Columbia University’s School of Social Work (CSSW) on Monday shut down a scheduled anti-Israel campus event that justified Hamas’s October 7 atrocities as a “Palestinian counteroffensive.”
Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine organized a “teach-in and discussion” on Wednesday regarding “the significance of the October 7 Palestinian counteroffensive.” During its brutal onslaught, Hamas murdered over 1,200 Israelis and took 240 others captive, perpetrating war crimes such as torture, rape, and beheadings.
“We will discuss the significance of the Palestinian counteroffensive on October 7th and the centrality of revolutionary violence to anti-imperialism,” the group advertised on X. “In advocating for Palestinian liberation, Palestinians have engaged in nonviolent resistance tactics for years. These peaceful actions have been met with tear gas and armed opposition by the Israeli government.”
Melissa Begg, the dean of CSSW, told National Review Monday afternoon that the event would be discontinued as its promotional materials were not authorized by the school.
“We learned late last night of a flier and accompanying text being circulated about a December 6th event at the Columbia School of Social Work (CSSW),” her statement read. “This is not a CSSW-sponsored event. The students who organized the event did not seek approval for the fliers and text as required by CSSW processes. CSSW supports free speech but does not condone language that promotes violence in any manner, which is antithetical to our values. This event will not go forward at CSSW.”
The original CSSW post prompted outrage on social media and drew condemnation from professors and politicians. Antisemitism has exploded in academia since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7.
“It’s time for all of us to raise our voices!” Columbia University professor Shai Davidai wrote on X. “The School of Social Work at Columbia University cannot allow a ‘teach-in’ that sees rape as a counteroffensive and calls murder and kidnap of children ‘revolutionary violence!’”
Davidai criticized Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, in October for not denouncing student protests on campus sympathizing with Hamas terror.
Democratic New York representative Ritchie Torres slammed the graduate school for its moral tone-deafness: “If you are defending murder, rape, and torture of innocent civilians, you’re a sociopath pretending to be a social worker.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who attended Columbia, said the event signaled the downfall of the once prestigious Ivy League. Major Jewish donors have withdrawn support from multiple high-ranking U.S. colleges for their failure to get campus antisemitism under control.
“If your faculty thinks rape, slaughter, kidnapping and mutilating babies, and torturing civilians is a type of ‘counteroffensive,’ in a military conflict, you have lost your values as a once great institution (of which I am an alumnus),” he wrote on X. “Just do the right thing and refund your students’ tuition which you appear to have obtained by fraudulent means.”