Columbia University placed three administrators on leave this week while the school investigated their conduct at an alumni panel discussion on antisemitism last month, according to a university spokesman. The administrators were placed on leave after leaked images emerged last week showing the trio sharing disparaging text messages during the event.
The panel, which focused on Jewish life on campus amid tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza, occurred during a Columbia College reunion on May 31.
The three administrators were Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support, according to The Washington Free Beacon, which first acquired the images of the exchanged text messages.
Ms. Chang-Kim also exchanged texts during the event with Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, according to The Free Beacon. In one exchange, Mr. Sorett texted “LMAO,” for “laughing my ass off,” in response to a sarcastic message Ms. Chang-Kim had written about Brain Cohen, the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, according to The Free Beacon.
Mr. Sorett is cooperating with the investigation, according to a university official. He will be recused from matters relating to the investigation while continuing to serve as dean.
Attempts to reach Mr. Sorett and the other administrators were unsuccessful.
A spokesman for Columbia College did not respond to questions seeking to confirm which administrators were put on leave, what they were disciplined for and why Mr. Sorett did not receive the same discipline. Because the investigation is pending, the spokesman said the school would not address specifics about it or the initial episode.
The images of the text messages were shared by a person who sat behind Ms. Chang-Kim at the event, according to The Free Beacon. As the panelists spoke, the deans exchanged messages, the pictures show. “Difficult to listen to but I’m trying to keep an open mind to learn about this point of view,” Ms. Chang-Kim texted to Mr. Sorett at one point. He responded “yup.”
In another exchange, Ms. Kromm texted her colleagues a message that referred to an October 2023 opinion essay by Yonah Hain, Columbia’s campus rabbi, called “Sounding the Alarm and followed up with two different vomit emojis, the images show.
Mr. Patashnick accused one of the panelists of “taking full advantage of this moment,” according to the images. “Huge fundraising potential,” he wrote.
The event was advertised as including a discussion of the climate at Columbia since Hamas’s attack against Israel on Oct. 7, the responsibility of universities to ensure the safety of “not only Jewish students on campus but also of all students” and how Columbia can move forward.
Speakers at the panel included David Schizer, dean emeritus of the Columbia Law School and a co-leader of the university’s task force on antisemitism.
The controversy is only the most recent one to affect the elite university since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last fall and Columbia’s emergence as a center of a campus protest movement that has swept the country.
Earlier this month, the website of The Columbia Law Review, one of the country’s most prestigious student-edited law journals, was taken offline by its board of directors after its editors published an article arguing that Palestinians were living under a “brutally sophisticated structure of oppression” that amounted to a crime against humanity.
Last month, weeks after Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, asked the Police Department to enter the university’s Upper Manhattan campus to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment, the school’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a resolution of no confidence in her leadership.
Virginia Foxx, a Republican representative from North Carolina who chairs the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, demanded this week that the university share the administrators’ text messages with the committee by June 26.
“I was appalled, but sadly not surprised, to learn Columbia administrators exchanged disparaging text messages during a panel that discussed antisemitism at the university,” Ms. Foxx said. “Dean Josef Sorett’s weak private ‘apology’ to the college’s Board of Visitors shows that the school doesn’t get it. Columbia’s Jewish community deserves better than this.”
