None of this year’s graduates from an elite Jewish high school on the Upper East Side. At least in part because of anti-Semitism, he will be attending Columbia University’s top liberal arts school for the first time in decades.
“For the first time in more than 20 years, no Lamas alumni will be attending Columbia University,” Lamas said in a statement to The Washington Post on Sunday.
One student from Lamas High School was accepted into Columbia University’s College of Liberal Arts, and three were accepted into Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate, but none of them attended college.
Lamas suggested that anti-Israel protests and hostility toward Jewish students at Columbia last semester contributed to some of the school’s graduates not attending the university.
“At Ramaz, we are providing as much information as we can about the status of various colleges of interest and prioritizing issues surrounding the horrific increase in anti-Semitic incidents at some schools so students and their families can make informed decisions about which college is right for them,” a Ramaz representative said in an email.
Rory Lancman, a prominent Jewish civil rights activist who has two daughters who graduated from Lamas and is a graduate of Columbia Law School, said he would not encourage Jewish students to apply to or attend Columbia at this time because of the attacks against Jews.
“Jewish families are voting with their feet and choosing a university that takes anti-Semitism seriously,” said Lancman, a former Queens city councilman who now serves as director of corporate initiatives and senior counsel at the Louis Brandeis Center for Legal and Human Rights.
“I would not encourage my daughters to attend Columbia or any other university that is not committed to protecting them as Jews,” he said.
Columbia declined to comment when contacted by The Post on Sunday.
The Ivy League university in Morningside Heights is still reeling from turmoil that has shaken the institution to its very core.
Columbia University’s embattled president, Minouche Shafik, resigned last week and is returning to Britain after leading the elite university through a year of relentless, sometimes destructive anti-Israel protests.
Shafik’s resignation comes just a week after three deans also resigned from Columbia University following the revelation of a series of “highly troubling” emails that disparaged Israeli and Jewish students’ concerns about growing anti-Semitism on campus.
In April, a large mob of masked pro-terror rioters invaded an academic facility at Columbia University, occupying the building and unfurling a giant flag calling for an “intifada.”
One Shocking Video Protesters with hammers were filmed smashing through the glass doors and attaching what appeared to be bike locks to the handlebars.
Their refusal to leave their campus encampments led to hundreds of student arrests on trespassing charges and sparked the occupation of buildings, but many of the vandals, rioters and trespassers who followed avoided criminal charges.
The protests and anti-Israel vehemence were fuelled by Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The terrorist militant group massacred 1,200 people in the Jewish state and sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
