Jewish students at Columbia, Barnard SLAM professors for canceling classes over post-election stress

The emails were filled with language that implied students had just experienced a tragedy.

"I'm sure that if Harris won, the university would not have canceled classes," Jewish student Eliana Goldin told the New York Post. "Columbia has a serious problem with neutrality. For an institution that claims to care so much about equality and equity, their empathy clearly doesn't apply to the Jews."

This past spring, both Columbia and Barnard students made national news for the anti-Israel Gaza encampment that took over Columbia's quad, which fueled anti-Semitic hatred of Jewish students and staff members, leaving them fearful for their safety. Left-wing faculty members took part in the notorious protests and urged the Gaza camps to continue despite the increased safety threat to their Jewish peers and students.

Barnard professor Amelia Simone Herbert, who teaches a class on "Race, Space, and Urban Schools," told her students in an email: "I hope you are all taking care. I recognize that processing the results of a national election can be heavy and having space to breathe and go a bit slower is vital." She added that classes would be canceled but offered to "remain in the room for anyone who wants to use it as a workspace or a space to reflect with others," per the paper.

Another professor encouraged her students to take a day of self-care and "check in on your friends."

"I have decided to cancel our class today," said Columbia adjunct professor Michelle Greene, who served in the Obama administration's White House Council on Women and Girls. "The current events would make it too difficult to concentrate on factorial ANOVA, and although I had planned an alternative lecture on modern polling methods and their blind spots, it feels a bit tone-deaf to deliver it today."

Another Jewish student at Columbia, who preferred to remain anonymous, criticized the prestigious institution for the class cancelations, which he attributed to its well-established "double standard" regarding Jewish students' safety, and stated that he strongly disagrees with professors canceling classes due to post-election stress.

"It's a part of life. Get used to it," he told NYP. "This is where the double standard comes in. You are protecting people because of stress, but when you have several Jewish students say, 'Hey, not only are we stressed but we fear for our lives,' not once did they cancel classes."

"Not until the fear came through and students took over the building," he explained, referencing the April 30 far-left occupation of Hamilton Hall.

A Jewish engineering student also chimed in and said, "It's very telling that some in the Columbia community feel more threatened by the results of a democratic election than by openly violent terror sympathizers threatening to burn down Western civilization. I, like many of my Jewish students and Israeli peers, have been intimidated by both students and faculty."