What is anti-Semitism? A Columbia Task Force would rather not say.
A Columbia University task force created to combat anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks is trying to avoid one of the most contentious issues in college debates about the war: Its members have refused to determine what is the definition of “anti-Semitism”.
Competing factions on campus and beyond are pushing for two different definitions. The Firstfavored by the US State Department and many supporters of Israel, says that “attacking the State of Israel” could be anti-Semitic, a definition that identifies much of the pro-Palestinian activism sweeping the campus as anti-Semitic could label.
The second is narrower. It makes a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and could lead to criticism that the school does not take anti-Semitism seriously enough.
The debate over the definitions has become a lightning rod for the Columbia Task Force and for other universities across the country. The task force is charged with “understanding how anti-Semitism manifests on campus” and improving the climate for Jewish faculty and students. But the refusal to choose a definition also faced harsh criticism from both sides.
“If you don’t diagnose the problem, you don’t have to deal with it,” said Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor who is Israeli and advocates a stricter definition. He added: “To say we don’t want to define it so we don’t have a problem, that’s getting away with it.”
Pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist teachers and students, quite a few of whom are Jewish, fear that without definition the anti-Semitism task force could be too far-reaching in the speech and activities it seeks to regulate.
Columbia’s dilemma illustrates the broad challenge universities face as they try to find a line between protecting free speech and avoiding lawsuits alleging discrimination against Jewish students.
Universities also face enormous external pressure. Columbia President Nemat Shafik and the co-chairs of the board of directors have been called upon to do so to give evidence during a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism on April 17. Ms Shafik was not present at the controversial meeting. December hearing where the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania struggled to answer questions about whether a call for genocide of Jews would violate school policy.
Columbia has already been charged in a case federal civil rights lawsuitfiled by more than a dozen Jewish students, describing the university as an institution where “crowds of pro-Hamas students and faculty march in the hundreds and shout vile anti-Semitic slogans, including calls for genocide.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters dispute that slogans such as “Whatever it takes” and “There is only one solution, the intifada, the revolution” are anti-Semitic calls for genocide.
For the task force, the university has chosen three Jewish professors as co-chairs because they are seasoned senior faculty who know how Columbia works. However, they are not academic experts in anti-Semitism research.
The professors argue that their fifteen-member task force does not need to define anti-Semitism, because they do not see it as their job to label things as anti-Semitic or not. Instead, they want to hear why Jewish students and teachers are upset and see if practical solutions can be found to help them feel more at ease.
“I get letters every day from parents, just from regular people, students,” says one of the co-chairs. Nicholas Lemann, a former journalism school dean said in an interview. He said many of them ask, “Why aren’t you listening? Why don’t you do anything?’”
“It’s not our job to define anti-Semitism,” he said, adding: “Our job is to listen to them, make them feel like someone at Columbia cares about them, and try to find out which causes this great inconvenience and suffering. and whether anything can be done to improve it that is consistent with the values of the university.”
Pro-Israel Jewish advocacy groups have been pushing for years that organizations and governments adopt the broader definition developed by the International Alliance for the Remembrance of the Holocaust, which ends with anti-Zionist speeches. As of 2016, it has been endorsed by more than 40 countries, including Israel.
There is no dispute about the core of the definition – anti-Semitism, the report states, is a “certain perception of Jews that can be expressed as hatred” towards them. But the examples about Israel can be interpreted broadly, in ways that critics say would unfairly silence political criticism.
For example, the definition says that “denying the right of self-determination to the Jewish people, for example by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” could be anti-Semitic.
Left-wing Jews often support the newer, Declaration of Jerusalem definition, which takes a more tolerant approach to criticism of Israel, including boycotts and sanctions against the Jewish state. Another definition, known as the Nexus documentstands in the awkward middle.
At Harvard and Stanford, members of the anti-Semitism task force have done the same faced harsh criticism for not supporting the more sweeping definition; that tension was one of the reasons why the co-chair of the task force at Stanford decided to do so resign.
At Columbia, task force chairs are trying to avoid falling into a similar trap. But fighting something without defining it can be difficult.
“If you want to understand any problem, you have to understand what it is,” said Dov Waxman, an expert on anti-Semitism at UCLA. “You can’t count something if you don’t understand what it is.”
He recommended that the Columbia task force refer to more than one definition, as the Biden administration did last year in laying it out anti-Semitic strategy. The task force has not ruled out such a move, Mr. Lemann said.
Some of the Columbia task force listening sessions on campus have become tense. For example, during a March 1 session with graduate students, several anti-Zionist Jews demanded to know what the definition of anti-Semitism would be and whether their views would be included.
Esther Fuchsa professor of urban studies and co-chair of the task force, interrupted them and became hostile. Four students were denounced in a subsequent letter to Ms. Shafik and other administrators, calling on Professor Fuchs to be replaced on the task force by an anti-Zionist.
Caitlin Liss, a Jewish graduate student who signed the letter, said she is part of a “long Jewish tradition of anti-Zionism” that includes many students at the school. But, she said, “you would never know that on campus, from the way the administration talks about it, from the way the task force talks about it.”
Professor Fuchs said the students “tried to disrupt the session and ignore its purpose – to listen to students’ concerns and experiences with anti-Semitism on campus.”
Joseph Howley, a professor of Jewish classics and supporter of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement, was invited to a listening session, but did not go. “I have no reason to believe I will be taken seriously,” he said. In the end, only a few of the approximately forty teachers invited to a listening session intended for critics of Israel attended.
In another session, Amy Werman, a professor at the School of Social Work who supports Israel, raised the question of whether the task force might just be window dressing to appease Congress.
“Ester, oh boy, she didn’t take that very kindly,” she said, referring to Professor Fuchs. “I would almost say it felt like she was attacking me.”
Professor Fuchs disputed that, saying she replied: “You clearly don’t know us. We have never done window dressing, and we do not intend to do so now.”
Still, at least some Jewish students who felt left out or unsafe on campus found the listening sessions helpful, the spokesperson said Rebecca Massela sophomore covering anti-Semitism for The Columbia Spectator.
“It has been an outlet for students to express their concerns,” she said.
The task force is now looking for one research director to develop a study on anti-Semitism at Columbia and recommend training materials for the university.
It released its first report earlier this month. The 24 page document extra requested borders on protests and better enforcement of existing rules, to address a major complaint from Jewish students who say the environment at Columbia has become intolerable.
Protests were the initial focus, Professor Fuchs said, because they are “the most overtly disruptive to campus life and make people feel unsafe, like they are not welcome and that they have to find another place to go to school.” to go.”
When asked whether some common anti-Israel protest songs like “Death to the Zionist State” could amount to discriminatory harassment of Jewish or Israeli students, the report largely sidestepped, saying this was ultimately a question for lawyers.
“We urge the university to provide more guidance on the meaning of ‘discriminatory harassment,’ including anti-Semitic harassment,” the report said.