Rebecca Massel
Rolling Stone, Nov. 22, 2023
“So you must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that?”
THE TOPIC WAS justice and righteousness. I was sitting in my Contemporary Civilization class at Columbia University last month debating free will, when I received an email with the subject line “You are disgusting.”
“I hope you fucking get what you deserve … you racist freak,” the email read.
The night before, as a senior staff writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator, I broke the news about an Israeli student who was allegedly assaulted on campus in broad daylight. Like the dozens of other news articles I have written, I thoroughly investigated before publishing the news. I interviewed the New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Public Information twice, the student who had reported the assault, and a friend of that student who was with him minutes after the altercation. We reached out to the alleged attacker for comment, and I reviewed video evidence of the incident.
This email was not the only consequence for my publishing this story. Sidechat, an anonymous social media platform open to those with a Columbia email address, blew up with claims against me, my article, and the Spectator, calling the reporting racist and defamatory. The most glaring comments focused on my Jewishness and claimed that my identity compromised my writing, including assertions that the story was written with a “religious agenda.”
In addition to writing for the Spectator, I am an active member of the Jewish community on campus. I chose to attend Columbia for college because I was told by many students and advisers that here I would feel welcomed and comfortable to participate in the broad, diverse campus community while being fully accepted as a Jew. The question of my safety on campus due to my Jewish identity never crossed my mind.
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