July 28, 2025, 2:54pm

[Last week, Columbia University reached an agreement with the Trump administration to “resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.” As part of the agreement, Columbia will pay a $200 million settlement to the federal government and establish a $21 million class claims fund to “compensate employees who may have experienced antisemitism on Columbia’s campus post-Oct. 7, 2023.” In response to this, filmmaker and Columbia professor James Schamus has written the below letter to Columbia Acting President Claire Shipman.]

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Dear Acting President Shipman,

I was struck by some of the wording in your announcement last week heralding Columbia’s Big Beautiful Agreement with the Trump administration, with its $200 million payout to the feds, and, as you put it, an additional “$21 million to settle investigations involving the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” You didn’t provide anything more specific in your announcement about that extra $21 million, but a subsequent press release from the EEOC gives a bit more detail, bragging that its “historic” deal with Columbia is “the largest EEOC public settlement in almost 20 years,”  one that resolves, among other things, a charge against Columbia brought by the EEOC “on behalf of a class of all Jewish employees” [emphasis added—and, yeah, I think you might be seeing where this is going…]: “Under the multi-year agreement with the EEOC, the Ivy League university will establish a $21 million class claims fund to compensate employees who may have experienced antisemitism on Columbia’s campus post-Oct. 7, 2023.”

So, a quick question for you: Where can I sign up for my share of those Crazy Columbia Antisemitism Cash Dollars???

As you have repeatedly—and I mean repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly—professed, Columbia’s antisemitism problem is one you take seriously. And so do I. I even gave a whole speech about being Jewish at Columbia last year, one I had to deliver on the sidewalk off campus, given how hostile the campus environment has become for those professing Jewish values etc.

But I hope you’ll forgive me if I air some suspicions about the odds of me getting my hands on any of this promised bounty. I just have a sense I’m going to be like one of the folks too far to the back of the room that time Trump went to Puerto Rico to deliver disaster relief (or at least some paper towels) after Hurricane Maria. So close, and yet so far away!

Still, it’s a serious question. If, as you repeatedly, repeatedly claim, antisemitism is such a generalized scourge on campus, it can’t possibly be the case that only a chosen few, so to speak, should legit be handed the cash haul to divvy up amongst themselves. Shouldn’t it be distributed pro rata amongst the entire class of all Jewish employees, including moi? But I’d wager (in fact, I’d put up as collateral for that bet my share of the pile) that, indeed (and I admit, I don’t know this for a fact), you guys are going to distribute the spoils according to other metrics and criteria. I think everyone (especially students and their families taking out loans to pay Columbia tuitions, not to mention potentially jealous colleagues who might feel a bit left out of the discrimination lottery takings) would love to know what those criteria are.

Because I have a suspicion (and please do correct me if I’m wrong) that payouts might be made along a spectrum not so much of Jewish-ness, not so much even of specific, documented harm, but along the lines of what the EEOC press release carefully articulates, when it describes the fund as one which will compensate “employees who may have experienced antisemitism” [emphasis again added, as, yeah, I think you can see where this is going…].

Now, who might be “experiencing” antisemitism to the extent they will get a slice of the settlement pie? Let me give you an example to perhaps get to the answer. Let’s say two Jews are walking across campus on College Walk, and they both overhear the chants and shouts from a gathering on the lawn coming from students and fellow faculty and staff outraged at the ongoing slaughter and starvation of Palestinians by Israel. One of those Jews (me) is, like: “Look, there’s a bunch of Jewish students holding a Passover seder at the encampment—cool!” The other Jew (say, one of the various Atlantic magazine and New York Times writers who were brave enough to venture on campus this past couple of years) professes to experience this all as a manifestation of antisemitism allowed, if not even aided and abetted, by Columbia. So I’m surmising that they’re gonna get a big fat check while I’m not? That sucks for me, I guess.

And we can take this a step further. Because it’s quite possible that those of my fellow Jews who “may experience antisemitism” the most when encountering campus protests against Israel’s genocidal mania may end up getting the biggest bucks. Like maybe there will be different categories, ranging from the small-change hand-wringing “I’m-uncomfortable-with-what-Israel-is-doing-but-Hamas-tunnels-something-something-your-keffiyeh-makes-me-nervous” category; through the Bret Stephens/New York Times mid-tier “Genocide? What genocide?” bunch; and ending with the Megabucks Jackpot we’re-in-the-money Shai Davidai “We are not ok!” crowd. Maybe there can be a special bonus for the Columbia OU-JLIC director who WhatsApp’d hundreds of Jewish students last year urging them to flee campus for their lives.

As you can see, under this possible scenario, the more you go all-out weaponizing antisemitism in the context of Israel’s mass murder spree, the more Columbia $$$ you earn. Nice work if you can get it!

In any case, I’m standing by for further instructions, with just one last favor to ask: please don’t hire some outside consulting group, such as, say, the Boston Consulting Group, Orbis Operations, or Safe Reach Solutions, to administer distribution of the fund. We wouldn’t want the giveaway to turn into some sort of Hunger Games now, would we?

Yours sincerely,

James Schamus