Columbia University report calls for action on anti-Semitism

A US university at the center of a firestorm of claims of anti-Semitism on campus published a new report Friday calling for better training and reporting to prevent the victimization of Jewish students.

Protests against the Israel-Hamas war erupted at Columbia University earlier this year, with some Jewish students and campaign groups alleging that Jewish students were intimidated and that authorities failed to act to protect them.

Friday's report, the second issued by the university's anti-Semitism task force, called for anti-bias and anti-Semitism training for students, faculty and staff.

It also recommended improved mechanisms for the reporting of discrimination, including anti-Semitism, on campus.

"The surge in violent anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric that shook our campus this past academic year has revealed that the consensus around our norms and values no longer exists," the report said.

"We have documented Jewish and Israeli students' experiences at Columbia during this past academic year and found the University to be failing at its basic mission."

The report documented examples of students being pushed to the ground for expressing support for Zionist causes, as well as having Nazi swastikas daubed on their dormitories.

Others reported being denied access to certain public spaces because they were Jewish or Israeli.

The protests that roiled Columbia and other schools culminated in US Congress grilling higher education leaders about accusations of anti-Semitism and whether enough was being done to keep Jewish students safe.

The university's former president, British-American economist Minouche Shafik, became the fourth president of an Ivy League university to step down in the wake of the bitter divisions and anti-war protests that swept campuses nationwide.

"Improving the climate at Columbia requires ambitious, concerted, and long-term efforts across the University," interim Columbia president Katrina Armstrong said in a statement.

"The recommendations the Task Force proposes to enhance the sense of safety, wellbeing, and belonging for Jewish students will make our entire community stronger."

Protesters -- many who were themselves Jewish -- said anti-Israel views were being conflated with anti-Semitism and that individual allegations of hate incidents were being used to distract from calls for a ceasefire.

Columbia called in New York police to forcibly evict students occupying a building at the end of April, and cancelled its main commencement ceremony in May.

Hamas's 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The war has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered a humanitarian crisis.