A Congressional committee investigating antisemitism on college campuses across the country found a “stunning lack of accountability by university leaders for students engaging in antisemitic harassment, assault, trespass and destruction of school property.”
The 325-page report from the House Committee on Education and Workforce was released last month following a series of hearings over almost a year, collecting more than 400,000 pages of evidence and calling presidents of numerous colleges and universities to testify, including Rutgers University President Dr. Jonathan Holloway.
“At every school investigated by the Committee, the overwhelming majority of students facing disciplinary action for antisemitic harassment or other violations of policy received only minimal discipline,” according to the report.
“At some schools, such as Columbia and Harvard, radical faculty members worked to prevent disciplinary action from being taken against students who violated official policies and even the law.”
The report noted that after the terrorist attack on Israel last Oct. 7 by Hamas campus life became a “daily trial of intimidation and insult for Jewish students” as pro-Palestinian protesters began justifying terrorism, which soon began to spiral into such actions as death threats and physical attacks that left Jewish students “alarmed and vulnerable.”
Many “extremist antisemitic encampments” were allowed to remain even though they violated both institutional policy and the law.
“The antisemitism engulfing campuses was treated as a public-relations issue and not a serious problem demanding action,” stated the report of the attitude adopted by many university administrations.
It goes into details about the “unsafe and hostile learning environments” for Jewish students that the encampments created and how the “dereliction of leadership” put these students at personnel risk. It sharply criticized some administrations for “intentionally” failing to express support for campus Jewish communities out of concern for “offending” antisemitic students and faculty who supported “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Although it criticized the handling of pro-Palestinian protests at many universities, most of its condemnation appeared to be directed at Columbia and Harvard and to a somewhat lesser extent, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA, but even Rutgers drew heavy criticism as did other colleges across the country as numerous Incidents and institutional failures were highlighted in detail.
Among its key findings were that Columbia offered greater concessions to encampment organizers than publicly announced and that its administration failed to correct the false narratives of a “chemical attack” used to vilify Jewish students, but imposed disproportionate discipline on the Jewish students involved and the University’s Senate obstructed plans to discipline students involved in the takeover of Hamilton Hall.
The January chemical attack incident occurred during an illegal anti-Israel protest on the steps of Low Library in support of the Houthi terrorist organization. Two pro-Israel students were accused of using a military level spray developed by the IDF on protesters. Four administrators present reported they had seen no evidence of the alleged incident and it was later confirmed the students sprayed a harmless novelty substance in the area.
Despite the fact that Interim Provost Dennis Mitchell in a later communication characterized the matter as a “deeply troubling incident” in which students required medical attention.
Although his remarks were later shown to be a mischaracterization by the university itself, which described the substance as “prank fart spray,” the two students were suspended in March for 18 months, which the report noted was longer than any such discipline handed out for any of the antisemitic conduct violations.
Columbia refused to correct the record on the incident until August after reportedly reaching a $395,000 settlement with one of the students involved in the incident.
In contrast, the report cited among the many other failures of Columbia its handing only probation to the student who made such threatening statements as telling student conduct officials “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and only a year suspension for obstructing the movement of Jewish students with a “human chain” at the encampment.
The report additionally listed other instances where there appeared to be unequal discipline given to pro-Palestina demonstrators.
The concessions made by Columbia to pro-Palestinian demonstrators included offering formal reviews of divesting from companies deemed by encampment leaders to violate international law or which manufacture specified categories of weapons, providing amnesty for many of the students in the encampment, funding scholarships for students connected to the West Bank and Gaza and creating a “resilience fund” for Gaza.
For their code of conduct violations Rutgers only suspended three students, issued probation to four students and issued two reprimands, noted the report. It pointed out that notably, no students received individual discipline for their involvement in either the New Brunswick or Newark campus encampments owing to the “capitulation” by administration to the encampment ringleaders.
The report also cited an incident in which a Rutgers student threatened an Israeli at the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity by posting on the Yik Yak social media site, “There is an Israeli at AEPI go kill him.”
The student, Matthew Skorny, received only a one semester suspension, and even more concerning, the offending student was allowed to remain on campus under disciplinary probation for the remainder of the fall 2023 semester and was only suspended for the following spring 2024 semester, said the report.
At the time, Rutgers declined to answer a Jewish Link inquiry about whether Skorny would be allowed back on campus citing federal privacy laws regarding the student conduct process.
At an April town hall in which students shouted, “Globalize the Intifada” and where Holloway and Jewish students had to be escorted to safety by Rutgers Police, only one student was reprimanded for the mass disruption.
Among other incidents cited was Rutgers Law School “baselessly” opening “a disciplinary inquisition” of Orthodox law student Yoel Ackerman because he spread concerns about students’ antisemitic, pro-Hamas rhetoric, prompting him to transfer. Ackerman has filed legal action against the school.
The report noted that while religion is not an explicit form of prohibited discrimination under Title VI, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has affirmed multiple times since 2004 that discrimination against religious groups is prohibited by Title VI when that discrimination is based on an individual’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, or on an individual’s citizenship or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.
Over the last year the OCR has filed numerous Title VI violations against universities. Most universities receive federal funding and could be stripped of that funding in the most egregious cases.
Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.
