US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) blasted Columbia University over the weekend over their lackadaisical approach to combating antisemitism, excoriating the Ivy League institution for allowing a terrorist-supporting student group to exist on campus.
“Columbia University is so embedded in anti-Israel propaganda that it has a publication entitled, quote, ‘The Columbia Intifada.’ What is needed in our society is a revolution of the responsible against the intifada idiocy of the far-left,” Torres said in a statement on Sunday.
Earlier this month, the prestigious university came under fire after it was revealed that ‘Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine’—a cohort of anti-Israel student activists—distributed a publication titled ‘The Columbia Intifada’ around campus. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) reportedly printed 1,000 copies of the publication, which included articles titled “Zionist Peace Means Palestinian Blood,”and “The Myth of the Two-State Solution.”
When pressed about the publication, Columbia University criticized the students involved and indicated that it would consider administering punishment.
“Using the Columbia name for a publication that glorifies violence and makes individuals in our community feel targeted in any way is a breach of our values,” Columbia said in a statement.
“As we have said repeatedly, discrimination and promoting violence or terror is not acceptable and antithetical to what our community stands for. We are investigating this incident through our applicable offices and policies,” the university continued.
Though the publication is not officially recognized by Columbia University, critics argue that it indicates a thriving anti-Israel sentiment on the prestigious campus.
This is not the first time that Torres has lambasted Columbia over their failure to protect Jewish students on campus. Over the past year, Torres has repeatedly condemned the campus for allowing pro-Palestine students to chant slogans perceived by many to be antisemitic. He has also called Columbia’s anti-Israel professors “pseudo-intellectuals.”
In addition, the congressman has commended New York University (NYU) for expanding its anti-harassment and non-discrimination policies to protect students who support the existence of Israel. NYU’s new hate speech policies state that deploying “code words like ‘Zionist’” do not necessarily shield students from violating the university conduct policies. He has called on Columbia to implement a similar policy.
In the year following the Hamas terrorist group’s slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, Columbia has become a hotbed of pro-Palestine protests. Immediately following the Oct. 7 massacre, a litany of Columbia student groups issued statements expressing approval of the Hamas attacks and assigning blame exclusively to Israel. A mob of pro-Palestinian protesters held a demonstration in front of the City University of New York Hillel on Tuesday, shouting at Jewish students to get “out of the Middle East” and “go back to Brooklyn.”
Many Columbia campus groups have implemented policies banning self-professed “Zionists” from membership, effectively excluding the majority of Jewish students. Columbia University student Khymani James publicly stated that Zionists “don’t deserve to live.” The Ivy League university has not confirmed if James has been permanently expelled from the campus.
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