WSJ: Civil Rights And Antisemitism At Columbia

Wall Street Journal Weekend Conversation:  Civil Rights and Antisemitism at Columbia University, by Abigail Shrier (A.B. 2000, Columbia; B.Phil. 2002, Oxford; J.D. 2005, Yale; Author, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (2024)):

A hostile environment for Jews could mean a cutoff of federal funding and liability under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

If failure is the best teacher, several Ivy League schools are in contention for the title of 2023-24 Teacher of the Year. In December, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania distinguished themselves when their presidents failed to give a straight answer to lawmakers who asked if advocating genocide of Jews violated their schools’ disciplinary codes; both presidents soon resigned. But this spring, Columbia might have outdone them.

Protesters set up an unauthorized encampment on South Lawn and defied the administration’s demands to shut it down. “We don’t want no Zionists here!” they screamed into bullhorns. “Globalize the intifada!” Jewish students said they were barred from clubs, assaulted, threatened and spat on for speaking Hebrew.

On April 30, dozens of protesters smashed windows and barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall until the New York City Police Department removed them. A week later the university canceled its main graduation ceremony, citing security concerns. ...

Yet maybe there’s hope. In December, Columbia impaneled a Task Force on Antisemitism. It’s a classic bureaucratic response to a crisis—other Ivies have done the same—but one of the panel’s three co-chairmen, David Schizer, speaks of the problem with clarity and force.

“There’s no way that I’m giving up this territory,” Mr. Schizer says. “Jewish people had to fight to get into Columbia decades ago. If we decide to walk away, there are a lot of people who’d like to take our places. But why should that happen? We’ve contributed a lot to making Columbia what it is, and that should continue.”

Mr. Schizer, 55, is a professor and dean emeritus at Columbia Law School. An Orthodox Jew, he was named for his paternal grandfather, who was orphaned at 17 in western Ukraine. When the Russian Civil War broke out in 1917, counterrevolutionaries entered the grandfather’s village and lined Jews up against a wall, preparing to shoot them. Communists showed up, and in the crossfire, Mr. Schizer’s grandfather slipped away. He made it to America with two younger siblings, matriculated at Columbia’s Teachers College, and was so grateful to his adopted country that he voluntarily overpaid his taxes.

“Now, I’m a tax lawyer by training, so I don’t overpay my taxes,” Mr. Schizer says. “But I share his view that I am fortunate every day to live in the United States of America.”

After graduating from Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Federalist Society, Mr. Schizer served a clerkship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who hired him to disagree with her. “She actually used me to vet arguments,” he says. “You know, ‘Tell me why you don’t agree with that, David,’ and I would.”

At 35, he was appointed dean, the youngest in the law school’s history. He left that post in 2014 after serving out the 10-year term limit. He is putting his legal training to use on the task force, warning administrators that they could face liability under federal civil-rights laws for failing to control antisemitism on campus.

After the NYPD retook Hamilton Hall, Police Commissioner Edward Caban said that “professional, external actors are involved in these protests.” Mr. Schizer sees this as something of a cop-out.

“It was not just outside agitators,” he says. “What’s going on is that students have not believed that there would be meaningful discipline for breaking rules. And it’s because the university was so ineffective initially. And it’s also because there are faculty members who are encouraging it.

In January, a law-school colleague, Katherine Franke, told PBS’s “Democracy Now!” that she was concerned about having graduate students from Israel on campus because they are veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and “they’ve been known to harass Palestinians and other students seriously in the past.”

That comment could be evidence of illegal discrimination, Mr. Schizer says: “Almost everyone in Israel serves in the military. So nearly any Israeli is a veteran. And Columbia has a rule that we don’t discriminate based on your status as a veteran. We also don’t discriminate based on national origin. So those comments were problematic, not just morally but also legally.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes any institution that receives federal funding liable if it creates a hostile environment for students with a “shared ancestry.” Jews qualify as such a group. If the Education Department finds that Columbia had violated Title VI, the university could lose federal funding—an outcome Mr. Schizer calls “catastrophic.” The university could also face liability in court. Jewish and Palestinian students have separately sued Columbia alleging civil-rights violations, and three Education Department investigations are under way. ...

Mr. Schizer says he believes Columbia students who refused to leave the encampment will be suspended and those who occupied Hamilton Hall will be expelled. 

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• New York Times, 54 Columbia Law Faculty Condemn Administration For Disciplinary Action Against Anti-Israel Student Protesters (Apr. 23, 2024)
• Washington Post, Punish Columbia Professors, Not Students Protesters, For The Intellectual Degeneration On Campus (Apr. 28, 2024)
• Law.com, Columbia Law School Delays Exams Amid Protests and Police Activity (May 1, 2024)
• Bloomberg Law, Columbia Law School Offers Optional Pass/Fail Grading Amid Campus Protests (May 2, 2024)
• Washington Free Beacon, “Irrevocably Shaken”: Columbia Law Review Editors Demand Cancellation Of Exams Due To Campus Protests (May 4, 2024)
• Aaron Sibarium (Washington Free Beacon), 13 Federal Judges Will Not Hire Law Clerks From Columbia: An ‘Incubator Of Bigotry’ (May 7, 2024)
• Reuters, Columbia Law Dean Voices Confidence In Graduates In Face Of Conservative Judges' Boycott (May 8, 2024)
• Michael Simkovic (USC), Columbia Law Professor Says Columbia University Violated Federal Laws, Fostered A ‘Hostile Environment’ On Campus (May 11, 2024)