March 11, 2025
To the Members of the Joint Federal Task Force on Antisemitism:
American Jewish Committee (AJC) writes to express appreciation for the Task Force's efforts to hold Columbia to account for its egregious record of antisemitism. As the December 2024 House Report on antisemitism makes abundantly clear, Columbia has a years-long history of neglecting to address antisemitic discrimination, bias, and harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
According to AJC’s recent State of Antisemitism in America 2024 Report, one in three Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitism in some form during 2024. This is patently unacceptable, and it is past time that universities commit to concrete, measurable, and effective action steps to address antisemitic prejudice, hostility, and violence that, at too many schools, has continued to grow.
Funding cutoffs can be an essential end-stage weapon in the arsenal against discrimination in federally funded programs, including those that benefit colleges and universities. We are concerned that, in response to a university’s failure to seriously counter antisemitism, life-saving scientific research and other critical fields that have little connection to the areas where antisemitism has manifested may be harmed by arbitrary, across the board cuts to grants and research contracts.
Addressing antisemitism effectively at schools like Columbia requires precise, highly focused, and powerful measures that also afford the university due process and the opportunity to take necessary action to comply with the law in order to keep Jewish students safe and free from harassment.
AJC can assist the Task Force in its work by providing urgent and impactful action plans for universities to adopt in order to address campus antisemitism. AJC’s Center for Education Advocacy’s action plans for higher education and K-12 administrators contain specific steps on how to build campus communities with zero tolerance for antisemitism in any of its manifestations. More targeted, strategic university policies along with verifiable and rigorous enforcement is necessary to address the problem. The Offices for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and other relevant federal agencies can and should continue to hold universities accountable for their failures.
AJC holds a deep regard for the vital role played by universities in our shared democracy and a conviction that the excellence of American universities is incompatible with anti-Jewish hostility, prejudice, and discrimination. We stand ready to work closely with you to bring about the change we all seek, and we hope that the Task Force will partner with us to bring meaningful, visible change to Columbia and other schools. Such changes would enable schools to remedy the unacceptable tidal wave of antisemitism we have witnessed while also allowing them to continue operating as centers of autonomous research that have made American universities the envy of the world.
