Columbia Antisemitism Task Force Exposes Faculty Targeting Jewish Students

Columbia's antisemitism task force documents faculty reading private student emails aloud in class, calling Israeli students "murderers," and denying academic freedom to Jewish students for two years

Credit: Columbia University

Columbia University has documented rampant faculty antisemitism through a systematic pattern of professors reading confidential student emails aloud, calling Israeli students “occupiers” and “murderers,” and denying academic freedom to Jewish students through classroom intimidation tactics.

The 70-page final report from the university’s Task Force on Antisemitism, released in December 2025, found that Columbia lacks any full-time tenured faculty expertise in Middle East studies that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.

Confidential Emails Weaponized for Punishment

One student described a faculty member violating privacy by reading confidential email aloud in class—a practice designed to punish dissent and silence Jewish students. The same student who had emailed objecting to Middle East framing found his private email dissected line-by-line by the professor, who used the classroom to publicly shame him while other students watched

Investigators also documented faculty presenting tendentious claims as academic fact, including statements that Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, was an antisemite and that Eastern European Jews “aren’t really Jewish.”

Conditional Access to Education

Faculty systematically denied Jewish and Israeli students equal access to education by holding classes and office hours in anti-Israel encampments where “Zionists were not welcome.” This practice sent a clear message that access to equal education at Columbia was conditional—dependent on students’ willingness to be excluded based on their identity.

The task force found that Columbia “not only tolerated antisemitism, it hired and platformed faculty who masked it in academic jargon,” using antisemitic tropes to attack Jewish donors as “laundering blood money.”

Academic Boycott Movement Targets Jewish Students

The report condemned the academic boycott movement targeting Israel, noting that demands to end Columbia’s partnership with Tel Aviv University would violate academic freedom principles. The task force found this movement proposes to “restrict the research, teaching, and studying opportunities available to a cohort whose members are overwhelmingly Jewish.”

Investigators also documented faculty presenting tendentious claims as academic fact, including statements that Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, was an antisemite and that Eastern European Jews “aren’t really Jewish.”

Institutional Failures and Recommendations

The investigation, conducted over nearly two years through hundreds of student testimonials, revealed institutional failures to protect Jewish students’ academic freedom. The task force found that protections afforded to other protected classes “must apply equally to other protected classes, including Jewish and Israeli students.

Recommendations include establishing senior-level faculty positions in Middle East studies and improving resources for Jewish and Israeli topics, currently “insufficient compared to resources for other Middle East subjects.”

Columbia Acting President Claire Shipman acknowledged the findings represent a series of rigorous and thoughtful analyses covering a difficult and painful period in the university’s history,” committing to implementing the task force’s recommendations.