DOE says Columbia should be stripped of accreditation over ‘indifference’ to antisemitism on campus

Columbia University should be stripped of its accreditation over its “deliberate indifference” to the harassment of Jewish students on campus, the US Department of Education said Wednesday.

In a letter to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), an accrediting institution that Columbia belongs to, the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights accused the Ivy League school

of allowing antisemitism to run rampant at its Morningside Heights campus.

“After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus,” DOE

Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in the memo.

“If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period, an accreditor must take appropriate action against its member institution,” the department added.

The school failed to protect its Jewish students amid the anti-Israel demonstrations that became commonplace at the campus, the DOE said, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

The protests reached a frenzy last year during the encampment set up on the campus lawn and illegal barricade of the Hamilton Hall building, with the protests continuing with a recent rally

during graduation last month where people ripped up and burned diplomas. 

The demonstrations, subsequently, led to the students being denied “equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law,” the DOE alleged.  

The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights claimed that MSCHE is required to notify Columbia about the noncompliance finding and “establish a plan to come into compliance.” 

“If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period, an accreditor must take appropriate action against its member institution,” the department said.

The MSCHE confirmed to The Post that it received the letter from the DOE, but declined to comment further. 

Matthew Schweber, a member of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, touted the Trump administration’s move to question the university’s accreditation. 

“Only the threat of financial insolvency will force Columbia to dismiss the hundreds of faculty members in the humanities and social sciences that teach post-colonial Jerkish, specialize in

illiberal identity politics and cheerlead for Hamas,” Schweber said.   

The DOE first revealed the allegations against Columbia last month following a monthslong investigation against universities across America over allegations of facilitating antisemitism. 

The Trump administration had previously canceled $400 million in federal grants over the Ivy League school’s “failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.”

The Department of Justice also revealed Wednesday that one of the protesters, Tarek Bazrouk, had a direct link to Hamas’ deadly al-Qassam Brigades militant group.

Bazrouk, 20, — who is awaiting trial after being indicted on three federal hate crimes against Jewish people — was “a member of a chat group that received regular updates from Abu Obeida,”

the official spokesperson for the brigades, according to allegations laid out in federal documents.

While on Columbia’s campus during the encampment protests in April 2024, Bazrouk also allegedly texted a pal saying he lit a flare and considered lighting someone on fire, but that there

were “too many” people around for him to take on, otherwise he “would’ve hurted [sic] them,” officials added. 

Columbia has said it would cooperate with the administration’s orders to address antisemitism and comply with numerous policy changes in direct accordance with a list of reforms requested by

a joint task force composed of the Department of Education, the General Services Administration, and Health and Human Services.

Among the changes, the university banned all face coverings on campus worn “for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of university policies or state,

municipal or federal laws.”