“Darkness descending.”

The nonsense of ‘anti–Semitism’ at Columbia.

‘To resist is to love.’ Columbia, 21 April 2024. (Abbad Diraniya, cc-0 / Wikimedia Commons.)

This is the first of two essays on the insidious creep of censorship, coerced conformity, and “centrist” intolerance in America and elsewhere in the Atlantic world.

20 July—Is it possible to be shocked but at the same time not surprised? It seems so in this, the third decade of our troubled century, as the United States drifts ever further from reality, as unreason replaces reason—as, altogether, America destroys itself from within.

You read, case in point, that Columbia University has just formally adopted a definition of “anti–Semitism” no sentient human being can take as anything more than illogical nonsense—propagandistic rubbish advanced with the sole purpose of protecting the Zionist state from those who stand against the barbarous atrocities it commits daily before the eyes of the world. And you say, No, public discourse, law, bedrock institutions of higher learning cannot have cratered this far into such self-destructive irrationality. Language itself cannot have been stripped so bare of meaning.

And then you recall or make yourself familiar with the history behind Columbia’s appalling display of gutlessness, its craven surrender to power, its dereliction of duty to the cause of cultural efficacy and intellectual freedom. And you say, Yes, well, a long time coming, and there is almost no one in a place of high station principled enough to stand up to this pernicious chicanery.

Here is Claire Shipman, a former television news correspondent—we all must begin somewhere—on 15 July, as she announced Columbia’s new policy in an address to the university, where she serves as acting president. The dates refer to previous announcements concerning the question to hand:

Today, I write to you, specifically, about our ongoing efforts to combat antisemitism. There is no place for intimidation, hateful language, or targeting of Jews or Israelis at Columbia, and we have zero tolerance for this behavior. Over the last year, guided by our principles of academic freedom, inclusion, and respect, and the important work of our Antisemitism Task Force, we have enacted meaningful reforms, understanding that more would be needed. After deep consultation with our Jewish community, and many friends and experts outside of our institution, we are taking some important additional steps.

As part of our March 21^st commitments, Columbia announced we would incorporate the definition of antisemitism, as recommended by our Antisemitism Task Force in August 2024, into our anti-discrimination policies. We felt then, as we do now, that it is important to use a definition of antisemitism that reflects the experiences of many within Columbia’s Jewish community. Our Task Force had recommended that definition for use in education and pedagogy. While we remain committed to that carefully constructed definition, we are today also formally incorporating the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism into the work of our Office of Institutional Equity, housed under the Office of the Provost.

There are all sorts of problems with this statement. Straight off the top there is the faux-resolute language: … ongoing efforts to combat antisemitism, no place for hateful language or targeting of Jews or Israelis, zero tolerance, and so on. This is boilerplate at this point, but coming from Shipman it is mendacious boilerplate. In her position as acting president, she is officially asserting that anti–Semitism is sufficiently widespread at Columbia to warrant “combat.”

But stop right there. One heard no talk of rampant anti–Semitism at Broadway and West 116^th Street before the events of 7 October 2023 and the demonstrations Israel’s terror campaign in Gaza then prompted. No cries of targeted Jews, no epidemic of hate speech.

Let me rewrite that last sentence: There was no anti–Semitism at Broadway and West 116^th Street before the events of 7 October 2023 and the demonstrations Israel’s terror campaign in Gaza then prompted. There was none requiring task forces, commissions, and investigations, in any case. Ms. Shipman, to make my point another way, merely caved to the Trump regime’s exercise of power in her statement last Tuesday. She implicitly associates last year’s quite honorable demonstrations—so much of this stuff must be implicit, as it cannot be said openly—with anti–Semitism according to the I.H.R.A.’s utterly unacceptable definition.