Trump administration finds Columbia U. violated civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students from harassment

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights accuses New York’s Columbia University of violating federal civil rights law in its treatment of Jewish students in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

According to HHS, which has been investigating the university, Columbia violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present.”

Over the past 19 months, it says, the school has “continually failed to protect Jewish students.”

Providing examples, HHS says that the university did not have any effective mechanism in place to report and deal with antisemitism until the summer of 2024, and did not abide by its own student misconduct policies when it came to the harassment of Jewish students.

It adds that the university also failed to punish incidents of vandalism, including “the repeated drawing of swastikas and other universally recognized hate images.”

“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” says Anthony Archeval, Acting Director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS.

“We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students,” he adds.

In response, a Columbia University spokesperson says that the school is “deeply committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination.”

We take these issues seriously and will work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education to address them,” the spokesperson adds.

In March, the Trump administration announced the cancellation of $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia due to campus antisemitism.

The university then agreed to a series of changes demanded by the administration as a precondition for restoring the federal funding.