For decades, if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention, Columbia University was renowned for its antisemitism. That didn’t stop billionaire Leon Cooperman from donating millions to Columbia. Now, though, he’s suddenly discovered that “Wow, it’s antisemitic” there. To that end, he’s insulting the students and vowing to withhold money. I guess I’m pleased he’s finally seen the light, but I’m mostly enraged by his blindness, which saw him pour so much money into the institution.

Here’s a random collection of headlines about Columbia University, all of them predating the genocidal anti-Israel protests that erupted there after Hamas crossed into Israel and slaughtered 1,400 people:

• October 29, 2004: Columbia To Probe Faculty [Allegedly Anti-Semitic] Remarks
• November 4, 2004: Columbia’s Anti-Semitism Problem
• January 19, 2005: Columbia’s Own Middle East War
• March 16, 2005: The Mideast Comes to Columbia
• April 1, 2005: Columbia University Deals With Recent Charges of Anti-Semitism on Campus
• March 2005: Columbia’s Jewish problem [i.e., Joseph Massad the fanatically anti-Israel, anti-Jewish Columbia professor]
• January 24, 2017: Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi Is Secure in His Anti-Semitism
• November 29, 2018: Jewish Professor Finds Swastikas Spray-Painted in Office at Columbia
• April 5, 2019: Israel Apartheid Week flyer at Columbia U. depicts IDF soldier with horns
• March 6, 2020: [Columbia’s] President Bollinger Condemns Anti-Semitism in a Statement Before the Senate Plenary
• September 30, 2020: Columbia students pass university’s first-ever Israel boycott referendum
• September 25, 2022: Columbia, NYU and Brooklyn College get failing grades on confronting anti-Semitism: report

And that’s just going back to 2004. If I had Lexis-Nexis, I guarantee you that I could find openly published reports going back much further regarding the foul, oozing stench of antisemitism coming out of Columbia.

Indeed, I could do the same for almost every campus in America. They’ve all been living and breathing increasingly aggressive antisemitism. That’s why two Jewish mothers of UCLA students founded the invaluable Stand With Us: Because their children were coming under relentless antisemitic attack.

And yet, somehow, Leo Cooperman, who managed to make billions in finance, missed all these signs. Instead, he went ahead and donated $50 million to Columbia University. I’m glad he’s finally seen the light, but I’m livid that he and other Jews kept ignoring what’s been going on.

I’m especially targeting Cooperman because he went on Fox to talk tough about college kids with “sh** for brains”:

🚨Billionaire Leon Cooperman who has donated $50 Million to Columbia University announces he is suspending his giving after the school refused to fire a professor who called the Hamas attacks “awesome”

“I think these kids at the colleges have SH*T for brains” pic.twitter.com/9foHZR1Qar

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 26, 2023

College students, at least, have an excuse for their execrable values: They’ve been marinated in this garbage in public schools, they’re off on their own for the first time, they have empty, malleable brains, their professors are screaming this stuff at them from the front of the classroom, and they're enveloped in a completely indoctrinating environment. What’s Cooperman’s excuse for having missed all this?

I have a proposal for Cooperman: It’s great that you’re vowing to stop giving money to Columbia. However, you need to redeem yourself for the $50 million you gave that funded this garbage over the past few years. You helped this deadly plant bloom. You gave it financial fertilizer. To make amends, you should redirect some seriously big bucks to people and organizations fighting the toxins to which your money gave birth.

As noted, Stand With Us is a fantastic organization fighting antisemitism on college campuses across America. Throw some money its way. Also, here at American Thinker, we’re fighting the fight, too, and have been doing so for twenty years. We’d enjoy a no-strings-attached cash infusion, as well, so that we can shout the truth more loudly.

Image: Leon Cooperman on Fox. X screen grab.