CNN
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The president and board chairs of Columbia College have agreed to testify subsequent month at a Congressional listening to on campus antisemitism.
The Home Training and Workforce Committee introduced Monday it should maintain a listening to on April 17 that includes Columbia President Minouche Shafik and the 2 co-chairs of the board of trustees: Claire Shipman and David Greenwald.
Shafik had been invited to testify on the disastrous December hearing the place the presidents of Harvard College, the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how and the College of Pennsylvania struggled to answer questions about whether or not requires the genocide of Jews would violate faculty insurance policies. The Columbia president declined the invitation attributable to a scheduling battle, based on the Columbia Spectator.
Inside weeks, the leaders of each Harvard and Penn had give up amid firestorms of controversy.
Final month, the Home Training Committee widened its campus antisemitism investigation to include Columbia and demanded the Ivy League faculty flip over a variety of paperwork to assist that probe.
“Among the worst circumstances of antisemitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism on campus have occurred at Columbia College,” stated Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the committee, in a press release. “As a result of extreme and pervasive nature of those circumstances, and the Columbia administration’s failure to implement its personal insurance policies to guard Jewish college students, the Committee should hear from Columbia’s management in particular person to find out how the college is addressing antisemitism on its campus.”
At a roundtable event held by the committee earlier this month, Eden Yadegar, a junior at Columbia College, described how Jewish college students had been attacked by individuals wielding sticks outdoors of the college library.
“We’ve got been attacked by sticks outdoors our library. We’ve got been attacked by indignant mobs and we have now been threatened to ‘Preserve f—ing operating,’” stated Yadegar, who’s the president of College students Supporting Israel at Columbia College
Columbia has stated that antisemitism is “antithetical” to the college’s values.
“Columbia is dedicated to combating antisemitism and we welcome the chance to debate our work to guard and assist Jewish college students and hold our group secure,” Columbia spokesperson Samantha Slater informed CNN in a press release on Monday.
In November, the Department of Education launched an investigation into Columbia and different universities after getting complaints about alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Final fall, a Columbia scholar who was hanging posters on campus in assist of Israel was assaulted. Days later, a cell “doxxing” billboard drove outdoors the doorway of Columbia displaying the names and faces of students who a conservative nonprofit stated had been linked to a statement blaming Israel for the Hamas terror assault.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor on the Columbia Enterprise Faculty, referred to as Shafik a “coward” in a fiery speech final yr criticizing the college president for failing to quiet “pro-terror” voices on the faculty.