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Columbia University will pay $200 million to the federal government and $20 million to Jewish employees because the school made Jewish students and staff uncomfortable.
How did they do that?
By allowing protestors to criticize Israel—which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defines as antisemitism in its controversial working definition.
The Trump administration pulled more than $400 million in federal funding from Columbia, accusing the university of tolerating antisemitism due to pro-Palestine protests. Columbia does not admit wrongdoing, but this settlement clears the way for that funding to resume.
So now, protesting a foreign government is a civil rights violation.
And discomfort is the new standard for discrimination.
But here’s the twist: many Jewish students participated in these protests—standing in solidarity with Palestinians and opposing the Israeli government. That directly challenges the narrative that Jewish students uniformly felt “unsafe.” Some were leading the chants.
Meanwhile, the federal government said nothing about the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students who were detained, harassed, suspended, and in some cases assaulted—right on the same campus.
Only some discomforts seem to matter.