A recent listening session hosted by Columbia University’s new Task Force on Antisemitism devolved into chaos, with a task force leader yelling at students who questioned the group’s refusal to define “antisemitism,” according to sources at the university. Meanwhile, the school is preparing to spend up to $135,000 to hire someone to support the task force, which was propped up just weeks after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
In a session on February 29, students asked how the task force defined antisemitism. Professor Gil Zussman said that defining antisemitism was not a “top priority” for the task force, which would rather move forward with its work. Numerous students pounced, objecting to the idea of moving forward without defining the term the task force was ostensibly focused on. Some argued that not defining it could stifle criticism of Israel’s actions. Others pointed out that not defining antisemitism could hinder enforcement against it.
Multiple Jewish students spoke up in that meeting, saying they were worried that their anti-Zionism could be conflated with antisemitism. One Jewish student, who said their grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, described feeling like their Judaism was being erased and worried that the task force wasn’t taking their perspective seriously. They said that they didn’t feel comfortable being on campus if other students could feel comfortable calling them a Nazi simply because they didn’t agree with what is happening in Palestine.
“I’m still waiting to hear from the administration anything about the only actual violence that has occurred on our campus around this conflict: which has been against Palestinian students and pro-Palestinian Jewish students,” Howley told The Intercept. “I’m still waiting to hear anything from the institution about that. Why have we not set up a task force just to look into that?”
During a closed-door meeting last week, Professor Ester Fuchs, who is one of the chairs of the task force, invoked a Supreme Court justice’s famous line about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
The problem is, people like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) think they do, too, when they accuse university presidents of it who then lose their jobs…and yet, turn a blind eye to it when it involves their own.
In this f**ked-up political environment “I know it when I see it” is highly subjective. And it’s bullshit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
During a closed-door meeting last week, Professor Ester Fuchs, who is one of the chairs of the task force, invoked a Supreme Court justice’s famous line about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
Amid the campus debate over the task force’s purpose, the university has opened a 35-hour per week job posting for a research director for the group, with a salary range of $110,000-$135,000.
While the task force has said it is concerned about other forms of discrimination, including Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry, Columbia has not set up any specific processes to study those issues.
If we wanted to have a task force on protests, we could have had one of those — except we already have a Senate Rules Committee that put in a lot of work on the new events policy,” said Professor Joseph Howley, a member of the university’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine group, and the chair of one of the school’s core undergraduate classes, Literature Humanities.
“The clearly stated ground rules governing all Task Force listening sessions have been and continue to be that the proceedings are confidential and off the record,” Fuchs wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
We condemn all these toxic forms of hate, and we look forward to working with colleagues and to partnering on initiatives to counter them across the University,” wrote co-chairs Fuchs, Nicholas Lemann, and David M. Schizer.
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