The Ongoing Morass at Columbia

“Among the dozens of newly published messages, Columbia College Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer Susan Chang-Kim wrote at 1:46 p.m. that the panel’s content “Comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm wrote at 2:08 p.m. that it is “Amazing what $$$$ can do” while referring to a Spectator op-ed penned by the campus rabbi in October 2023.”

-Columbia Spectator

We recently learned that several administrators at Columbia University were caught exchanging text messages mocking the concerns of anti-Semitism on the part of Jewish students on campus. Amid the surge in anti-Semitism at Columbia and other universities in the wake of the October 7 attack by the Hamas terror group upon innocent Israeli civilians, Columbia is not surprisingly, one of the campuses most affected.

The mocking text messages were first brought to light by the hearings conducted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Now, that committee has released additional exchanges that are basically insulting to Jewish students on campuses.

Columbia’s campus newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, has a fairly detailed report on the latest revelations including transcripts of the exchanges. The exchanges reportedly took place during a May 31 panel discussion on  Jewish life on campus.

There is no way anybody can convince me that this university has any interest in the welfare of its Jewish students. From the president of the university on down, a thorough housecleaning is in order. The Jew-baiting, pro-Palestinian students who violate campus policies need to go, the outside agitators who come to campus to wreak havoc need to go, the indoctrinating professors who egg them all on need to go, and the cowardly administrators, especially those who mock Jewish concerns about campus anti-Semitism need to go.

Columbia, like other similar universities, has to feel it in the pocketbook. That means declining student enrollment, declining donations, declining grants-declining everything.

This resurgence in anti-Semitism in the US started on our university campuses, and it must be tackled on our university campuses.