by Rabbi Dov Fischer in The American Spectator

I am a Columbia University alumnus, so this one hits home. When I was there in the mid-1970s, Jews not only were safe, but I was elected by the entire undergraduate class to be their representative in the University Senate. Yes, a crazy Orthodox kid with a yarmulka, who was known throughout the university as an outspoken activist for Soviet Jews and Israel, was elected by the student body of the college to be their representative in the University Senate from 1974 to 1976. (I was termed out by graduation.) I mingled for two years with department deans, college professors, student representatives from other schools in the university, and with William J. McGill, the president of Columbia in my day. In negotiations with me, he agreed to cancel Columbia University’s entire academic exchange program with the Soviet Union until they allowed a particular Jewish refusenik professor to go free from the U.S.S.R., teach a year at Columbia, and then make his life in Israel.

There was no fear in being a Jew at Columbia then. The fear was in being an anti-Semite. One time, the dean of the college, dear naïve Peter Pouncey, a scholar of Greek letters, came up with the fabulous idea of introducing two on-campus “celebrities” to each other. He thought that would be just grand. So he called me in for this academic-intellectual “blind date” that he would chaperone in his office. I was curious. He was my dean. He always deemed me a wonderful curiosity — a right-wing Jew who somehow had gotten a college of left-wingers to elect him their guy.

And the other person whom Dean Pouncey invited to this intellectual “blind date,” equally clueless as to who would be there waiting for him, was Prof. Edward Said, the most virulently, viciously, venomously anti-Jewish — oops! anti-Zionist — person of the day. Even back then, the Columbia faculty had some doozeys. This character went to Lebanon in July 2000, traveled south with his son to the border with Israel, and together the two of them threw stones across the border. A real class act, this professor.

So there we were in this clueless college dean’s office, a classic case of He Said/She Said/Jew Said/Edward Said. We looked at each other, smiled, and for a moment in time the chances for Arab-Jewish mutual understanding never were closer, as we both saw in each other’s eyes an exact meeting of the minds, to wit: “This college dean is a moron (or a غَبي / أبله).”

That is the Columbia I not only knew but experienced. I made dear friends there who remain buddies 50 years later. Literally. I would bond with many others whom I would meet over future years simply by virtue of our having gone to Columbia. I sent some kids there. In fact, until this past year, my only hard feeling about Columbia in half a century is that I met my first wife there.

And then the garbage happened this past year. Columbia, slowly but surely over the decades, started admitting more and more non-American Arab Muslim foreign students and others from countries hostile to America and contemptuous of America’s values. Columbia’s 14,088 non-American foreigners now make up — get this! — 38 percent of their student body. If you want to know where the “encampment” garbage began, there is no need for a sociological study. Just read this paragraph. That’s where the trouble began, and the foreign professors from Middle Eastern countries tutored them in destroying the peace in the America that welcomed them. The Jewish Virtual Library has reported, “According to the Department of Education (DoE), between 1986 and Oct. 17, 2022, colleges and universities received nearly $44 billion from foreign sources, and nearly one-fourth — $10,826,665,022 — came from Arab individuals, institutions, and governments.”

In the face of this mess, it was the job of Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik — the president of Columba also known as Minouche Shafik — to protect all students, whether Christian, Jewish, or born into the faith she was born into, Islam. When the very first tent was set up on campus, it was her job to call 9-1-1 or the local Morningside Heights police precinct to come in, tear it down, and arrest the culprit(s) for trespass. If Shafik had acted promptly, it would not have come to dozens, then scores of such eye-sore tents jamming all of Columbia’s main campus. The dirtbags would not have been able to grow in strength and confidence to test more limits: occupying College Walk, then taking over Hamilton Hall, smashing windows, barricading buildings, threatening Jews, and fist-fighting with cops. Frankly, it is unfair to the police to call them in when there are 100 tents to tear down and hundreds of radical maniacs to remove when it all could have been handled in 10 minutes the day of the first tent.

After the situation got completely out of hand, with even professors telling the public that, as Jews, they did not feel safe on campus, Baroness Shafik shifted to making excuses for her inaction and incompetence by sending public letters to alumni and donors. Her letters reflected that, as an Ivy League dean goes, she is awfully stupid because the malarkey she was sending — refusing to apologize and trying to explain everything away — was being sent to … alumni of Columbia University, educated by great professors 30 to 50 years ago to read incisively between lines. I am one of many such thousands. We who graduated from pre-DEI Columbia University — we, the ones in our 50s and beyond, with the real money to donate — learned at Columbia in better days how to read and see through baloney. She thought she was writing to Hollywood celebrities who cannot read between lines, only the lines they are handed to read. But she was writing to Columbia-trained attorneys and medical professionals and business titans, all from a pre-DEI era when we got in because we were qualified, and we never needed DEI career help afterward to make the most of our education.

Donations hemorrhaged. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who annually gives Columbia millions, pulled his gift and instead donated it to Yeshiva University. Billionaire hedge fund founder and Columbia University graduate Leon Cooperman announced he would no longer donate to Columbia. In April, House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded that Shafik resign if she couldn’t stand up to the agitators, calling her leadership “very weak” and “inept.” She could not do squat.

So it is extra great news that Baroness Shafik now has resigned under enormous pressure from all fronts. And, really, it is such a shame. My alma mater finally had hired its first Arab Muslim-reared dean, a child of Egypt. Such a thrill. Diverse religion, Diverse ethnicity. Diverse nationality. And a woman, too.

Baroness Shafik joins three other Ivy League university presidents knocked off this season because of Jew-hatred. The house cleaning began with those great congressional hearings chaired by Rep. Elise Stefanik. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, the most arrogant one who projected that self-righteous smirk throughout the questioning, resigned Dec. 9, 2023. Then Harvard University President Claudine Gay, plagiarist, who talked down at the hearing to the Representatives because they obviously were not as educated about “context” as she, stepped down on Jan. 2, 2024. Most recently, Cornell University President Martha Pollack joined that “Squad” on June 30. Baroness Shafik makes a quartet. And now, y’alla: