More than 200 faculty members at Columbia University said Tuesday they were “appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents” on the Manhattan campus, a day after scores of their colleagues signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 terror attack.
The new letter came after Jewish students rallied on campus to blast the administration’s “inaction” on what they called an “unsafe” atmosphere in the weeks since the attack, due to at least one attack on an Israeli student, death threats and rampant hate speech and vandalism.
While the faculty members agree “there should be robust debate about complex and difficult issues” concerning the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, they say “there is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians.”