Liberal institutions these days are in desperate need of crisis communications help. The Democratic Party, Columbia University, and many others. Columbia recently announced it was hiring an assistant director of media relations, presumably to help manage the ongoing fallout over its disastrous response to anti-Semitism on campus.
The Ivy League school's public affairs team is looking for an experienced professional to "increase understanding of Columbia's impact as one of the world's leading universities" through "the delivery of world-class crisis communications preparedness and execution," according to a job listing on the university website.
Columbia reassigned three deans earlier this month after they were caught exchanging dismissive and bigoted texts during a panel discussion about anti-Jewish hate on campus. The panelists had been invited to discuss the university's incompetent response to violent student-led protests in support of Hamas following the terrorists group's deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
One of the deans, Matthew Patashnick, had accused one of the Jewish panelists of "tak[ing] full advantage" of the Jew hatred on display at Columbia in order to maximize the "fundraising potential." Patashnick and the other deans he was observed texting with during the panel, Susan Chang-Kim and Cristen Kromm, have been place on leave pending the results of an investigation, after which they will be reassigned to new roles.
The incoming media relations assistant will have a lot on their plate. Earlier this week, for example, billionaire philanthropist Mort Zuckerman canceled his $200 million pledged donation to Columbia, citing concerns about the school's failure to address the rise of anti-Semitism on campus. "The recent decisions and actions taken by Columbia have been antithetical to the University's mission and it is simply not the same institution it was when Mr. Zuckerman made the pledge," a spokeswoman for Zuckerman told the Washington Free Beacon.
The gig comes with a salary of between $75,000 and $85,000, which is considerably less than the $164,500 salary Harvard University was willing to pay for a "crisis communications" professional experienced in the art of "reputational risk" mitigation. Harvard also suffered an anti-Semitism scandal in late 2023 after its former president, Claudine Gay, suggested in a congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews would not violate university policy. Gay was subsequently revealed to have plagiarized a significant portion of her academic work, and was forced to resign in January.