New texts show Columbia deans mocked Jewish students over antisemitism concerns: ‘Comes from such a place of privilege’
Columbia University deans accused Jewish students of asserting “privilege” — and mocked them for needing a place to “huddle” to avoid antisemitism and harassment on campus, new text messages released Tuesday show.
Associate deans Josef Sorett, Susan Chang-Kim, Matthew Patashnick and Cristen Kromm exchanged the dismissive and derisive texts while seated in the audience of a May 31 alumni event about Jewish life on campus, which were released in full by the House Education Committee.
“Laying the case to expand physical space! They will have their own dorm soon,” said Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support, in one message, prompting Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College, to respond: “Comes from such a place of privilege.”
“Hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center Huh??” Chang-Kim added, referring to the campus Hillel chapter. ”Trying to be open minded to understand but the doors are closing.”
“Amazing what $$$$ can do,” Kromm said, adding at another point: “If only every identity community had these resources and support.”
Columbia had featured multicultural graduation celebrations for black, Asian, Native American, LGBTQIA+ and “Latinx” students — but not Jewish students.
The May 31 panel had included Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Life executive director Brian Cohen; former Columbia Law School dean David Schizer, who co-chaired the university’s task force on anti-Semitism; religious life dean Ian Rottenberg; and rising Columbia junior and journalist and the campus newspaper Rebecca Massel.
The Washington Free Beacon first obtained and reported on the text exchanges — including one that used vomit emojis in reference to an op-ed about antisemitism authored by Columbia’s Campus Rabbi Yonah Hain.
Chang-Kim, Patashnick and Kromm were later placed on leave.
“I’m going to throw up,” Chang-Kim wrote in response to another portion of the discussion when a Holocaust survivor, Orly Mishan, expressed fear about her daughter “hiding in plain sight” while student-protesters embraced Hamas following the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, the outlet noted.
“His use of the word Hamas is interesting,” Patashnick claimed elsewhere. “Students generally weren’t protesting for Hamas.”
A spokesman for the US-designated foreign terrorist organization endorsed the tent cities that popped up on college and university campuses nationwide last spring, praising them for having helped “refute the Zionist narrative.”
“Jewish students deserve better than to have harassment and threats against them dismissed as ‘privilege,’ and Jewish faculty members deserve better than to be mocked by their colleagues,” Education Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a statement.
“These text messages once again confirm the need for serious accountability across Columbia’s campus,” she added of the exchanges, which had been provided voluntarily.
A Columbia University official told The Post that the school is “committed to combatting antisemitism and taking sustained, concrete action to ensure Columbia is a campus where Jewish students and everyone in our community feels safe, valued, and able to thrive.”
Sorett is also cooperating with the investigation into his three colleagues who were placed on leave and “will be recused from all matters relating to the investigation while continuing to serve as Dean of the College,” the official added.
Sorett previously issued a private apology to Columbia’s Board of Visitors, according to the Free Beacon, claiming that the texts, some of which he sent, did not “indicate the views of any individual or the team.”
Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus was a seedbed for many of the anti-Israel tent encampments at schools across the country, which called for universities to divest from Israel and opposed the Jewish state’s war against Hamas.
In late April, a mob of masked pro-Hamas rioters even occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall building, breaking a window with a hammer and flying a huge flag calling for “intifada” from a second-story window. Dozens were arrested within 24 hours — with many seeing their charges dropped by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik came under fire for refusing to say whether “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was an antisemitic phrase while testifying before Congress.
