To do the same thing over and over and expect a different result is one definition of insanity. According to Robert Shibley, a special counsel of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), it’s also Columbia University’s approach to addressing anti-Semitism on campus.
On Tuesday, Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, announced in an email to the community that the university would take several steps to quell anti-Semitism on campus. Columbia will appoint Title VI and Title VII coordinators to review allegations of discrimination. It will launch new programming around anti-Jewish discrimination, send out regular messages affirming its zero-tolerance policy on hate, and use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism for certain disciplinary proceedings. In her message, Shipman promised that the university would continue making reforms until it had stamped out anti-Semitism. “In a recent discussion, a faculty member and I agreed that anti-Semitism at this institution has existed, perhaps less overtly, for a long while, and the work of dismantling it, especially through education and understanding, will take time,” she wrote.
The message was notable for how closely it resembled the communications that university presidents have previously sent out about other forms of discrimination. Replace the references to “anti-Semitism” with “racism,” and Shipman’s message could practically have been lifted from the statements of summer 2020. As university presidents contort themselves to respond to campus anti-Semitism, they seem to be replicating the DEI push of the past decade, bureaucracy and all. It’s not just Columbia. Harvard University is also implementing new trainings, evaluating its administrative complaint structure, and adopting a more expansive definition of anti-Semitism.
Setting aside the question of insanity, Columbia’s approach is risky: University leaders may be implementing reforms that aren’t proven to work, or are proven not to work. Giving anti-Semitism the DEI treatment is also ironic: Universities are instituting these policies under pressure from the Trump administration, which is simultaneously engaged in an effort to root out DEI from governing and educational institutions across the country.
Anti-Semitism is a real issue at Columbia. As my colleague Franklin Foer documented, university administrators slow-walked responses to anti-Jewish discrimination; such apathy directed at any other protected group would have led to scandal. In the days after Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Columbia’s student newspaper interviewed dozens of Jewish students about life on campus. Thirteen students said they had suffered attacks or harassment.
Under President Donald Trump, campus anti-Semitism has also been a pretext to wage war on universities. In March, the Trump administration used Columbia’s perceived deficiencies in combatting anti-Semitism as an excuse to yank $400 million in research funding. It demanded far-reaching concessions as a precondition for getting the money back. Columbia soon acquiesced to the reforms, with only minor changes. But the administration still didn’t restore the funding. The two parties have been locked in protracted negotiations ever since, though they are reportedly nearing a deal. Shipman’s Tuesday announcement was one attempt among many to satisfy the administration.
Assaf Zeevi, an Israeli professor at Columbia’s business school, told me he was encouraged by the latest reforms. He cautioned, however, that these efforts would matter only if the university demonstrates that it will discipline students who harass their Jewish peers or violate protest policies. Otherwise, the recently announced measures are no more than lip service. (Columbia did not immediately provide comment.)
Universities have built up their antidiscrimination apparatuses for decades now. Yet they seemed utterly ill-equipped to address anti-Semitism on their campuses. “It suggests that whatever tactic universities were using and the huge growth in the bureaucracy dedicated to this hasn’t been effective,” Shibley told me. “I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that adding some coordinators or throwing more people at the problem is going to solve it.”
Ineffectiveness is one concern. Here’s another: As the university sets up a new anti-Semitism bureaucracy, it runs the risk of repeating the overreach of the DEI movement. What began as a well-intentioned effort to address real issues of discrimination resulted in a proliferation of administrators who, in certain instances, evolved into a sort of speech police. David Bernstein, the founder of the North American Values Institute, has criticized DEI initiatives for flattening nuanced issues. “I don’t like the idea of training anybody in ideas,” he told me. “Just as I’m critical of DEI programs for providing simplistic answers about power and privilege to complex issues, I’m worried that campus anti-Semitism training will use the same playbook.”
The appointment of new Title VI coordinators and the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism could also tend in that direction. FIRE has opposed universities adopting the IHRA definition, arguing that it could be used to punish speech that merely, if harshly, criticizes Israel’s government. Universities’ existing policies are sufficient to punish anti-Semitic speech, Shibley said. The problem is that schools haven’t enforced them.
And then there’s the fact that the Trump administration, even as it has focused on addressing anti-Semitism, has pushed universities to get rid of efforts that have the faintest whiff of DEI. The notion that some version of the DEI bureaucracy is appropriate for anti-Semitism and only anti-Semitism is nonsensical. “Ultimately, the most important thing a university can do to deal with this anti-Semitism problem is to embrace the free expression of ideas and to make sure that they have faculty who embrace a genuine liberal education,” Bernstein told me.
The experiments in addressing anti-Semitism are likely to continue all summer and into the next academic year. “Hopefully, some will work,” Shibley told me. “I’m concerned, though, that many of them are going to cause government overreach and end up causing more problems than they solve.”
