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| Fifth Column |
| Anti-Jew/anti-Israel action at America’s universities 9/10-10/17/2026 |
| 2026-10-18 |
An incomplete collection, being those articles I came across around the internet while looking for other things. Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia for alleged failure to protect pro-Palestinian students [IsraelTimes] Civil rights lawsuit accuses university of ‘deliberate indifference’ that led to his own arrest by ICE agents and enabled ‘peer-on-peer harassment’ of other activists. Charges to be dropped against anti-Israel protesters who occupied Stanford building [IsraelTimes] Activists have paid $52,000 of restitution and have committed to completing 100 hours of community service after case over 2024 incident ended in mistrial Columbia faculty says she felt ‘unsafe’ after confronting IDF veterans posing as pro-Palestinian protesters [CollegeFix] A Columbia University faculty member claimed members of a pro-Israel organization dressed in keffiyahs and “waving Palestinian flags” made her feel shaken and “unsafe” after she inquired what they were doing. According to the Columbia Spectator, early last week several former Israeli Defense Forces members aligned with the group Frontline Advocates set up a table outside the university’s gates with a placard stating “We are IDF. We’ve been in Gaza. Ask us anything.” Frontline Advocates “collaborates” with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on “specific projects,” according to the report. Its members claimed they dressed as pro-Palestinian activists in order to get people to talk to them; when they have pro-Israel paraphernalia, people ignore them, they say. Columbia To Host Jew-Bashing Student Protester at Free Speech ‘Symposium’ After Damning New Report Claims He Backs Terror Groups, Said ‘I Like To Kill Jews.’ [WashingtonFreeBeacon] Mohsen Mahdawi, who is currently fighting a deportation order, was a leader in the pro-Hamas protests that crippled Columbia’s campus in 2024. US House advances bill to withhold federal funds from universities boycotting Israel [IsraelTimes] 33 Democrats join most GOP lawmakers in backing legislation, to which Democratic leadership objected over free speech concerns and because it didn’t differentiate between Israel and settlements Southern Methodist University cancels ‘Unapologetically Muslim’ student conference Anti-Israel Haverford College faculty refuse letters of recommendation for Israeli schools. UW proposes tougher conduct rules year after pro-Palestinian occupation [CampusReform] The University of Washington (UW) in Seattle is proposing new student conduct rules that would allow it to discipline students who refuse orders to leave university property and hold students responsible for assisting or planning prohibited conduct. The proposed revisions come more than a year after the May 2025 pro-Palestinian occupation of UW’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building, although the university does not state that the incident prompted the changes. In legal settlement, UC Berkeley promises snubbed Israeli dance scholar a job offer [IsraelTimes] The US university previously denied Yael Nativ a position due to her nationality; she plans to decide whether to return once invitation is received, after months of delay For more than nine months, UC Berkeley has failed to honor a legal settlement with an Israeli dance scholar who was denied a teaching position due to her nationality. In response to a J. inquiry, a university spokesperson said the delay was caused by “internal miscommunication.” The US university now promises that the scholar, Yael Nativ, will receive the job offer she was guaranteed in the December 2025 settlement “no later than the week of September 28.” “We deeply regret this unfortunate delay and look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to our campus,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement. Nativ said she received an apology for the delay and the promise of an imminent job offer in a September 21 email from a university administrator. “It’s always a surprise when I get emails from them because the correspondence was so little to none,” Nativ said. “I’m so tired of this case.” Nativ, a sociologist specializing in Israeli dance, taught in UC Berkeley’s dance department during spring 2022 as a visiting professor through the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Her course focused on contemporary dance in Israel through social, political and cultural perspectives. The institute invited Nativ to reapply for another year of teaching. But after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, SanSan Kwan, chair of the dance department, informed Nativ that she would not be rehired. In November 2023, Kwan told Nativ in a WhatsApp message: “My dept cannot host you for a class next fall. Things are very hot right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.” The university’s civil rights office investigated the matter and concluded that Nativ was discriminated against based on her Israeli identity. Nativ sued the university, with representation from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in August 2025. When the two sides settled the lawsuit in December 2025, the university acknowledged its wrongdoing and committed to apologizing to Nativ and inviting her back to campus. UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons apologized to Nativ over Zoom on February 3, but no job offer arrived. The lapse was publicized by Malcolm Feeley, a retired UC Berkeley Law professor, who wrote about Nativ’s case in a September 16 article in the Jewish Review of Books. “Justice delayed is justice denied. This is justice delayed in the extreme,” Feeley said in an interview. “It takes a concerted effort of badgering to get [the university] to move an inch.” In a statement to J. following the publication of Feeley’s article, Mogulof said the university hadn’t sent Nativ a job offer due to a misunderstanding among administrators about who was responsible for doing so. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin will personally ensure the offer will come within the next two weeks, according to Mogulof. Nativ went on to work as a research fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba after she left Berkeley. She said her main goal since the lawsuit has been to hold UC Berkeley accountable, not to land a job. “It wasn’t urgent for me to go [back to campus]. It’s more about making a point, getting my justice,” she said. “But if they invite, I will consider.” The lawsuit alleged national origin discrimination under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, failure to prevent discrimination under the act, and national origin discrimination under the California Education Code. It was one of dozens filed around the US related to antisemitism and anti-Zionist activism on college campuses. Universities across the country have faced allegations of discrimination from Israel’s supporters and its opponents with allegations of discrimination over how the campuses responded to protests. American Jews have filed most of the lawsuits, alleging antisemitism. Israelis have also filed some cases due to alleged discrimination based on their national origin. Antisemitic harassment claims move forward against University of Illinois-Chicago ‘Incitement’: Jewish, pro-Israel student groups condemn invitation of leftist provocateur Hasan Piker [CollegeFix] Two prominent Jewish and pro-Israel student groups at Cornell University have condemned the invitation of leftist provocateur Hasan Piker, arguing the upcoming speech is meant to serve as a provocation, not an attempt at exploration and civil discourse. Piker, a far-left political commentator who once said “America deserved 9/11,” is scheduled to speak at the Ivy League institution on Thursday at the behest of Students Not Bombs, a coalition of the groups Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Young Democratic Socialists of America. LA Review of Books spikes feature on pro-Israel professor [CollegeFix] The Los Angeles Review of Books has canceled a commissioned article that centered on an outspoken pro-Israel professor at Columbia University who helped highlight antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Shai Davidai, who left Columbia University in 2025 after making a name for himself strongly defending Israeli and Jewish students and staff at the Ivy League school amid aggressive pro-Palestinian protests, is making the rounds to promote his new book. But LA Review senior editor Rob Latham “pulled the rug out from under freelancer Melissa Uchiyama after hiring her to interview Davidai ahead of his new book, ‘American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities,'” according to the California Post, which obtained emails regarding the situation. SJP demands UVA dean resign because she’s an ex-IDF soldier [CollegeFix] Students with the University of Virginia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter recently called for the resignation of Yael Grushka-Cockayne, dean of the Darden School of Business, prompting concerned alumni to question why administrators have yet to publicly defend her. The SJP chapter wants Dean Grushka-Cockayne to resign because she served in the Israeli Defense Forces from 1993 until 1996. Grushka-Cockayne was raised in both the U.S. and Israel and holds dual-citizenship. She has been lauded for her global perspectives and is the first woman to permanently lead the business school in its 70-year history. Campus leadership has not responded to the petition in defense of Dean Grushka-Cockayne, prompting the Jefferson Council, a center-right UVA alumni group, to publish a series of posts demanding administration take a stand. “Let’s be perfectly clear about this: our new dean is being threatened with removal from her new position solely because she is an Israeli, where universal military service is mandated with few exceptions,” the council wrote. The group added that a person’s national origin is a protected class under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as UVA’s “Preventing and Addressing Discrimination and Harassment” handbook. ‘Ashamed of my university’: UCLA chancellor, professor slam 9/11 event featuring terrorist’s lawyer [CollegeFix] University of California Los Angeles Chancellor Julio Frenk and a professor have condemned the law school’s 9/11 symposium, which featured terror sympathizers and an attorney who represented a 9/11 terrorist. In a Sept. 11 news release, Chancellor Frenk said the school rejects “antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms, and we believe our campus must be a place where the dignity of every member of our community is respected.” “Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments,” he said. He added that “Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism.” Frenk also honored UCLA computer science Professor Judea Pearl, whose son was killed in Pakistan in 2002 by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the same terrorist one of the symposium speakers defended in court. “The brutal murder of Daniel Pearl was an act of unspeakable evil, and I support Judea and his family,” the chancellor wrote. Pearl also condemned the event in a post on X, saying he is “ashamed of [his] university and, especially, the five centers within the UCLA School of Law sponsoring this disturbing symposium.” Conservative students’ 9/11 memorial defaced with pro-Palestinian, pro-Antifa vandalism [CollegeFix] A 9/11 memorial set up by students at a California State University campus was defaced with pro-Palestinian and pro-Antifa vandalism, prompting a police investigation. Vandals destroyed about 30 of the 2,177 memorial flags set up on Stanislaus State’s “free speech lawn” to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, said Young Americans for Freedom chapter President Madeline Iwasyk. Accused terror-praising Columbia student drops out of 9/11 event on campus [CollegeFix] Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who has been under fire for allegedly supporting terrorist organizations, dropped out of an event marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on campus this week. Mahdawi was slated to be interviewed at the event titled “The Forever War’s Long Shadow.” It is hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, which aims to expand discourse on free expression and press rights. The symposium, scheduled for Sept. 9 and 10, will examine how the post-9/11 “War on Terror” continues to affect democratic rights, specifically freedom of speech and the press, according to the event description. Some good news from the one Ivy League school whose Jewish student population has grown since 10/7/3023: President Paxson, Who Made Brown an Ivy Bright Spot, Says She Will Leave[WashingtonFreeBeacon] Settled with Trump administration, had anti-Israel protesters arrested US religion professor charged with posting anonymous antisemitic threats online Guangtian Ha of Haverford University in Pennsylvania allegedly used right-wing language to threaten victim and his family. Hot Air adds quite a few details, including this tidbit: Ha is apparently a Chinese Muslim who got his Ph.D. at, where else, Columbia University.VIDEO: Protesters outside U. Oregon Hillel praise Oct. 7 terrorists, demand ban on Jewish student group Alarms disrupt pro-Israel ‘October 7’ play at Northwestern Swarthmore Students for Justice in Palestine posts video of Israeli soldier effigy being set on fire Harriet Jackson finds belonging in Israel after fighting campus antisemitism [Jpost] Historian Harriet Jackson makes aliyah after years of confronting antisemitism at Columbia U. and researching Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. |
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