We wholeheartedly support Columbia’s decision to take appropriate disciplinary action against those who desecrated campus and normalized heinous anti-Jewish, anti-American, pro-terror ideas. But these announced actions remain totally unsatisfying. The phrase “Too Little, Too Late,” does not properly convey our resentment for their callous indifference to the physical and emotional safety of Jewish students and faculty for a year and a half.
As we’ve always said: Antisemitism is a malignant and metastatic force. When it is not confronted, antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, destroys everything it touches, from political parties to movements to societies and entire continents. Columbia is learning that the hard way.
Things never should have gotten to the point of multi-hundred million dollar budget cuts and potential student deportations – and would not have, had Columbia officials met their obligations under the Constitution, Title VI, and basic human decency.
May the many horrors of this experience serve as a lesson to universities nationwide: take action against antisemitism and uphold the mandate of true liberalism, an essential foundation of academia, before your entire institution is eroded from inside and out.