Jewish students say Columbia is failing them terribly by coddling protesters. They’re right
Last week, I witnessed the NYPD arrest more than 100 Columbia students — pro-Palestine protesters — for illegally camping on the campus quad. But it was barely a slap on the wrist: The second encampment is bigger than ever.
“Down with the bosses, up with the workers! Workers for Palestine,” an activist with a megaphone chanted in this “liberated zone.” Behind her was a sign reading, “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine.”
That’s rich, considering the People’s University costs $89,587 a year.
It seems many of the students are misinformed activists desperately searching for purpose — like the woefully misguided one who crafted “dykes for divestment” and “trans people for Palestine” posters.
But their bandwagoning is devastating many of their Jewish classmates.
“Even if they’re not calling for [our] death right now, if they’re not saying anti-Semitic things to our face right this minute, that doesn’t take away the fact that they’re anti-Semitic, that they’ve been pushing these anti-Semitic tropes,” Erin McNulty, a Jewish pre-med student, told The Post. “They’ve been enabled to really discriminate against us, and harass us, and put our safety on the line for quite some time now.”
McNulty was one of around 100 attendees who attended Passover Seder Monday evening at the school’s Chabad community center.
Just across Broadway, campers — who have 360-degree security at the university’s and taxpayer’s expense — set up a peanut butter and jelly station, as if in search of comfort food from their childhood. I saw one student wearing a Moncler beanie (costing north of $300) under her keffiyeh and overheard another ask a fellow camper, “Do you want, like, a cappuccino or something?”
These students could have set up camp when war broke out in October, or any time since then. Instead they waited for good weather — a nice stress-reliever to hang out with friends just before finals.
Zoom classes are now an option for the rest of the semester, as the university has given up on controlling its campus.
But I noticed very few laptops open in the encampment, and little evidence the protesters were showing up to remote classes. I overheard one brag to another that a sympathetic professor had excused all her absences.
In fact, a handful of pro-Palestine professors volunteered to stand guard at the encampment’s entrances to make sure no outsiders could gain access.
One told me I was “not allowed to film” or “zoom in on their faces.” Says who? And aren’t these activists standing loud and proud for their cause?
Well, no — most were wearing keffiyeh and Covid masks, presumably to protect their future Goldman Sachs job prospects.
I heard chants of “Intifada” and “f–k Israel” and was shocked to see a cardboard sign, buried deep in the encampment, reading, “A message to the scum of nations and pigs of the earth: Paradise lies in the shadow of swords.”
No wonder a rabbi affiliated with the university has urged Jewish students to get off campus and go home.
I spoke with a group of three Jewish students sitting on steps overlooking the encampment. All were wearing kippahs and asked not to be identified for privacy reasons.
“I feel like my presence here — as someone who is visibly Jewish — is a protest in and of itself,” one told me. “My mom pleaded with me to come home today, but I won’t be intimidated out of my own campus.”
His friend chimed in: “As a senior, I feel a responsibility to show other Jewish students that, even though I’m a bit nervous and I’ve felt unsafe on campus, I can still be here. I want to reassure other people.”
The “liberated zone” — erected in clear violation of long-established school policies that require “tenting [be approved and] ordered through Columbia Facilities Events Administration” — represents an enormous failure on the part of the administration. And, for many Jewish students on campus, it’s a betrayal.
“The university needs to take a strong stance, and they’re not. They’re emboldening [protesters] … ,” Mendi Hecht, a 23-year-old pre-med major and former IDF soldier, told The Post. “They’re consistently failing the Jewish students on campus. Every day and every hour they let this go on, they’re failing.”
McNulty believes the answer shouldn’t be taxing for Columbia.
“I think that [administrators] really just need to follow their policy,” the 23-year-old said. “It’s written out for them. They don’t have to do much thinking about it.”
The NYPD, to their credit, wants to get in and help out again. But Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber said on Monday that the university “does not want NYPD present on campus.”
I applauded the president for cracking down on trespassers last week with the help of police. But clearing out students only to let them set up camp in a different area is even worse than never doing anything in the first place.
It tells protesters that there are no real consequences for their actions. And it sends a message to everyone else — particularly Columbia’s Jewish community — that the university’s action was merely performative.
“The truth is, we don’t want to be here,” McNulty said. “We deserve to be here. But we don’t want to endure this every day.”
Additional reporting by Dorian Geiger
