NEW YORK – On her first day of classes at Columbia University earlier this month, freshman Shoshana Aufzien awoke not to an alarm clock, but to the clamor of her peers calling for an “intifada.”
While not exactly surprised – Aufzien knew the campus had been rife with anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric throughout the previous academic year – she was jolted nonetheless. Yet, rather than stay inside until her first class, Aufzien decided to make her voice heard.
“I spent that morning with my friend, silently counter-protesting on 116th and Broadway as we were berated by masked protestors,” the double Psychology and Jewish History major said.
Many of those protesting Israel held signs with inverted red triangles, a nod to Hamas propaganda celebrating attacks on Israelis, or calling for a return to “Hind Hall,” referring to a name protesters gave Hamilton Hall after storming the school building last year.
Despite moves by the school to address widespread complaints of antisemitism, Jewish students say Columbia of Fall 2024 is much the same as Columbia of Spring 2024, if perhaps not as intensely toxic.
“It’s tense on campus, we seem to have picked up where we left off,” said Eden Yadegar, a senior and president of Students Supporting Israel.
In the first 72 hours of the fall semester, which began September 3, anti-Israel protesters poured viscous red paint on the Alma Mater statue, an important campus landmark, several students said. Masked and keffiyeh-clad student protesters affiliated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest also staged an unauthorized sit-in inside the lobby of the School of International and Public Affairs and handed out pamphlets urging the severing of ties with Israeli universities. CUAD and Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace branch advertised the protests on social media.
“It can be eerily calm and quiet,” Yadegar said, but she also noted the presence of fliers with pro-Hamas messaging, or calling to attack Zionists. “It’s very anti-West and anti-American.”
An Anti-Defamation League report published on September 17 found a total of 2,087 anti-Israel incidents on college and university campuses in the United States between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024. These included incidents of assault, vandalism, harassment, protests and resolutions seeking divestment from Israel.
Some of the most high-profile anti-Israel protests last year occurred on and around Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan. The demonstrations, which included large pro-Palestinian protest encampments, thrust the school into the center of a bruising nationwide debate about the limits of free speech and how to deal with criticism of Israel that strays into antisemitism and harassment of Jewish students, resulting in a campus where Jewish supporters of Israel no longer felt safe.
Throughout last year, Jewish students at Columbia felt pressured to hide their Jewish identity, were maligned by faculty, stalked, mocked, spit on, and ostracized by peers, according to an August report by an antisemitism taskforce set up by the school.
“We heard about crushing encounters that have crippled students’ academic achievement. We heard about students being avoided and avoiding others, about exclusion from clubs and activities, isolation and even intimidation,” the task force said in the report.
Jewish students, American and Israeli, confronted antisemitism on the Morningside Campus nearly every day last year, whether it was social media posts mocking the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, justifying them, or frequent demonstrations featuring calls to “Globalize the Intifada” and similar sentiments, including one instance in which students chanted in support of “10,000 October 7ths.”
In many cases, protesters who set up encampments blocked access to campus to those they perceived as “Zionists,” violating the rights of Jewish students and others.
While offensive and hateful speech is constitutionally protected, many have condemned calls in support of an intifada, referencing violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel in the late 1980s and early 2000s, as incitement toward violence against Jews, Israelis or their allies. Similarly, chants of “from the river to the sea,” or support for boycotts of the world’s only Jewish state are interpreted by many as support for the dismantling of Israel and the genocidal ethnic cleansing of its Jewish residents.
According to the ADL report, campus groups responsible for much of this recorded anti-Israel activity include Students for Justice in Palestine, SJP; Jewish Voice for Peace, JVP; Students for a Democratic Society, SDS; Young Democratic Socialists of America, YDSA; and Dissenters.
Rhetorical themes common to these clubs, according to the report, included open expressions of support for terrorism and violence, as well as for designated terror groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, as well as for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, who have terrorized global maritime trade in support of Hamas.
During orientation and the first few days of school, when many student groups set up tables on campus hoping to attract new members, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of several like-minded clubs better known as CUAD, distributed a manifesto calling for the boycott and divestment of Israel as well as an end to “Zionist entities” on campus.
Activists associated with CUAD also allegedly spray-painted graffiti calling for the ousting of Barnard’s president Laura Ann Rosenbury for her failure to condemn “the on-going genocide” in Israel.
Among the groups with a table at Columbia’s campus club fair at the start of the semester was Jewish Voice for Peace, despite being prohibited from doing so by the school’s conduct code due to it being suspended by Columbia last year.
“There they were, disseminating propaganda to their impressionable peers,” said Aufzien. “I walked up to the table and asked one of the organizers if I could look at a flier equating the NYPD to the KKK, and they snatched it out of my hand.”
A university official said it is investigating the matter “and will utilize disciplinary processes based on the outcome of the investigations.”
The university official also painted a different picture of the semester’s first week.
There were typical back-to-school activities on the main campus, including a student resource and activities fair as well as a “Summer Treats on the Plaza,” during which Interim President Katrina Armstrong greeted students and served ice cream alongside colleagues, the official said.
“There were a few small protests last week, mostly outside the campus gates, that have not disrupted the start of classes or campus activity and have dispersed on their own,” the official added.
This does little to assuage Aufzien, who said she’s experienced antisemitism on campus from day one.
“During move-in, as I approached Chabad’s table to pick up a mezuzah, a member of SJP threw a flier at me – for context, I’m often identifiably Jewish – and told me to ‘stop supporting settler colonialism,’” Aufzien said.
According to the newly released ADL report centers for Jewish life on campuses were routinely targeted last academic year. At least 73 incidents directly impacted Hillels and Chabads and anti-Israel activists often demand that universities cut ties with both organizations.
Freshman Maya Cukierman said she debated whether to come to Columbia due to all the turmoil last year, but decided she didn’t want to give in.
“I came hoping for the best, preparing for the worst,” Cukierman said.
So far this year, the Economics and Modern Jewish Studies major said she’s had several brushes with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
In one instance, protests calling to “Globalize the Intifada” on a street outside a classroom were so loud she could barely hear her professor, she said.
Although students can’t be punished for political chants according to the First Amendment, courts have found that curbs can be placed on speech or protests that interrupt a class or prohibits students from fully accessing campus.
Aufzien was also disappointed by a mandatory orientation session on antisemitism and Islamophobia, which she said focused on only one of the two.
“A DEI professional said the use of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ is justified, racialized Jews, and didn’t mention any specific antisemitic incidents on Columbia’s campus. She also devoted an entire slide of her presentation to combating ‘anti-Palestinians’ without a commensurate discussion of anti-Israeli hate,” Aufzien said.
The university didn’t respond to a request for comment about specific incidents during orientation.
“Every Columbia student has the right to free expression as well as the right to live and learn on campus free from discrimination and harassment,” a university official said. “Under our system of shared governance, Columbia relies on the University Rules of Conduct to guarantee a wide latitude in the free expression of opinion in protests and demonstrations, as long as these do not substantially disrupt the University’s academic activities.”
As the second full week of classes draws to an end, the university’s wrought iron gates remain locked and students may only access the grassy part of the quad with the permission of public safety officers, part of measures designed to keep protest encampments from returning.
Yadegar said that while the protests aren’t at the level they reached last year, people are waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially as October 7 approaches. But students remain resolute.
“At the end of the day we just want to go to class,” she said, “and we’re not going to be intimidated.”
