College and University Monitor

...Jonathan Karten, an Economy and Psychology student at Columbia University in New York became the first to press charges under the new executive order.

"Thanks to this order, support to complaints about anti-Semitism will be provided, because more often than not Jewish and Israeli students are the target of discrimination and persecution," he said. Karten.

"Politics is an excuse, and students and Jewish faculty members at Columbia University and across the US deserve to study and work in an environment free of discrimination and anti-Jewish deflection."

Recalling various anti-Semitic incidents he witnessed, Karten said that "allegedly, there are semantic differences between anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist expressions. Many of those who oppose Israel believe, for example, that Zionism is colonialism, and it's not anti-Semitism per-se. You won't see skinheads on campus, although swastikas did deface a Jewish lecturer's office last year."

According to Karten, a fellow student recently submitted a paper on terrorist attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organization "and his lecturer disqualified it because he called the PLO a terrorist group rather than 'freedom fighters'. There are, on the other hand, pro-Israel lecturers who are afraid to come forward for fear it could cost them their jobs, their tenure. It's been like this on campuses across the state."...