[News] Columbia Task Force Finally Weighs In: Yes, Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2024/06/17/israel-columbia-antisemitism-task-force-zionism/>
Columbia Task Force Finally Weighs In: Yes, Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism
Natasha Lennard
June 17, 2024
------------------------------
[image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 23: People with signs demonstrate near
Columbia University on May 23, 2024 in New York City. Demonstrators
gathered to protest against New York Mayor Eric Adams’s association with
wealthy business owners and investors calling for they city's student
protest encampments to be disbanded. Several of New York's prominent
business owners reportedly offered political donations to Mayor Adams in an
effort to influence public opinion towards Israel, while others suggested
payments for private investigators to aid the NYPD in handling the student
protesters, according to a Washington Post investigation of conversations
made via on-line chats. According to City Hall, the NYPD did not use any
donations in their handling of the protesters. (Photo by John
Lamparski/Getty Images)] Pro-Palestine demonstrators near Columbia
University in NYC on May 23, 2024. Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images

*On Sunday, some* current faculty members at Columbia University learned
through a news article that all new students and faculty at the school will
be mandated to go through an orientation on antisemitism. The plan was not
announced in any direct communications from the university.

Rather, it was reported
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-06-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/columbia-task-force-reveals-full-extent-of-antisemitism-on-campus-since-oct-7/00000190-205f-d880-a7f5-b4df117d0000>
by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a story about the university’s task force
on antisemitism.

Formed last November as political pressure mounted
<https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/columbia-pomona-vanderbilt-gaza-student-protests-arrests/>
against criticism of Israel on campuses, the task force set out to examine
specific notions of bigotry at the university, which has become a
flashpoint of protests against Israel’s war on Gaza — often followed by
violent police crackdowns.

The plan was not announced in any direct communications from the
university. Rather, it was reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Numerous participants in the antisemitism task force, including its three
co-chairs — Columbia faculty members, many of whom are outspoken Israel
supporters — openly discussed the not-yet published report with the
newspaper before any such information was shared with the university’s
community, or even their colleagues.

The antisemitism task force will release a report in the coming weeks
detailing accounts from students who submitted written testimony or
participated in “listening sessions,” according to Haaretz. All the
anecdotes, equally, were shared without any attribution except that they
were anonymously gathered by the task force — a body with pro-Israel
leadership that has been controversial since its inception last November.

The article also revealed that a mandatory antisemitism orientation would
be developed. The trainings will include expressions of anti-Zionism as
examples of possible antisemitism, touching on a controversy that has
enveloped the protests, crackdowns, and larger national conversation about
Israel–Palestine.

Anecdotes that the task force shared with Haaretz include disturbing
examples of antisemitism, like a professor reportedly telling a class “to
avoid reading mainstream media, declaring that ‘it is owned by Jews.’”

Examples like these have been widely reported, but they are fewer and
further between than the explicit and tacit conflation of anti-Zionism with
antisemitism that pervade task force members’ comments — a conflation that
has helped lead to dire consequences, including arrests, for thousands of
students protesting Israel’s war.
*A Dangerous Conflation*

Up until this point, the chairs and participants in the antisemitism task
force have demurred
<https://theintercept.com/2024/03/07/israel-gaza-protests-columbia-antisemitism/>
from offering a working definition of antisemitism. Now, with the new
orientation planned, task force members now said that a definition of
antisemitism will be put forward — and it will include anti-Zionism.

According to the Haaretz article, the task force’s antisemitism definition
“is expected to determine that statements calling for the destruction and
death of Israel and Zionism can be considered antisemitic, while criticism
of the Israeli government cannot.” It mirrors, then, the contested and
nationalist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA, definition,
which has been championed
<https://www.jpost.com/international/article-799519> by Republicans
<https://theintercept.com/2024/05/08/american-democracy-israel-us-arabs/>
and other conservative Zionists, including President Joe Biden
<https://theintercept.com/2023/06/06/antisemitism-definition-israel-palestine/>
.

“This definition is designed to inform faculty and students about what can
offend Jewish people and which types of statements can cause pain and
discomfort,” Haaretz reported. “An educational definition will not infringe
upon freedom of speech on campus or prohibit potentially antisemitic
phrases.”

Given that aggressive police raids
<https://theintercept.com/2024/05/07/columbia-protest-gaza-nypd-overtime-cost>
at Columbia and Barnard, its women’s college, that saw student protesters
arrested
<https://theintercept.com/2024/05/06/columbia-student-protests-nypd-jail/>
and the shutdown of the entire campus, the claim that free speech on campus
will not be repressed beggars belief. Even if the only use of the
definition is during mandatory orientations on antisemitism, its deployment
inscribes the dangerous antisemitism/anti-Zionism conflation into campus
culture. Views of Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, and the many others in
the community who express criticism of Israel are bound to be delegitimized.

Even in their own telling to Haaretz, task force members make clear that
their interest involved validating pro-Israel students’ discomfort as
examples of widespread antisemitism. “We heard from students who feel their
identity, values and very existence on campus have been under attack,” said
task force co-chair and political science professor Ester Fuchs.

There can be no doubt, as I’ve previously noted
<https://theintercept.com/2024/03/28/safety-college-columbia-stanford-antisemitism-israel-palestine/>,
that students for whom Israel is central to their Jewish identity have felt
immense discomfort in the months of protests against Israel’s violence.
This discomfort is not, however, proof of real threat. Nor is it grounds to
continue to uphold the dangerous claim that criticism of Israel, even
criticism of Israel as an ethno-state, is an attack against Jewish people.

All professors at universities nationwide should be committed to all of our
students’ safety and well-being; this does not mean we must accept all
feelings of fear and discomfort as legitimately grounded in persecution and
oppression.

A definition of antisemitism, even for purely educational purposes, that
insists on defending Israel as an ethno-state will only serve to further
silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, while rendering real cases
of antisemitism — Jewish people targeted for being Jewish — harder to
target and fight.

We would not, for instance, validate the fears of a white student brought
up to see Black people as a threat — an important counterfactual, given a
particularly striking comment by task force member Gil Zussman, an Israeli
electrical engineering professor, about the Black Lives Matter movement.

“If, for example, a student group were to use an abhorrent chant such as
‘We don’t want BLM supporters here,’ there would be immediate
consequences,” Zussman told Haaretz. “However, chants such as ‘We don’t
want Zionists here’ have been normalized and currently have no
consequences. These double standards are unacceptable and will eventually
fracture the university.”

The idea that the standards should be the same — that support for an
ethno-state should be as protected as efforts to end anti-Black racism —
reveals exactly the problem with the conflation of anti-Zionism and
antisemitism: a troubling conflation of nation-state ideology with racial
identity.
[image: A pro-Palestinian protestor (R) argues with Pro-Israel protesters
during a demonstration outside Columbia University, in New York City on May
23, 2024. (Photo by KENA BETANCUR / AFP) (Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via
Getty Images)] A pro-Palestine protester argues with pro-Israel protesters
outside Columbia University in NYC on May 23, 2024. Photo: Kena
Betancur/AFP via Getty Images *A Controversial Task Force*

Since its formation last year, numerous students and faculty members expressed
concerns
<https://theintercept.com/2024/03/07/israel-gaza-protests-columbia-antisemitism/>
about the antisemitism task force’s makeup, methodology, and purview.

“Ever since the task force was announced, we feared it would equate Zionism
and Jewishness,” wrote
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024/06/11/task-force-on-antisemitism-can-you-hear-us-now/>
four Jewish graduate students, all critical of Zionism, in an op-ed for the
Columbia Spectator last week. “All three co-chairs of the task force —
Ester R. Fuchs, Nicholas Lemann, and David M. Schizer — are members of
the Academic
Engagement Network <https://academicengagement.org/>, a Zionist advocacy
organization, and the three of them penned a statement supporting
Columbia’s ties to Israel <https://www.columbiafacultystatement.com/>.”

Columbia law professor Katherine Franke, writing in The Nation
<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/banned-israel-qa-law-professor-katherine-franke/>
in April, noted that the task force is “chaired by among the most ardent
Zionist faculty members on our campus” and that “none of its members has
any academic expertise in the study of antisemitism, or in how
antidiscrimination laws apply in an academic setting.” (Franke was among
the five Columbia faculty members maligned
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/columbia-university-president-takes-heat-congressional-antisemitism-hearing-2024-04-17/>
by university President Minouche Shafik in Congress
<https://theintercept.com/2024/04/17/columbia-antisemitism-hearing-congress/>
for their Israel-critical positions.)

The antisemitism task force itself published
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024/05/16/we-hear-you/> an
op-ed in the Spectator under a shared byline last month. The text was
riddled with claims indicating the body’s readiness to conflate
anti-Zionism and antisemitism. “Zionism literally means the venerable
movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in
their ancestral homeland,” the task force wrote, “but in many settings on
campus it has become a less well-defined general-purpose accusation.”

Zionism — literally, practically, and historically — is by no means
reducible to this rosy abstraction. While the group for months refused to
give a clear definition of antisemitism, it was willing to offer a simple
and reductive definition of Zionism — one that ignores that political,
nation-state ideology’s unbroken history
<https://theintercept.com/2020/02/01/hundred-years-war-palestine-book-rashid-khalidi/>
of Palestinian exile
<https://theintercept.com/2022/11/25/tantura-movie-israel-palestine/>,
oppression, and occupation.

In February, LitHub published
<https://lithub.com/internal-emails-reveal-columbias-task-force-on-antisemitism-is-causing-ruptures-in-its-faculty/>
an email exchange between task force co-chair Nicholas Lemann, a professor
of journalism and film, and the celebrated filmmaker James Schamus. Schamus
continuously urges Lemann to be transparent about the task force’s working
definition of antisemitism, expressing concern over the task force’s
pro-Israel bias.

Demands like Schamus’s for the task force to give a definition of
antisemitism don’t presume a clear and simple definition of antisemitism.
Instead, they ask for recognition that discrimination and bigotry are
context-dependent and that definitions can’t be relied upon in every case.

The concern is that, all too often, anti-Zionism is treated as antisemitism.
*Unacceptable on Campus*

In remarks to the Israeli paper, task force members themselves the task
force members seemed to acknowledge that felt experiences of antisemitism
related to opposition to the ideology of Zionism.

“The concept of Zionism has become unacceptable in some circles at
Columbia,” Lemann, the co-chair, told Haaretz. “People are asked to promise
that they’re not Zionist.”

For many Jewish people, including the many thousands of us worldwide
<https://theintercept.com/2024/05/01/judith-butler-israel-hamas-freedom-speech/>who
have taken part in Palestine solidarity protests
<https://theintercept.com/2023/11/11/palestine-israel-protests-ceasefire-antisemitic/>
and campus encampments, the growing opposition to Zionism is not an attack
on Jewish people but an overdue challenge to an oppressive, nationalist
worldview.

The task force wants it both ways: to themselves insist upon the
identification of Zionism with Jewishness, and then to call the
identification itself antisemitic.

“Zionism is a political ideology — not an ethnic or religious identity,”
wrote the Jewish graduate students in their Columbia Spectator open letter
to the task force. “We can attest to that fact: Some of us believed in
Zionism when we were younger, and even wanted to enlist in the Israeli
military. Some of us grew up feeling like Zionism and Jewishness were
inseparable, but our study of the history of Zionism led us to reject it.”

The task force wants it both ways: to themselves insist upon the
identification of Zionism with Jewishness, and then to call the
identification itself antisemitic. It is, in short, a trap.

When it comes to views deemed “unacceptable” on campus, meanwhile, it was
Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace — two
pro-Palestine organizations — that Columbia banned
<https://prismreports.org/2024/03/20/pro-palestine-student-groups-columbia-suspension/#:~:text=The%20next%20day%2C%20Gerald%20Rosberg,Thursday%20afternoon%20that%20proceeded%20despite>
from campus last November. Over 100 students engaging in peaceful Palestine
solidarity protests were arrested in April, with many suspended and, in the
case of Barnard students, kicked out of their campus housing. It was
Palestinian students and their supporters who were sprayed with noxious
chemicals
<https://theintercept.com/2024/01/22/columbia-university-palestine-protest-skunk/>
by two former members of the Israeli military on campus.

It was also, as I witnessed firsthand, young Palestinian and other Arab
women students who were met at their campus gates by a crowd of middle-aged
men and women wrapped in Israeli flags, screaming that the students should
“go get raped” in Gaza. It is professors who have criticized Israel and
supported Palestinians who were then smeared in Congress. Yet it is only in
service of a perverted definition of antisemitism that there will be
mandatory orientations.

“To be Muslim at Columbia is to be racially profiled and doxxed, *beg* for
administrative resources and support, and still receive none,” wrote
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024/05/15/what-it-means-to-be-muslim-at-columbia/>
Noreen Mayat, a recent Barnard graduate and former president of the
school’s Muslim Students Association, in the Columbia Spectator in May. “To
be Muslim at Columbia is to face Islamophobia on campus — to be spat on and
called ‘terrorists’ — and receive no University acknowledgment or
recognition.”

In the Haaretz article, the antisemitism task force’s apparent
prioritization of pro-Israel student experiences shields itself from
critique by calling for a space of open discussion, when only one line of
discourse will be institutionally sanctioned.

“Part of what a great university does is introduce us to people with
different opinions,” David Schizer, Columbia law school professor and task
force co-chair, said.

It’s a rich comment from the self-identifying conservative who went out of
his way to see pro-Palestine colleagues censured and peaceful protests
shuttered. It was in this very vein that the task force has operated from
the jump: exploratory, but with only one possible focus and thus one
possible conclusion.

“The priority has *always* been the comfort of students other than us,”
Mayat, the Barnard graduate, wrote. “The priority has always been the
safety of others, at the expense of ours.”
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