York University, also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, and over 375,000 alumni worldwide. It has 11 faculties, including the Lassonde School of Engineering, Schulich School of Business, Osgoode Hall Law School, Glendon College, and 32 research centres.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), formerly called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit civil liberties group founded in 1999 with the mission of protecting freedom of speech on college campuses in the United States. FIRE changed its name in June 2022, when it broadened its focus from colleges to freedom of speech throughout American society.
Hamid Dabashi is an Iranian-American professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City.
StandWithUs (SWU) is a nonprofit right-wing pro-Israel advocacy organization founded in Los Angeles in 2001 by Roz Rothstein, Jerry Rothstein, and Esther Renzer.
Joseph Andoni Massad is a Jordanian academic specializing in Middle Eastern studies, who serves as Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. His academic work has focused on Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli nationalism.
There has been antisemitism at universities since the medieval period. Antisemitism has manifested in various ways in universities, including in policies and practices such as restricting the admission of Jewish students by a Jewish quota, or ostracism, intimidation, or violence against Jewish students, as well as in the hiring, retention and treatment of Jewish faculty and staff. In some instances, universities have been accused of condoning the development of antisemitic cultures on campus.
Rabbi Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert is Professor of Religion Emerita at Temple University, and was one of the first women rabbis. Her chief academic interests are religions and sports and sexuality in Judaism, and she says that her beliefs were transformed by a Sabbath prayer book that refers to God as 'She'.
Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, commonly known as Minouche Shafik, is a British-American academic and economist. She served as the president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023, and then as the 20th president of Columbia University from July 2023 to August 2024.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Kenneth L. Marcus in 2012 with the stated purpose of advancing the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promoting justice for all peoples. LDB is active on American campuses, where it says it combats antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Elise Marie Stefanik is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 21st congressional district. As chair of the House Republican Conference from 2021 to 2025, she was the fourth-ranking House Republican. Stefanik's district covers most of the North Country and the Adirondack Mountains, some of the outer suburbs of Utica, and the Capital District in New York. In addition to being the first woman to occupy her House seat, Stefanik was 30 when first elected to the House in 2014, making her the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time.
The AMCHA Initiative is a non-partisan organization aiming to combat antisemitism on campuses through investigation, documentation, and education in order to protect Jewish students from assault and fear. AMCHA was founded in 2012 by University of California Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and University of California Los Angeles Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith. The term Amcha is Hebrew for "your people" or "your nation."
Students for Justice in Palestine is a pro-Palestinian college student activism organization in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Founded at the University of California in 2001, it has campaigned for boycott and divestment against corporations that deal with Israel and organized events about Israel's human rights violations. In 2011, The New York Times called it "the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus". As of 2024, National SJP has over 350 chapters in North America.
Ester Rachel Fuchs is an American academic. She is Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Fuchs studied at Queens College, CUNY, Brown University, and the University of Chicago.
The Columbia Unbecoming controversy involved three professors at Columbia University in New York who some students and faculty thought were biased against Israel, with the main events taking place from 2002 to 2005. At the center of the controversy was Joseph Massad, a Palestinian assistant professor who led the class Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies and who described Israel as a racist, settler-colonial state. For years, he was allegedly dissented by students in his class who disagreed with him. Pundits called for Columbia to fire him as they saw him as unfit to teach.
Katrina Alison Armstrong is an American internist, and the interim president of Columbia University since August 2024. She is also CEO of Irving Medical Center and dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences at the university.
Columbia University in New York City, New York, has seen numerous instances of student protests, particularly beginning in the late 20th century.
On December 5, 2023, the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The committee called a few university leaders to testify, including the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A series of occupation protests by pro-Palestinian students occurred at Columbia University in New York City from April to June 2024, in the context of the broader Israel–Hamas war protests in the United States. The protests began on April 17, 2024, when pro-Palestinian students established an encampment of approximately 50 tents on the university campus, calling it the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and demanded the university divest from Israel.
Antisemitism at Columbia University was prevalent in the first half of the 20th century and has resurged in recent years. In the early 21st century, discourse surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would sometimes lead to accusations of antisemitism, but these individual controversies were typically isolated.
Shai Davidai is an Israeli assistant professor of business at Columbia Business School known for his outspoken advocacy for Israel, against antisemitism, and for Jewish civil rights. After the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and subsequent Israel-Hamas war, his activism led him into conflict with Columbia University administrators and has generated controversy among faculty, staff and the surrounding community.
