Columbia University ordered all classes to be held virtually on Monday after a campus rabbi urged Jewish students to go home and stay there for their own safety from the "extreme antisemitism" of pro-Palestinian activists.
Rabbi Elie Buechler of Columbia Barnard/Hillel, a Jewish student organization, told its members, "I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved."
In a WhatsApp message on Sunday morning, Buechler said it was "clear that Columbia University's Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students' safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy," according to the New York Post.
"It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus," Buechler wrote. "No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school."
The Ivy League school's president, Minouche Shafik, said the suspension of in-person learning at its New York City campus was intended to "deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps."
"There is a terrible conflict raging in the Middle East with devastating human consequences," Safik wrote in a statement. "But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view."
The move coincided with Monday's start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Also Sunday, the White House said that "calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous."
"This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous - and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country," President Joe Biden said in his own statement.
The outrage followed a series of campus protests and the surfacing of a video clip early Friday in which pro-Palestinian activists allegedly confronted two Jewish students just outside Columbia's gates and invoked the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel.
"The seventh of October is going to be every day for you!" they screamed, according to a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The organizers of the campus protests, Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine disavowed the actions of what it described as "non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students" and called them "inflammatory individuals who do not represent us," according to CNN.
