Columbia suspends top officials over antisemitism event texting

Columbia University has suspended three senior administrators who, after months of high-profile criticism of their institution’s treatment of Jewish students, were reported to have exchanged text messages mocking participants in a campus discussion about antisemitism.

The officials – Susan Chang-Kim, the university’s vice-dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student intervention and family engagement – were placed on leave amid growing condemnation of their alleged comments.

A fourth participant in the text chain during the event late last month, Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College and professor of religion and African American studies, was not suspended but recused from participating in the university’s investigation of the matter.

The text exchanges were captured by a Columbia alumnus who was seated at the antisemitism event behind Ms Chang-Kim, took photos of the texts on her mobile phone, and then provided the images to a right-wing news site, the Washington Free Beacon, which published them.

Professor Sorett was apologetic as the situation became public. “I deeply regret my role in these text exchanges and the impact they have had on our community,” he said in a note to his advisory panel, the Columbia College Board of Visitors.

But the chair of the education committee in the Republican-led US House of Representatives, Virginia Foxx, described the incident as feeding into her persistent narrative that student support for Palestinian civilians reflects a system of US higher education overly consumed by liberal politics, and she demanded that Columbia provide her committee with copies of the full text exchanges.

“I was appalled, but sadly not surprised, to learn Columbia administrators exchanged disparaging text messages during a panel that discussed antisemitism at the university,” Ms Foxx said in a statement before the suspensions were announced. “Dean Josef Sorett’s weak private ‘apology’ to the college’s Board of Visitors shows that the school doesn’t get it.”

During the two-hour event at Columbia, the four administrators were in the audience and they appeared in the photos of Ms Chang-Kim’s phone screen to be mocking speakers who were describing the campus climate for Jewish students.

Ms Chang-Kim at one point reportedly wrote, “Difficult to listen to but I’m trying to keep an open mind to learn about this point of view,” with Professor Sorett answering: “yup”. Professor Sorett also appeared to have replied “Lmao” to Ms Chang-Kim’s offering a sarcastic comment about the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, a centre for Jewish student life. Dr Patashnick appeared to have suggested that Jewish campus leaders saw “fundraising potential” in the controversy. Ms Kromm appeared to use vomit emojis in response to an editorial written by Columbia’s rabbi.

The event followed months of campus demonstrations across the US in which students demanded an end to Israel’s military attacks, which have killed 38,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, following the Palestinian attack in October that killed about 1,200 people in Israel.

Ms Foxx led conservative politicians and donors – already hostile to left-leaning free expression in academia – in denigrating the student anti-war protests as antisemitic in nature and demanding that university leaders end them.

Student protests at Columbia touched off violent confrontations across the country after the university’s president was berated by the Foxx committee and she quickly responded by calling in police to arrest her students. Columbia’s compliant response to the Foxx committee was instigated by a previous committee hearing where similar criticisms led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

The Columbia event involving the texting administrators – the university taking the opportunity of a college reunion to discuss Jewish life on campus – was intended to be part of the institution’s efforts to heal from the trauma of the protests.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com