Columbia University published its fourth and final anti-Semitism report on Tuesday. It paints a "disturbing" picture of life as a Jewish student at the Ivy League institution, where instructors smeared Jews and Israelis in their classes as occupiers and "murderers" and used unrelated lectures on topics like astronomy to rail against "genocide" in Gaza.
The report recounts a number of "disturbing incidents in classrooms" that Columbia's Task Force on Antisemitism uncovered through conversations with Jewish and Israeli students. Some of those incidents—like the January storming of an Israeli history class by keffiyeh-clad students who distributed pro-Hamas leaflets and harassed Jews—were highly publicized when they happened. Others were unknown until the report's release.
A section titled, "Scapegoating Jewish and Israeli Students for Their Ties to Israel" details scores of incidents in which Columbia instructors "singled out Jewish and Israeli students for personal scapegoating because of their real or perceived ties to Israel" in violation of federal anti-discrimination guidelines. One Israeli student was told, "You must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that?" Another was called an "occupier," while a third was told that, because she served in Israel's "army of murderers," she "should be considered as one of those murderers."
Jewish students from the United States were singled out, too. One reported being told by an instructor, "It's such a shame that your people survived in order to commit mass genocide." Another emailed his professor to challenge her framing of Israel's war on Hamas, only to hear the professor read the email aloud to the entire class without the student's permission.
The contents of the report are aligned with the Trump administration's diagnosis of pervasive anti-Semitism at Columbia. They also suggest Columbia has a long way to go to address the issue, even after the school agreed to a $221 million anti-discrimination settlement with the federal government.
Columbia has said the deal preserves its "autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making." It is through that autonomy, however, that Columbia brought to campus the faculty members and graduate student instructors who are taken to task in the report for harassing Jews.
Many of those instructors, according to the report, used "classes whose subject matter is far removed from Zionism, Israel, and the Middle East" to offer "harsh condemnations of Israel."
In an introductory astronomy class, an instructor began the semester with a unit on "Astronomy in Palestine," writing on the class's syllabus that "as we watch the genocide unfold in Gaza, it is also important to tell the story of Palestinians outside of being the subjects of military occupation." In an introductory Arabic class, an instructor used the sentence, "The Zionist lobby is the most supportive of Joe Biden," for a vocabulary lesson. And in a class on feminism, "the professor opened the first session by announcing it had been 100 days since Israel began waging war on Gaza."
The report teases similar incidents in classes on photography, architecture, nonprofit management, film, music, humanities, and Spanish. It notes that Columbia's faculty handbook requires instructors to "stick to their subjects in class." Instead, a group of graduate students "urged each other to 'teach for Palestine' in their classes on a wide variety of subjects."
The report also touches on a professor, Kayum Ahmed, who taught a required public health course and was highlighted in a March 2024 Wall Street Journal piece headlined, "Some Columbia Professors Accused of Pro-Palestinian Indoctrination."
Ahmed is quoted in the Journal as leading students in a "call-and-response protest chant" and lecturing that Israel is a "colonial settler state." Quotes attributed to him in the report go further: In one class, he singled out three of Columbia's Jewish donors, saying they "made their gifts with the aim of 'laundering blood money.'" He also referred to "so-called Israel" and led an exercise in which students "were asked to consider the possibility that a hypothetical 'development team is concerned that working in Palestine could turn off wealthy U.S. donors that support Israel.'"
Ahmed was not a tenured faculty member, and Columbia opted not to renew his contract. Still, the report notes that Columbia's public health school "did not officially say anything about his conduct of the class."
Before leaving Columbia, Ahmed dismissed his detractors as "a handful of privileged, white students, who have probably never been confronted by a framework that challenges them to think critically about the benefits they derived from the system of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism." Other instructors mentioned in the report were similarly unapologetic when confronted by their Jewish students.
One teacher who encouraged students to walk out of class and attend an anti-Israel campus protest, for example, told a student who was uncomfortable with the proposition that "he shouldn't come to class." Another Jewish student objected to taking an exam scheduled on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. "When the student asked the director of the program for an accommodation," the report states, "the student reportedly was encouraged to take a leave of absence instead of missing exams and classes because of holidays—even though University policy requires instructors to accommodate religious observance in this situation."
The report includes a number of recommendations to protect Jewish and Israeli students: It calls on Columbia to offer "reasonable religious accommodations," ensure instructors do not "require" or "otherwise pressure students to participate in a protest," and refrain from discriminating against people based on their race, gender, or religion. Columbia rules and federal laws, however, already forbid such behavior, meaning the report largely portrays the issue of anti-Semitism as a matter of enforcement rather than policy. In some cases, it calls on the school to hire Middle East professors who are not "explicitly anti-Zionist"—there are no such professors who are full-time and on tenure track, according to the report.
It's unclear who will be tasked with enforcing Columbia's rules in the long term. Columbia initially set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2026, for a permanent president to replace its acting leader, former Good Morning America senior national correspondent Claire Shipman. But the school extended that deadline on Monday, announcing that a new president will take office "beyond the start of next year."
Shipman marked the report's release with a letter commending the task force.
"The work of this task force has been an essential part of the University's efforts to address the challenges faced by our Jewish students, faculty, and staff," Shipman wrote. "Going forward, the University will continue to work on implementing the recommendations of the task force and addressing antisemitism on our campus, guided by the Office of the President," she said, adding that combating "discrimination and hate more broadly on our campuses" is another objective the school aims to achieve.
Update 4:58 p.m.: This post has been updated to reflect a statement from Columbia.
