As federal Department of Education and congressional investigators gear up to probe the climate of antisemitism at Columbia University and other colleges across the country, they might want to start by looking into the professors and administrators who fund antisemites.
They’re easy to find. Just look up donors to antisemitic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) who list their employer as Columbia in a federal database. I found at least seven professors and a vice dean at the school who donated to one or both of the lawmakers.
These faculty members are hardly alone in New York. Professors and administrators at New York University and the City University of New York gave to Tlaib and Omar in each of the last three election cycles. In total, staff at the three schools gave nearly $70,000 to the “Squad” representatives, including $28,000 so far this election cycle — the most ever.
And the donations are not confined to New York’s cosmopolitan enclaves. As student protests spread on college campuses throughout the country, most colleges have administrators and professors who have given succor to two of America’s most prominent antisemites.
At the University of California, staff members have given the two congresswomen nearly $120,000. Throughout the rest of the country, people with “university” in their Federal Election Commission employer ID have made more than 450 donations to the Democrats, including professors at elite institutions such as Harvard, Georgetown, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Emory. Support is highest in their home states, with hefty donations from faculty at the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan.
It isn’t a stretch to call the two Democrats antisemites, as the duo has a decadelong record of statements to back up the accusation. Tlaib was censured by the House of Representatives after she used the genocidal slogan “From the river to the sea” in a video, presaging the chants of student protesters.
Omar, too, faced condemnation from her own colleagues after she responded to a tweet about Israel, saying, “It’s all about the Benjamins.” She later apologized that she had not been educated about such antisemitic ideas — as if anyone doesn’t know the trope that Jewish money carries undue influence among those with power.
Donations aren’t the only thing that connects the Democratic representatives to Columbia. Omar’s daughter was arrested and then suspended for her role in antisemitic demonstrations at the school — a phenomenon that has spread nationwide, throwing universities as far away as Berkeley into chaos.
The protests at Columbia have even caught the White House’s attention and a rebuke from President Joe Biden, who said in a statement, “In recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
The faculty and staff at Columbia who donate to antisemites aren’t obscure visiting professors or junior assistants. They have tenure. They’re senior staff and deans.
Medical school vice dean Rudina Odeh-Ramadan gave $1,000 to Tlaib in 2021. Patrick Youngblood, a research director at the Labor Lab, a kind of labor think tank, gave Tlaib $1,000 and Omar $1,750 in 2020, along with several other donations dating back to 2019. Dr. Blandine LaFerrere, an associate professor of medicine, gave Omar $2,800 in 2020. Teacher’s College professor Amra Sabic-el-Rayess gave Tlaib $1,000 and Omar $2,000 last year. She should know better, as she is the author of a book about the Muslim genocide in Bosnia.
Nadia Abu El Haj, the Ann Whitney Olin professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, gave Tlaib $1,400 in 2019. Historian Rashid Khalidi, author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, gave Tlaib $500 last year.
I don’t mean to pick on Democrats. Of course, Republicans in Congress have their share of cranks, but they don’t get donations from university professors in New York, or anywhere else. Of the three schools in New York I mentioned, none gives less than 93% of its donations to Democrats. That’s typical for schools across the country.
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It would be reasonable to ask these professors and administrators what other antisemites and antisemitic causes they donate to. What do they teach in their classes when Israel or Jews come up? Are they dispassionate scholars or are they the activist professors who have joined students in protest? And how do these professors treat Jewish students when their donations fund such hate?
Indeed, if colleges and universities across the country want to cut down on campus antisemitism, a first step might be to ask professors to stop funding it.
David Mastio is a former USA Today editor and columnist and is a regional editor for The Center Square.
