College and University Monitor

A student group at Columbia University protested on Thursday against what it described as the administration’s tolerance of harassment directed at Zionists.

Some 50 members of Students Supporting Israel, Columbia alumni, and community members gathered before the university’s main gates in the afternoon, holding Israeli flags and signs that read, “all students deserve protection,” and “don’t dismiss, act on this.”

SSI’s grievances are rooted in a complaint plaint filed in January with Columbia’s Student Governing Board, which said that anti-Zionist clubs have fostered “an unacceptably hostile environment,” and “systematically maligned, harassed and silenced” Zionist voices.

The administration did not take any action based on this or several other subsequent complaints, SSI said. The school has also been criticized for tolerating professors who take a hard-line stance against Israel, like Hamid Dabashi, who in May claimed that the Jewish state is behind “[e]very dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world.”...