Columbia President Takes Hot Seat at Antisemitism Hearing

(Philip Toscano/PA Wire via AP Images)

Columbia President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik was out of the country in December when three of her colleagues in academia — two of them at Ivy League schools — appeared before Congress to talk about antisemitism on their campuses.

Two of those three are no longer university presidents after the infamous Dec. 5 hearing on Capitol Hill. To be forewarned is forearmed for Shafik, who has had five months to prepare since erstwhile presidents Liz Magill (Pennsylvania) and Claudine Gay (Harvard) gave staggering answers regarding campus policies about antisemitism and calls for genocide on their campuses, which resulted in widespread backlash, outrage and ultimately their resignations.

However, Congress, specifically, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has also had five months to scrutinize Columbia’s efforts to combat antisemitism, and Shafik hopes to have better answers than Gay and Magill.

“Some of the worst cases of antisemitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism on campus have occurred at Columbia University,” committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said ahead of Wednesday’s hearing. “Due to the severe and pervasive nature of these cases, and the Columbia administration’s failure to enforce its own policies to protect Jewish students, the Committee must hear from Columbia’s leadership in person to learn how the school is addressing antisemitism on its campus.”

Shafik will also be joined by two university board members and a professor at the hearing, titled, “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.”

Columbia has given the committee plenty of fodder ahead of the hearing:

The Anti-Defamation League gave Columbia a “D” in its antisemitism report card last week; a Columbia undergrad spoke at a February roundtable of being “surrounded by angry mobs” and “threatened;” calls for the destruction of Israel at campus rallies; and an Israeli professor told The Wall Street Journal the school has done “the absolute minimum.”

“I hope that this hearing will create an opportunity to publicize that there has been a problem at this university. Over the last six months, it’s often felt like Jewish students are screaming into a void, so I hope that this hearing will force the university to actually take note of what is going on and to respond to it effectively,” Jacob Schmeltz, a senior at Columbia and vice president of the Jewish on Campus Student Union, told The Hill.

Shafik, whose been on the job less than a year, penned an op-ed Tuesday outlining what she plans to tell lawmakers.

“Calling for the genocide of a people — whether they are Israelis or Palestinians, Jews, Muslims or anyone else — has no place in a university community. Such words are outside the bounds of legitimate debate and unimaginably harmful. No cause is so important as to justify threatening annihilation to anyone. There has to be a better way to make an argument,” she wrote in the Journal.

That position would put her ahead of Gay and Magill, both of whom said “it depends” when confronted with that very question — calling for the genocide of Jews — during their Dec. 5 hearing.