Columbia Law Students Senate Rejects Club Aimed at Fighting Antisemitism

By Matis Glenn

The student-run senate at Columbia University’s law school last week rejected a student club which was designed to fight antisemitism, as Jewish students there continue to report bias, discrimination and harassment at the prestigious university, the Times of Israel reported Thursday.

The 49-member senate rejected the formation of Law Students Against Antisemitism (LSAA) in the Ivy League school, partially due to its use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which includes delegitimizing Israel.

Columbia, which is under federal investigation for possible Title VI violations in allowing antisemitism to brew on campus, announced in December that chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and calls for “intifada” will not be tolerated on campus, as the terms are used by terrorist groups as a call for the genocide of Jews living in Israel. But demonstrations featuring the use of those expressions continued immediately after. At a January demonstration in which students used the phrases, the Columbia Spectator reports that university staff informed the protestors of “interim sanctions by the Provost up to and including suspension for the rest of the semester.” It is not known if any disciplinary actions have been taken by the university.

Columbia suspended its chapter of the Hamas-supporting Students for Justice in Palestine and the Jewish Voices for Peace groups in November, however the group has only increased its activities since then, according to witnesses who spoke with Jewish Insider in December. A student who attempted to videotape a December pro-Palestinian event organized inside Columbia’s School for Social Work was seemingly threatened by a protestor with violence after refusing to stop recording the event.

That event, entitled “Significance of the October 7 Palestinian Counteroffensive,” took place despite being officially cancelled by the university.

Students at that event were praising Hamas’ October 7 terror attack as a “great feat,” and were using umbrellas to shield them from view. According to Columbia Professor Gill Zussman, administrators at the university’s School of Social Work provided these umbrellas specifically to help students remain anonymous.

Both SJP and JVP have remained suspended going into the current semester, university officials said, according to JTA.

The LSAA group was formed by both Jewish and non-Jewish students, as a response to growing antisemitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’ brutal terror attacks on October 7, with 20 student groups signing a statement in support of the terror attacks and Hamas. The statement read that “occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land” and that the “weight of responsibility” for all people killed rests on Israel and western powers, including the U.S.

Official Law School groups that signed that declaration included Empowering Women of Color at Columbia Law School, the Middle Eastern Law Students Association at Columbia Law School, The National Lawyers Guild at Columbia Law School, Columbia Law’s Restorative Justice Collective; Columbia Law and Political Economy Society, and Columbia Law Students for Palestine.

Students who supported the LSAA group were saddened by the vote.

“I was heartbroken — not because I was surprised, but because I was right,” third-year law student Marie-Alice Legrand told the Times of Israel.

Legrand, who is not Jewish, wrote on social media that the student group was rejected in 2022, too.

“There was a lack of compassion and a level of cruelty I never experienced. People actually celebrated October 7,” Legrand said.

She says that she has lost friends and has been ostracized by her community.

“I was blacklisted by the Black community, so to speak,” Legrand said. “I have a different set of friends now, but I don’t want to live in a world where Jewish people are afraid.

“I am affected by antisemitism, we all are — because hate spreads.”

Legrand says that the school is guilty of hypocrisy, as it purports to be a place of inclusivity; the university’s website states that students are urged to “learn from viewpoints and experiences different from their own in a supportive and welcoming environment.”

“The level of double standard doesn’t even begin to cover it anymore. I’ve never witnessed so much hypocrisy; it breaks my brain,” Legrand said.

According to Martin Pritikin, dean of Purdue Global Law School, the club’s rejection might be illegal.

Pritkin says that since money from all students enrolled at Columbia University is used for funding the senate, the argument can be made that the university must ensure that the senate – though an independent entity – does not infringe on student rights.

“If anybody should be sensitive to due process it is law school students,” Pritikin told the Times of Israel, adding that he thinks the senate “exercised power in a manner that harms Jewish students.”

Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell are among the 28 universities under investigation by the DOE for alleged violations of Title VI, a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on shared ancestry, which includes antisemitism. The New York City Department of Education is also being investigated.