REPORT: Alumni laud Columbia U for suspending anti-Semitic student groups

Columbia University recently suspended two student groups on its campus, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. 

Now, a reported 500 alumni are cheering on the Ivy League institution after it took a stand against the organization’s “threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” according to The New York Post. 

The school’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace lost their recognition as official student groups “through the end of the fall term,” according to a Friday announcement from Senior Executive Vice President of the University and Special Committee on Campus Safety Chair Gerald Rosberg.

”This decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation,’ said Rosberg.

Jewish Columbia professor Shai Davidai has been an outspoken critic of the university’s response to campus anti-Semitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, telling Campus Reform in October that “I haven’t felt safe going into my very own office for the past two weeks, and the university has done NOTHING. Absolutely nothing.”

An X post from Davidai said that despite the suspension of the anti-Semitic student groups, “there was another ILLEGAL demonstration” on campus Tuesday ”in support of campus organizations that celebrate rape and murder and who call for the eradication of an entire people from their country.”

Here are lists of @Columbia’s donors and its Trustees:https://t.co/PDNT9bGBH8https://t.co/JRgCQTSpJ9

Maybe you know some of them. Maybe your kids went to school together. Maybe you worked at the same company.

Let them know that this is completely unacceptable. https://t.co/b9kkRzOVhp

— Shai Davidai (@ShaiDavidai) November 15, 2023

Davidai provided lists of Columbia’s donors and Trustees, calling on readers to “Let them know that this is completely unacceptable.”