The growing threat of anti Semitism on campus...Columbia U, that bastion of liberalism, leads the pack.

Columbia University rated most anti-Semitic campus in America

VICTOR SKINNER 

Victor is a communications specialist for EAG and joined in 2009. Previously, he was a newspaper journalist.

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. – A California-based pro-Israel nonprofit recently launched a “Jew Hatred on Campus” campaign, and ranked U.S. universities based on perceived anti-Semitic acts.

“As one if its first initiatives, Jew Hatred on Campus has compiled a list of the 10 U.S. campuses having the worst anti-Semitic activity in 2014,” Front Page Mag reports.

“Universities included in the top 10 played host to numerous incidents of anti-Jewish acts, such as Israeli Apartheid Week (a weeklong event that demonizes the Jewish state); interrupting university activities by staging mock ‘checkpoints’ on campus; campus speakers that call for the destruction of the Jewish state; and verbal or physical harassment and violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

“These anti-Semitic incidents occur on university property, often with the support of university funds, despite the fact that such behavior is explicitly forbidden under campus codes of conduct.”

The list, published on JewHatredOnCampus.org, is expected to be updated yearly. The list is part of a broader Jew Hatred on Campus Awareness Week, in which the “David Horowitz Freedom Center is planning to work with college students across the nation this spring to organize 50 Awareness Weeks on anti-Jewish incidents and the intimidation of Jews on campus,” according to the website.

The 2014 list, from most to least offensive:

1. Columbia University
2. Cornell University
3. George Mason University
4. Loyola University Chicago
5. Portland State University
6. San Diego State University
7. San Francisco State University
8. Temple University
9. University of California Los Angeles
10. Vassar College

The rankings seem to be based mostly on the activity level of local Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. Jew Hatred on Campus founder David Horowitz said SPJ student groups are associated with terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and seek to destroy Israel.

“These activities against Jewish and pro-Israel students would not be tolerated by university administrators if they were committed against students of any other ethnic group,” he said, according to Algemeiner.com.

“But because Jews are the target, they have been largely ignored. It is an obligation of university administrators to recognize and condemn acts of anti-Semitism by campus hate groups and to withdraw campus privileges and university support from them,” he said.

The list is accompanied by news reports detailing alleged anti-Semitic activity on campuses, including the mock security checkpoints, pro-Palestine students interrupting student government, large anti-Israel rallies and signs, and efforts to secure “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” against Israel in student government.

The list also takes issue with professors and speakers that appeared on college campuses in 2014, like Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS movement, and anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah.

Columbia University, for example, “is home to some of the most well-known anti-Semitic professors in the nation such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, who has been accused of harassing Jewish students on multiple occasions,” according to the campaign website.

“In addition, it is home to a highly active SJP chapter that has recently brought BDS founder Omar Barghouti and disgraced anti-Semitic professor Steven Salaita to campus.”

Some SPJ students at San Diego State University, however, believe the campaign incorrectly links anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

“They label anybody who questions the policies of Israel anti-Semitic,” Nasser Barghouti, San Diego coordinator for the Coalition for Justice in Palestine and a member of the national U.S. Campaign to End Israel Occupation Steering Committee, told the news site.

“That does a great disservice to the cause of eradicating anti-Semitism.”

Some Jewish college organizations also thought the list was unfair.

“I can tell you the kind of activities we’re seeing at San Diego State are not putting it in a top-10 list of anti-Semitic campuses,” according to Michael Rabkin, executive director of the San Diego chapter of Hillel, an international organization to foster Jewish life on campus.