Columbia president faces anti-Semitism Congress hearing: What’s at stake?
Al Jazeera
Previous hearings led to the resignation of Harvard and UPenn bosses. Now Columbia’s Minouche Shafik is in the line of fire.
On Wednesday, Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik will face a congressional committee over allegations that the leadership of the Ivy League school has failed to protect students and staff from rising anti-Semitism on its New York City campus.
The university is one of many elite schools across the United States that have emerged as battlegrounds for protests, counterprotests and explosive allegations linked to Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 people have been killed, most of them women and children.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have alleged that they have been victimised by university authorities and that they have faced physical attacks in some instances. Others have accused university authorities of not doing enough to counter anti-Semitism on campus.
Amid these heightened tensions, a congressional committee has been investigating allegations that universities have failed to shield students from anti-Semitism. The stakes are high for Shafik, the first female president of the university, appointed last year. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the committee, has accused Columbia of “some of the worst cases of anti-Semitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism on campus”.
The House investigation has already claimed two scalps: University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) President Elizabeth Magill and her Harvard counterpart Claudine Gay, amid similar allegations against them, and criticism of their responses to the congressional committee.
