The Ramaz School on Manhattan's Upper East Side has long been considered one of the more elite private schools in New York City, if not the country. It is a Jewish school, and its graduates have traditionally had no trouble being accepted at some of the better colleges and universities in the nation. Traditionally, many of their students have wound up attending Columbia University's liberal arts college, but that tradition changed this year. Not a single member of the graduating class of 2024 ended up applying to Columbia's liberal arts program. One of the primary reasons cited by students and their families was blatant antisemitism and a lack of personal safety for Jewish students. In other words, these families have been keeping an eye on the news and they don't care for what they see. And they certainly aren't going to be laying out the kind of money that Columbia charges for tuition just to have their sons and daughters treated in that fashion. (NY Post)
None of this year’s graduates of an elite Upper East Side Jewish high school will be attending Columbia University’s premier liberal arts college for the first time in decades at least partly because of antisemitism.
“For the first time in over 20 years, we will not have a Ramaz graduate enrolling in Columbia College,” Ramaz said in a statement Sunday to The Post.
One Ramaz student enrolled at Columbia’s school of General Studies, and three students enrolled in Columbia-affiliated Barnard College for women — but none at the college, it said.
When asked for a comment, one Ramaz representative confirmed that they have been tracking antisemitic incidents at campuses around the country. They said that they provide all of the information they collect to the students and their families so they are "able to make informed decisions about which colleges are right for them." Clearly, Columbia is no longer "right" for any Jewish student under the current circumstances.
The Post also spoke with Rory Lancman, a top Jewish civil-rights activist. His two daughters just graduated from Ramaz. Lancman said that he "would not recommend Jewish students to apply or attend Columbia at the moment." He added more bluntly that Jewish families are "voting with their feet." That means that they are also voting with their wallets. Is the administration at Columbia writing all of this down? They should be because it's probably going to be important.
Keep in mind that three Columbia deans were forced to resign just last week after a string of their text messages was leaked out to the press. They were privately disparaging Israeli and Jewish students at the university and mocking their concerns over antisemitism and violence against Jewish students. It's already been made obvious that the problems at Columbia aren't being caused by "a handful" of pro-Palestinian protesters or only outside agitators. These problems are endemic and they run up through the ranks of the faculty and the administration. So the question should not be why Ramaz students would refuse to apply to Columbia. The real question is why any of them would have considered that as their school of choice to begin with.
Sadly, the problem is now far more widespread than just one university campus or one urban neighborhood. This toxic trend has spread all across the country and it easily spills out into the streets and to neighborhoods surrounding Jewish temples. This should be informative for all of us. These antisemitic trends didn't simply crop up overnight out of nowhere. They were lurking out there all along under the covers, waiting for other antisemites to take to the streets in sufficient numbers. That gave the ones who were hiding in plain sight the permission slip they were waiting for to act the same way. Now the genie is out of the bottle, however. The question is what we do about it next.
