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Posted on 07/17/2025 6:36:09 AM PDT by MtnClimber
When antisemitism became institutional, radical professors fanned the flames and colleagues stayed silent, I had no choice but to walk away. But I won’t stop fighting.
Leaving my dream job wasn’t an easy choice, but Columbia’s latest scandal makes it crystal clear why I had to go. In texts released by the House Education and Workforce Committee, acting President Claire Shipman—then co-chair of the Board of Trustees—called the only vocal pro-Israel Jewish trustee “a mole.” She even suggested replacing her with “someone from the Middle East or who is Arab,” ignoring the Civil Rights Act that bans such discrimination. Worse, she downplayed the pro-Hamas movement on campus, belittled Jewish students’ concerns as irrational, and mocked a congressional probe on the issue as “Capitol Hill nonsense.” When caught, Shipman offered a hollow apology, blaming “immense pressure” during “deeply turbulent times”—as though leaders are excused from leading in tough times. Who could in good conscience follow such leadership or keep their name tied to such an institution?
The texting scandal is just the latest example of Columbia’s failed leadership. When senior administrators were caught making antisemitic remarks about a Jewish speaker at an antisemitism panel, the university let the most senior—professor Josef Sorett—stay on as dean of Columbia College. When a professor praised the Oct. 7 massacre, Columbia rewarded him with teaching a course on Zionism. And, when pro-Hamas student groups violently took over university buildings multiple times, the administration kept cutting them deals. Just last week, President Shipman bestowed the university’s highest honor on a professor who joined the hate-filled protests. This is what Columbia’s leadership has become: spineless, morally lost, and always begging for forgiveness.
Columbia’s leaders aren’t the only ones to blame for students cheering fundamentalist Islamist terror. Behind every raging student protester in a culturally appropriated kaffiyeh stands a radical professor, thrilled to see their postcolonial theories—which frame every struggle as oppressors versus victims—play out. The students do the marching, but their professors light the fire and show them where to aim it. Just look at Joseph Massad, who expressed “jubilation and awe” at the massacre of Israelis; Jeanine D’Armiento, who, as Senate chair, silenced colleagues for speaking out against the campus protests; Katherine Franke, who called the Oct. 7 massacre “military action”; Joseph Slaughter and Susan Bernofsky who rewrote university rules to help protesters; and Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate, who calls for “dismantling the Jewish state.” Praised by professor Rashid Khalidi for violently occupying a building, the students are following the script their professors wrote.
Most professors avoided direct involvement in the upheaval on campus. Keeping their heads down, they turned a blind eye as chants to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and expel its supporters echoed across campus. Indifferent, they stood by as colleagues championed a movement that seeks “the liberation of Palestine through the annihilation of the Jewish state.” Professors who preach democracy did nothing as the antidemocratic mob took over. In the end, all the extremists needed was the silence of their moderate peers.
My colleagues’ silence shows more than a lack of moral integrity. It reveals how costly it is to challenge dominant ideologies on American campuses. Question them, and you’ll quickly be isolated, even by close peers. Tasked with teaching truth, courage, and principled leadership, my colleagues failed to live by those very ideals. One senior colleague, a former vice dean of DEI at Columbia Business School, admitted they might have defended me—but the optics of a white-passing Jewish professor confronting a woman of color president “weren’t right.” By choosing comfort over conviction, my colleagues’ silence shows how wide the gap is between preaching values and living them. That’s the bitter truth about higher education today: Those who can’t, teach.
My colleagues stayed silent even as Columbia retaliated against me. In December 2023, the university launched an investigation after a video of me condemning support for Hamas went viral, accusing me of harassment based on “national origin and/or shared ancestry.” That charge was not only false but absurd. I never spoke against Palestinians, Arabs, or any ethnic, religious, or national group. I repeatedly and clearly distinguished between the Palestinian people and the terrorists ruling them, focusing only on student groups that glorify terror. By caving to a coordinated smear campaign from Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia didn’t just stand by—it seized the chance to intimidate me into silence. The baseless investigation dragged on for 20 months before closing with no findings of wrongdoing—HR-speak for “innocent.” Meanwhile, my name and reputation were dragged through the mud for all to see. This is what ideological persecution looks like in academia.
The investigation was only the beginning. In April 2024, when I tried to enter the illegal campus encampment—plastered with signs like “With a rifle we will free Palestine,” tributes to terrorists, and a ban on Jewish students who support Israel’s right to exist—Columbia deactivated my ID, barring me from campus while letting the encampment stand. Months later, on the Oct. 7 anniversary, I confronted Columbia’s COO for letting the same group terrorize Jewish students with an unauthorized march celebrating Hamas and its allies. In response, Columbia suspended me again—this time from every building, including my office and the only Jewish space on campus. Terrified of its most outspoken Jew, Columbia made silencing me its priority.
Don’t let the current calm on campus fool you. Even under congressional investigations, lawsuits, and threat of losing accreditation, Columbia’s leaders cling to the fantasy that these problems will fix themselves. By appeasing radical students and faculty who support terrorism, they believe they can wait out the storm. That is their gravest mistake. Beneath the fragile calm lies an extremist ideology that’s waiting to erupt again. I call it “American Intellectual Antisemitism”—the belief that Jews are white settler-colonialists conspiring to ethnically cleanse Palestinians to create a Jewish supremacist ethnostate. Such hatred never disappears on its own. It adapts, evolves, and returns stronger. Look at Mahmoud Khalil, whose first public act after three months in prison—and missing his son’s birth—was to lead another protest. That someone like him is now embraced by Zohran Mamdani, the anti-Israel frontrunner in the NYC mayoral race, signals what’s ahead. The tune may change, but the lyrics stay the same.
Columbia’s failed leadership, morally bankrupt faculty, and indifferent majority have shattered my respect for an institution I once called home. I no longer trust its leaders to do what’s right, or my colleagues to show them the way. With that respect lost, I have no choice but to leave. Staying would betray everything I stand for.
I am leaving Columbia, but not this fight. Freed from the shackles of a tenure-track job, I plan to intensify my efforts against American Intellectual Antisemitism and support for terrorism on campuses. Through live talks, a podcast on Jewish activism, and a book on the roots of this ideology, I hope to mobilize people to demand change. At its best, Columbia is a beacon of truth and discovery. At its worst, it’s a battleground for extremists who can’t stand dissent and intellectual diversity. Together, we can fight to restore its true purpose.
In the end, Columbia made my life so unbearable I chose to leave. But there’s one thing they’ll never do—silence me. My voice is not for sale.
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Antisemitism seems to be a requirement for leftists.
Bkmk
Will we ever see a “walk away” movement of American Jews moving away from Democrats like a lot of blacks are doing?
Columbia University should be completely shut down. The discrimination against Jews there today is every bit as bad as the discrimination against black people of the South in the mid-Twentieth Century.
People in charge at Columbia should go to prison for their flagrant discrimination.
Columbia University needs to have its academic accreditation revoked.
any ethical person should leave Columbia.
Marc Andreessen (of Netscape fame) had a recent post where he accused America’s elite schools of not even representing America any longer.
He pointed out that its basically impossible for even a very intelligent middle-class or working class American kid to attend, as they would have first been put at a competitive disadvantage by the poor level of their local public school, and then ‘weeded out’ by the international / globalist / DEI perspective of these universities.
And if they are not principally serving Americans, they will die - or be killed.
The graduates make terrible employees and have worse job prospects than someone going to a good State school.
That will take care of the problem.
It is in their DNA, as is their criticism of all things Judeo-Christian. (see "Critical Theory", "Critical Race Theory", et al).
Leftists never actually produce anything of use
(consider Philippians 4:8, which encourages believers to focus their thoughts on positive, virtuous things. It instructs them to consider what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy...this suggests that dwelling on these qualities can lead to a more positive and God-centered mindset. - oh! and btw, it leads to the development of Western Civilization - you know, that repressive stuff promoted by DWEMs: Dead White European Males)
Leftist are the equivalent of whiny, spoiled brats...always 'criticizing' every. single. thing.
(but never ever ever actually BEING productive)
He's not upset that Columbia is what it is; he's upset that he's no longer part of those controlling it.
He feels uncomfortable having to now explain to his social circle why he works for an institution that showed their true face after it threw off its mask and stomped on it. He'd still be there if it had kept the mask on.
Will the Obama tentacles never end? Claire Shipman was formerly married to, and has two children with, Obama's former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who was often vilified in this Forum, for cause, second only to KJP. They were lionized during Obie's admin as a DC “power couple.” Carney is now serving on the boards of directors of Urban Institute, Human Rights First, Airbnb, and Tech:NYC.
They all serve on "boards" and know nothing about anything. It's good to know so I can avoid those companies.
Lefty welfare: board seats, think tanks, foundations, professorships, and book contracts.
Antisemitism never ends with the Jews. Eventually their hatred and violence encompasses everyone. Such people are a clear and present danger to life and liberty. Society must be purged of such people
“Antisemitism seems to be a requirement for leftists.”
Now but not before. They used to be at the forefront of liberalism. Now if a candidate said he wanted the follow in the footsteps of Hitler, a % of Jews would still vote for them because the candidate is a Democrat and the Republicans might do worse.
A neighbor escaped from the Nazis by skiing over the Alps. His wife told us that the Nazis told them what would happen to them but people refused to believe it.
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