AMCHA’S Responses to Antisemitic Activity at Columbia University – Barnard College
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2. The CU chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) submitted an incident report to the University’s Student Governing Board (SGB).
- INCIDENT: The CU chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) submitted an incident report to the University’s Student Governing Board (SGB). In their report, the SSI students provided considerable and compelling evidence that anti-Zionist student groups, particularly the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have systematically harassed and silenced SSI members and other pro-Israel voices on campus, in apparent violation of university policy and New York state law.
- 5/15/18 – AMCHA’S RESPONSE: AMCHA Initiative coordinated a coalition letter of 65 groups to President Bollinger that stated, “We are impressed with the thoroughness of the SSI’s incident report and its focus on the unacceptable peer-on-peer harassment that impinges on the rights of Jewish and pro-Israel students to express themselves and fully participate in campus life. We are disappointed that, to date, neither the SGB nor school administrators associated with that student board have addressed the report’s concerns at all.” The groups then offered suggestions for steps the administration can take to “ensure that all Columbia students — including those who identify as Zionists because of their religious belief, ethnic identity, national origin, or political persuasion — are free to express their opinions, beliefs and identities and to fully participate in campus life.”
1. Columbia University was mentioned in AMCHA’s report, “The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on U.S. Campuses.”
- 10/14/17 – INCIDENT: Columbia University was listed in Table 4, “Middle East, Ethnic, and Gender Studies Departments and Programs that Sponsored the Most Events with One or More BDS-Supporting Speakers in 2015 and 2016” of AMCHA’s new study, “The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on U.S. Campuses.”
- 11/15/17 – AMCHA’S RESPONSE: AMCHA wrote a letter to President Bollinger to commend him for his previous condemnation of an academic boycott and to share, “new research that demonstrates the extent to which the on-campus implementation and advocacy of an academic boycott of Israel directly harm American students and faculty at U.S. universities.” The letter went on to detail how AMCHA’s study “found that pro-BDS faculty were between five and twelve times more likely to sponsor events with BDS-supporting speakers, and schools that hosted these events were twice as likely to have acts of anti-Jewish hostility.”