Columbia University has placed three administrators on leave in response to reports that officials sent inappropriate text messages mocking antisemitism on its campus.
“Columbia College is attending to this situation with the utmost seriousness,” a university spokesperson said. “We are committed to confronting antisemitism, discrimination, and hate and taking concrete action to ensure that ours is a community of respect and healthy dialogue where everyone feels valued and safe.”
The university’s announcement comes after the Washington Free Beacon reported that during a series of text exchanges, four top Columbia administrators downplayed antisemitism at the university. The texts were sent during a panel discussion on the Jewish experience at Columbia and mocked panelists for stating concerns about antisemitism at Columbia. Three out of the four speakers featured during the panel were Jewish.
Four Columbia administrators were involved in the incident: Dean Josef Sorett ; Susan Chang-Kim , vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm , dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick , associate dean for student and family support.
During one text exchange, Kromm used a pair of vomit emojis to react to an op-ed by Columbia's campus rabbi , Yonah Hain. The rabbi warned about the "normalization of Hamas" he saw at Columbia, writing, "What's not up for debate is that massacring Jews is unequivocally wrong."
Kromm derided the rabbi’s report, saying, "and we thought Yonah sounded the alarm …" in a text to Chang-Kim and Patashnick.
In another text exchange, the school administrators mocked panelists as they talked about the exclusion and fear they felt at the university.
"He knows exactly what he's doing and how to take full advantage of this moment," Patashnick texted Chang-Kim and Kromm, responding to a panelist’s comments about his experience with antisemitism at Columbia. "Huge fundraising potential."
"Double Urgh," Chang-Kim responded.
Additional leaked text messages showed Sorett mocking Brian Cohen , Jewish panelist and executive director of Columbia's Kraft Center for Jewish Life.
"LMAO," Sorett wrote in response to a message from his colleague, Chang-Kim, who had ridiculed Cohen as "our hero."
Sorett was not among the Columbia administrators placed on leave.
“I deeply regret my role in these text exchanges and the impact they have had on our community,” the dean said Friday to the Columbia College Board of Visitors.
Columbia came under fire in April after anti-Israel activists set up an encampment on campus. The school was forced to cancel its commencement last month after university President Minouche Shafik cited security concerns with the Gaza protests. Critics say the university has failed to provide an environment of safety and respect to Jewish students, with Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) slamming Sorett’s recent apology as “weak.”
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“I was appalled, but sadly not surprised, to learn Columbia administrators exchanged disparaging text messages during a panel that discussed antisemitism at the University,” Foxx said in a press release last week. “Dean Josef Sorrett’s weak private ‘apology’ to the College’s Board of Visitors shows that the school doesn’t get it. Columbia’s Jewish community deserves better than this."
During a panel on campus antisemitism Foxx held earlier this year, a Jewish student told the representative, “Jew-hatred is so deeply embedded into campus culture that it has become casual and palatable among students and faculty and neglected by administrators.”
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