House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) walked out onto the Columbia University campus yesterday...and was welcomed by a deafening chorus of booing students.
Johnson was the latest politician to visit the Ivy League campus—which has also included Democrats like Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.)—and had just emerged from meetings with Jewish students at the university to discuss what he and others allege is rising antisemitism on campuses nationwide. As Mother Jones readers surely know by now, Columbia has become the epicenter of the growing and highly politicized fight over the policing of mostly peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters on campuses nationwide after police arrested more than 100 protesters at Columbia last week at the behest of university officials. NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
But listening to Johnson and his fellow congressional Republicans yesterday, you wouldn't get that impression at all. “Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over," Johnson bellowed from the steps of Low Memorial Library. “Anti-Israel encampments are popping up in universities all across this country,” he continued. “The madness has to stop.”
But the Columbia students gathered to protest his speech weren't having it. “Liar!" "Get off our campus!" "Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism!" they chanted. A student organizer at the encampment, which I visited after Johnson's speech, also said he had it all wrong. “If you spend time here in the camp, it will be crystal clear to you—but they did not,” Sherif Ibrahim, a student and organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, told me. “They came and they spoke on the steps, and they left, because it’s a moment to gain political capital. And it’s something that they can make use of because there’s a lot of attention here toward our organizing and Columbia.”
Responding to allegations of antisemitism from Johnson and others, Ibrahim said, "There’s a definitive, declarative difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and we oppose discrimination of all forms and all kinds vehemently." (Columbia spokespeople didn’t respond to my questions about how many antisemitic or anti-Palestinian incidents they’ve tracked on campus since October 7.)
Check out my dispatch from Morningside Heights yesterday for the full run-down, and make sure to stay with Mother Jones for continued coverage of the nationwide campus protests of Israel's war on Gaza.
—Julianne McShane
