Additional Benefits Would Accrue by Better Dealing with Hate-Mongering Antisemitic Faculty & Monitoring/Training Personnel

Also Concerned That Two Left Wing Organizations ADL and Shema Are Part of the Training Groups

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research and Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following ZOA review:

The resolution agreement between Columbia University and the U.S. government contains many provisions that are praiseworthy, historic and/or that may lead to important, positive changes, including those listed below. Also included in the Deal are some concerns. ZOA wishes to strongly thank and praise the Trump administration, including President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon, and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Leo Terrell, and others for all their extraordinarily hard work on the agreement to protect Jewish students’ civil rights.

• Future Actions: The agreement specifically does not prohibit the United States from bringing actions against Columbia for future violations of Title VI (¶5), or from conducting subsequent compliance reviews, investigations, defunding or litigation related to Columbia’s actions occurring after the agreement’s effective date. (¶8) These provisions will hopefully help keep Columbia being very careful to avoid future violations.
• Payments: Columbia will pay $200 million for released claims, plus $21 million for EEOC claims. (¶10)
• Administrator and Resolutions Monitor: Columbia will appoint an Administrator who shall be principally responsible for coordinating and overseeing compliance with the agreement, and who shall make reports to a Resolution Monitor jointly appointed by Columbia and the U.S. Government. (¶¶ 11,40-53) The Resolution Monitor will have access to data and relevant officials, and may recommend actions to ensure compliance with the resolution agreement, including recommending agreement modifications or more training. (¶46) However, the Resolution Monitor will not have the authority to make a final determination regarding Columbia’s compliance with relevant law or to initiate any Title VI or other enforcement actions. (Id.)

Both the monitoring itself, and the Monitor’s ability to make recommendations, should be beneficial.

• Program review: Columbia’s Senior Vice Provost, acting with the authority of the Office of the Provost, will thoroughly review programs in regional areas across the University, starting with the Middle East. This review will include the Center for Palestine Studies; the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; the Middle East Institute; the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs; the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) – Middle East Policy major; and other University programs focused on the Middle East. (¶12)

The agreement calls for this review to “ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced”; review “all aspects of leadership and curriculum”; “steward the creation of new programs to address the full range of fields”; create a “standard review process for hiring of non-tenured faculty”; review the “processes for approving curricular changes”; and make recommendations to the President and Provost about “any necessary changes, academic restructuring, or investments that will ensure academic excellence and complementarity across all programs.” (Id.)

Many of the programs to be reviewed are currently hotbeds of antisemitism and Israel-bashing that indoctrinate students with anti-Israel propaganda lies and Jew-hatred. The review process and recommendations could and should lead to much-needed changes. The proof will be in the pudding. (But see ZOA’s discussion below about pervasive antisemitic, Israel-hating faculty.)

• New Jewish studies faculty: Columbia “shall appoint new faculty members with joint positions in both the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the departments or fields of economics, political science, or SIPA.” (¶13) Depending on who is appointed, this provision could/should lead to positive changes.
• Student Liaison: Columbia will add a Student Liaison, an administrator who will serve as a liaison to students concerning antisemitism issues, and make recommendations to University leaders about ways to improve and to support Jewish students. (¶14) Depending on who is appointed and whether his or her recommendations are adopted, this could/should lead to positive changes.
• Merit-based admissions: Columbia “shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts” and will assure that it does not pursue unlawful DEI goals. (¶15) . . . Columbia shall maintain merit-based admissions policies. . . . No proxy for racial admission will be implemented or maintained. . . . (¶16) Columbia will provide its admissions data to the Resolutions Monitor (who will audit the data) and the U.S. government. (¶18)

These strong provisions are extremely important, even if they reiterate and seek to monitor existing legal requirements based on recent Supreme Court rulings. The recent lack of merit-based admissions has badly unjustly, unfairly and wrongly harmed Jewish (as well as Asian) students throughout the Ivy League and elsewhere. This caused Jewish admissions to have been reduced to a small fraction of what they were years ago. A large presence of Jewish students can decrease the ability of Jew-haters to succeed in targeting Jews.

• Merit-based hiring: “Columbia shall provide that all hiring and promotion practices for faculty and administrative roles are grounded solely in individual qualifications and academic and professional merit . . .” Hiring data will be provided to the Resolutions Monitor to comprehensively audit. (¶19) This provision is also extremely important for counteracting the pervasive discrimination against Jewish and even pro-Israel applicants for faculty positions.
• Title IX: “Columbia will uphold its commitment to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 . . .” (¶20) This provision is vital for protecting women, including Jewish women.
• International Admissions Review, Questions and Dependence: “Columbia will undertake a comprehensive review of its international admissions processes and policies and will ensure that international student-applicants are asked questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States.” (¶21)

ZOA strongly recommends that these questions should be designed to uncover international applicants who have hateful, bigoted attitudes towards Jews and Christians, and/or past involvements with terrorism or other hateful, bigoted activities.

Columbia is also required to “examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.” (¶22) Indeed, American universities’ dependence on the tuition provided by foreign students from nations where Jew-hatred/Israel-hatred is endemic is a significant factor that turned campuses into hotbeds of Jew-hating Israel-hatred. The requirement to reduce this dependence could/should improve Columbia’s campus environment.

• Civil Discourse, Training: “Processes will be established to provide that all students, international and domestic, are committed to the longstanding traditions of American universities, including civil discourse, free inquiry, open debate, and the fundamental values of equality and respect. Students will also agree not to engage in discrimination, harassment, and other violations of Columbia policy. Columbia will also develop training materials to socialize all students to campus norms and values more broadly. The Resolution Monitor shall review such processes . . .” (¶22)

Inculcating students with the values of civil discourse, respect, non-discrimination could/should be vital to making campuses safer. However, an important issue is who will be doing this training, and what will the training consist of?  

***Disturbingly, Columbia’s “Additional Commitments to Combatting Antisemitism,” announced by its acting president on July 15, named left wing groups the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and “Project Shema” as two of its training groups.

ADL has frequently harmed efforts to combat antisemitism. For instance, ADL accused U.S. Senators of anti-Muslim bigotry for questioning a judicial nominees’ alarming affiliation with an antisemitic organization; defended antisemitic phony “human rights” groups; purged Muslim antisemitism data from its website; featured extreme Israel-hating speakers that demonize Israel at ADL’s major annual conference; wrongly stated that BDS resolutions alone [resolutions to boycott Israelis] would not count as antisemitism; speaking to and wrongly praising extremist, anti-Israel, Soros-funded group J Street as doing important work for Israel; leaders of ADL condemning ZOA’s successful efforts to reinterpret Title VI to cover Jews in order to protect Jews (proclamations were made that ZOA are “gunslingers from the East” and we should use diplomacy not legal actions; and much more. Moreover, a Fox News investigation found that ADL’s educational and “anti-bias” programs promote far-left and critical race theory (CRT) concepts such as “white privilege” and “systemic racism” (concepts often used to defame Jews) and promote groups such as the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter (BLM) – despite the virulent Jew-hating, Israel-hating and pro-Farrakhan positions of the Women’s March leaders and BLM/M4BL organization.

“Project Shema”’s weak course materials use the term “Palestine” (a non-existent entity) and appear to defend the term “globalize the Intifada” – a term calling for finishing Hitler’s monstrous Nazi agenda by murdering every Jew on Earth. Project Shema claims that the term refers to “social uprisings” that “could be non-violent,” but that many Jews rightly “hear” this as violent due to violent/ murderous attacks against civilian Jews in Israel during the Second Intifada in which over 10,000 innocent Jews were murdered or maimed. In other words, the problem is what Jews “hear” based on actions and facts rather than what is being said. Similarly, Project Shema offers potentially “innocent” explanations for terms calling for Israel’s annihilation, such as “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”; “Zionism is racism and colonization”; and “Decolonization by any means necessary.” Project Shema again explains that Jews “hear” these statements differently. Project Shema also claims that we can’t really know the intent of the speakers of these violence-promoting statements. Why haven’t they learned the perils of writing off, and not believing the intent and proclamations of Jew-haters and Israel-haters?

Any organization providing training at Columbia should be making it crystal clear that chants for “Intifada,” “From the river to the sea,” and equating Israelis with Nazis constitute harassment of Jewish students and must be forbidden and perpetrators held accountable.

• Discipline and Information re: Visa Holders: Columbia will comply with Student and Exchange Visitor (SEVIS) program legal requirements and “all requests for immigration information consistent with the requirements of the program.” Also, “Columbia will promptly provide the United States, upon request, with all disciplinary actions involving student visa-holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions, and arrest records that Columbia is aware of for criminal activity, including trespass or other violation of law, to the extent permitted by FERPA, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” Further, “Disciplinary actions will be determined without regard to immigration status. The University will provide the Resolution Monitor with anonymized statistical data sufficient to evaluate compliance with the foregoing sentence.” (¶23)

This important provision appears to be aimed at preventing Columbia from avoiding taking appropriate disciplinary action against violent foreign students. MIT had incurred public outrage when MIT refused to expel nine violent foreign students due to visa issues.

• Foreign funding: Columbia will comply with all foreign gift and contract reporting obligations, including under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. Columbia will comply with reasonable and lawful requests from the United States for information related to foreign funding sources. (¶24)

This provision may go even a little further than Columbia’s existing legal obligation to disclose its foreign funding and contracts. Transparency is important. However, it would be even more helpful to curb the foreign funding that enables hostile foreign governments to impose their antisemitic professors and courses on American universities.

• Prevention of terrorism financing, etc.: “Columbia will, as needed, engage experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing (including laws and regulations applicable to sanctioned countries and individuals) and will adopt, modify and enforce policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with such laws and regulations . . .” (¶25)

Columbia is of course already obligated to comply with sanctions, AML and terrorism financing laws. Perhaps hiring experts in these areas may be helpful. The assistance that Columbia faculty gave to pro-Hamas encampments arguably violates the law prohibiting providing material support to terrorism. Will Columbia and its experts do anything about this?

• Disciplinary Processes: Disciplinary processes will be administered by the Office of the Provost, and require rigorous vetting of disciplinary panel members, who will be solely comprised of faculty and administrative staff, “to ensure an efficient and fair process for student discipline and the right to a safe and nondiscriminatory educational environment.”

“The Provost will have final approval of all panel members and appellate Deans. Final determination of appeals of disciplinary decisions will remain with the University President. The University will not provide the UJB panel members with information about respondents’ immigration status and the UJB will not consider respondents’ immigration status in its deliberation or sanctioning.” (¶26)  

These important provisions appear to be designed to assure fairer disciplinary processes.

• University Policies and Rules: Consistent with Columbia’s March 21, 2025 commitments, Columbia will maintain University policies and rules that: (a) Demonstrations inside academic buildings and places where academic activities take place are not acceptable under the Rules of University Conduct; (b) “All demonstration activity is subject to the University’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies”; (c) Demonstrators must present their University identification to University delegates or Public Safety Officers, and if the demonstrators fail to comply, “be subject to discipline, being escorted off campus, and detention for trespass where appropriate”; (d) “Face masks or face coverings are not allowed for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of University policies or state, municipal, or federal laws. . . .”; (e) Student groups are subject to discipline for discriminatory conduct or other violations of University policy, and can be sanctioned for violations “including by defunding, suspending, or de-recognizing them.” (¶27)

These important policies and rules, if (hopefully) implemented, can make Columbia a far safer campus for Jewish students.

However, due to the alarming history of too many university administrators excusing horrific calls for murdering Jews – such as chants for “Globalizing the Intifada,” “From the river to the sea,” and equating Israelis with Nazis – ZOA believes that the university rules should also make it absolutely clear that such calls constitute harassment of Jewish students and are forbidden.

Consistent enforcement: “Columbia will impartially implement and apply University rules and policies, including prompt and consistent enforcement of disciplinary rules and policies without regard to identity or ideology.” (¶28) This provision, we hope, will help stop the “double standard” that denies Jewish students the benefit of university policies and gives a free pass to those who harass and attack Jewish students.  

• Title VI: “Columbia will evenly implement its institution-wide policies on harassment and discrimination under Title VI.” (¶29) It is indeed vital for Columbia to comply with Title VI “evenly” – hopefully meaning protecting Jewish students’ Title VI rights to a safe, harassment-free learning environment as assiduously as other minorities’ rights are protected.

*ZOA alone among the Jewish organizations led the groundbreaking six-year battle to interpret Title VI’s regulations to cover Jewish students; and has long fought against university “double standards” that failed to protect Jewish students’ rights.

• Employee training: Columbia is required to ensure that its employee training covers Columbia’s obligations under the resolutions agreement. (¶30) As with student training, this can be very helpful, but who will do the training, and what will the training include?
• Campus safety: Columbia is required to maintain its recent enhancement to campus safety during the three-year duration of the resolution agreement, including maintaining “at least 36 trained and certified special officers . . . with the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them when appropriate” and maintaining Columbia’s MOU with the New York Police Department “ensuring that the NYPD can provide additional security assistance when needed.” (¶31)

These praiseworthy provisions are vital for maintaining a violence-free campus. Too often in the past, radical pro-Islamist, pro-Hamas students and outside agitators took over buildings, blocked access to areas of the campus, and harassed and attacked Jewish students with impunity.

• Reporting non-compliance: “Columbia will maintain retaliation reporting procedures and protections, in accordance with federal, state, and local laws” and applying to the reporting noncompliance with the resolution agreement. (¶¶32-33)

While non-retaliation reporting procedures are already legally required, this provision appears to enhance these important protections and assure better compliance with the resolution agreement.

• Alternative Dispute Resolution: The agreement establishes a detailed alternative non-binding dispute-resolution mechanism for the U.S. government and Columbia to attempt to resolve violations of Title VI and the resolutions agreement, prior to commencing court action. “The Assistant Attorney General [for the DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights] shall have discretion and authority to initiate and conduct reasonable compliance audits, reviews, inquiries, or investigations to the maximum extent ordinarily permitted by Title VI.” (¶¶33-39)

This dispute resolution process could be a much faster way to resolve Title VI violations, than the usual lengthy process. One of ZOA’s Title VI cases (against Rutgers) was pending for over eight years.

Data: The Resolution Monitor and the U.S. government (to the extent not unreasonable) will have access to non-privileged data, staff, etc. (¶¶49-50) The Resolution Monitor and U.S. will maintain confidential information in a confidential manner. (¶53)

Reporting: During the resolution agreement’s three year term, Columbia will issue public semi-annual reports documenting its progress and activities in implementing the resolution agreement. (¶54)

The reporting can be helpful.

Columbia’s additional helpful commitments: On July 15, 2025, Columbia announced “Additional Commitments to Combatting Antisemitism,” including adoption of the valuable IHRA definition of antisemitism; the appointment of Title VI and Title VII Coordinators; and a commitment to not recognize or meet with organizations that promote violence or encourage academic disruption, including “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD), its representatives, or any of its affiliated organizations; clear announcements of zero tolerance for antisemitism and hate.

Withdrawing the welcome mat from CUAD and its affiliates is an important commitment which, if complied with, would end the obscenity of college administrators “negotiating” with violent antisemites who take over campus buildings and quads and intimidate and attack Jewish students. These vital commitments were likely only achieved due to the Trump administration’s pressure and actions.

ZOA’s concerns:

Columbia’s president’s statement regarding the resolution agreement bragged that the agreement “preserves Columbia’s autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making.” Indeed, the resolution agreement states: “No provision of this Agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, admission decisions, or the content of academic speech.” (¶5)

This provision could undercut Columbia’s commitments made elsewhere in the resolution agreement, for merit-based admissions and hiring, and reviews of Columbia’s academic programs that foment anti-Israel, antisemitic lies and hatred.

We are particularly concerned that Columbia appears to be maintaining its current faculty. A university’s faculty is its core influencer and educator of the university’s students – our future national and international leaders. ZOA believes that Columbia will not be a welcoming and safe place for Jewish and other decent students, and will not be a provider of truthful unbiased education, until the huge contingent of notorious Columbia University professors who spread lies about Jews and Israel and foment anti-Jewish hatred are fired.

Canary Mission’s eye-opening study, The Ecosystem of Antisemitic Professors at Columbia University, reported that 85% of faculty in Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies are antisemitic; and that antisemitic faculty also pervade Columbia’s Institute of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender; Anthropology Department (which includes leaders of the American Anthropological Association’s resolution to boycott Israeli institutions); English and Comparative Literature Department; and History Department; among others. Jew-haters can also be found in Columbia’s medical school and other departments.

Some of these well-known Jew-hating, Israel-hating Columbia faculty members include: Prof. of Modern Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi, a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terror organization, who labeled terrorism against Israelis as “acts of spontaneous resistance” and claimed the “occupation doesn’t have the right to call resistance ‘terrorists’”; Prof. of Government and Anthropology Mahmood Mamdani, a BDS activist (and father of the socialist NYC mayoral candidate), who spoke at an event with BDS founder Omar Barghouti and signed a horrific letter in October 2023 calling the Hamas massacre of innocent Jews a “military response” by “an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation”; Professor of Modern Arab politics and Intellectual History Joseph Massad, who was the subject of an investigation for antisemitic abuse and intimidation of students, and called “ethnic cleansing” and Jewish supremacism “an ideological cornerstone of the Zionist movement”; and Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke, who justified anti-Israel terror, stating that “Palestinian resistance 2 Israeli policy isn’t ‘Islamic terrorism’ – it’s anti-colonial resistance.”

In addition, the Canary Mission study names and provides the horrifying details about at least another sixty (60) Columbia faculty members who have been engaging in virulently antisemitic, anti-Israel activities – including supporting or organizing antisemitic hate groups SJP, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestinian Youth Movement; supporting or organizing BDS activities; participating in and/or spreading anti-Israel hatred at pro-Hamas encampments; demonizing Israel with vile false charges; and/or justifying and praising Hamas’ war crimes against Israelis.

Those additional Columbia faculty members include:  Stathis Gourgouris; Munir Atalla; Hamid Dabishi; Joseph Howley; Mohamed Abdou; Premilla Nadasen; Psychiatry Prof. Blake Turner; Social Work Prof. Anthony Zenkus; History Prof. Anupama Rao; Audra Simpson; Brian Boyd; Brinkley Messick; Bruce Robbins; D. Max Moerman; David Scott; Dirk Salomons; Elizabeth Bernstein; Farah Griffin; Frank Guridy;Frederick Neuhouser; Gauri Viswanathan; Gayatri Spivak; George Saliba; Gil Anidjar; Gil Hochberg;Gray Tuttle; Gregory Mann; Gregory Pflugfelder; James Schamus; Prof. of Humanities Jean Howard; Josh Whitford; Lila Abu-Lughod; Mae Ngai; Marianne Hirsch; Marwa Elshakry; Michael Harris;Michael Taussig; Michael Thaddeus; Muhsin Al Musawi; Nadia Abu-El-Haj; Najam Haider; Naor Ben-Yehoyada; Neferti Tadiar; Pablo Piccato; Paige West; Partha Chatterjee; Patricia Dailey; Rebecca Jordan-Young; Rhoda Kanaaneh; Rosalind Morris; Ross Hamilton; Sarah Haley; Sociology Prof. Saskia Sassen; Taylor Carman; Thea Abu El-Haj; Timothy Mitchell; Victoria De Grazia; Wayne Proudfoot; Zainab Bahrani;Zoe Crossland.

No wonder this past year, every graduate of elite New York City Jewish high school Ramaz avoided enrolling in or even applying to Columbia College for the first time in decades.

Acting University President Claire Shipman said, “This [resolution] agreement marks an important step forward.” We agree. And again, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) strongly praises President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General and Chair of the Task Force on Antisemitism in the Department of Justice Leo Terrell for an extraordinarily important, historic work to protect Jewish students who have suffered greatly in recent years simply because they are Jews.

The United States and the Trump administration has shown that it does not, cannot and will not tolerate this sort of continuous and relentless Jew-hating, Israel-having behavior and actions that innocent Jews have experienced in recent years. This is a monumental Trump administration and Department of Justice effort to rectify this horrific problem. But more needs to be done – especially regarding Columbia’s hate-mongering faculty members and clarifying and properly choosing the appropriate monitors and training personnel involved in this very important and sacred task.