Marianne Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender.
As a Holocaust scholar and child of Holocaust survivors, your words carry weight, which makes your letter all the more disturbing.
There is a fundamental difference between fighting for peace and justifying terrorism. Conflating the two reveals a failure of both moral clarity and analytical reasoning. In your letter, you collapse the distinction between peaceful protest and terrorist propaganda. Instigators of campus unrest and violence, CUAD and others, have openly justified the most barbaric acts imaginable: rape, the beheading of babies, the murder of civilians. Not only by denying these atrocities, but worse, by rationalizing them as “resistance” and calling for a globalized genocide against Jews. They repeat and amplify Hamas propaganda, dressing atrocity in the language of liberation and presenting terror as a political tool. By echoing this rhetoric (whether knowingly or not) you become its conduit. You are not defending justice. You are defending the indefensible.
We must be able to distinguish peaceful protest from terrorist propaganda. If we are to have any hope of peace, we must condemn all forms of hate and refuse to justify terrorism in the name of liberation. We must begin with the courage to say: this is wrong.
You invoke “never again for all,” as if specificity excludes others. But just as Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t, Never Again for the Jewish people does not exclude anyone. It reflects the unique horror of a genocide aimed at erasing Jews from the earth and the moral imperative to recognize and prevent that hatred when it resurfaces. Diluting that history doesn’t universalize it. It erases it.
You describe Columbia’s implementation of legally mandated reforms following verified Title VI and Title VII violations, as “preferential treatment” for Jews. In reality, those reforms are a long-overdue response to the university’s repeated, systemic failure to protect Jewish students and faculty amid escalating antisemitism. Calling this “special treatment” is not scholarship. It is victim-blaming cloaked in the misappropriated language of justice, used to excuse bigotry rather than confront it. What you call “persecution” is, in fact, the university finally enforcing its own rules against harassment, hate speech, and disruption. To suggest that Jewish safety comes at the expense of others is to pit communities against one another, a classic tactic of bad-faith ideology masquerading as equity.
You dismiss the federal agreement as a product of the “Trump administration,” but its President Biden’s administration laid the entire foundation for serious federal action against antisemitism. His team launched the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, mobilizing over 100 concrete actions across government, funding a new Holocaust education center, and allocating $400 million to secure Jewish institutions. His Department of Education clarified that Title VI protects Jewish students, issued specific enforcement guidance, and opened dozens of investigations, including against Columbia. His Executive Order 13899 ordered agencies to identify civil and criminal tools to address campus antisemitism. Far from a partisan invention, the agreement reflects the very framework Biden established. Trump’s appointees may have signed it, but Biden’s administration made it necessary. Denouncing the agreement as a partisan conspiracy is not only false, it erases the lived experience of the very Jews you claim to speak for. Columbia’s agreement does not silence criticism of Israel. It does not elevate Jews above others. It simply ensures that Jews, like Black, Muslim, LGBTQ+, and all others, are not harassed, marginalized, or punished for their identity or beliefs.
Your broader argument rests on the same dangerous logic that underpins this dismissal. You demand academic freedom while calling for the censorship of Israel-related instruction that doesn’t align with your political views. You claim that protecting Jewish students may inflame antisemitism. In doing so, you echo the oldest antisemitic trope of all: that Jews are responsible for the hatred directed at them. You equate Israel’s existential fight for survival with genocide: precisely the kind of distortion the IHRA definition of antisemitism was created to identify.
You are entitled to your views. But you are not entitled to redefine antisemitism to fit an ideological framework that excuses hatred and targets Jews for exclusion. Your letter is not a defense of academic freedom. It is a manifesto of ideological conformity that punishes dissenting Jewish voices, a moral inversion that blames victims for their own persecution, and a form of internalized antisemitism.
I invite you to join in the hard but necessary work of defending every group from hatred, including Jews. That work begins with moral clarity and the courage to name hatred when we see it.
The reforms imposed in the Agreement are not 'legally mandated' but were imposed via a 'negotiation' while critical research funds were held hostage. Not exactly voluntary or consensual.
How did we get there on the first place? Columbia’s repeated failure to address documented antisemitism left federal enforcement as the only option.
The fact that the agreement was reached through negotiation while federal funding was frozen does not mean the reforms were optional or arbitrary. When the Department of Education’s OCR and the EEOC conclude that an institution has violated Title VI and Title VII, the university faces two choices: accept legally binding remedies or fight the government in court. Columbia agreed to these terms because the underlying violations were real, and litigation risk was high. “Negotiated” in this context is not a free-market haggle. It was a structured legal resolution under federal civil-rights enforcement authority. Calling the agreement “not legally mandated” ignores that it stems directly from the university’s legal obligations under federal law. The enforcement mechanism may have been a settlement, but the duties it imposes protecting students from discrimination are not optional.
Kudos to you, Dr. Geskin for your clarity and honest accounting of how Columbia got to where we find ourselves today. Your 21 years living in Latvia under the Soviet Union's oppressive regime makes you well-positioned to speak to antisemitic propaganda and actions gone unchecked. On our campus, antisemitism, under the veil of anti-Zionism has been allowed to flourish without consequences, thus despite, my feelings about our government and it's motives for interfering on campus, I am happy that some measures, albeit hardly adequate, are being implemented to acknowledge and combat antisemitism at Columbia. May our hostages come home in the very near future 🙏🏻.
Hi, everyone. I'm going to turn off comments to this post now. I think everyone's had their say. I'll have mine and that'll be that.
Professor Genkin: Thank you for engaging with the post. It was helpful to see you lay out your thinking. It seems to me that you genuinely believe all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, including when it comes from Jews (I, too, am Jewish). You ask why so many people are critical of Israel but not Iran or Hamas. For people in the U.S., including at Columbia, the answer is very simple: Hamas is a State Department-designated terrorist organization; Iran is subject to massive U.S. sanctions and occasional military attack (we bombed them just last month, if I recall correctly). Israel, on the other hand, is a very close U.S. ally who receives billions in military aid, no questions asked, and whose Prime Minister regularly addresses sessions of Congress. We, as Americans, have an extremely close relationship with Israel, and potentially a lot of leverage; we do not have a similarly close relationship with Hamas.
You urge us to speak with the supposedly peaceful protesters at Columbia and find out what they really think. Many of us has been doing so for the last year and a half. These are our students. Some of them are young and intemperate; sometimes they use language and imagery that we think crosses the line, and we have said so. (See this letter from Jewish faculty about the disruption of Prof. Avraham Shilon's class last year: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2025/01/22/letter-to-the-editor-faculty-denounce-class-disruption-and-hate-speech-at-recent-protest/) But overall we have found the students to be deeply passionate, idealistic, thoughtful, and, yes, peaceful.
Our own antisemitism task force last year commissioned a survey of student experiences over the last year. I urge you to read the results. (https://www.columbia.edu/content/sites/default/files/content/Documents/Columbia-Student-Survey-Report-June-2025.pdf) In question after question, Jewish students *and* Muslim students reported similar levels of discomfort and exclusion, with some slight variations. Clearly, many Israeli and Jewish students are traumatized by Hamas's actions on October 7, 2023; just as clearly, many Muslim students (as well as a healthy minority of Jewish students, of whom I am very proud) have been horrified by the Israeli assault on Gaza in response. Both sets of students--and at a far greater rate than their peers--have been having a tough time over the last year and a half. And yet, in communications from the President's office, over and over, antisemitism has been highlighted, and the experience of Muslim and Palestinian students has been ignored. When the Trump administration cut off funding to the school, they did so with the claim that Columbia had not done enough to address antisemitism--a claim bolstered by the letter from Columbia faculty that you participated in.
Either our students (and faculty) have a right to speak--including to say things that we don't like or agree with--or they do not. If they have that right, let's defend it. If they don't, then we are going to continue living in a world where our students are arrested, threatened with deportation, suspended for *years* for protesting in Butler; and on and on. That's not a world I want to live in.
As a non-Jew, I write to respectfully but firmly disagree with your characterization of Columbia’s recent antisemitism policies as misguided or harmful.
Your central premise—that addressing antisemitism constitutes “singling out” Jews for “preferential treatment”—fundamentally misunderstands both the nature of targeted discrimination and the purpose of remedial action. When a university identifies that members of a particular group have faced harassment, threats, or discrimination, responding with specific measures is not preferential treatment; it is basic institutional responsibility. Would you argue that establishing support for any targeted community—whether Black students facing racism or Muslim students facing Islamophobia—constitutes dangerous “special treatment”?
Your claim that anti-antisemitism measures will “foment anti-Jewish prejudice” employs a particularly pernicious logic: that Jews should accept discrimination quietly lest they provoke further hatred. This reasoning effectively holds Jewish students responsible for others’ antisemitism—a stance that would be immediately recognized as victim-blaming in any other context.
Most concerning is your assertion that supporting Jewish students and adopting the IHRA definition “amplifies antisemitic tropes about Jewish power.” This argument essentially contends that any effort to combat antisemitism validates antisemitic conspiracy theories. By this logic, institutions should never address anti-Jewish discrimination for fear of confirming stereotypes—a standard applied to no other minority group.
Your letter conflates legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with the right to engage in harassment or intimidation of Jewish students. Universities can and must distinguish between protected political speech and conduct that creates hostile environments for students based on their identity. The fact that some protesters may have legitimate grievances about Israeli policies does not immunize all protest activity from scrutiny when it crosses into harassment.
Finally, your invocation of Holocaust history to argue against protecting Jewish students today is deeply troubling. The lesson of “never again” is not that Jews should accept present-day discrimination to avoid appearing too powerful; it is that institutions must act decisively when hatred emerges, rather than waiting for it to escalate.
Columbia’s measures appear proportionate to documented problems. Rather than undermining campus discourse, clear policies against antisemitism—like policies against all forms of discrimination—create the foundation for genuine academic freedom where all students can participate fully without fear.
Thank you so much for speaking out with such clarity and moral courage. It is especially powerful when a non-Jew cuts through the false narratives and double standards that so often surround these conversations. You have articulated what should be obvious: protecting Jewish students from harassment is not “special treatment,” it is the same basic responsibility a university has toward every targeted group.
Your letter exposes the core flaw in Professor Hirsch’s framing: that Jews should endure discrimination quietly to avoid “provoking” antisemitism. We would never apply that logic to any other minority, yet it is still trotted out when the target is Jewish. You also dismantle the false claim that adopting the IHRA definition somehow “amplifies” antisemitic tropes, when in reality, it does exactly what it was designed to do: distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitic harassment, ensuring universities can protect Jewish students without stifling political debate.
By rejecting these distortions, you’ve made clear that fighting antisemitism is not a “Jewish issue” but a universal one. And in this moment, your voice shows that the demand for safety and dignity is not coming from “Jews defending Jews,” but from anyone who refuses to excuse bigotry under the guise of political discourse.
Thanks again for speaking up and for speaking so clearly and powerfully.
Like Professor Hirsch I am the Jewish son of holocaust survivors. My grandparents, five uncles, their wives and children were all murdered victims of the holocaust. If there had been a State of Israel they would have had a place of refuge. But Britain to placate the Arabs did not allow Jewish emigration to Palestine.
The IHRA definition states that to say that the Jewish people do not have the right of self determination in their ancient homeland in the State of Israel is antisemitic. This does not mean that the rights of Palestinians or any others are excluded. It does not disallow criticisms of Israel.
The accusations of genocide against Israel ignore the murder of Israelis, Jews and non Jews on October 7th and the taking of hostages by Hamas. This war would be over in a day if Hamas released hostages and laid down its arms. The people starve while Hamas steals aid and Hamas members remain well fed in their tunnels. It is Hamas that is responsible for the suffering of the people in Gaza.
I agree with Dr. Geskin. It’s appalling to defend those who justify rape and murder as “resistance,” especially when the principles of gender studies, which focus on understanding and opposing violence, are being twisted. Defending such actions under the guise of justice is deeply troubling—and it mirrors a “Me Too, unless you're a Jew” mentality, where the fight against hate and sexual violence seems to exclude Jews.
Columbia’s reforms are not preferential treatment—they are an overdue response to the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from escalating antisemitism. Labeling these reforms as “special treatment” distorts the truth and sidesteps the real issue.
When we fight hate, Jews cannot be excluded. Ignoring Jew-hatred while championing other causes is not justice—it’s complicity
Like Marianne Hirsch I , too am a daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Poland. My mother was the sole survivor of her family, one of seven siblings. My father and four of his sisters survived, while their parents and other siblings were murdered. I grew up in Israel, surrounded by survivors, a couple of streets away from the border that divided Jerusalem. I remember clearly when the Egyptian president, Gamal Naser, threatened to throw all of us to the sea. I heard students and others at Columbia chanting like hypnotized, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Why should we not believe what Hamas has put down in its written manifesto?
As the chair of the NGO in the Committee on Mental Health in Consultative relationship to the United Nations, one of the annual programs I created was dedicated to raising awareness to the ‘suffering others among us’, and invited experts in their fields to share the horrifying data about the rise in violence against LGBTQ and many other marginalized communities among us. How come those colleagues whom I would have considered my allies, are not as horrified by the brutality of the atrocities committed against civilians, babies, children and women, atrocities documented by the perpetrators themselves?!
Prof. Geskin’s reply to Marianne Hirsch speaks for many of us. Prof Hirsch and others are entitled to their opinions, but the moral inversion and complete disregard for historical facts they espouse are replacing the standards that I would expect of anyone who has had the opportunity to train their minds to think and seek knowledge, and put it in the service of seeking a real peace and caring for the well-being and safety of all, on campus and beyond. As a Holocaust scholar, too, I am profoundly shaken by what I am experiencing as a Jewish and Israeli in America and at Columbia.
Thank you Marianne Hirsch's for sharing this powerful letter that speaks for so many of us at Columbia and thanks to Rise Up for publishing it.
I am interested in the negative responses to the letter on the comment thread. They find Hirsch's piece "disturbing" or "deeply troubling" (2 comments use those same words) and then, while ignoring what she actually writes, they question her “reasoning” or “logic” to give the appearance of undermining her argument. I admit I find these poorly argued repetitive talking points "deeply troubling." If Larisa Geskin is concerned about the denial of atrocities and justifying "the most barbaric acts imaginable" then surely she should be fighting against pro-Israel propaganda when it accuses students who are protesting genocide of antisemitism. We have seen how it is done: by conflating criticism of Zionism or Israel or supporting Palestinian liberation with being pro-terror or pro-genocide. Geskin is invested in that conflation. If Sam Marchiano is concerned with the conflation of “legitimate criticism of Israeli policies” with “harassment or intimidation of Jewish students” then she should be fighting with Hirsch against the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism to do just that. She too is invested in that conflation.
Why? Are they supporters of Israel's indefensible treatment of Palestinians? I don't want to assume as much but this is the consistent thread that brings together the individuals who have tried to manufacture the narrative that students protesting genocide in Gaza is a crisis of antisemitism despite all the Jewish students and faculty who are part of the protests or support them.
If any of these people wish to respond to my comment, I encourage them to first state clearly their position on Israel, the occupation, the lack of equal rights for Palestinians, and the mass murder taking place in Gaza. Then we can talk about the logic of argumentation
Joshua, there’s a Russian saying: let’s separate the flies from the cutlets. If you want to talk about positions on Israel, start by asking CUAD and their supporters on campus, you might be surprised that these “peaceful protestors” openly say they want Israel wiped off the map. You placed the atrocities of October 7 in quotation marks... I have a problem when the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of civilians is justified or minimized in the name of “liberation.” I hope you do, too.
It’s also not accurate to frame these atrocities as part of a struggle for “equal rights and liberation.” If we are serious about ending Palestinian suffering, we must be honest about who is most responsible for perpetuating it. Yasser Arafat walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace talks, rejecting a deal that would have given Palestinians nearly everything they demanded: statehood, control over most of the West Bank and Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Why? He chose violence instead. Gaza was unilaterally vacated by Israel in 2005. Since then, billions in aid have flowed in and were used to dig terror tunnels, stockpile weapons, and prepare for massacres. The goal has never been peaceful coexistence; it has been to eliminate Israel and its Jewish population. If you doubt that, look at the rest of the region: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria - all once had thriving Jewish communities. Today, none remain. Let’s protest that. Let’s demand equal rights for Jews in those countries. Silence...
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, diverting billions in aid into terror infrastructure. Hamas holds Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, prolonging agony for all sides. Iran bankrolls and arms these actors to ensure the conflict never ends. These are not leaders seeking peace; they are committed to eradication of Israel and Jews.
That goal of eradication is what I hear in our own campus protests, which started BEFORE any military action by Israel even started and it is supported by you and Professor Hirsch. Peaceful protest is a right. But when demonstrations use Hamas talking points, erase or deny the atrocities of October 7, glorify “resistance” that includes murder and rape, or call for “globalizing the intifada,” they are not advocating for coexistence; they are normalizing the very ideology that seeks to destroy Israel and its people, they are justifying genocide against Jews. Strip away the slogans, you defend an ideology committed to the destruction of an entire people. You can oppose Israeli government policies without defending terrorism. You can support Palestinian rights without aligning with those who openly call for eradication. But if you cannot condemn the deliberate targeting of civilians, no matter who commits it, the problem is not my reasoning. The problem is the moral standard being applied.
If we want the war to end, we have to see the situation as it is: Israel is not the only party responsible for this war. In your narrative (and Hirsch’s) the responsibility of Hamas and Iran all but disappears. That’s a fatal blind spot. You want peace? Put pressure where it belongs: on Hamas and Iran to release hostages, to stop targeting civilians, and to allow aid money to build schools and hospitals instead of tunnels and rocket launchers. Acknowledge Hamas’s deliberate tactic of using civilians as human shields to maximize casualties and inflame outrage against Israel. Where is your criticism of Hamas? Until you can answer that, your narrative will ring hollow.
Joshua, there’s a Russian saying: let’s separate the flies from the cutlets. If you want to talk about positions on Israel, start by asking CUAD and their supporters on campus, you might be surprised that these “peaceful protestors” openly say they want Israel wiped off the map. You placed the atrocities of October 7 in quotation marks... I have a problem when the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of civilians is justified or minimized in the name of “liberation.” I hope you do, too.
It’s also not accurate to frame these atrocities as part of a struggle for “equal rights and liberation.” If we are serious about ending Palestinian suffering, we must be honest about who is most responsible for perpetuating it. Yasser Arafat walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace talks, rejecting a deal that would have given Palestinians nearly everything they demanded: statehood, control over most of the West Bank and Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Why? He chose violence instead. Gaza was unilaterally vacated by Israel in 2005. Since then, billions in aid have flowed in and were used to dig terror tunnels, stockpile weapons, and prepare for massacres. The goal has never been peaceful coexistence; it has been to eliminate Israel and its Jewish population. If you doubt that, look at the rest of the region: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria - all once had thriving Jewish communities. Today, none remain. Let’s protest that. Let’s demand equal rights for Jews in those countries. Silence...
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, diverting billions in aid into terror infrastructure. Hamas holds Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, prolonging agony for all sides. Iran bankrolls and arms these actors to ensure the conflict never ends. These are not leaders seeking peace; they are committed to eradication of Israel and Jews.
That goal of eradication is what I hear in our own campus protests, which started BEFORE any military action by Israel even started and it is supported by you and Professor Hirsch. Peaceful protest is a right. But when demonstrations use Hamas talking points, erase or deny the atrocities of October 7, glorify “resistance” that includes murder and rape, or call for “globalizing the intifada,” they are not advocating for coexistence; they are normalizing the very ideology that seeks to destroy Israel and its people, they are justifying genocide against Jews. Strip away the slogans, you defend an ideology committed to the destruction of an entire people. You can oppose Israeli government policies without defending terrorism. You can support Palestinian rights without aligning with those who openly call for eradication. But if you cannot condemn the deliberate targeting of civilians, no matter who commits it, the problem is not my reasoning. The problem is the moral standard being applied.
If we want the war to end, we have to see the situation as it is: Israel is not the only party responsible for this war. In your narrative (and Hirsch’s) the responsibility of Hamas and Iran all but disappears. That’s a fatal blind spot. You want peace? Put pressure where it belongs: on Hamas and Iran to release hostages, to stop targeting civilians, and to allow aid money to build schools and hospitals instead of tunnels and rocket launchers. Acknowledge Hamas’s deliberate tactic of using civilians as human shields to maximize casualties and inflame outrage against Israel. Where is your criticism of Hamas? Until you can answer that, your narrative will ring hollow.
Appalled by what I witnessed on the Columbia campus since October 7: vilification of a foreign nation (under assault since its creation); demonization of its citizens; intimidation of Israelis and Jews by mobs of wimpy masked students masquerading as terrorists (I saw fear in my Jewish students eyes, not guilt); support offered by activist faculty members; near silence of a self-preserving faculty; a nearly paralyzed administration letting the situation fester while the world was watching a highly respected university hijacked by activists and brought down to its knees.
Non-Jew here, who unlike the majority of protesters on our campus spent 6 months living in Israel and three more years with Israelis. Hearing the ideological and profoundly one-sided rhetoric unleashed on our campus, I kept thinking of:
1. My host family in Israel: Iraqi Jews still traumatized by the experience they shared with over 800,000 other Jews forced to leave their countries in the Middle East to find refuge in Israel.
2. My classmates at a Hebrew-language school: Jews from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, and Iran who, also fleeing persecution, found refuge in Israel late in life where they had to learn a new language and start life from scratch.
3. My Israeli friends who want nothing but live in peace alongside Palestinians.
4. All the Muslims, Christians, Druze and others who choose to live happy lives in Israel.
5. All the European Jews who for years have been subjected to intimidation, harassement, terrorist attacks, and have felt compelled to find refuge in Israel.
Here perhaps lies a key to what I view as somewhat mysterious: American Jews at Columbia and beyond willing to let the State of Israel disappear (remember “From the River to the Sea”?) and to throw under the bus half of the world Jewry. The comfort of a life sheltered from the terrorist attacks that have plagued Jews the world over.
Your words cut straight to the heart. You have put into writing so vividly, so truthfully… the anguish, fear, and disbelief that so many of us have been carrying, often in silence. The clarity of your witness, the moral courage it took to stand up and speak as you have, especially as someone who is not Jewish, pierces me with gratitude.
You saw what too many refused to see. You named what too many lacked the courage to name. And you did it with humanity, with the memories of real people, real families, real lives that Israel has sheltered when no other place would. It’s incredibly important to know that even in this darkness, there are voices of light, people who are willing to risk to tell the truth.
I am deeply grateful. And I am also heartbroken that this burden has fallen on so few, and that so many others, especially those who should know better have turned away.
Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities, just as they did not justify the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians; rejected peace offers or historical crimes cannot excuse Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza today. Even if one accepts the framing that this war is about Israel’s survival, existential Jewish fear does not grant a blank check to violate international law — especially for a state that claims to uphold democratic values and the rule of law. In any credible system of justice, victims are not the judges of their perpetrators’ punishment — because vengeance is not justice, even when that vengeance is enabled and backed by the United States. And at Columbia, we must be able to speak out against the humanitarian catastrophe facing Palestinians in Gaza, even in an environment where such speech is too easily and too often mislabeled as antisemitism.
Thank you Professor Hirsch. I am saddened to see so many arguments in this comment section dressed up with mostly false equivalence between the current “antisemitism” story at CU and other racial/gender struggles. This I believe is done so as to avoid the context of the current situation. Why are some Jewish students feelings being hurt at CU? Why are some Jewish students feeling nervous when they see protests for Palestinian rights on their way to class? Hmmm? Guilt by association with Israel maybe? Guilt for their own dehumanization of Palestinians? Guilt being associated with a country exposed for committing genocide against the Palestinians still ongoing? Coming to the realization that colonialism isn’t feasible the way it once was? Grieving friends or family members in harms way or even killed. Realizing the Jewish people who have been abused, have now become the abusers? It makes sense that they would feel hurt and nervous if their worldview was being so turned upside down. These other comments try to erase the Palestinian struggle from the narrative but the world (outside of America) is no longer falling for it.
This comment is a textbook example of rabid antisemitism justifying harassment of Jewish students by blaming them collectively, the same logic antisemites have used for centuries. It ignores inconvenient facts (or reflects ignorance of them): Israel has made repeated offers of peace in 1947, Camp David 1978, Oslo 1993, Camp David 2000, Annapolis 2007, all rejected by Palestinian leadership. It erases the historic expulsion of Jews from every Middle Eastern country where they lived for millennia. This is not a dispute over land; it is a fight over the very survival of the Jewish people, with Iran and its proxies openly declaring their goal to eradicate Israel and slaughter or exile its Jews. That is genocide, and it’s the cause you are defending.
This is not about “hurt feelings.” It is about documented harassment, threats, and intimidation of Jewish students on our campus, treatment no other group would be told to “accept” because of someone else’s political grievances. You claim “the world outside America” sees through the “narrative,” but in reality, democracies worldwide, from Canada to the EU, have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism precisely because rhetoric like yours normalizes hatred and violence against Jews.
You can demand Palestinian rights without excusing terrorism. You can critique Israeli policy without demonizing every Jew. But when you smear Jews as “colonial abusers” and rationalize the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians, you are not advocating for justice - you are standing with those who commit and justify genocide against Jews. That doesn’t make you a voice for human rights. It makes you an unapologetic, rabid antisemite.
Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities. Trying to shut down criticism by labelling everything antisemitic will not win for you in the end, even if it is winning in the short-term present moment at Columbia.
Don’t start a war and then whine and cry “genocide” when you lose.
The notion of “proportionality” is only invoked when it comes to Israel defending itself.
What would have been more proportional? Israel going into Gaza, raping, mutilating and dismembering women, burning families alive, and kidnapping innocent civilians, including children? Strangling babies alive next to their mothers? Parading dead bodies on the streets of Tel Aviv? Is that what you prefer?
Of course not.
If Palestinians really wanted peace, they would not have “elected” Hamas to rule Gaza. They would not have attacked some of the most Peace-nik communities in Israel. Oct 7 was not just executed by Hamas terrorists. Gaza civilians came into Israel and looted the cars left at the Nova festival. If a living person was found hiding, these civilians notified the Hamas terrorists for them to be killed.
Hostages were kept in civilian homes.
Not one Gazan tried to save or protect the hostages.
On campus, there was not one mention of a two state solution coming from the CUAD/SJP/JVP/PSC crowds. I did hear “say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here!” And “globalize the intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”. And oh yeah, “we don’t want 2 state, we want ‘48/ we want all of it!”
This isn’t about stifling free speech or refusing to engage in meaningful dialogue. This isn’t about legitimate criticism of the Israeli government. Israelis, in Israel, do that regularly. What you are doing is simply demonizing the only Jewish state for defending its borders.
Are you also protesting how Ukraine is protecting itself from Russia?
@ Mel Wall - so, according to your logic, the reason why so many Muslims/Arabs/Palestinian feel unwelcome here at Columbia (according to recent surveys) is then that they have a sense of guilt for the atrocities committed against Jews in the name of struggle for Palestinian freedom? Coming to the realization that killing innocent Israeli wasn’t perhaps the right thing to do? Is that what you’re saying?
We all as humans should feel guilt for allowing (continuing to allow) the atrocities committed against civilians, yes those committed against Israelis and those committed against Palestinians. Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities...and I think those of us who do not want to be called terrorists should do all we can to make sure we do not act like terrorists ourselves. It may not be obvious but as an American I feel complicit in all that is happening as well. I do not feel inappropriately "harrassed" when others - usually from other countries - criticize me for the crimes my country is committing.
Professor Wall--As a Jew, it does not particularly bother me that you are a flagrant and virulent anti-Semite--the trashbins of history are littered with millions of you and i guess you have chosen to cast your lot with them. However, as a fellow academic colleague i am quite amazed at your apparent ignorance of historical fact. Are you aware of the origin of the word "Palestine"? Of it's Roman origin to insult the Jews whose rebellion they had crushed--at a time when Jews had been living in the land for over a thousand years--many centuries before the Muslim invasion. (who exactly is the colonizer here??). Are you aware that in the 1920's and 1930's the leaders of the Arab world claimed that there is no such place as Palestine? Are you aware that the charter of Hamas reflects the philosophical dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood that it is the religious obligation of Muslims to kill Jews? --not Zionists, not Israelis, Jews. So i do not find it surprising that you have adopted the Marxist strategy of accusing your enemy of doing what you are doing in order to confuse the situation. I am sure that you are aware that of the 10 million Israelis, 2 million are Arab--with the right to own property, worship freely, vote and hold office and receive government aide for higher education--seems like an odd strategy for genocide. And if the goal in densely populated Gaza were genocide, why have there not been hundreds of thousands of casualties--technically easily achievable? And when was the last time in history that a country participated in feeding the population of the enemy that was seeking its annihilation?
I certainly hope that it is merely your blind hatred of Jews that has clouded your intellect rather than a drastic collapse of intellectual rigor infecting the Mailman School.
Professor Wall--As a Jew, it does not particularly bother me that you are a flagrant and virulent anti-Semite--the trashbins of history are littered with millions of you and i guess you have chosen to cast your lot with them. However, as a fellow academic colleague i am quite amazed at your apparent ignorance of historical fact. Are you aware of the origin of the word "Palestine"? Of it's Roman origin to insult the Jews whose rebellion they had crushed--at a time when Jews had been living in the land for over a thousand years--many centuries before the Muslim invasion. (who exactly is the colonizer here??). Are you aware that in the 1920's and 1930's the leaders of the Arab world claimed that there is no such place as Palestine? Are you aware that the charter of Hamas reflects the philosophical dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood that it is the religious obligation of Muslims to kill Jews? --not Zionists, not Israelis, Jews. So i do not find it surprising that you have adopted the Marxist strategy of accusing your enemy of doing what you are doing in order to confuse the situation. I am sure that you are aware that of the 10 million Israelis, 2 million are Arab--with the right to own property, worship freely, vote and hold office and receive government aide for higher education--seems like an odd strategy for genocide. And if the goal in densely populated Gaza were genocide, why have there not been hundreds of thousands of casualties--technically easily achievable? And when was the last time in history that a country participated in feeding the population of the enemy that was seeking its annihilation?
I certainly hope that it is merely your blind hatred of Jews that has clouded your intellect rather than a drastic collapse of intellectual rigor infecting the Mailman School.
Professor Hirsch,
As a Holocaust scholar and child of Holocaust survivors, your words carry weight, which makes your letter all the more disturbing.
There is a fundamental difference between fighting for peace and justifying terrorism. Conflating the two reveals a failure of both moral clarity and analytical reasoning. In your letter, you collapse the distinction between peaceful protest and terrorist propaganda. Instigators of campus unrest and violence, CUAD and others, have openly justified the most barbaric acts imaginable: rape, the beheading of babies, the murder of civilians. Not only by denying these atrocities, but worse, by rationalizing them as “resistance” and calling for a globalized genocide against Jews. They repeat and amplify Hamas propaganda, dressing atrocity in the language of liberation and presenting terror as a political tool. By echoing this rhetoric (whether knowingly or not) you become its conduit. You are not defending justice. You are defending the indefensible.
We must be able to distinguish peaceful protest from terrorist propaganda. If we are to have any hope of peace, we must condemn all forms of hate and refuse to justify terrorism in the name of liberation. We must begin with the courage to say: this is wrong.
You invoke “never again for all,” as if specificity excludes others. But just as Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t, Never Again for the Jewish people does not exclude anyone. It reflects the unique horror of a genocide aimed at erasing Jews from the earth and the moral imperative to recognize and prevent that hatred when it resurfaces. Diluting that history doesn’t universalize it. It erases it.
You describe Columbia’s implementation of legally mandated reforms following verified Title VI and Title VII violations, as “preferential treatment” for Jews. In reality, those reforms are a long-overdue response to the university’s repeated, systemic failure to protect Jewish students and faculty amid escalating antisemitism. Calling this “special treatment” is not scholarship. It is victim-blaming cloaked in the misappropriated language of justice, used to excuse bigotry rather than confront it. What you call “persecution” is, in fact, the university finally enforcing its own rules against harassment, hate speech, and disruption. To suggest that Jewish safety comes at the expense of others is to pit communities against one another, a classic tactic of bad-faith ideology masquerading as equity.
You dismiss the federal agreement as a product of the “Trump administration,” but its President Biden’s administration laid the entire foundation for serious federal action against antisemitism. His team launched the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, mobilizing over 100 concrete actions across government, funding a new Holocaust education center, and allocating $400 million to secure Jewish institutions. His Department of Education clarified that Title VI protects Jewish students, issued specific enforcement guidance, and opened dozens of investigations, including against Columbia. His Executive Order 13899 ordered agencies to identify civil and criminal tools to address campus antisemitism. Far from a partisan invention, the agreement reflects the very framework Biden established. Trump’s appointees may have signed it, but Biden’s administration made it necessary. Denouncing the agreement as a partisan conspiracy is not only false, it erases the lived experience of the very Jews you claim to speak for. Columbia’s agreement does not silence criticism of Israel. It does not elevate Jews above others. It simply ensures that Jews, like Black, Muslim, LGBTQ+, and all others, are not harassed, marginalized, or punished for their identity or beliefs.
Your broader argument rests on the same dangerous logic that underpins this dismissal. You demand academic freedom while calling for the censorship of Israel-related instruction that doesn’t align with your political views. You claim that protecting Jewish students may inflame antisemitism. In doing so, you echo the oldest antisemitic trope of all: that Jews are responsible for the hatred directed at them. You equate Israel’s existential fight for survival with genocide: precisely the kind of distortion the IHRA definition of antisemitism was created to identify.
You are entitled to your views. But you are not entitled to redefine antisemitism to fit an ideological framework that excuses hatred and targets Jews for exclusion. Your letter is not a defense of academic freedom. It is a manifesto of ideological conformity that punishes dissenting Jewish voices, a moral inversion that blames victims for their own persecution, and a form of internalized antisemitism.
I invite you to join in the hard but necessary work of defending every group from hatred, including Jews. That work begins with moral clarity and the courage to name hatred when we see it.
Beautifully, accurately and perfectly said, Larisa. Thank you.
Pseudo-intellectual propaganda for genocide remains propaganda for genocide.
The reforms imposed in the Agreement are not 'legally mandated' but were imposed via a 'negotiation' while critical research funds were held hostage. Not exactly voluntary or consensual.
How did we get there on the first place? Columbia’s repeated failure to address documented antisemitism left federal enforcement as the only option.
The fact that the agreement was reached through negotiation while federal funding was frozen does not mean the reforms were optional or arbitrary. When the Department of Education’s OCR and the EEOC conclude that an institution has violated Title VI and Title VII, the university faces two choices: accept legally binding remedies or fight the government in court. Columbia agreed to these terms because the underlying violations were real, and litigation risk was high. “Negotiated” in this context is not a free-market haggle. It was a structured legal resolution under federal civil-rights enforcement authority. Calling the agreement “not legally mandated” ignores that it stems directly from the university’s legal obligations under federal law. The enforcement mechanism may have been a settlement, but the duties it imposes protecting students from discrimination are not optional.
Kudos to you, Dr. Geskin for your clarity and honest accounting of how Columbia got to where we find ourselves today. Your 21 years living in Latvia under the Soviet Union's oppressive regime makes you well-positioned to speak to antisemitic propaganda and actions gone unchecked. On our campus, antisemitism, under the veil of anti-Zionism has been allowed to flourish without consequences, thus despite, my feelings about our government and it's motives for interfering on campus, I am happy that some measures, albeit hardly adequate, are being implemented to acknowledge and combat antisemitism at Columbia. May our hostages come home in the very near future 🙏🏻.
Hi, everyone. I'm going to turn off comments to this post now. I think everyone's had their say. I'll have mine and that'll be that.
Professor Genkin: Thank you for engaging with the post. It was helpful to see you lay out your thinking. It seems to me that you genuinely believe all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, including when it comes from Jews (I, too, am Jewish). You ask why so many people are critical of Israel but not Iran or Hamas. For people in the U.S., including at Columbia, the answer is very simple: Hamas is a State Department-designated terrorist organization; Iran is subject to massive U.S. sanctions and occasional military attack (we bombed them just last month, if I recall correctly). Israel, on the other hand, is a very close U.S. ally who receives billions in military aid, no questions asked, and whose Prime Minister regularly addresses sessions of Congress. We, as Americans, have an extremely close relationship with Israel, and potentially a lot of leverage; we do not have a similarly close relationship with Hamas.
You urge us to speak with the supposedly peaceful protesters at Columbia and find out what they really think. Many of us has been doing so for the last year and a half. These are our students. Some of them are young and intemperate; sometimes they use language and imagery that we think crosses the line, and we have said so. (See this letter from Jewish faculty about the disruption of Prof. Avraham Shilon's class last year: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2025/01/22/letter-to-the-editor-faculty-denounce-class-disruption-and-hate-speech-at-recent-protest/) But overall we have found the students to be deeply passionate, idealistic, thoughtful, and, yes, peaceful.
Our own antisemitism task force last year commissioned a survey of student experiences over the last year. I urge you to read the results. (https://www.columbia.edu/content/sites/default/files/content/Documents/Columbia-Student-Survey-Report-June-2025.pdf) In question after question, Jewish students *and* Muslim students reported similar levels of discomfort and exclusion, with some slight variations. Clearly, many Israeli and Jewish students are traumatized by Hamas's actions on October 7, 2023; just as clearly, many Muslim students (as well as a healthy minority of Jewish students, of whom I am very proud) have been horrified by the Israeli assault on Gaza in response. Both sets of students--and at a far greater rate than their peers--have been having a tough time over the last year and a half. And yet, in communications from the President's office, over and over, antisemitism has been highlighted, and the experience of Muslim and Palestinian students has been ignored. When the Trump administration cut off funding to the school, they did so with the claim that Columbia had not done enough to address antisemitism--a claim bolstered by the letter from Columbia faculty that you participated in.
Either our students (and faculty) have a right to speak--including to say things that we don't like or agree with--or they do not. If they have that right, let's defend it. If they don't, then we are going to continue living in a world where our students are arrested, threatened with deportation, suspended for *years* for protesting in Butler; and on and on. That's not a world I want to live in.
As a non-Jew, I write to respectfully but firmly disagree with your characterization of Columbia’s recent antisemitism policies as misguided or harmful.
Your central premise—that addressing antisemitism constitutes “singling out” Jews for “preferential treatment”—fundamentally misunderstands both the nature of targeted discrimination and the purpose of remedial action. When a university identifies that members of a particular group have faced harassment, threats, or discrimination, responding with specific measures is not preferential treatment; it is basic institutional responsibility. Would you argue that establishing support for any targeted community—whether Black students facing racism or Muslim students facing Islamophobia—constitutes dangerous “special treatment”?
Your claim that anti-antisemitism measures will “foment anti-Jewish prejudice” employs a particularly pernicious logic: that Jews should accept discrimination quietly lest they provoke further hatred. This reasoning effectively holds Jewish students responsible for others’ antisemitism—a stance that would be immediately recognized as victim-blaming in any other context.
Most concerning is your assertion that supporting Jewish students and adopting the IHRA definition “amplifies antisemitic tropes about Jewish power.” This argument essentially contends that any effort to combat antisemitism validates antisemitic conspiracy theories. By this logic, institutions should never address anti-Jewish discrimination for fear of confirming stereotypes—a standard applied to no other minority group.
Your letter conflates legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with the right to engage in harassment or intimidation of Jewish students. Universities can and must distinguish between protected political speech and conduct that creates hostile environments for students based on their identity. The fact that some protesters may have legitimate grievances about Israeli policies does not immunize all protest activity from scrutiny when it crosses into harassment.
Finally, your invocation of Holocaust history to argue against protecting Jewish students today is deeply troubling. The lesson of “never again” is not that Jews should accept present-day discrimination to avoid appearing too powerful; it is that institutions must act decisively when hatred emerges, rather than waiting for it to escalate.
Columbia’s measures appear proportionate to documented problems. Rather than undermining campus discourse, clear policies against antisemitism—like policies against all forms of discrimination—create the foundation for genuine academic freedom where all students can participate fully without fear.
Respectfully,
Sam Marchiano
Dear Sam,
Thank you so much for speaking out with such clarity and moral courage. It is especially powerful when a non-Jew cuts through the false narratives and double standards that so often surround these conversations. You have articulated what should be obvious: protecting Jewish students from harassment is not “special treatment,” it is the same basic responsibility a university has toward every targeted group.
Your letter exposes the core flaw in Professor Hirsch’s framing: that Jews should endure discrimination quietly to avoid “provoking” antisemitism. We would never apply that logic to any other minority, yet it is still trotted out when the target is Jewish. You also dismantle the false claim that adopting the IHRA definition somehow “amplifies” antisemitic tropes, when in reality, it does exactly what it was designed to do: distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitic harassment, ensuring universities can protect Jewish students without stifling political debate.
By rejecting these distortions, you’ve made clear that fighting antisemitism is not a “Jewish issue” but a universal one. And in this moment, your voice shows that the demand for safety and dignity is not coming from “Jews defending Jews,” but from anyone who refuses to excuse bigotry under the guise of political discourse.
Thanks again for speaking up and for speaking so clearly and powerfully.
Like Professor Hirsch I am the Jewish son of holocaust survivors. My grandparents, five uncles, their wives and children were all murdered victims of the holocaust. If there had been a State of Israel they would have had a place of refuge. But Britain to placate the Arabs did not allow Jewish emigration to Palestine.
The IHRA definition states that to say that the Jewish people do not have the right of self determination in their ancient homeland in the State of Israel is antisemitic. This does not mean that the rights of Palestinians or any others are excluded. It does not disallow criticisms of Israel.
The accusations of genocide against Israel ignore the murder of Israelis, Jews and non Jews on October 7th and the taking of hostages by Hamas. This war would be over in a day if Hamas released hostages and laid down its arms. The people starve while Hamas steals aid and Hamas members remain well fed in their tunnels. It is Hamas that is responsible for the suffering of the people in Gaza.
I agree with Dr. Geskin. It’s appalling to defend those who justify rape and murder as “resistance,” especially when the principles of gender studies, which focus on understanding and opposing violence, are being twisted. Defending such actions under the guise of justice is deeply troubling—and it mirrors a “Me Too, unless you're a Jew” mentality, where the fight against hate and sexual violence seems to exclude Jews.
Columbia’s reforms are not preferential treatment—they are an overdue response to the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from escalating antisemitism. Labeling these reforms as “special treatment” distorts the truth and sidesteps the real issue.
When we fight hate, Jews cannot be excluded. Ignoring Jew-hatred while championing other causes is not justice—it’s complicity
Thank you, Larisa, for your well-argued response to this one-sided open letter.
Like Marianne Hirsch I , too am a daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Poland. My mother was the sole survivor of her family, one of seven siblings. My father and four of his sisters survived, while their parents and other siblings were murdered. I grew up in Israel, surrounded by survivors, a couple of streets away from the border that divided Jerusalem. I remember clearly when the Egyptian president, Gamal Naser, threatened to throw all of us to the sea. I heard students and others at Columbia chanting like hypnotized, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Why should we not believe what Hamas has put down in its written manifesto?
As the chair of the NGO in the Committee on Mental Health in Consultative relationship to the United Nations, one of the annual programs I created was dedicated to raising awareness to the ‘suffering others among us’, and invited experts in their fields to share the horrifying data about the rise in violence against LGBTQ and many other marginalized communities among us. How come those colleagues whom I would have considered my allies, are not as horrified by the brutality of the atrocities committed against civilians, babies, children and women, atrocities documented by the perpetrators themselves?!
Prof. Geskin’s reply to Marianne Hirsch speaks for many of us. Prof Hirsch and others are entitled to their opinions, but the moral inversion and complete disregard for historical facts they espouse are replacing the standards that I would expect of anyone who has had the opportunity to train their minds to think and seek knowledge, and put it in the service of seeking a real peace and caring for the well-being and safety of all, on campus and beyond. As a Holocaust scholar, too, I am profoundly shaken by what I am experiencing as a Jewish and Israeli in America and at Columbia.
Thank you Marianne Hirsch's for sharing this powerful letter that speaks for so many of us at Columbia and thanks to Rise Up for publishing it.
I am interested in the negative responses to the letter on the comment thread. They find Hirsch's piece "disturbing" or "deeply troubling" (2 comments use those same words) and then, while ignoring what she actually writes, they question her “reasoning” or “logic” to give the appearance of undermining her argument. I admit I find these poorly argued repetitive talking points "deeply troubling." If Larisa Geskin is concerned about the denial of atrocities and justifying "the most barbaric acts imaginable" then surely she should be fighting against pro-Israel propaganda when it accuses students who are protesting genocide of antisemitism. We have seen how it is done: by conflating criticism of Zionism or Israel or supporting Palestinian liberation with being pro-terror or pro-genocide. Geskin is invested in that conflation. If Sam Marchiano is concerned with the conflation of “legitimate criticism of Israeli policies” with “harassment or intimidation of Jewish students” then she should be fighting with Hirsch against the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism to do just that. She too is invested in that conflation.
Why? Are they supporters of Israel's indefensible treatment of Palestinians? I don't want to assume as much but this is the consistent thread that brings together the individuals who have tried to manufacture the narrative that students protesting genocide in Gaza is a crisis of antisemitism despite all the Jewish students and faculty who are part of the protests or support them.
If any of these people wish to respond to my comment, I encourage them to first state clearly their position on Israel, the occupation, the lack of equal rights for Palestinians, and the mass murder taking place in Gaza. Then we can talk about the logic of argumentation
Joshua, there’s a Russian saying: let’s separate the flies from the cutlets. If you want to talk about positions on Israel, start by asking CUAD and their supporters on campus, you might be surprised that these “peaceful protestors” openly say they want Israel wiped off the map. You placed the atrocities of October 7 in quotation marks... I have a problem when the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of civilians is justified or minimized in the name of “liberation.” I hope you do, too.
It’s also not accurate to frame these atrocities as part of a struggle for “equal rights and liberation.” If we are serious about ending Palestinian suffering, we must be honest about who is most responsible for perpetuating it. Yasser Arafat walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace talks, rejecting a deal that would have given Palestinians nearly everything they demanded: statehood, control over most of the West Bank and Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Why? He chose violence instead. Gaza was unilaterally vacated by Israel in 2005. Since then, billions in aid have flowed in and were used to dig terror tunnels, stockpile weapons, and prepare for massacres. The goal has never been peaceful coexistence; it has been to eliminate Israel and its Jewish population. If you doubt that, look at the rest of the region: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria - all once had thriving Jewish communities. Today, none remain. Let’s protest that. Let’s demand equal rights for Jews in those countries. Silence...
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, diverting billions in aid into terror infrastructure. Hamas holds Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, prolonging agony for all sides. Iran bankrolls and arms these actors to ensure the conflict never ends. These are not leaders seeking peace; they are committed to eradication of Israel and Jews.
That goal of eradication is what I hear in our own campus protests, which started BEFORE any military action by Israel even started and it is supported by you and Professor Hirsch. Peaceful protest is a right. But when demonstrations use Hamas talking points, erase or deny the atrocities of October 7, glorify “resistance” that includes murder and rape, or call for “globalizing the intifada,” they are not advocating for coexistence; they are normalizing the very ideology that seeks to destroy Israel and its people, they are justifying genocide against Jews. Strip away the slogans, you defend an ideology committed to the destruction of an entire people. You can oppose Israeli government policies without defending terrorism. You can support Palestinian rights without aligning with those who openly call for eradication. But if you cannot condemn the deliberate targeting of civilians, no matter who commits it, the problem is not my reasoning. The problem is the moral standard being applied.
If we want the war to end, we have to see the situation as it is: Israel is not the only party responsible for this war. In your narrative (and Hirsch’s) the responsibility of Hamas and Iran all but disappears. That’s a fatal blind spot. You want peace? Put pressure where it belongs: on Hamas and Iran to release hostages, to stop targeting civilians, and to allow aid money to build schools and hospitals instead of tunnels and rocket launchers. Acknowledge Hamas’s deliberate tactic of using civilians as human shields to maximize casualties and inflame outrage against Israel. Where is your criticism of Hamas? Until you can answer that, your narrative will ring hollow.
Ah yes, the famous Professor Hirsch who told AP she "may quit"... after she became Emerita. Spare me your performative hand wringing.
https://riseupcolumbia.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-president-claire-shipman
Yes Marianne. Thank you for articulating this so well.
Joshua, there’s a Russian saying: let’s separate the flies from the cutlets. If you want to talk about positions on Israel, start by asking CUAD and their supporters on campus, you might be surprised that these “peaceful protestors” openly say they want Israel wiped off the map. You placed the atrocities of October 7 in quotation marks... I have a problem when the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of civilians is justified or minimized in the name of “liberation.” I hope you do, too.
It’s also not accurate to frame these atrocities as part of a struggle for “equal rights and liberation.” If we are serious about ending Palestinian suffering, we must be honest about who is most responsible for perpetuating it. Yasser Arafat walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace talks, rejecting a deal that would have given Palestinians nearly everything they demanded: statehood, control over most of the West Bank and Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Why? He chose violence instead. Gaza was unilaterally vacated by Israel in 2005. Since then, billions in aid have flowed in and were used to dig terror tunnels, stockpile weapons, and prepare for massacres. The goal has never been peaceful coexistence; it has been to eliminate Israel and its Jewish population. If you doubt that, look at the rest of the region: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria - all once had thriving Jewish communities. Today, none remain. Let’s protest that. Let’s demand equal rights for Jews in those countries. Silence...
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, diverting billions in aid into terror infrastructure. Hamas holds Israeli hostages as bargaining chips, prolonging agony for all sides. Iran bankrolls and arms these actors to ensure the conflict never ends. These are not leaders seeking peace; they are committed to eradication of Israel and Jews.
That goal of eradication is what I hear in our own campus protests, which started BEFORE any military action by Israel even started and it is supported by you and Professor Hirsch. Peaceful protest is a right. But when demonstrations use Hamas talking points, erase or deny the atrocities of October 7, glorify “resistance” that includes murder and rape, or call for “globalizing the intifada,” they are not advocating for coexistence; they are normalizing the very ideology that seeks to destroy Israel and its people, they are justifying genocide against Jews. Strip away the slogans, you defend an ideology committed to the destruction of an entire people. You can oppose Israeli government policies without defending terrorism. You can support Palestinian rights without aligning with those who openly call for eradication. But if you cannot condemn the deliberate targeting of civilians, no matter who commits it, the problem is not my reasoning. The problem is the moral standard being applied.
If we want the war to end, we have to see the situation as it is: Israel is not the only party responsible for this war. In your narrative (and Hirsch’s) the responsibility of Hamas and Iran all but disappears. That’s a fatal blind spot. You want peace? Put pressure where it belongs: on Hamas and Iran to release hostages, to stop targeting civilians, and to allow aid money to build schools and hospitals instead of tunnels and rocket launchers. Acknowledge Hamas’s deliberate tactic of using civilians as human shields to maximize casualties and inflame outrage against Israel. Where is your criticism of Hamas? Until you can answer that, your narrative will ring hollow.
Thank you Larisa.
Appalled by what I witnessed on the Columbia campus since October 7: vilification of a foreign nation (under assault since its creation); demonization of its citizens; intimidation of Israelis and Jews by mobs of wimpy masked students masquerading as terrorists (I saw fear in my Jewish students eyes, not guilt); support offered by activist faculty members; near silence of a self-preserving faculty; a nearly paralyzed administration letting the situation fester while the world was watching a highly respected university hijacked by activists and brought down to its knees.
Non-Jew here, who unlike the majority of protesters on our campus spent 6 months living in Israel and three more years with Israelis. Hearing the ideological and profoundly one-sided rhetoric unleashed on our campus, I kept thinking of:
1. My host family in Israel: Iraqi Jews still traumatized by the experience they shared with over 800,000 other Jews forced to leave their countries in the Middle East to find refuge in Israel.
2. My classmates at a Hebrew-language school: Jews from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, and Iran who, also fleeing persecution, found refuge in Israel late in life where they had to learn a new language and start life from scratch.
3. My Israeli friends who want nothing but live in peace alongside Palestinians.
4. All the Muslims, Christians, Druze and others who choose to live happy lives in Israel.
5. All the European Jews who for years have been subjected to intimidation, harassement, terrorist attacks, and have felt compelled to find refuge in Israel.
Here perhaps lies a key to what I view as somewhat mysterious: American Jews at Columbia and beyond willing to let the State of Israel disappear (remember “From the River to the Sea”?) and to throw under the bus half of the world Jewry. The comfort of a life sheltered from the terrorist attacks that have plagued Jews the world over.
Sandrine,
Your words cut straight to the heart. You have put into writing so vividly, so truthfully… the anguish, fear, and disbelief that so many of us have been carrying, often in silence. The clarity of your witness, the moral courage it took to stand up and speak as you have, especially as someone who is not Jewish, pierces me with gratitude.
You saw what too many refused to see. You named what too many lacked the courage to name. And you did it with humanity, with the memories of real people, real families, real lives that Israel has sheltered when no other place would. It’s incredibly important to know that even in this darkness, there are voices of light, people who are willing to risk to tell the truth.
I am deeply grateful. And I am also heartbroken that this burden has fallen on so few, and that so many others, especially those who should know better have turned away.
I really appreciate your courage.
Thank you for publishing.
Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities, just as they did not justify the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians; rejected peace offers or historical crimes cannot excuse Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza today. Even if one accepts the framing that this war is about Israel’s survival, existential Jewish fear does not grant a blank check to violate international law — especially for a state that claims to uphold democratic values and the rule of law. In any credible system of justice, victims are not the judges of their perpetrators’ punishment — because vengeance is not justice, even when that vengeance is enabled and backed by the United States. And at Columbia, we must be able to speak out against the humanitarian catastrophe facing Palestinians in Gaza, even in an environment where such speech is too easily and too often mislabeled as antisemitism.
Like Professor Hirsch I am the son o
Thank you Professor Hirsch. I am saddened to see so many arguments in this comment section dressed up with mostly false equivalence between the current “antisemitism” story at CU and other racial/gender struggles. This I believe is done so as to avoid the context of the current situation. Why are some Jewish students feelings being hurt at CU? Why are some Jewish students feeling nervous when they see protests for Palestinian rights on their way to class? Hmmm? Guilt by association with Israel maybe? Guilt for their own dehumanization of Palestinians? Guilt being associated with a country exposed for committing genocide against the Palestinians still ongoing? Coming to the realization that colonialism isn’t feasible the way it once was? Grieving friends or family members in harms way or even killed. Realizing the Jewish people who have been abused, have now become the abusers? It makes sense that they would feel hurt and nervous if their worldview was being so turned upside down. These other comments try to erase the Palestinian struggle from the narrative but the world (outside of America) is no longer falling for it.
This comment is a textbook example of rabid antisemitism justifying harassment of Jewish students by blaming them collectively, the same logic antisemites have used for centuries. It ignores inconvenient facts (or reflects ignorance of them): Israel has made repeated offers of peace in 1947, Camp David 1978, Oslo 1993, Camp David 2000, Annapolis 2007, all rejected by Palestinian leadership. It erases the historic expulsion of Jews from every Middle Eastern country where they lived for millennia. This is not a dispute over land; it is a fight over the very survival of the Jewish people, with Iran and its proxies openly declaring their goal to eradicate Israel and slaughter or exile its Jews. That is genocide, and it’s the cause you are defending.
This is not about “hurt feelings.” It is about documented harassment, threats, and intimidation of Jewish students on our campus, treatment no other group would be told to “accept” because of someone else’s political grievances. You claim “the world outside America” sees through the “narrative,” but in reality, democracies worldwide, from Canada to the EU, have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism precisely because rhetoric like yours normalizes hatred and violence against Jews.
You can demand Palestinian rights without excusing terrorism. You can critique Israeli policy without demonizing every Jew. But when you smear Jews as “colonial abusers” and rationalize the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians, you are not advocating for justice - you are standing with those who commit and justify genocide against Jews. That doesn’t make you a voice for human rights. It makes you an unapologetic, rabid antisemite.
Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities. Trying to shut down criticism by labelling everything antisemitic will not win for you in the end, even if it is winning in the short-term present moment at Columbia.
Mel, you’re not being silenced. You’re being called out for antisemitism. The fact you see that as a “tactic” says everything.
Here is what it comes down to, Mel.
Don’t start a war and then whine and cry “genocide” when you lose.
The notion of “proportionality” is only invoked when it comes to Israel defending itself.
What would have been more proportional? Israel going into Gaza, raping, mutilating and dismembering women, burning families alive, and kidnapping innocent civilians, including children? Strangling babies alive next to their mothers? Parading dead bodies on the streets of Tel Aviv? Is that what you prefer?
Of course not.
If Palestinians really wanted peace, they would not have “elected” Hamas to rule Gaza. They would not have attacked some of the most Peace-nik communities in Israel. Oct 7 was not just executed by Hamas terrorists. Gaza civilians came into Israel and looted the cars left at the Nova festival. If a living person was found hiding, these civilians notified the Hamas terrorists for them to be killed.
Hostages were kept in civilian homes.
Not one Gazan tried to save or protect the hostages.
On campus, there was not one mention of a two state solution coming from the CUAD/SJP/JVP/PSC crowds. I did hear “say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here!” And “globalize the intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”. And oh yeah, “we don’t want 2 state, we want ‘48/ we want all of it!”
This isn’t about stifling free speech or refusing to engage in meaningful dialogue. This isn’t about legitimate criticism of the Israeli government. Israelis, in Israel, do that regularly. What you are doing is simply demonizing the only Jewish state for defending its borders.
Are you also protesting how Ukraine is protecting itself from Russia?
No. You’re not.
Get a grip.
@ Mel Wall - so, according to your logic, the reason why so many Muslims/Arabs/Palestinian feel unwelcome here at Columbia (according to recent surveys) is then that they have a sense of guilt for the atrocities committed against Jews in the name of struggle for Palestinian freedom? Coming to the realization that killing innocent Israeli wasn’t perhaps the right thing to do? Is that what you’re saying?
We all as humans should feel guilt for allowing (continuing to allow) the atrocities committed against civilians, yes those committed against Israelis and those committed against Palestinians. Past wrongs do not justify present atrocities...and I think those of us who do not want to be called terrorists should do all we can to make sure we do not act like terrorists ourselves. It may not be obvious but as an American I feel complicit in all that is happening as well. I do not feel inappropriately "harrassed" when others - usually from other countries - criticize me for the crimes my country is committing.
Professor Wall--As a Jew, it does not particularly bother me that you are a flagrant and virulent anti-Semite--the trashbins of history are littered with millions of you and i guess you have chosen to cast your lot with them. However, as a fellow academic colleague i am quite amazed at your apparent ignorance of historical fact. Are you aware of the origin of the word "Palestine"? Of it's Roman origin to insult the Jews whose rebellion they had crushed--at a time when Jews had been living in the land for over a thousand years--many centuries before the Muslim invasion. (who exactly is the colonizer here??). Are you aware that in the 1920's and 1930's the leaders of the Arab world claimed that there is no such place as Palestine? Are you aware that the charter of Hamas reflects the philosophical dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood that it is the religious obligation of Muslims to kill Jews? --not Zionists, not Israelis, Jews. So i do not find it surprising that you have adopted the Marxist strategy of accusing your enemy of doing what you are doing in order to confuse the situation. I am sure that you are aware that of the 10 million Israelis, 2 million are Arab--with the right to own property, worship freely, vote and hold office and receive government aide for higher education--seems like an odd strategy for genocide. And if the goal in densely populated Gaza were genocide, why have there not been hundreds of thousands of casualties--technically easily achievable? And when was the last time in history that a country participated in feeding the population of the enemy that was seeking its annihilation?
I certainly hope that it is merely your blind hatred of Jews that has clouded your intellect rather than a drastic collapse of intellectual rigor infecting the Mailman School.
Professor Wall--As a Jew, it does not particularly bother me that you are a flagrant and virulent anti-Semite--the trashbins of history are littered with millions of you and i guess you have chosen to cast your lot with them. However, as a fellow academic colleague i am quite amazed at your apparent ignorance of historical fact. Are you aware of the origin of the word "Palestine"? Of it's Roman origin to insult the Jews whose rebellion they had crushed--at a time when Jews had been living in the land for over a thousand years--many centuries before the Muslim invasion. (who exactly is the colonizer here??). Are you aware that in the 1920's and 1930's the leaders of the Arab world claimed that there is no such place as Palestine? Are you aware that the charter of Hamas reflects the philosophical dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood that it is the religious obligation of Muslims to kill Jews? --not Zionists, not Israelis, Jews. So i do not find it surprising that you have adopted the Marxist strategy of accusing your enemy of doing what you are doing in order to confuse the situation. I am sure that you are aware that of the 10 million Israelis, 2 million are Arab--with the right to own property, worship freely, vote and hold office and receive government aide for higher education--seems like an odd strategy for genocide. And if the goal in densely populated Gaza were genocide, why have there not been hundreds of thousands of casualties--technically easily achievable? And when was the last time in history that a country participated in feeding the population of the enemy that was seeking its annihilation?
I certainly hope that it is merely your blind hatred of Jews that has clouded your intellect rather than a drastic collapse of intellectual rigor infecting the Mailman School.
I wear no mask as I have nothing to hide. We must normalize dialogue and questioning of motives instead of rushing to judgments that someone hates or disdains the other and is a "rabid antisemite". You can read articles by diverse Columbia Jewish students who agree suppressing free speech does not make Jewish students safer. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2025/04/27/shma-koleinu-a-joint-message-from-jews-of-columbia-across-the-ideological-spectrum/ I believe there is indeed a