Columbia University administrators made significant revelations during a Wednesday congressional hearing about their response to incidents that have rocked the campus since October 7.
The school suspended two students who allegedly sprayed a chemical on their peers at a rally for Gaza in January, is investigating a professor for harassing students online over their pro-Palestine activism, and has moved to punish two professors for making comments that have been condemned as antisemitic.
The Columbia leaders also took great pains to assure the House Committee on Education and Workforce that they have not done enough to tackle campus antisemitism, the subject of the hearing. The congressional committee heard testimony from Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik, former Law School dean and Task Force on Antisemitism co-chair David Schizer, and Board of Trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald.
“I feel this current climate on our campus viscerally. It’s unacceptable. I can tell you plainly that I am not satisfied with where Columbia is at this moment,” Shipman said. “As co-chair of the board, I bear responsibility for that.”
“I am a Columbia student, I came from New York,” a voice rang from the hallways outside the hearing room on Wednesday morning, where one person carried a Palestinian flag and others sported pro-Palestine messages on their clothing. “I came to see my president speak.”
“Let the students in,” chants began to ring.
Such was the beginning of the committee’s follow-up act to its viral December hearing on the campus antisemitism, which led to the ouster of Harvard University President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz McGill.
Despite the commotion outside the room, the committee — led by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. — trudged along in interrogating the administrators in front of a crowded room which few, if any, of the Palestine advocates were able to enter.
As proof of the seriousness with which the school takes antisemitism, the panel pointed to decisions like suspending the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. The school suspended the groups for hosting a demonstration for Gaza without permission from the university, a decision the groups have contested in a lawsuit.
While Republican lawmakers lobbed questions and thoughts on why, for example, Columbia should institute a course on the Bible and bemoaned a social work class that criticizes capitalism, committee members also asked questions that led to substantive revelations into the university’s approach over recent months.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., asked Shafik what the school’s policies are surrounding professors who harass students or attack the president online, naming Columbia professor Shai Davidai. The business school professor has for months derided pro-Palestine students on Twitter as being “pro-Hamas” or in support of terrorism, while he has repeatedly gone after the school for not more severely pursuing those students.
Shafik said that as president she was no stranger to being attacked, but that there have been more than 50 complaints about Davidai, who is currently under investigation for harassment.
Republicans pressed the panelists on the status of two other professors: Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, and Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor in modern Arab studies.
Massad penned an article on October 8 that critics say is antisemitic and glorified Hamas’s attack on Israel.
“No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the day watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it by air,” Massad wrote, describing the attack as a “remarkable takeover of Israeli military bases and checkpoints.”
He went on to describe the Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, as well as the Israelis killed by Hamas. It was, he wrote, “all in all a horrifying human toll on all sides.”
Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, who recently suggested nuking Gaza as a way to solve the war, pressed the panel to answer how Massad could say such things in support of violence. Shafik condemned the comments and said the professor was removed from his role as chair of the university’s academic committee. Walberg also asked the trustees whether they would have approved Massad for tenure given his comments. “No,” Shipman and Greenwald said.
Later, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., once again raised the professor’s status, noting that Massad was still listed as chair of the academic committee on a Columbia website. Shafik responded saying she would need to confirm. Stefanik pressed on, asking if, regardless, Shafik would commit to removing him from the chairmanship.
“I think I would, yes. Let me come back with, yes. But I think I just want to confirm his current status before I reply,” Shafik said.
Columbia subsequently changed its website to list Massad as “outgoing chair,” according to web archives.
Stefanik also asked about Abdou, who the Republican said had expressed support for Hamas online following the October 7 attack. Shafik said Abdou had been terminated and will “never teach at Columbia again.” (Stefanik, for her part, has helped lead the battle against universities’ alleged antisemitism problem while standing loyally beside Donald Trump, who has dined with antisemite Nick Fuentes and recently said Jewish people who do not support him “should be spoken to.”)
Both Stefanik and Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., invoked the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as definitionally antisemitic, pressing the Columbia panel to agree with the assumption. The panelists did not push back on the interpretation of the phrase, which many Palestinians and their allies view as an aspirational call for equality.
Stefanik and Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, also cited allegations of Hamas beheading babies — a claim that has repeatedly been shown to be unverified, and that even the Israeli military said it couldn’t confirm.
Asked about the reporting that encourages caution before taking the claim as fact, Owens dug his heels in. “You’re going to have to do your homework,” he told The Intercept. “You can debate that with anybody you want to, but it’s true. It’s very obvious. The videos are out there.”
The hearing also prompted new disclosures about the university’s response to a chemical being sprayed during a January campus rally for Gaza, an issue first raised by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.
Shafik said the two alleged perpetrators were suspended, the university’s first public admission of this fact, while Foxx said in her closing remarks that documents provided to her by Columbia show that the substance sprayed was a “non-toxic gag spray.”
On Tuesday, one of the students filed a pseudonymous lawsuit against the school, alleging an “egregious miscarriage of justice” because of the school’s rush to “silence Plaintiff and brand him as a criminal for harmlessly exercising his freedom of expression in opposition to a pro-Hamas pro Palestine rally.”
The plaintiff, who is identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe, said that he, “as a harmless expression of his speech, sprayed into the air a novelty, non-toxic ‘fart’ spray named ‘Liquid Ass’ and ‘Wet Farts’ which he purchased on Amazon for $26.11.”
Just days ago, The Intercept asked Columbia about its investigation into the incident. The school deferred to the New York Police Department, which said that the investigation remains “ongoing,” and that the suspects’ identities were “unknown.” According to the lawsuit, however, the school placed the plaintiff on interim suspension “almost instantly,” and on March 13 finalized the decision to suspend him through May 2025.
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