Columbia Spectator: House Committee on Education and the Workforce chairman Rep. Tim Walberg meets with Columbia students on Capitol Hill

Columbia Students Visit
February 28, 2025
In The News
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, met Tuesday with Columbia students on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to discuss the experience of Jewish students on campus since former University President Minouche Shafik testified before the committee on April 17, 2024.
 
The students—Eden Yadegar, GS/JTS ’25, Elisha Baker, CC ’26, David Lederer, CC ’26, Eliana Goldin, GS/JTS ’25, and Tal Zussman, SEAS ’23 and a second-year Ph.D. student in the computer science department at SEAS—also met with staff from the office of Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.).
Zussman said in an interview with Spectator that the group spoke with Walberg about the “pervasive nature of the antisemitism on campus over the last year.”
 
“I’ve been at Columbia, at this point, six years,” Zussman said. “It’s nearly unrecognizable compared to what it was when I first started here in terms of what the Jewish community is experiencing.”
 
In a statement to Spectator, a University official said that interim University President Katrina Armstrong has taken “decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism” since assuming her role in August.
 
“Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety office,” the official wrote.
 
According to Zussman, Walberg was interested in hearing about events on campus since the “Columbia in Crisis” congressional hearing on April 17, 2024.
 
“He really wanted to kind of get a sense of how the Jewish community on campus sees the current situation,” Zussman said.
 
At the April 2024 hearing, Walberg asked Shafik if Joseph Massad, professor in the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department, was “out of the classroom” after Massad published an article in the Electronic Intifada on Oct. 8, 2023, describing Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel as “astonishing,” “astounding,” and “awesome.”
 
Massad is currently teaching the Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies course.
 
Zussman said that throughout the past year, “It really became clear that this isn’t just an issue of protests.”
 
“I think there are really institutional and systemic issues at the university that, for a long time, have apparently been enabling antisemitism and allowing discrimination against Israeli students as well to kind of foster and grow, which as an Israeli student myself, I think is really awful,” Zussman said.
 
Baker said that it is “really important” that Walberg hear directly from students.
 
“We really experienced the repercussions on campus when members of our faculty fail to take responsibility and hold perpetrators of discriminatory harassment and rules violations accountable for those violations,” Baker said.
 
The group also met with staff from Meng’s office to emphasize that combating antisemitism on college campuses “needs to be a bipartisan issue,” according to Zussman.
 
On Jan. 4, 2024, Shafik wrote in a text to board of trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman, CC ’86, SIPA ’94, and David Greenwald, Law ’83, that then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told her that “universities political problems are really only among Republicans,” according to the 325-page “Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed” report.
 
Zussman said that Meng’s staff “made it pretty clear that that was not the case.”
 
Yadegar said that antisemitism at Columbia should not be treated as a political issue.
 
“It’s not a political issue, but I’m grateful that there are political means of addressing it,” Yadegar said. “I’m grateful that our leaders in Washington, like Chairman Walberg, are not only willing, but eager to be leaders in this fight, standing up for Jewish Americans and really for American values and against discrimination and bigotry.”
 
According to Yadegar, she and other students are in “constant communication” with congressional leaders. Yadegar called the Committee on Education and the Workforce an “incredible partner in this fight,” and said that the “little change” at Columbia over the last 16 months has been a result of “continued pressure from our leaders in Washington.”
 
“The Committee will always stand with students like Eden, Elisha, Tal, David, Eliana, and Jonathan,” the House Committee on Education and the Workforce wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.
Issues:Education