Columbia, as our parents might have said to us sarcastically as they waited in the car for us to put our shoes on, apparently needed an engraved invitation.
So Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent one to the school yesterday.
The metaphorical engraved invitation in this case has to do with the university’s atrocious response to campus anti-Semitism.
Columbia has been under fire for cultivating an unusually aggressive atmosphere of Jew-baiting, both from professors and students, for at least two decades now. But for the past 16 months it has been consistently and publicly and in great detail accused of systematically violating the civil rights of Jews on campus. Because those civil-rights complaints were filed with the federal government, Columbia has been aware that the federal government has known of these violations of federal law.
The directive from students, advocates, and the government itself has been: Stop violating Jewish students’ civil rights.
The response from Columbia was, for a while: OK we’ll try I guess. Eventually the school administrators just gave up; they had no idea how or why they should protect the civil rights of Jewish students.
This is not only a moral problem but a financial one: Columbia, like other universities, takes lots of taxpayer cash. But being in noncompliance with federal civil-rights law makes the institution ineligible for such public money.
So the Department of Education, along with the General Services Administration and Department of Health and Human Services, has decided to help them out by detailing the ways the school must adjust its policies in order to be in compliance.
Among them are the following:
The university must “centralize all disciplinary processes under the Office of the President” instead of the University Judicial Board, in order to improve accountability.
Columbia is directed to “ban masks that are intended to conceal identity or intimidate others, with exceptions for religious and health reasons.” This is a rather obvious one, though it will be controversial to students who enjoy vandalizing school property and harassing Jews.
The administration letter also tells the school to “Formalize, adopt, and promulgate a definition of antisemitism. President Trump’s Executive Order 13899 uses the IHRA definition.” This will also face opposition, though it’s unclear if the school is being told it must adopt the IHRA definition, which is the consensus definition and the one used for the purposes of federal law. Harvard adopted the IHRA definition against the opposition of so-called free-speech advocates who didn’t read either the definition or Harvard’s student handbook very carefully: It was not added to imaginary “speech codes” but simply folded into existing harassment penalties which are not for speech alone.
The administration also wants Columbia to put its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies departments under academic receivership “for a minimum of five years” as part of broader efforts to address the rampant anti-Semitism that has been baked into its curricula. This could be reworded as “teach students the truth, not blood libels” but it will also raise complaints from students and faculty and administrators who would prefer the school continue teaching medieval anti-Semitic conspiracy theories instead of whatever subject they were nominally hired to teach.
Another tough one: The Education Department wants Columbia to develop a plan to “reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices to conform with federal law and policy.”
In truth, Columbia should welcome that one. Administrators have repeatedly expressed shock that the school somehow admitted such large numbers of violent Jew-haters. It would be helpful for Columbia to get to the bottom of why it is the preferred destination for terrible people.
There are others, including one Columbia complied with as of yesterday: disciplining the violent occupiers of Hamilton Hall last year.
Should Columbia have to be told all this? Of course not. But don’t live in a world of should. We live in a world in which the very idea of safeguarding the civil rights of Jews on campus is considered puzzling and offensive to the administrators of these esteemed institutions of higher learning.
