Former Columbia Law dean says antisemitism task force’s next report to focus on Jews
David Schizer believes that despite post-Oct. 7 displays the NYC university is incredibly welcoming to Jewish students and that this will be felt again when its charter is enforced
Reporter at The Times of Israel
NEW YORK — When David Schizer, former Columbia University Law School dean and one of the co-chairs of Columbia’s newly-established Task Force on Antisemitism, is asked whether he’s been personally affected by antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, he pauses for an extra beat before answering.
“I think I’ll say yes — but as a tenured professor and a former dean, I’m in a different place than students who are feeling isolated, excluded or worse,” Schizer said. “The truth is, I have been spending an enormous amount of time with students who are upset and hurt and in pain. It breaks my heart to see some of the challenges they’re dealing with.”
Schizer said students should feel free to participate in campus activities regardless of their views on Israel. “But some student groups whose missions have nothing to do with Israel have, in effect, been imposing litmus tests on students,” he said. “And that’s not appropriate.”
The Times of Israel spoke to Schizer over the telephone after the release of the Columbia Task Force on Antisemitism’s first report, which focused on regulations and policies around campus protests. Since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught that saw 1,200 people in southern Israel brutally murdered and 253 abducted to the Gaza Strip, many elite universities in the United States — Columbia among them — have become hotbeds of anti-Israel activity as the Jewish state continues a campaign to return the hostages and oust Hamas from power.
The task force’s initial report does not define antisemitism and reads almost like a press release, which Schizer said was by intent.
“This is a report on rules and on the law,” Schizer said. “And so, the relevant question is not what antisemitism is, but what discriminatory harassment is under Title VI under federal law and under local New York laws.”
Title VI was enacted as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin or religion in programs — including most American universities — that receive federal funding. Government financial contributions would potentially be jeopardized were a university to be found in violation of Title VI.
To comply with Title VI, a university can’t have a hostile learning or work environment for members of a protected class. The question, Schizer said, is how to create and maintain a non-hostile environment for all.
One issue, Schizer pointed out, is that people “may say or do things at protests that contribute to a hostile environment, and the issue is how should a university make that judgment.” He noted that two different approaches can be used: one considering the perspective of the protected class, and the other, the intentions and free speech rights of the speaker.
“There are situations where a chant is heard one way, but the speakers claim that this is not what they intended. So what should the university do?” Schizer said, adding that the task force recommends that the university take a consistent approach.
“At times in the past, the focus has been on the audience: How do remarks affect them, how do they feel about those comments, how do they interpret them?” he said. “But starting in October, when Jewish and Israeli students identified statements that were painful to them, the perspective often has been different, and the question is not how does the audience hear it, but what do the speakers intend, and do they have a free speech right to say what they said.”
“There are good reasons to defer to either the listener or the speaker — that’s a hard question,” Schizer said. “What is not the hard question is the need for consistency. The university has to apply the same approach to all protected classes, otherwise it can violate Title VI.”
Schizer did note that there are “particular needs and concerns that are unique to Jewish and Israeli students, and it is essential to address them.”
But, he said, the university’s rules governing protests need to apply to everyone equally while acknowledging the potential for discriminatory harassment against multiple groups.
“Under US law under Title VI, it actually is problematic in and of itself to have different rules for different groups, and that’s why this report, which focuses on rules, is more general,” Schizer said. “But we are going to do other reports where we focus more on challenges that are unique to Jewish and Israeli students.”
He also stresses that the issue at hand is enforcing, not changing, school regulations.
“We do think the rules as written are good,” Schizer said. “We think they can and should be clarified in various ways, and we also think that a critical challenge is enforcement – because having rules on the page doesn’t change behavior, and it doesn’t protect speech rights, and it doesn’t prevent discrimination unless the rules are enforced uniformly and effectively.”
Schizer also highlights his personal connection to the issues being handled by the task force.
“I’m a lawyer and a former law school dean, and so those skills and insights were critical when we analyzed the law, but the reason why I am able to make a particular contribution on some other issues is that the experience of Jewish Columbians resonates with me personally — I’m Jewish as well,” he said.
Schizer called Columbia an “amazing experience” for Israeli and Jewish students, and noted that he is confident post-October 7 problems will be addressed.
“There’s an enormous reservoir of goodwill within the community for Jewish and Israeli colleagues, and more generally for the proposition that we need to be a place that’s welcoming to everyone,” Schizer said. “While there is disagreement on particular policy issues, everyone understands that Columbia is true to its values when it is welcoming to everyone. That’s a core belief.”
Asked whether Columbia’s continued employment of Joseph Massad, a Middle Eastern studies professor who has made inflammatory statements including calling Hamas’s October 7 massacre “astonishing,” “astounding,” “awesome” and “a resistance offensive,” reflected the goodwill he had just described, Schizer took a breath before responding.
“We believe in free speech at Columbia — people are allowed to take competing positions,” Schizer said. “Sometimes we offend each other, on a whole range of issues. Hopefully, when we have difficult conversations, we try to be respectful and collegial. We are a university committed to free speech and we’re also a university committed to antidiscrimination and compliance with the law.”
