Columbia Delenda Est
Destroy one university to salvage the rest
As an alumnus of Columbia University (MPhil and PhD), I recommend that every peaceful, legal means available be employed to destroy the reputation of my alma mater—an institution that has chosen to make itself Ground Zero for Jew-hatred in America. Paraphrasing Cato the Elder:
“Columbia Delenda Est”—“Columbia Must Be Destroyed.”
Cato’s entreaty—“Carthago Delenda Est”—was intended not only to punish the Carthaginians, but also to warn other states from behaving as Carthage had. Laying waste to Columbia’s prestige would send a chilling message to other institutions choosing to tolerate, appease, and celebrate threats and acts against Jews.
WHY COLUMBIA SPECIFICALLY?
America’s elite universities are awash in antisemitism. When Rep. Elise Stefanik repeatedly asked the presidents of Harvard, Pennsylvania, and MIT whether they would discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, the feckless trio humiliated themselves before an international audience—though they seem unaware of that fact.
Recently, a Jewish student at Yale was stabbed in the eye by a protestor wielding a Palestinian flag. At Berkeley, students invited to the (Jewish) law school dean’s home decided that was an appropriate setting for a pro-Hamas demonstration and refused to desist or leave when asked. Encampments similar to Columbia’s are ongoing at Emerson College, MIT, NYU, Rutgers, the New School, Tufts, UMaryland, UMichigan, UNC-Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, Washington U, and Yale. Thousands of antisemitic incidents have been recorded at hundreds of schools. The University of Southern California has surrendered to the mob by canceling this year’s commencement ceremony.
Use the wrong pronoun or wear a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo, and your university will consider bringing out the firehoses and German shepherds; but assault Jewish students and call for their extermination (along with the eradication of a sovereign nation), and the same university will defend your actions as representing the sacred right to free and open speech. Antisemitism has spread like ebola across American Academia. But there are at least three good reasons to single out Columbia.
FIRST: With antisemitism blooming at so many American universities, it is impractical to try attacking the phenomenon everywhere all at once. It is better to choose one prestigious university, inflict as much pain as possible on that lone institution, and let the stinking carcass of its reputation stand as a warning to other universities—leaving all of them to wonder which university is second on the list. This strategy reminds me of a passage from Hagakure: Way of the Samurai:
“According to what one of the elders said, taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird other than the one that it has first marked.”
Or, more prosaically, as activist Saul Alinsky wrote in his Rules for Radicals:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
SECOND: Columbia is located in New York City—the world’s leading media market. No doubt, that geographic locale has contributed to the school’s outsized prominence in the current wave of on-campus pogroms. Any blowback falling on Columbia as a result of its moral collapse will also will attract blaring coverage by the press and/or by the denizens of social media. The school’s locale will guarantee maximum publicity as the school’s reputation crumbles, brick by brick.
THIRD: The offenses at Columbia have been especially egregious. Even by today’s standards, the number of offenses at Columbia (some violent and threatening, some merely hateful) are breathtaking. The examples reported on a single day (April 20) illustrate the lie that “anti-Zionism” is anything other than rebranded Jew-hatred:
“A protestor holding a sign saying ‘Al-Qasam’s [sic] next target’ who stood in front of a group of Jewish students holding Israeli flags and singing
A Jewish student wearing a yarmulke being shoved and screamed at by protestors, ‘you’ve got blood on your hands!’ when he attempted to recover an Israeli flag stolen by a protestor, who then ran to a cheering crowd of anti-Israel protestors that attempted to burn the flag. (The student additionally claims a rock was thrown at his face and protestors screamed, ‘Kill the Zionist’)
Protestors screaming ‘go back to Poland!’ and ‘yehudim, yehudim [which translates to Jews, Jews]’ at Jewish Columbia students trying to leave campus
Protestors circling around the main gates and entrance to campus, with one stating, ‘I am Hamas,’ which was documented in video
Crowds screaming ‘tear down the gates’ and various hateful chants in English and Arabic as individuals unaffiliated with the university climbed the University’s gates
A Jewish Columbia student being splashed with water by a protestor
Protestors chanting, ‘Al-Qassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out!,’ ‘We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!,’ and ‘Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!’
A protestor delivering a speech on campus that exclaimed, ‘We are here today because on October 7 the Palestinian resistance in Gaza broke through the walls of their open air prison, shattering the illusion of the invincibility of their occupiers. [Cheers from the crowd.] By setting up this encampment in the heart of the Zionist stronghold of Columbia University, we intend to do the same’
A protestor standing immediately outside Columbia’s gates leading a crowd in Arabic chants glorifying terrorism and encouraging students to become terrorist ‘martyrs’ after which he explained in English that the chant translated to ‘mother of the shahid, mother of the martyr, I wish my mother was in your place.’”
Columbia has allowed the mobs and tents to linger, rather than speedily removing them and restoring order and safety to campus. Professors have endorsed and participated in the encampment, as have legions of students. The university chose to shut down in-person classes rather than taking steps to assure the safety of Jewish students. Recognizing this, a rabbi associated with the university urged Jewish students to leave for the sake of their safety.
FROM GUCCI TO DOG S**T
Longtime X/Twitter sage David Burge (“Iowahawk”) wrote this week that:
“At this point, a Columbia degree is like a Gucci shopping bag that somebody used to collect dog shit for 3 weeks.”
Protestors, students, faculty, and administrators have worked tirelessly to wreck the reputation of a once-great university—so how can the rest of us help finish the job? Here are a few ideas:
Examine the variables that go into college rankings and strive—legally and peacefully—to undermine Columbia’s ranking along each and every dimension.
Withdraw charitable funding from the university. Alumnus Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, is leading the way, saying Columbia “is no longer an institution I recognize.”
Drop Congressional subpoenas on one Columbia official after another, subjecting each of them to brutal questioning before the harsh glare of television cameras.
Extinguish as much of Columbia’s federal funding as possible.
Avoid applying for admission to Columbia—especially if you are Jewish or if you are a non-Jewish student who opposes antisemitism.
If you are a student at Columbia, transfer to a more hospitable institution. States and other institutions can expedite such an exodus of Columbia students by opening wide the doors of their own institutions.
For states and morally upright colleges, make it easier for those students to transfer to your institutions. For example, in January, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered his state’s universities to waive usual transfer requirements for Jewish students facing “well-founded fear of religious persecution” elsewhere and urged Florida’s universities to offer in-state tuition and scholarships to financially disadvantaged transfer students.
To those same schools, make it possible for doctoral candidates to transfer out of Columbia into more civilized schools without losing years of credits and certifications. Schools in other states can go the extra mile in minimizing the costs of transferring for these students.
For Columbia faculty members, find employment elsewhere. Decimate Columbia’s coveted research programs. Once again, states and universities of good will can expedite the hiring of faculty members wishing to escape the mephitic atmosphere of Columbia—not unlike the programs that allowed Jewish faculty in Germany to find work elsewhere in the 1930s.
Expel students implicated in violence or shown to have harassed Jews. Where appropriate, revoke the visas allowing them to remain in the U.S.
Arrest those shown to have perpetrated civil strife at Columbia.
Shower the university and individuals at the university with civil lawsuits. Alumni withdrawing their charitable donations to the university could redirect their funds to assist injured parties bear the costs of such litigation.
For employers, stop interviewing Columbia graduates. Doing so would degrade the value of a Columbia degree, thereby augmenting and accelerating all of the above suggestions.
Finally, it is time to recognize Columbia University for what it is—a settler-colonialist entity that has appropriated the land of Morningside Heights, thereby depriving the rightful and historical residents of their homes and their neighborhood.
“From the Hudson to the sea …”
YIDDISHKEIT AT COLUMBIA, 1918
One of the most beautiful of all Jewish liturgical songs is Israel Goldfarb’s “Shalom Aleichem,” composed on the very spot where pro-Hamas activists currently congregate to implicitly call for the extermination of Jews. Above is my own piano arrangement and performance of the song. As described in Wikipedia:
“The slow, well-known melody for the song was composed by the American composer and conductor Rabbi Israel Goldfarb on May 10, 1918, while sitting near the Alma Mater statue in front of Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, and first published later that year as "Sholom Aleichem—שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם" in Friday Evening Melodies by Israel and his brother Samuel. The famous Goldfarb song is often presumed to be a traditional Hasidic melody. I. Goldfarb wrote in 1963, ‘The popularity of the melody traveled not only throughout this country but throughout the world, so that many people came to believe that the song was handed down from Mt. Sinai by Moses.’”
Today, Goldfarb would risk physical assault sitting near that statue—or would be barred from campus by administrators eager to appease the mob.
Good essay Mr. Graboyes. Two Franciscan colleges came out right after Oct 7 and said they would expedite transfer of Jewish students who felt unsafe at their university- Franciscan of Steubenville, Ohio being one of them.
Robert, the destruction of one university as an example will not change the rest. The best case is we do what you suggest happen to Columbia to the worst 40% of universities and then look at the rest and say 'do you get it yet?'.
I personally believe the university system in this country should be completely shorn of all government funding from all levels of government (including research grants and student loans) and their non profit status eliminated. The marketplace (or The Gods of the Copybook Headings) would determine which survived.