Columbia University Locks Down Campus Amid Anti-Hillel Protest

Columbia University locked down its campus on Thursday, following an anti-Hillel protest staged by a front group for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) outside the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life.

“SIPA, SIPA, you can’t hide, you invest in genocide!” the mob chanted, according to The Columbia Daily Spectator, as they held signs calling for the university to “abolish” the Birthright Israel program, which grants Jewish students a free trip to their ancient homeland.

As The Algemeiner previously reported, this assault on Columbia’s Jewish life, perpetrated by a group which calls itself the Palestine Working Group (PWG), appears to have been prompted by an event held by the university on Thursday, in which Israeli journalist Barak Ravid spoke as a guest of the Kraft Center — where the Hillel chapter serving both Columbia and Barnard College students is located — and the School of International and Public Affairs’ (SIPA) Institute of Global Politics (IGP).

Reputed to be the largest Jewish collegiate organization in the world, Hillel International is a “home away from home” for the 180,000 students at over 850 colleges who avail themselves of its religious services, relationship building opportunities, and recreational activities. PWG, along with another group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), insists, however, that “Hillel is complicit in manufacturing propaganda and consent for the Zionist entity’s imperialist and colonial projects.”

On Friday, Columbia University — which has come under fire for its alleged failure to combat the incubation of antisemitism and jihadist extremism on its campus — denounced the attacks on Hillel.

“The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, the home of Columbia and Barnard’s vibrant Hillel, is a vital part of our campus, providing a welcoming space for our students to explore and celebrate Jewish culture and identity,” Columbia University said in a statement that was not attributed to any one official. “We appreciate the many contributions the Kraft Center and Hillel and make to supporting our Jewish community and building our university community. Any efforts to intimidate the Kraft Center, Hillel, and our Jewish community and all forms of antisemitism are unacceptable and inimical to what we stand for as a university.”

Columbia Apartheid Divest hit back at the university hours later, charging that it “directly engages in the colonization and destruction of Palestinian life and land through the construction of their ‘Tel Aviv Global Center’ on stolen land,” linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the popular left-wing issue of gentrification in urban cities. Such messaging continues a pattern of blaming Israel, the lone Jewish state, for the world’s problems.

“On top of the centuries of continuing gentrification and displacement of Harlem residents, the entire campus is illegally isolated solely to punish and hide the brutality Columbia inflicts on us for fighting for Palestinian liberation,” the group continued.

The campaign to kick Hillel chapters off college campuses is not new. The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) launched the initiative, titled “Drop Hillel,” in October, just weeks after the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign said in a manifesto published in concurrence with its launching. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”

The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of SJP unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.

The #DropHillel campaign comes amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published in September by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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