuous and, in any case, highly insulting to the students who were moved to protest. Whether or not one agrees with the application of ‘genocidal’ to the bloodshed in Gaza, and even though Zionist students should not be barred from campus clubs, protesters were reacting to a moral and material catastrophe, not to halachic dietary practices. If Columbia truly wants to engage protesters in open dialogue and understanding about antisemitism, denigrating their activist motives is hardly the way to do it. The protesters, too (including the Jews among them), must not be made to feel “excluded, marginalized, disrespected, or unheard.”

The report also dangerously mischaracterized faculty members who spoke out over the past year against the misuse of the accusation of “antisemitism” to shut down dissent and student protests on campus. A group of 23 Jewish faculty members who published an open letter in the Columbia Spectator on April 10, 2024 (many of whom are also signatories here) decrying the “weaponization of antisemitism” were slandered in the Task Force report, which listed them by name and accused them of “calling for the end of the state of Israel” in their letter. The letter contains no such call, and, in fact, notes that its signers have a range of attitudes toward and attachments to Israel: mendaciously (or even just carelessly) claiming that it does make this call, exposed the Task Force’s fellow faculty members to potentially violent repercussions. (The Task Force corrected this slander in response to demands that they do so, but the report had already been widely publicized for nearly a week, and the Task Force issued no statement of apology or retraction; see Appendix)

Suggestions and resources

Finally, the report offers recommendations in an area in which no Task Force member has expertise. We are not experts in anti-bias pedagogy either, but we can observe the chauvinistic nature of some of the report’s suggestions and point to some alternatives. And, as teachers who sometimes deal with difficult discussions in our classrooms, we can offer some general principles for fostering more open, reasoned engagement on antisemitism and other biases that have reared up on our campus during an unremittingly violent war.

Among its recommendations, the report, tellingly, lists the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a resource. We strongly discourage the University from engaging or making use of resources from the ADL. Widely recognized as a right-wing advocacy organization, the ADL is a main driver in the US of the very same kinds of confusion, conflation, and misinformation around antisemitism that mar the Task Force’s report. It has a record of supporting lawmakers and causes that oppose equality and social justice. Its stated goal of protecting the political interests of Israel would stain any efforts at improving the climate at Columbia and – especially given its letter urging universities to investigate campus pro-Palestine groups for ties to terrorism, despite no evidence of such ties – would announce the University's interest in partisanship over community.

Instead, the University should seek out resources that prioritize holistic and inclusive approaches to confronting the multiple kinds of prejudice we face. A multi-pronged approach engaging different groups would both send the right message and achieve better outcomes.

In the current climate, it is vital that the University not single out only Jewish students’ feelings as especially in need of protection, to the exclusion of other groups affected equally by the situation in Israel-Palestine. At a time when Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, like Jewish and Israeli students, have also lost family, also seen their identities under attack, and also experienced other kinds of pain and prejudice, it would be an insult, and an inflammatory one at that, to suggest that only some students’ pain is deserving of special attention and protection.

Therefore, we recommend that the University target its programming not against “antisemitism” but for “discourse and inclusion in a time of conflict,” and recognize that the challenges we face are not primarily the result of independent prejudices but of a real and ongoing brutal war that affects many members of our community in disparate ways.

To balance and expand the resources listed in the Task Force report, we point to:

• Material to combat discrimination against Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community members, developed and gathered by the Biden White House.

• A holistic program developed by the community-based education center, Parceo – “Curriculum on Antisemitism from a Framework of Collective Liberation,” which can be tailored to specific institutional needs.

• Materials on combating antisemitism materials developed by Diaspora Alliance, an international advocacy group that focuses on protecting Jews from antisemitism and political exploitation, and has strong commitments to taking a big-tent approach to the complex diversity of Jewish identities and experiences.

We would be remiss not to make one final plea on behalf of our students, including Jewish students. Many attempts to politicize the experience of our students have trafficked in generalizations that have misrepresented their commitments as static or fixed. Universities are places where students (as well as faculty) are often challenged to question values and assumptions, interrogating them with tools of critical thinking, new peers and social networks, and in response to new information and evidence. Sometimes they find themselves more certain in their beliefs; sometimes they change their minds; sometimes they keep exploring. We have heard privately from Jewish students who have experienced as stifling both the positions represented by the protest movement and the Task Force’s repressive agenda. Jewish students have even reported that campus Jewish organizations do not always welcome them if they have questions about their own relationship or commitments to Israel.^[2] As Jewish faculty, then, our plea to you is to avoid measures that would make our campus an inhospitable environment for Jewish students and scholars as they continue to interrogate, investigate, and express their own ideas and commitments as works-in-progress.

Finally, we are alarmed by the announcement accompanying the Task Force report, which informs us that a “separate report on academic issues related to exclusion in the classroom and bias in curriculum will be issued by the Task Force in the coming months.” With this, the Task Force has proclaimed its intention to move on to targeting colleagues and others it has already dangerously and falsely disparaged. We urge you to disband the Task Force before it further imperils faculty members, threatens academic freedom, damages the University’s reputation, and exacerbates the divisions that have been plaguing us.

As faculty members, we aspire to be not just custodians of this institution, but a resource for it. Some of us are experts on Jewish history and culture and politics, and on antisemitism; some are experts on political movements and social phenomena more generally; some of us have firsthand experience of the complex and diverse Jewish identities and experiences the Task Force so casually misrepresents and erases. Please consider us at your disposal, and please reach out to any or all of us who might be able to help guide the University through this challenging time.

We thus request to meet with you as soon as possible to pursue the concerns voiced in this letter. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Nico Baumbach, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, School of the Arts

Debbie Becher, Associate Professor, Sociology, Barnard College

Nina Berman (Journalism ‘85), Professor, School of Journalism

Elizabeth Bernstein, Professor and Chair, WGSS and Professor of Sociology, Barnard College

Susan Bernofsky, Professor of Writing, School of the Arts

Helen Benedict, Professor, School of Journalism

Amy Chazkel, Associate Professor of History, A&S

Yinon Cohen, Yosef H. Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies, A&S

Nora Gross, Assistant Professor, Education, Barnard College

Jack Halberstam, David Feinson Professor of the Humanities, A&S

Sarah Haley, Associate Professor, History and Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, A&S

Michael Harris, Professor, Mathematics, A&S

Marianne Hirsch, Willam Peterfied Trent Professor Emerita, English and Comparative Literature, A&S

Joseph Howley, Associate Professor, Classics, A&S

David Lurie (GSAS ‘01), Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, A&S

Sharon Marcus, Orlando Harriman Professor, English and Comparative Literature, A&S

Nara Milanich, Professor, History, Barnard College

D. Max Moerman (CC ‘86), Professor and Chair, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College

Manijeh Moradian, Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College

Robert Newton (GSAS ‘01), Lecturer, Sustainability Science, SPS

Sheldon Pollock, Raghunathan Professor Emeritus, Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, A&S

Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, A&S

James Schamus, Professor of Professional Practice, Film, School of the Arts

Alisa Solomon, Professor, School of Journalism

Below signatures updated 10:00am, 9/13/24

Additional Jewish faculty signatures following this letter’s initial delivery

Arnold Aronson, Professor Emeritus, School of the Arts

Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History, Emerita, A&S

Dani Friedrich, Associate Professor, Curriculum & Teaching, Teachers College

Jon Kessler, Professor, Visual Arts, School of the Arts

Laura Kurgan, Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation

Kenneth Miller, Peter Taylor Professor of Neuroscience, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute & CUIMC

Andrew Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor, Political Science, A&S

James Piacentini (GSAPP ‘20), Adjunct Assistant Professor, Urban Planning, GSAPP

Matt Sandler (GSAS ‘09), Interim Associate Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race

Shelly Silver, Professor, Visual Arts, School of the Arts

We signed this letter as Jews of diverse backgrounds and commitments who share a common concern about the weaponization of antisemitism and the harm it can do to our institution and every member of our community. We welcome the solidarity of the undersigned colleagues who do not identify as Jewish but have asked to lend their support to our arguments and proposals.

Nadia Abu El-Haj, Ann Whitney Olin Professor, Anthropology, Barnard

Angela Aidala (GSAS ‘80), Research Scientist, Sociomedical Scientist, Mailman School of Public Health

Christopher Baswell, Professor, English (Barnard), English and Comparative Literature (A&S)

Elizabeth Blackmar, Mary and David Boies Professor of American History, A&S

Aleksandar Boskovic, Lecturer, Slavic Languages, A&S

Melanie Brewster, Professor, Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College

Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor, Italian, A&S

Madeleine Dobie, Professor, French, A&S

Laura Fair, Professor, MESAAS, A&S

Ralph Ghoche (GSAS ‘15), Assistant Professor, Architecture, Barnard

Wael Hallaq, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, MESAAS, A&S

Jean E. Howard, George Delacorte Professor Emerita in the Humanities, A&S

Elizabeth Hutchinson, Associate Professor, Art History, Barnard and A&S

Andreas Huyssen, Billard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, A&S

Rebecca Jordan-Young (GSAS ‘00), Ann Whitney Olin Professor, WGSS, Barnard

Tom Kalin, Professor of Professional Practice, Film, School of the Arts

Mana Kia, Associate Professor, MESAAS, A&S

Jennifer Lena (GSAS ‘03), Associate Professor, Arts Administration, Teachers College

Dan O’Flaherty, Professor, Economics, A&S

Celia Naylor, Professor, Africana Studies, Barnard

Gregory Mann, Professor, History, A&S

Reinhold Martin, Professor, Architecture, GSAPP

Christia Mercer, Gustave M. Berne Professor, Philosophy, A&S

Fred Neuhouser (GSAS ‘88), Professor, Philosophy, Barnard

Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, A&S

Kim Phillips-Fein, Professor, History, A&S

Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Assistant Professor, Architecture, Barnard

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, A&S

Neferti Tadiar, Professor, WGSS, Barnard

Yannik Thiem, Associate Professor, Religion, A&S

Gray Tuttle, Luce Professor of Modern Tibet, East Asian Languages and Cultures, A&S

Karen Van Dyck, Kimon A. Doulas Professor, Classics, A&S

Susan Witte (CUSSW ‘01), Professor, School of Social Work

Elwin Wu, Professor, School of Social Work

Homa Zarghamee, Professor and Chair, Economics, Barnard

Appendix. Certain factual errors in the original report were corrected without public notice around 9/3/24, after the initial report had been publicized and widely accessed and reported on.

Example one: misrepresenting speech and commitments of non-Zionist Jewish faculty (footnote 121 lists the name of individual faculty members to whom these views are attributed)

Original report, p. 68:

Updated version, p. 68:

Example two: reference to discredited account of assault and broken finger

Original report, p. 83:

Updated version, p. 83:

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[1] This number offers no indication of how 80% of Jews relate to this “essential or important part of their identity.” A 2021 survey commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute, a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats, found that 25% of Jewish respondents agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state,” and 22% that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.” Among respondents under age 40, 33% agreed (in 2021) that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”

[2] Eg: “Recently, [a student] told a rabbi at Hillel that she felt the group was not a welcoming space for Jews who aren’t ardently pro-Israel. She said the rabbi, Yonah Hain, told her that Hillel wasn’t supposed to be a resource for Jewish students who don’t support Israel.” (New York Times, May 22 2024, “On Campus, a New Social Litmus Test: Zionist or Not?”)