Columbia University president praises ‘persistence’ of students accused of antisemitism

Columbia University’s president has praised the “persistence” of students accused of antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war.

In an email to the community Wednesday, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury announced they are establishing a “Doxing Resource Group” composed of key offices across both campuses to “serve as a centralized point of contact for issues related to doxing, harassment, and online security.”

“The deliberate harassment and targeting of members of our community by doxing, a dangerous form of intimidation, is unacceptable,” they wrote. “Many individuals, including students across several schools, have been subject to these attacks by third parties. This includes disturbing incidents in which trucks have circled the Columbia campus displaying and publicizing the names and photos of Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students.”

“We are grateful for the persistence and perseverance of the students, and their families, in the face of this harassment,” Shafik and Rosenbury continued. “We are assembling available resources to support them and the staff and faculty who are by their side.”

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The announcement came in response to the nonprofit news watchdog Accuracy in Media sending trucks to Columbia’s campuses in Manhattan, featuring large video screens on all sides and displaying the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” over a slideshow of Ivy League students’ headshots and names in red block letters.

The display intended to identify students who allegedly justified the Oct. 7 deadly assault by Hamas militants on Israeli civilians through “a horribly hateful, antisemitic proclamation similar to the one signed at Harvard that blamed victims for their own death, rape and torture,” Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette told the New York Post.

In their email, Shafik and Rosenbury said that in addition to forming the resource group, which will coordinate with the recently announced SIPA Task Force on Doxing and Student Safety, Columbia and Barnard “have retained experts in the field of digital threat investigation and privacy scrubbing to support our impacted community members.”

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“The special resource group on doxing will serve as one point of contact for all issues related to doxing, harassment, and online security; communicate proactively with students to help navigate the resources available to them; make referrals where necessary and ensure coordination of services; hear concerns and receive suggestions for additional support,” they wrote. “The special resources group will be in operation through November 30, at which point we will reassess our efforts to ensure that our work meets your needs.”

A Columbia spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement that “the University – and President Shafik – is concerned for the safety and security of all its students and community members. That is why the president announced both a Task Force on Antisemitism and a Doxing Resource Group to address the acute problem of doxing playing out on our doorstep, even today.”

According to the Columbia Spectator, the announcement came hours after Shafik, Rosenbury and Columbia University’s Teachers College President Thomas Bailey sent an email with regard to the establishment of a task force on antisemitism. The School of International and Public Affairs established a Task Force on Doxing and Student Safety the day before.

Daniel Di Martino, an economics Ph.D. student at Columbia studying migration, condemned the announcement on X, writing, “These students who are defacing and tearing down Jewish kidnapped victim posters and signing statements against Israel are receiving University help to deal with the backlash.”

“This comes after they formed an “antisemitism taskforce”. Their goal is to take both sides and hope to ride through,” he wrote. “In reality, they would have never done this had any nation been attacked like Israel was. Only Israel (because it’s a Jewish state) is subject to another standard.”