A Settlement Won’t Fix Columbia’s Anti-Semitism Problem

Columbia University’s recent civil rights settlement with the federal government is a watershed moment—but not for the reasons its defenders suggest. It marks the first time in recent memory that an Ivy League institution has been held accountable for allowing open hostility toward Jewish students and faculty. The fact that it took federal intervention—not moral leadership from within the faculty ranks or decisive action from Columbia’s board of trustees—to address these abuses should give us all pause.

Columbia’s mess wasn’t just about student complaints or a few offensive incidents. It was about institutional failure, moral rot, and the complete collapse of academic and intellectual principles. It was about a university that allowed hatred to hide behind the language of liberation. And it was about a broader academic culture that has treated Jewish identity as a problem to be managed rather than a community to be protected.

And now, finally, that toxic and dangerous culture is being called to account.

The Government Steps in Where Universities Would Not

The Department of Education’s (ED) Title VI 200-million-dollar settlement with Columbia is just one part of the story. In a separate—and even more damning—action, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the most significant public anti-Semitism settlement in nearly two decades: $21 million paid by Columbia for allowing the sustained harassment of Jewish faculty and staff. Taken together, these settlements send a clear message: anti-Semitism in the ivory tower is no longer untouchable.

The federal government froze over $400 million in research funding, appointed an external monitor, and imposed sweeping changes in speech adjudication and discipline procedures. This is the government doing what Columbia’s administration refused to do: enforce the law. Civil rights protections for Jewish students and faculty are not optional. They are not conditional. And they do not vanish the moment anti-Semitism comes dressed in the language of anticolonialism, intersectionality, or social justice.

To be very clear, this is not overreach. It’s long-overdue enforcement.

Culture, Not Compliance, Is the Core Problem

These settlements—one from the ED and another from the EEOC—are necessary and essential for setting clear guidelines about behavior, but they are not sufficient. Columbia’s core problem is not administrative procedure; it is culture. You cannot spreadsheet or training-module your way out of an institutional worldview that paints Jews as oppressors, Israel as an illegitimate state, and Jewish students as morally suspect by virtue of their heritage, their faith, or their ties to the Jewish people and land.

That worldview is deeply embedded.

Faculty members have publicly called Zionism “genocidal,” while others have justified violence against Israeli civilians as “resistance.” Protesters banged on library windows while Jewish students were trapped inside. Students who wear Stars of David or express support for Israel are regularly doxed, shunned, or socially exiled; hate, exclusion, and fear are the norm for students who do not fall into defined, acceptable scripts.

This isn’t just anecdotal. According to the 2024 Brandeis Center report, Antisemitism on Campus: Understanding Hostility to Jews and Israel, 82 percent of Jewish students say there is a hostile environment toward Israel on their campus, and 60 percent report a hostile environment toward Jews themselves. The 2024 American Jewish Committee’s report, The State of Anti-Semitism in America, found that 43 percent of Jewish college students avoid expressing their views about Israel out of fear, and nearly one-third (32 percent) believe that faculty themselves have promoted anti-Semitism or contributed to a hostile academic atmosphere.

And Columbia is not merely part of the trend—it has become a model of it.

Columbia’s own Task Force on Antisemitism, in its internal 2025 Campus Climate Survey, revealed that 53 percent of Jewish students reported being subjected to discrimination because they are Jewish; 59 percent said they believed they “would be better off by conforming their beliefs” to campus orthodoxy; and 62 percent reported a low sense of acceptance based on their religious identity. These figures confirm what Jewish students have been saying for years: that the harassment is not theoretical or rare—it is routine.

These federal settlements are necessary—but far from sufficient.

You cannot reform an institution merely by updating policies while leaving intact an ideological ecosystem that treats Jewish students as outsiders, Zionism as genocidal, and Israel as an illegitimate state that is not granted the rights and sovereignty afforded to every other state around the globe.

As such, per the Forward, some Jewish leaders at Columbia are frustrated that the Trump administration backed off other major changes that it had initially floated, such as “including forcing out certain pro-Palestinian faculty members or placing the Middle Eastern studies department into academic receivership in which it would lose control of many of its affairs.”

Going further, “Only when the heads of the indoctrinators roll will we know that Columbia is serious about making substantive changes,” Documenting Jew Hatred On Campus, a right-leaning group focused on Columbia, said in a statement, adding that the deal only addressed “a few symptoms” of the school’s problems.

The reality is that at Columbia and many other schools, the chilling environment present for many Jewish and Zionist students, faculty, and staff is not just theoretical; it is structural. It echoes beyond protests or viral incidents, permeating classrooms, culture, and curricula.

This is what happens when elites substitute moral complexity with ideological purity. When “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) becomes a mechanism for exclusion rather than inclusion. When Zionism is treated not as a legitimate belief but as a disqualifier. When Jewish students—secular, religious, Zionist, or liberal—are made to feel they do not fully belong unless they conform to specific political codes.

This is what happens when the politics of grievance replace the principles of pluralism. When DEI offices reduce Jewish students to privileged “white-adjacent” actors rather than recognizing them as a historically marginalized group. When intersectionality is used not to build coalitions but to construct hierarchies of victimhood—and to place Jews outside the circle of compassion. When ideology replaces empathy.

These patterns reproduce themselves because the culture that enables them has tacit institutional support. Administrators have minimized concerns, faculty have dismissed or stoked them, and reporting avenues have remained opaque. The result: Jewish students and staff feel forced into silence, into hiding, or into self-censorship.

Columbia did not merely fail to deter this culture—it helped build it.

Until Columbia confronts not only the symptoms but the system that produced them, the settlements will only treat surface wounds. The disease—ideological intolerance masked as enlightenment—will persist unchecked.

A Shift in Definitions—Finally

One of the most consequential elements of Columbia’s federal settlement is the university’s decision to adopt a new working definition of anti-Semitism. While Columbia does not formally endorse the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) standard, it has agreed to enforce a policy that recognizes that anti-Semitism can include “[denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination]” and “[applying double standards] to Israel.” The school describes this as being “in the spirit of IHRA,” aiming to strike a balance between civil rights enforcement and academic freedom.

This change marks a significant institutional shift. Elite universities long maintained that anti-Zionism should remain outside the scope of anti-Semitism, treating criticism of Israel as protected speech regardless of context. That stance offered implicit cover to faculty and activists who demonized Zionism—and marginalized Jewish students who affirm their identity. By reversing course, Columbia tacitly acknowledges what Jewish students have said for years: antisemitism today often emerges from within progressive academic spaces.

Reactions have been immediate. Marianne Hirsch, a tenured genocide and memory studies scholar and daughter of Holocaust survivors, told the Associated Press that she is considering leaving Columbia in light of the new policy. She warned: “With this capitulation to Trump, it may now be impossible to do that inside Columbia … If that’s the case, I’ll continue my work outside the university’s gates.”

Other faculty members have raised concerns privately, and some university insiders have suggested the changes could chill Israel-related scholarship. While there is no public statement from Columbia’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences formally opposing the settlement, these sentiments reflect deeper anxieties about ideological pressure and academic independence.

But let’s be clear: academic freedom is not a shield for discrimination. Professors remain free to criticize Israeli government actions, policy decisions, or military strategy. But they have no right to harass Jewish students, demand ideological conformity, or create a climate where a core aspect of identity becomes suspect.

This hybrid definition may lack the precision of IHRA and leave enforcement murky. Yet even so, it constitutes progress. It names the ideological double standards that have allowed anti-Semitism to flourish in campus discourse—even when wrapped in theory and scholarly language. And it pushes institutions to confront the reality that bigotry doesn’t always announce itself with slurs or slogans. Sometimes it’s delivered in a syllabus. Sometimes in a campus coalition. The effect remains the same: exclusion, fear, and silence.

What Real Reform Looks Like

The Columbia case is a national test, not just a local scandal. If this is to mark a turning point, it must go beyond checklists and compliance reports. It must trigger deep institutional reform. That means:

• Hiring for intellectual diversity, especially in departments like Middle East and Ethnic Studies, where ideological monoculture is the norm.
• Faculty accountability. Professors who intimidate students or endorse terrorism must face consequences, regardless of tenure.
• A DEI overhaul. As David Bernstein argued in the Wall Street Journal, DEI as currently practiced excludes Jews. Reforming DEI means ensuring that Jewish identity is protected, not politicized.
• Protecting dissenting Jewish voices. Whether they’re traditional, progressive, Zionist, or apolitical, Jewish students deserve safety and respect.
• Transparency. Columbia must publish annual climate reports, discrimination statistics, and response outcomes—not bury them in bureaucracy.
• Moral clarity (above all): “From the River to the Sea” is not a neutral slogan. It is a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state. No university committed to human rights and pluralism should treat it as unproblematic.

Jewish and Conservative—And Unapologetically So

As a Zionist, a Jew, and a professor, I don’t need a university’s permission to exist. And as a conservative, I believe institutions must be held to account when they betray their purpose. Columbia’s crisis is not just about legal failure—it is about moral abdication. It is a case study in what happens when elite educational institutions exchange truth for ideology, critical inquiry for dogma, and moral courage for performative compliance.

For Jewish students and staff at Columbia, the message has been painfully evident: you may be tolerated—but only if you remain silent, hide your symbols, and distance yourself from your people. Professors can call your commitment to Israel genocidal, your values oppressive, and your connection to Israel illegitimate—and the institution will defend its academic freedom while questioning your very belonging. DEI programs that preach inclusion have nothing to say when Jews are harassed. Administrative leaders write memos but avoid naming the problem. And faculty who speak out—whether Jewish or not—risk professional isolation.

This is not theoretical. It is real, lived experience. Jewish students report being afraid to speak in class. They remove mezuzot from dorm doors. They hesitate before wearing Magen David necklaces. Staff and faculty have recounted being shunned in departmental meetings for simply defending Jewish pluralism or supporting the right of Israel to exist. In what world is this compatible with the values of a great university?

And let’s not pretend this is just about Zionism. This is about Jewish and Zionist identity itself—its moral legitimacy, its right to be expressed publicly, its place within the American pluralist compact. What’s being tested is whether Jews are considered full members of the university community, entitled to the same protections, dignity, and respect as any other minority.

Jewish history teaches us to recognize soft exclusion before it hardens. We hear when our pain is met with silence. We understand what it means when we are treated as uniquely powerful, uniquely privileged, or uniquely suspect. We know that when elites excuse bigotry because it comes in the right ideological packaging, danger is not far behind.

As a conservative, I also know that institutions matter—that they form character, transmit values, and bind generations. But Columbia has not stewarded its own traditions. It has surrendered them. And in doing so, it has betrayed the very idea of the university as a sanctuary of truth and a space for civic courage.

Columbia has paid a financial price—over $221 million and counting. But the real reckoning is moral. It cannot be satisfied with press releases, task forces, or vague commitments to “learning and listening.” It requires repentance, reform, and the reestablishment of principles that have long been neglected: academic integrity, moral clarity, and the equal dignity of all.

Until Columbia is willing to say—not just through legal settlements, but through sustained action—that Jewish identity belongs, that Jewish students are not ideological pariahs, and that discrimination against Jews is no more acceptable than against any other group, then the reckoning remains unfinished.

Jewish students and staff deserve better. All of us do.

The National Stakes

The settlements at Columbia are not just institutional corrections. They are a national inflection point. And they should send a clear, unignorable warning to other elite universities—Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Berkeley: your silence is no longer protected. Your evasions, platitudes, and bureaucratic deflections are no longer going unnoticed.

Writing in the Atlantic, Franklin Foer is wrong in declaring that Columbia’s “agreement with the Trump administration bodes ill for American higher education.” Columbia was not going to self-correct and suddenly start protecting Jewish students. Other schools are having real trouble upholding their stated values and protecting all students equally and fairly. Foer is correct in declaring that “Universities are desperately in need of reform. The paucity of intellectual pluralism in the academy undermines the integrity of the pursuit of knowledge. Failure of university trustees and presidents to make these changes on their own terms has invited government intervention.” He is also justifiably concerned that the Columbia agreement could serve as a template for abuse elsewhere, but he offers no alternative remedy or paths forward. The federal government had to act and did.

The good news now is that Columbia and, by extension, other schools can no longer act with such irresponsible and reckless abandon. Donors are watching. Alumni are organizing. Lawmakers are engaged. And for the first time in decades, the federal government is enforcing civil rights laws on behalf of Jewish students and faculty. That era of moral exceptionalism—where universities could ignore anti-Semitism because it came cloaked in activist language—is over.

But this moment will only matter if it produces more than compliance with government demands. Title VI enforcement may force a change in process and this settlement is a needed and necessary start. But what American higher education truly needs is a change in culture. A change in will. A change in moral vocabulary.

Because the deeper disease is not legal; it is the institutional decay that has allowed anti-Semitism to be normalized, explained away, or perversely justified in the very places that claim to champion DEI. That decay shows up in hiring practices that exclude dissenting views, curricula that erase Jewish narratives, and campus climates where Jews are treated as symbols of power rather than fellow citizens.

Universities were once places of inquiry, complexity, and courage—places where truth was pursued without fear or favor. They can be again. But only if they are willing to confront what they’ve become: elite spaces that too often confuse ideology for scholarship and moral vanity for virtue.

Columbia is now the test. If it chooses a path of shallow compliance and face-saving PR, the rot will remain. But if it embraces this reckoning with honesty, humility, and reform, it might just become what a university is meant to be.

So let the record show: Columbia has been put on notice. The country is watching. And the question is no longer whether universities will be held accountable; it is whether they are willing to hold themselves accountable—before it’s too late.

Image: “Columbia University, New York” by Mike Steele on Flickr