Former US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt published an article in The Free Press explaining why she would not accept a teaching position at Columbia University or its affiliates.
Lipstadt stated that while she had been considering accepting a teaching position at Columbia, to do so would be to "serve as a prop or fig leaf."
She stated that she watched the inverting of morality in places of higher learning and that this problem became even worse following the October 7 massacre. She was "pleased and surprised" when Barnard College expelled two students who had disrupted an Israeli professor’s class earlier this semester.
Lipstadt noted that "Over the past two years, universities have been overwhelmingly weak in their response to those clearly breaking university rules and even the law."
The final straw came last week, when anti-Israel activists at Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia University, stormed a campus building. A university employee was assaulted by these anti-Israel activists and had to be hospitalized.
The university's response was to attempt to appease the violent and hateful activists. "The same administration that had expelled two students a few days earlier engaged in multi-hour, drawn-out negotiations," Lipstadt said. "Consequences? None."
"Watching Barnard capitulate to mob violence and fail to enforce its own rules and regulations led me to conclude that I could not go to Columbia University, even for a single semester," she declared, adding that she would not "be used to provide cover for a completely unacceptable situation."
Moreover, Lipstadt is not "sure that I would be safe or even able to teach without being harassed" at Columbia in the current climate.
Pro-Palestinian Arab demonstrators at Columbia set up dozens of tents in April of last year, demanding that the university divest from its Israeli assets. The university administration called in police to dismantle the encampments.
On April 30, at the request of university leaders, hundreds of officers with the New York Police Department stormed onto campus, gaining access to the building through a second-story window and making dozens of arrests of the pro-Palestinian Arab demonstrators who had taken over Hamilton Hall.
Before the anti-Israel encampment on campus, the Chabad rabbi of Columbia University and a group of Jewish students were forced to leave the university campus for their own safety during a pro-Hamas demonstration.
In August, three Columbia University deans resigned from the school, after it was discovered that they had exchanged “very troubling” texts that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.”
Later that month, Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik announced her resignation, following months of criticism for her handling of campus antisemitism.
In September, on the first day of classes, dozens of masked anti-Israel protesters gathered at the entrance to Columbia and at Barnard College.