Representative Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) — chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee — sent a letter calling for order to be restored on Columbia University’s campus to the school’s president, Minouche Shafik, and board of trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman on Sunday night, the fifth day of mass pro-Hamas protests on the Ivy League institution’s campus.
Since April 17 — the day Shafik, Greenwald, and Shipman testified in front of the House Education and Workforce Committee on the university’s response to campus antisemitism — students and outside activists have occupied Columbia’s campus, chanting anti-Israel and pro-terrorist slogans and harassing and even assaulting Jewish students.
While Shafik authorized the New York Police Department (NYPD) to clear the encampment on Columbia’s main lawn on April 18 after issuing several warnings to the students occupying the section of campus, students have once again violated university policy and gathered on the lawn, with no repercussions from Columbia leadership. At the same time, outside agitators congregated at the campus gates, with many making their way onto Columbia property.
“Columbia’s continued failure to restore order and safety promptly to campus constitutes a major breach of the University’s Title VI obligations, under which federal financial assistance is contingent, and which must immediately be rectified,” Foxx wrote. “If you do not rectify this danger, then the Committee will not hesitate in holding you accountable.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act stipulates that entities receiving federal funding must not allow discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. In 2019, former president Donald Trump issued an executive order clarifying that the term “national origin” applies to Jewish people, writing that “individuals who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin do not lose protection under Title VI for also being a member of a group that shares common religious practices.”
Foxx cited multiple instances in the letter demonstrating the environment Columbia had allowed to develop.
Where a group of students had gathered, defiantly waving American and Israeli flags, a woman with her face wrapped in a keffiyeh held up a sign with an arrow pointing at the students and text that read “Al-Qasam’s Next Target,” referencing Hamas’s military wing.
Some on the campus chanted, “We don’t want no Zionists here,” while others cornered Jewish students attempting to leave and threw objects at them, accusing the Jewish students of having “blood on [their] hands.” The activists told Jewish students to “go back to Poland” and yelled “Yehudim, Yehudim, fuck you!” while the students exited Columbia’s grounds.
Many protesters openly cheered Hamas, with one saying, “I am Hamas,” according to a letter a Jewish student sent the committee. Another told a Jewish student leaving campus that “the seventh of October is going to be every day for you.” Videos from Columbia show demonstrators chanting, “Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too!” and “We say justice, you say ‘how?’ Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!”
A speaker at the protest who said she was “here to talk about escalation” said that “on October 7, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza broke through the walls of their open-air prison, shattering the illusion of the invincibility of their occupiers” to applause from the audience.
“By setting up this encampment in the heart of the Zionist stronghold of Columbia University, we intend to do the same,” she continued.
Arab-Israeli journalist Yosef Haddad, who came to campus to deliver a talk to a student organization, was mobbed, punched, and told to kill himself by a crowd of pro-Hamas protesters.
According to a letter signed by over 100 Jewish Columbia students, protesters stood outside Barnard University — a Columbia affiliate — dormitory buildings and harassed two undergraduates, screaming, “We know where you live now” and “You killed half our family.” They yelled, “Come out, pussy” and wrote “intifada” in chalk on the street outside the students’ dorm-room window.
Protesters assaulted a Jewish student who attempted to recover a stolen Israeli flag and prevent it from being set aflame, shoving him and yelling, “You’ve got blood on your hands!”
Eden Yadegar, one of the Jewish Columbia students who signed the open letter to the administration, told National Review that the non-student protesters pose a legitimate threat to Jewish students.
“The immediate safety threat is the protesters that are not Columbia affiliates that are around our campus and that are sneaking onto our campus,” Yadegar said. “Columbia needs to acknowledge that it’s a threat and address it through whatever legal means that they can, whether it’s with the NYPD or the National Guard.”
Some of those individuals had already been officially banned from Columbia’s campus, like Within Our Lifetime organizer Nerdeen Kiswani. After having been prohibited from entering the premises after a “Resistance 101” event at which she promoted terrorism, she appeared on video at Columbia leading “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” chants. Former Cooper Union and Hunter College faculty member Shellyne Rodriguez, who was fired after threatening a journalist with a machete, was also present.
A professor with a history of apologism for terror groups, Mohamed Abdou, whom Shafik swore in her testimony was being removed from his teaching position at Columbia over, was spotted on campus as well.
Yadegar told NR that the situation has “devolved into complete anarchy around the whole neighborhood.”
“I live six blocks away from the center of campus, and when I go into my like living room kitchen area, I can hear them chanting and I can hear helicopters and I can hear police cars,” she said. “Students have left, because it’s obviously not a suitable learning environment.”
Yadegar said she thinks the university is afraid of the protesters, adding that the administration “got a lot of backlash for calling the NYPD to arrest their own students that were violating their rules — after repeated warnings, by the way.”
“I think that they are afraid and I think that they honestly are way in over their heads and they don’t know how to handle the situation,” she continued.
Foxx noted in her letter that Shafik testified that she takes the problem of antisemitism and student safety seriously during the hearing last week.
“Safety is paramount and the university will take the necessary steps, no matter how unpopular, to secure Columbia’s campus and apply rules around protest, harassment, and discrimination consistently and fairly to everyone,” Shafik said to the committee, adding that antisemitism “has no place on [Columbia’s] campus.”
Greenwald and Shipman both told the committee that student safety is the board of trustees’ primary concern.
“This is a pivotal moment and a test of Columbia’s leaders,” Foxx wrote. “I call on you to rise to meet the needs of the moment and your legal obligations through immediate and decisive action and honor your commitments to Congress. In the event you do not, the Committee will not hesitate in holding you accountable.”
Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, called on Shafik to resign in a statement released Sunday morning.
“While Columbia’s failed leadership spent hundreds of hours preparing for this week’s Congressional hearing, it clearly was an attempt to cover up for their abject failure to enforce their own campus rules and protect Jewish students on campus. Over the past few months and especially the last 24 hours, Columbia’s leadership has clearly lost control of its campus putting Jewish students’ safety at risk,” Stefanik wrote. “It is crystal clear that Columbia University — previously a beacon of academic excellence founded by Alexander Hamilton — needs new leadership. President Shafik must immediately resign. And the Columbia Board must appoint a President who will protect Jewish students and enforce school policies.”
After four days without comment, the White House condemned the antisemitic words and actions observed at the protests. Andrew Bates, deputy press secretary for President Joe Biden, said that the administration condemns the harassment and assault of Jewish students.
“While every American has the right to peaceful protect, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous — they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America,” Bates said. “And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. We condemn these statements in the strongest terms.”