The Free Press
Even before she first stepped foot on Columbia’s quads this past fall, Shoshana Aufzien was aware of antisemitism on campus. But she didn’t truly witness it until November 10, two months after she started studying at Barnard, Columbia’s sister school.
Aufzien was scrolling through Instagram when she spotted a post from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and two other pro-Palestinian groups, promoting an event at a Columbia literary society, Alpha Delta Phi (ADP). The two-day event, on November 9 and 10, was entitled “Hind’s House,” in tribute to a 5-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rijab, who died during Israel’s war against Hamas. A strict schedule was listed for the second day:
2:00 COMMUNITY COOKING BEGINS
2:30 PALESTINE 101 w/ @cujafra
4:00 PROTEST SKILLS TRAINING w/ @cuapartheiddivest
5:00 KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TRAINING w/ C*LUMBIA LEGAL
5:30 DEFENSE TRAINING
6:00 ON TECHNOGENOCIDE
6:30 DIRECT ACTION TRAINING
As a concerned Jewish student, Aufzien decided to go to the event to see what her peers were up to. What she saw, she said, shocked her. “The only way I can describe it,” she told me, “is a museum of terror.”
Aufzien said she usually wears a black skirt, a Star of David, or a hostage tag at campus protests to make clear she’s Jewish. But because Alpha Delta Phi is technically off campus and no campus police were present, she concealed her identity by wearing a Covid mask. As she walked into the foyer of the two-story ADP building, she noticed that the entire place had been converted into an exhibition, with more than 100 students and visitors staring at the displays.
On the first floor, she spotted posters pertaining to five members of Columbia’s Board of Trustees tacked to the wall, listing their various “crimes against the Palestinian people.” Their crimes included “sitting on the board of the NYPD Foundation” and “speaking at AIPAC,” a prominent pro-Israel political action committee.
Then Aufzien moved to the focal point of the room: a pool table covered with tools, such as wrenches, hammers, ropes, and wire cutters—all of which were used by anti-Israel protesters to break in to and occupy Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April. Pinned next to the hardware was a note that ordered visitors: “DO NOT GET YOUR FINGERPRINTS ON THESE!!”
The Hamilton Hall break-in was the culmination of one of the largest Columbia protests in history, which began on April 17 and mushroomed into a weeks-long encampment on the school’s main lawn. During the occupation of Hamilton Hall, protesters bashed in windows and doors and held multiple custodians hostage, leading to the arrests of 109 people in and around the building. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has since dropped the charges against the majority of students who took part; now just 15 of the original 46 charged still face criminal charges, including second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Next to the pliers and hammers, Aufzien observed another artifact from the occupation: red headbands stamped with the logo for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—a group that the State Department designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.
“I usually associate Columbia frats with binge-drinking and hazing—not the PFLP,” Aufzien told me.
Across the room, another table was lined with posters; one depicted a hang glider used by members of Hamas to drop into Israel and murder innocent civilians on October 7, 2023. Underneath, the message read: So on that day, the people of Gaza drifted into the sky like a host of colorful dragonflies.
One of the walls was covered with art using Jewish imagery, including menorahs and a blood-spattered Jewish star, underscored with the words Ceasefire Now. Also on display were photographs depicting the occupation of Hamilton Hall, including masked invaders barricading doors and the viral image of Columbia custodian Mario Torres fending off protester James Carlson, a then–40-year-old with a trust fund.
Maps, sleeping arrangements, security plans, response scenarios, and heavy equipment locations all formed part of the archive. Even the eating habits of the occupiers, scribbled onto a chalkboard, were recorded for posterity: granola, ramen, rice, beans, soup, and the dietary demand: vegan/will eat vege[tarian] if need be.
As Aufzien climbed the stairs to the second floor, she passed a poster detailing tunnel warfare in the Gaza Strip as well as a pamphlet targeting Laura Rosenbury, the president of Barnard, for “weaponizing Jewish pain to support genocide.”
Aufzien’s friend, Alon Levin, a PhD student studying engineering, also attended the exhibit and observed the session on resistance training, led by the CUAD legal team.
Levin told me that about 40 attendees were given instructions on how to covertly protest. They were encouraged to wear masks when demonstrating, taught how to avoid campus surveillance cameras, and given optimal times to arrive on campus so their ID swipes were less likely to correspond with protest participation, he said. “It felt like I was in a training camp,” Levin told me. “It felt like they were preparing for something, but I don’t know what. They were very professional in how they taught resistance tactics. They had PowerPoints and textbooks on building resistance networks.”
In exclusive videos obtained by The Free Press, footage shows the first day of the Hind’s House exhibition. Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder and leader of pro-Palestinian activist group Within Our Lifetime, is seen giving a speech to about 120 people, most of them wearing keffiyehs. Kiswani thanks the group for its takeover of Hamilton Hall and for “inspiring people all over the country and all over the world to take action.” She credits them for creating a space like Hind’s House so people can meet, organize, and “take over the city block by block.”
“It’s even more of a responsibility for those of us who live in the belly of the beast, particularly in New York City, one of the finance capitals of the world, one of the cities with the highest rates of Zionist institutions,” she adds.
The students nod along as she ends with a call to action:
“As long as Israel exists, it’s a genocide against the Palestinian people. Get to know your neighbors, get to know your community. . . and educate them. Provide them with resources, provide them with support if they’re attacked, but also demand that they take a side. A Zionist-free NYC is the only way that we can ensure that our universities don’t have the power to kick us out and silence us and to continue to fund Israeli genocide on our watch.”
Shortly after Kiswani spoke, three students took the stage to recite a poem with text “borrowed from the will of Yahya Sinwar”—the Hamas leader who masterminded October 7 and was killed on October 16, 2024, during a strike in Rafah. In their performance, students said they aspired to “inhabit the voice of Yahya.” After they concluded, the audience broke into applause.
Levin, who has seen the video, told me, “Hind’s House was the most unsafe I’ve felt on campus since the encampments.”
On November 14, four days after the Hind’s House event, Aufzien and Levin filed a Title VI complaint with Columbia. In this formal allegation of discrimination, which The Free Press is reporting for the first time, they detailed to the university what they saw at the exhibition, noting the “terrorist propaganda and antisemitic tropes” displayed “in such a blatant manner” that it made them “feel targeted and unsafe.”
The students said the complaint resulted in no action from the school beyond a Zoom call from the university’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). Levin told me the individuals they spoke to from OIE “seemed very engaged and concerned,” and they later wrote to check in on Aufzien’s mental health. Beyond that, “we do not know what happened next with the information we provided,” Levin said. Aufzien added, “I don’t need to be therapized by Columbia’s antidiscrimination admin.”
It’s now been over a year since three Ivy League presidents testified before Congress amid the outburst of antisemitism on their campuses—and still, not much has changed. Even after Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned this past August—largely due to her inability to control violent campus protests—evidence of antisemitism abounds here, even beyond the Hind’s House event.
Consider the following:
Joseph Massad, a Columbia professor who, on October 8, 2023, described the Hamas invasion of Israel as “astounding,” will teach a course on Zionism in the spring semester. In a TV interview last month, Massad decried the concept of an “ancient Israel” and the idea that Jews are the “descendants of the ancient Hebrews” as latter-day “inventions,” even going so far as to describe the idea of any kind of genetic link between Jews today and ancient Israelis as a “Hitlerian project.”
Columbia professor Lawrence Rosenblatt, who is Jewish, quit his job after Massad’s Zionism course was announced. In his resignation letter, he wrote that having Massad teach a course on Zionism is “akin to having a White nationalist teach about the US Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black equality, having a climate denier teach about the impact of global warming, or a misogynist teach about feminism.”
Meanwhile, a second report from Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism, issued in August, documented incidents of Jew hatred coming not just from students, but professors and administrators. For example, in the first week of the Masters of Public Health program, a professor discussed Jewish donors by name, calling them “wealthy white capitalists” who “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money.” A student writing a thesis on Israeli artists reported that each time she presented in her seminar, her thesis leader said, “I hate Israel.” And, an Israeli student reported that when she sought help from campus health services, she “overheard a discussion between two healthcare professionals in another room in which one said they would not treat her because she was Israeli.” She said she waited ten minutes until someone addressed her needs. (At the time, interim Columbia president Katrina Armstrong denounced the report’s “painful and distressing incidents of antisemitism” as “completely unacceptable.” She added: “They are antithetical to our values and go against the principles of open inquiry, tolerance, and inclusivity that define us.”)
When The Free Press asked Columbia for a comment on the Hind’s House exhibition, a college spokesperson responded via email that “this event took place off campus in a house independently owned and operated by a group known to Columbia as the Association of Graduates of the Columbia Chapter of ADP. Upon learning of the event, the University notified law enforcement, the national Alpha Delta Phi Society leadership and a representative of the owner of the ADP house. We immediately launched an investigation, which is ongoing.
“We will uphold our policies with respect to any actions by Columbia affiliates who violate them,” the spokesperson added. “As we have said repeatedly, it is absolutely unacceptable for any member of the Columbia community to call for, promote, or celebrate the use of terror or violence.”
But even though Columbia does not technically own the ADP building, it still pays for some of its running costs, such as Wi-Fi, said Levin, who has been working closely with a legal adviser. “Essentially, the house exists in an ambiguous gray zone, allowing Columbia to not take accountability for the events that take place there, despite its clear affiliation with the school,” he said.
Levin added that he sees no future for Jewish students or Jewish professors on the campus.
“Columbia is treating Jew hatred as though it’s just a PR situation instead of tackling the root of the problem—a core group of racist affiliates and a system that continues to enable their activities. Open antisemitism has been normalized and become banal, and we, the Jewish community, can’t just pretend that the situation is ‘fine’ and go on as before. I can’t keep quiet, especially given my family’s history of being persecuted for being Jewish in the Soviet Union. It’s up to us to do what we can.
“I know the bureaucratic machine does not work,” he added. “There are no visible outcomes that came from my complaint.”
Aufzien said she feels the same about Hind’s House. “The university hasn’t condemned it,” she told me, “and all the admins just acquiesced.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misheard Nardine Kaswani as saying: “Provide them with resources, provide them with support of their attack.” In fact, she said, “Provide them with resources, provide them with support if they’re attacked.” The story has been updated.
