I forgot that Columbia University officials are being grilled in Congress about anti-semitism on its campus. You can watch it live below, and things are getting heated, as they did in the House hearings involving the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn. The Republicans are loaded for bear, but I think I’ll have to watch most of this later. CNN has an article, with a live feed, about what’s going on. Here is some of their news:
All four Columbia officials testifying before Congress unequivocally stated that calls for the genocide of Jews violate the university’s code of conduct.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici asked Columbia President Minouche Shafik, board co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman and David Schizer, co-chair of a task force on antisemitism, for a simple yes or no response. All four said “yes,” calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Columbia’s code of conduct.
The response offered a stark contrast to the lawyerly answers that university presidents provided during the December hearing before the same committee. That moment went viral, sparking an uproar that eventually contributed to the ousters of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
Of course, the Columbia officials had the advantage of having months to prepare for that question.
Days after the December hearing, Columbia issued a statement saying: “Calls for genocide against the Jewish community or any other group are abhorrent, inconsistent with our values and against our rules.”
Columbia certainly has learned from what happened in the last hearings! But apparently Columbia doesn’t adhere to the First Amendment, under which calls for genocide are, under many circumstances, legal. This means that their code of conduct does not completely comport with the First Amendment.
Here, quickly, are the YouTube notes:
The Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC), will hold a hearing to call on the leadership at Columbia University to answer for the rampant antisemitism engulfing their campuses and threatening their Jewish students.
Here’s FIRE’s free-speech ranking for Columbia University. It’s below average: #214 out of #248 schools (Harvard was the lowest). Click to look it up:
Thank you for providing this video of the hearing. I am a bit over an hour into it at this point and look forward to finishing it this evening. There may be a lot of witnesses and questioners talking past one another. One person’s sanction may be another’s empty slap on the wrist gesture. What does injury mean? Is someone feeling bad because of words they are hearing the same as someone feeling physically unsafe due to words versus feeling or being physically unsafe due to actions? As I have said before on this site, I grew up in a time when we were taught that sticks and stones would break our bones but name do not hurt us. I think that the answer on the calling for genocide question is really: “it depends on the context”. The answer to physical aggression such as spitting, blocking access, or hecklers’ vetoes is they are not allowed and students who engage in such actions and behaviors need to be really sanctioned by the university with at least a full semester suspension from enrollment and physical ban from campus, followed by formal application for readmission at the 3nd of the suspension period. A physical ban from campus means that the university supports a charge of criminal trespass if a banned student comes onto campus. I look forward to watching the final two hours.
PS…of course these hearing formats only serve to raise potential issues for structured study and solution. Lets hope there will be follow ups.
Check out this fabulous interview with Shai Davidai, Assistant Professor at Columbia:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/wartime-diaries-shai-davidai/
His comments detail how poorly Shafik dealt with Davidai’s experience in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack.
Peggy Mason
Well, I watched all of it and really appreciate the opportunity. I had not seen a full Rayburn committee room hearing in twenty years and it was good to see the whole story as opposed to the selected slices shown on main stream media. Thank you very much for the link.