Columbia anti-Semitism task force co-chair claims many at the school ‘don’t know . . . what it means to be Jewish’
‘They don’t know much about Jewish life or Jewish history, or what it means to be Jewish,’ Lemann stated.
‘You can’t propagandize in class, or you shouldn’t. There’s a power imbalance. The job of the professor is to get the student thinking, not tell the student what to think,’ he added.
A co-chair of Columbia University’s Task Force on Anti-Semitism recently spoke about anti-Semitism at the Ivy League school.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency interviewed Professor Nicholas Lemann on Sunday regarding his work on the task force and thoughts about anti-Semitism at the university.
“Protest is constant at Columbia, but the level of protest we were seeing last year was by far the highest I’ve ever seen in my 21 years at Columbia. Most of the causes that sweep through the university are on the left, and this one is too,” Lemann said.
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Lemann also described the apparent ignorance that many anti-Israel students have about the Jewish state. He claimed that many of these activists perceive the Israel-Hamas war as “a morally urgent moment in which Israel is clearly in the wrong,” but added that “they couldn’t pass a detailed test on the history of Israel or the conflict.”
He added: “ I don’t need to explain to people in my congregation that being Jewish and the state of Israel are not two completely unrelated topics. But a lot of people at Columbia are completely mystified, or pretend to be, by why so many Jewish people think there’s a connection. They don’t know much about Jewish life or Jewish history, or what it means to be Jewish.”
[RELATED: Anti-Israel group at Columbia calls for removal of Jewish organization Hillel]
Lemann also claimed that “academic freedom” does not grant a professor the right to “do anything,” and continued: “You can’t propagandize in class, or you shouldn’t. There’s a power imbalance. The job of the professor is to get the student thinking, not tell the student what to think.”
Besides his role on the task force, Lemann also teaches at Columbia’s Journalism School.
Lemann informed Campus Reform that he had nothing “new to add” besides the comments already maid in the aforementioned interview.
