A U.S. congressional committee on Wednesday accused Columbia University's president of failing to protect Jewish students on campus, echoing accusations leveled against three other elite university leaders at a hearing last year that sent shockwaves through higher education.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik responded to the accusations by some members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce by strongly denouncing antisemitic behavior by students and professors at the New York City-based Ivy League university, and by pledging there would be consequences.
Shafik said the university was facing a "moral crisis" with antisemitism on campus, and it had taken strong actions against suspected perpetrators. It had suspended students who participated in unauthorized protests, for example, and terminated a professor who supported the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, she said.
"Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who want to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country," Shafik told the committee.