Columbia magazine’s troubling silence on antisemitism
I have read the autumn 2024 issue of Columbia Magazine, the glossy publication sent to around 350,000 graduates of the university’s undergraduate schools, cover to cover.
Menachem Rosensaft
I did so as an alumnus with two Columbia degrees – an M.A. in contemporary European history (1975) and a J.D. (1979) – and as a lecturer-in-law who has taught about the law of genocide at Columbia Law School since 2011.
To say that I was and am deeply disappointed by the issue would be an understatement. I was and am appalled at the magazine’s ostrich-like failure to in any way acknowledge, let alone confront, the antisemitic scourge that has been and is tearing Columbia apart.
One of the magazine’s stated goals is to “shed light on university priorities.” Ever since Hamas terrorists perpetrated their pogrom on October 7, 2023, Columbia’s leadership has been grappling with a surging antisemitism so severe that Claire Shipman, the co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, called it “a moral crisis on our campus.” Presumably, the countering of such a moral crisis qualifies as a university priority, and yet the latest issue of Columbia Magazine does not mention anything – not one word – about the repeated manifestations of antisemitism on the Columbia campus over the course of the past year.
Not one word about the enthusiastic support on campus by far too many students and faculty members for the Hamas terrorist organization and its lethal violence against Jews in Israel. Not one word about their one-sided sympathy for Palestinians and Hamas and their undisguised loathing not just for Israel and Israelis but for any Jew who supports or identifies with Israel in any way. Not one word about chants calling for “death to Zionists.”
A “Letter from the Editors” notes in general terms that “This past year has been an extremely difficult one for Columbia,” adding that “Global events have divided the community and challenged our sense of self.”
Not challenging enough, apparently, for these events to be identified. Instead, the magazine features such issues as climate change, the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, and how psychedelic drugs may treat depression and anxiety.
One of Columbia Magazine’s principal reasons for existing – if not its principal purpose – is to engender financial support for the university from its alumni. But I’m not at all sure that insulting the intelligence of Jewish alumni, of whom there are quite a few, by studiously ignoring their very real concerns is a great strategy to get them to open their wallets.
This past year has been a harrowing one. Like most other universities and colleges across the U.S. and elsewhere, Columbia has experienced – and by all accounts, continues to experience – virulent antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism and rabid hatred of Israel on an unprecedented scale. Jewish students and faculty members have been screamed at, harassed, and far, far worse to such an extent that the presidents of Columbia, Barnard College, and Teachers College established the Columbia Taskforce on Antisemitism “to address the harmful impact of rising antisemitism on Columbia’s Jewish community and to ensure that protection, respect, and belonging extends to everyone.” This taskforce, headed by former Law School Dean David M. Schizer and Professors Esther R. Fuchs and Nicholas Lemann, issued two devastating reports setting forth in excruciating detail the severity of this existential problem that the university is confronting.
I say “existential” with full awareness of the significance of that term and without in any way overstating quite how dire the situation is.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” proclaimed Khymani James, one of the leaders at Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment this past spring. James ended up being banned by the university, and both he and his organization, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), issued apologies of sorts, but James has since sued the university and CUAD has retracted its apology. The battle lines have been clearly drawn.
Signs on campus supporting Intifada “by any means necessary” have made clear to Jewish students and faculty members that not only do their contemporaries want to see Israel eradicated from the map of the Middle East, but that the murder of Jewish men, women and children, the rape and mutilation of Jewish women, and the taking civilian hostages into a horrific captivity is an acceptable part of their playbook.
One Columbia law professor, Katherine Franke, tried to shift the blame – any blame – on Israeli students who supposedly come to Columbia “right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.” Needless to say, the exact opposite is the case – it is the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist members of the greater Columbia community who, with the encouragement of the likes of Professor Franke, have been harassing and intimidating Jewish students on campus.
None of this is reflected in the pages of the fall issue of Columbia Magazine. It absolutely should have been.
Last Monday, when Columbia’s Jewish students tried to mourn the victims of October 7, they were confronted on campus with anti-Israel demonstrators chanting “The only solution is intifada revolution,” which is to say, continued violence against Israeli Jews with their destruction as the ultimate goal.
“I stood there for almost an hour with my jaw on the floor. To see my peers, some of whom I’ve had intense discussions with this past year, walking around and chanting, is unbelievable. I just don’t see how that can anything but a celebration of what happened on Oct. 7,” said Abigail Fixel, a junior and president of the Columbia University chapter of Jewish on Campus.
And so the beat goes on.
Columbia’s Interim President Katrina Armstrong declared in August that “The painful and distressing incidents of antisemitism recounted in” the antisemitism taskforce’s second report “are completely unacceptable. They are antithetical to our values and go against the principles of open inquiry, tolerance, and inclusivity that define us.” She pledged “to make the changes necessary to do better.”
One welcome change would be to reassure the university’s alumni and other stakeholders in the next issue of Columbia Magazine that protecting Abigail Fixel and all other Jewish students at Columbia from the antisemitism they have been and are being forced to endure is indeed a university priority.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).
