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In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel's assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Shafik's visit to Capitol Hill is the latest in a series of hearings on alleged antisemitism at elite U.S. private schools. In December, similar hearings led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Our guests Nara Milanich and Rebecca Jordan-Young, both professors at Barnard College and Columbia University, respond to the televised hearings. "What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody," warns Jordan-Young. "What we got was a live performance [of President Shafik] throwing the entire university system under the bus." Adds Milanich, "Antisemitism here is being used as a wedge. It's being used as a Trojan horse for a very different political agenda."
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(Second column, 11th story, link)
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 Ken Cedeno/ReutersSeveral hours after students at Columbia University set up a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" in the middle of campus on Wednesday—demanding "divestment and an end to Columbia's complicity in genocide"—the Ivy League school's president was questioned by a congressional panel in a fiery back-and-forth about antisemitism among the student body.
Members of the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce grilled Minouche Shafik, Columbia Board of Trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald, and Columbia Law School Dean Emeritus David Schizer, a leader of the school's newly formed Task Force on Antisemitism, during the highly animated session. Jewish students have recently been assaulted and spat on by others at Columbia, and pro-Palestinian students have publicly chanted slogans such as ??"Death to the Zionist state." Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) called for the hearing after accusing Columbia's leadership of not doing enough to tamp down anti-Jewish sentiment.
The assembled administrators turned in a markedly more decisive performance than then-Harvard President Claudine Gay and then-University of
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(First column, 5th story, link)
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