As an American Jew, I was proud to serve as president of Columbia’s largest pro-Israel group, then known as LionPAC, during my junior year in 2010-2011. My tenure involved routinely responding to a variety of protests against the Jewish state. Mock “apartheid walls” and cardboard cutouts of Israeli tanks were erected on Low Steps. Holocaust deniers, hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke freely under the infinite confines of “academic freedom”. And students simply trying to walk to class were subjected to “die ins” on College Walk, where anti-Israel activists donning fake IDF uniforms and machine guns would pretend to slaughter Palestinians, who would lay lifeless on the ground for minutes on end. These charades were no surprise at a university that hosted one of the world’s most prolific Holocaust deniers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and tenured Professor Joseph Massad, who called Hamas’ October 7th slaughter of innocent Israeli Jews a “stunning” and “astonishing” display of “Palestinian resistance”.

In other words, today’s protests are a natural manifestation of Columbia’s seemingly limitless tolerance for anti-Semitism. There is ample room for reasonable debate about the war between Hamas and Israel and the Israeli government’s policies vis-à-vis Palestinians. That is not the goal of these demonstrations. Jewish students are being verbally assaulted with calls to “go back to Europe,” and rather than clearing the encampment, Columbia has instead cancelled in person classes to the detriment of all students.