Anti-Semitism at Columbia University

Hat tip to The Israel Group and JTA

I am cross-posting two items I received from The Israel Group. It concerns anti-Semitism at Columbia University, which has had numerous instances of anti-Semitism in recent years. This is hardly surprising since the university is home to Middle East professors like Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad. It was also home to the late Edward Said, the ingrate who came to the US from the Middle East and and became a guru of anti-Western thinking.  Combine all that with the little brown shirts of Students for Justice in Palestine, and you have  a toxic combination.

This afternoon, the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel scheduled a rally to protest campus anti-semitism. In addition, one Jewish student, the daughter of the Israeli consul general in New York, describes what she has to endure on campus.

Call To Action Against Columbia University!  Rally Against Anti-Semitism at Columbia University Thursday, October 4th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM Meet near Columbia's main gates on 115th and Broadway

From Students Supporting Israel Dear Friends and Israel Supporters, Please join our protest against Columbia University's mistreatment and lack of protection for Students Supporting Israel who have been harassed and intimated. Time and again, Columbia has done nothing to protect the pro-Israel students and has shown apathy and total disregard for their safety.   "All Columbia University students deserve protection! Freedom of speech for all! Members from Students Supporting Israel, Columbia's chapter of Alums for Campus

Fairness, faculty, and the local community have had enough. We demand fair and equal treatment by the administration! Last semester SSI filed a detailed, thorough, and evidence-based complaint documenting our members’ harassment by anti-Zionist groups and individuals on campus, and of their clearly numbered violations of the CU Rules of Conduct. And yet, Columbia University has taken no action, summarily dismissed the complaint, and left us – its students – without any protection from harassment and bullying. Since then, we have submitted three more complaints, and the Columbia administration has failed to appropriately address any of them.  SSI has spoken with university administrators on numerous occasions, but all our requests have fallen on deaf ears. It is time to show the university that we will not stand by quietly while SSI and other pro-Israel students are harassed and systematically silenced on our own campus.  Please join us and help us receive the protection we need! Now is the time to stand together! Meet near Columbia’s main gates on 115th and Broadway at 4:00 PM! -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Israeli envoy’s daughter says she is being threatened at Columbia by pro-Palestinian group By JTA Ofir Dayan, daughter of Israel’s Consul General in New York Dani Dayan and an undergraduate student at Columbia University, said she is being harassed and threatened by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. “SJP is violent,” she told the New York Post in an interview published over the weekend. “I’m worried about my personal safety.” Dayan, 24, is a sophomore at Columbia. She previously served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. She told the newspaper that she has been called a “murderer” and “terrorist” by angry mobs of Palestinian supporters and that when her father spoke at the university in February she was handed a flier calling the consul general a “war criminal.” She said that members of the Students Supporting Israel, or SSI, were threatened last year by members of SJP after leaving an on-campus event. “They were really angry and it was scary. I believed it would escalate to physical violence,” she told the Post. The pro-Israel group filed a complaint with the appropriate student adjudication board and was later told by a university administrator that it was too complicated for the student-run board. The administrator dismissed the complaint in March. Dayan told the newspaper that a university administrator said that unless the group can prove anti-Semitism, the school cannot intervene. “I thought the university would protect me, but they didn’t do anything when [protesters] called me a terrorist,” Dayan said. “The school stands by as I’m harassed.” Suzanne Goldberg, executive vice president for university life, said in a statement: “The safety and well-being of all of our students is fundamentally important . . . we will always work with students who have concerns about their physical safety, allow debate on contentious questions where our students hold strong views, and provide essential personal and group support.” Dayan said she met with Goldberg last week to request protection from SJP and to ask for disciplinary action to be taken against the group. She said Goldberg refused and recommended that she put the school’s public-safety number on speed dial. “[She] said that unless SJP gets ­violent, they can’t do anything. We have to wait until we’re beaten to call you? [The school] can protect me, but they choose not to,” Dayan told the Post. She said in a Facebook post on Monday that she has received “an overwhelming amount of messages supporting me. I just wanted to make something clear, it is easy for the press to focus on me but I am in no way the issue here. [T]he issue is thousands of pro-Israel students around the world who are afraid to support Israel publicly. They are the ones deserving of support and love.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I say good luck to SSI in their quest to stop campus anti-semitism. I really think, however, they need to bring in the lawyers.