columbia university

NEW YORK — For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts.

Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, including applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of a $220-million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities.

While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Trump and his administration.

For Hirsch, the restrictions on drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and questioning Israel’s founding amount to “clear censorship,” which she fears will chill discussions in the classroom and open her and other faculty up to spurious lawsuits.

“We learn by making analogies,” Hirsch said. “Now the university is saying that’s off limits. How can you have a university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation?”

A spokesperson for Columbia didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

‘Weaponization’ of an educational framework

When he first drafted the IHRA definition of antisemitism two decades ago, Kenneth Stern said he “never imagined it would one day serve as a hate speech code.”

At the time, Stern was working as the lead antisemitism expert at the American Jewish Committee. The definition and its examples were meant to serve as a broad framework to help European countries track bias against Jews, he said.

In recent years, Stern has spoken forcefully against what he sees as its “weaponization” against pro-Palestinian activists, including anti-Zionist Jews.

“People who believe they’re combating hate are seduced by simple solutions to complicated issues,” he said. “But when used in this context, it’s really actually harming our ability to think about antisemitism.”

Stern said he delivered that warning to Columbia’s leaders last fall after being invited to address them by Claire Shipman, then a co-chair of the board of trustees and the university’s current interim president.

The conversation seemed productive, Stern said. But in March, shortly after the Trump administration said it would withhold $400 million in federal funding to Columbia over concerns about antisemitism, the university announced it would adopt the IHRA definition for “training and educational” purposes.

Then this month, days before announcing a deal with the Trump administration to restore that funding, Shipman said the university would extend the IHRA definition for disciplinary purposes, deploying its examples when assessing “discriminatory intent.”

“The formal incorporation of this definition will strengthen our response to and our community’s understanding of modern antisemitism,” Shipman wrote.

Stern, who now serves as director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, called the move “appalling,” predicting it would spur a new wave of litigation against the university while further curtailing pro-Palestinian speech.

Already, the university’s disciplinary body has faced backlash for investigating students who criticized Israel in op-eds and other venues, often at the behest of pro-Israel groups.

“With this new edict on IHRA, you’re going to have more outside groups looking at what professors are teaching, what’s in the syllabus, filing complaints and applying public pressure to get people fired,” he said. “That will undoubtedly harm the university.”

Calls to ‘self-terminate’

Beyond adopting the IHRA definition, Columbia has also agreed to place its Middle East studies department under new supervision, overhaul its rules for protests and coordinate antisemitism training with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week, the university suspended or expelled nearly 80 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Kenneth Marcus, chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said Columbia’s actions were an overdue step to protect Jewish students from harassment.

He dismissed faculty concerns about the IHRA definition, which he said would “provide clarity, transparency and standardization” to the university’s effort to root out antisemitism.

“There are undoubtedly some Columbia professors who will feel they cannot continue teaching under the new regime,” Marcus said. “To the extent that they self-terminate, it may be sad for them personally, but it may not be so bad for the students at Columbia University.”

But Hirsch, the Columbia professor, said she was committed to continuing her long-standing study of genocides and their aftermath.

Part of that work, she said, will involve talking to students about Israel’s “ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide” in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 60,000 Palestinians have died in 21 months of war — most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — and where experts are warning of rising famine.

“With this capitulation to Trump, it may now be impossible to do that inside Columbia,” Hirsch said. “If that’s the case, I’ll continue my work outside the university’s gates.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

CONCORD, N.H. — A Palestinian activist who was detained for more than three months pushed his infant son’s stroller with one hand and pumped his fist in the air with the other as supporters welcomed him home Saturday.

Mahmoud Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters Saturday at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey a day after a judge ordered his release from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana. The former Columbia University graduate student, a symbol of President Trump’s clampdown on campus protests, vowed to continue protesting Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.

“The U.S. government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said. “This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.”

Khalil, a legal U.S. resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, said he also will speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention center.

“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human,” he said.

The 30-year-old international affairs student wasn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. However, the Trump administration has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the U.S. for expressing views it deems to be antisemitic or “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it is appealing Khalil’s release.

Joining Khalil at the airport, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said his detention violated the 1st Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”

“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” she said.

“The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.”

Ramer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A multifront assault by the Trump administration against the nation’s oldest university intensified on Friday when Harvard sued to block the government from barring international student enrollment, and a judge issued an immediate order to halt the ban.

The rapid-fire legal action is the latest in Trump administration attacks against the university as it claims Harvard failed to adhere to its demands to combat antisemitism.

But the whiplash felt by Harvard international students is reverberating far beyond Cambridge, Mass., as university leaders and foreign students across the United States and California watch with growing alarm over how federal actions will affect the nation’s 1.1-million foreign student population — 6% of American higher education enrollment.

Campuses have been on alert since last month, when the Homeland Security and State departments canceled thousands of enrollment certifications and visas at dozens of U.S. colleges, including UCLA, for individuals who often had minor infractions such as traffic tickets. The government, seeing losses in court, later reversed those cancellations and was further blocked from undertaking them when an Oakland-based federal judge issued an injunction Thursday.

“The current mindset of the international community is uncertainty,” said Syed Tamim Ahmad, a junior at UCLA who is from India and recently completed his term as the student government’s international student representative.

Ahmad, who recently took the MCAT and plans to apply to medical school, said he was reconsidering whether continuing his studies in the United States is a safe option.

“We do not know what to expect or what to come next,” he said. “Every student saw what happened at Harvard and was absolutely shocked. We wonder, what if it happens at UCLA or any other university?”

UCLA senior Adam Tfayli, a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen who grew up in Beirut, had a different view. “My friends at Harvard are very concerned right now,” said Tfayli, who finished his term this week as the Undergraduate Student Assn. Council President. “At UCLA, it’s tense just because it has been on college campuses for months under this administration, but doesn’t feel as bad as it did when people’s visas were being revoked last month.”

In a statement, UCLA Vice Chancellor of Strategic Communications Mary Osako said that “international Bruins are an essential part of our community.”

“We recognize that recent developments at other universities have created a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety, and we remain committed to supporting all Bruins’ ability to work, learn, teach and thrive here at UCLA,” Osako said.

USC, home to 17,000 international students — the most of any California school — declined to respond to events at Harvard, and pointed The Times to statements on its Office of International Services website about foreign students. “New restrictions could be implemented with little notice. The decision to travel internationally should be made carefully,” said a letter this month.

Like at Harvard, government officials have also scrutinized USC for its enrollment of Chinese students, who they have suggested may be a security threat — an accusation that also arose at California colleges during the first Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has accused Harvard of failing to protect Jewish students amid pro-Palestinian protests, accused the university on Thursday of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”

In March, a House commitee wrote to USC to request data on Chinese nationals and their “involvement in federally funded research and the security of sensitive technologies developed on campus.”

USC said in a statement Friday that it is “cooperating with the select committee’s inquiries and are following all applicable privacy laws and other legal protections.”

Speaking on Fox News on Thursday, Noem said the actions against Harvard were a “warning” to universities nationwide.

“This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together,” she said. “Get your act together.”

The case amplifies an increasingly existential fight for Harvard, one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher education. The Trump administration has launched multiple investigations into the university, moved to freeze nearly $3 billion in federal funding and pushed to end its tax-exempt status. Taken together, the federal actions raise fundamental questions over Harvard’s ability to sustain its international standards.

Harvard alleged in its suit Friday that the Trump administration’s moves mark “the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The administration’s “pernicious” actions, Harvard alleged, would prevent some of the world’s greatest minds from pursuing research and degrees at the university. Already, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has offered “unconditional” acceptance of international students forced to depart the Boston area due to Trump’s policies.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, appointed by former President Obama, granted an immediate restraining order, agreeing with Harvard’s argument that the Trump directive would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to the institution.

In a statement to The Times, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, dismissed the judicial injunction out of Massachusetts.

“The American people elected President Trump — not random local judges with their own liberal agenda — to run the country,” Jackson said. “These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy.”

The Trump administration’s assault on higher education has not focused solely on Harvard, but on much of the Ivy League and other elite campuses, including Columbia University, several UC campuses, USC and Stanford. Columbia and UCLA in particular became a focal point last year when protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza roiled campuses.

A Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism established by Trump sent Harvard a letter last month demanding the university police ideology on campus and expel students it deems are “anti-American.”Harvard has sued over those demands, as well, calling them a violation of free speech.

Discussing the legal fight with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump noted that “billions of dollars have been paid to Harvard.”

“How ridiculous is that?” he asked. “Harvard’s going to have to change its ways.”

The same task force has also similarly singled out UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley. While the campuses have been subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant cancellations that have affected a wide swath of American academia, they have not seen the targeted federal funding clawbacks that took place at Harvard and Columbia.

Still, the California universities — anticipating less federal support overall — have recently instituted hiring freezes and budget cuts. They’ve also vowed to address campus antisemitism allegations and faced criticism that they have given unequal treatment to allegations of bias against Muslim and Arab American student activists.

NEW YORK — Less than three weeks after his release from an immigration jail, the Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi strode across the graduation stage at Columbia University on Monday morning, savoring a moment the Trump administration had fought to make impossible.

Draped in a keffiyeh, Mahdawi, 34, paused to listen to the swell of cheers from his fellow graduates. Then he joined a vigil just outside Columbia’s gates, raising a photograph of his classmate Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in federal custody.

“It’s very mixed emotions,” Mahdawi told The Associated Press. “The Trump administration wanted to rob me of this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration.”

Mahdawi, a 34-year-old legal resident of the U.S., was detained during an April 14 citizenship interview in Vermont, part of the widening federal crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists.

He was released two weeks later by a judge, who likened the government’s actions to McCarthyist repression. Federal officials have not accused Mahdawi of committing a crime but argued that he and other student activists should be deported for beliefs that may undermine U.S. foreign policy.

For Mahdawi, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Columbia’s School of General Studies, the graduation marked a bittersweet return to a university that he says has betrayed him and other students.

“The senior administration is selling the soul of this university to the Trump administration, participating in the destruction and the degradation of our democracy,” Mahdawi said.

He pointed to Columbia’s decision to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s demands — including placing its Middle Eastern studies department under new leadership — as well as its failure to speak out against his and Khalil’s arrest.

He said Columbia’s leadership had denied his pleas for protection prior to his arrest, then ignored his attorney’s request for a letter supporting his release from jail.

A spokesperson for Columbia University did not return an emailed inquiry.

Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. At Columbia, he organized campus protests, led a Buddhist association and co-founded the Palestinian Student Union with Khalil.

Khalil would have received his diploma from a Columbia master’s program in international studies later this week. He remains jailed in Louisiana as he awaits a decision from a federal judge about his possible release.

As he prepares for a lengthy legal battle, Mahdawi faces his own uncertain future. He was previously admitted to a master’s degree program at Columbia, where he planned to study “peacekeeping and conflict resolution” in the fall. But he is reconsidering his options after learning this month that he would not receive financial aid.

For now, he said, he would continue to advocate for the Palestinian cause, buoyed by the support he says he has received from the larger Columbia community.

“When I went on the stage, the message was very clear and loud: They are cheering up for the idea of justice, for the idea of peace, for the idea of equality, for the idea of humanity, and nothing will stop us from continuing to do that. Not the Trump administration nor Columbia University,” he said.

The School of General Studies graduation comes two days before Columbia’s university-wide commencement, as colleges across the country are bracing for possible disruptions.

Last week, New York University announced it would withhold the diploma of a student speaker who criticized Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in his graduation speech.

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.