Two Ivy League schools struggling to deal with antisemitism are getting at least $200 million from New York taxpayers — leading some to demand the gravy train end if the universities don’t address the burgeoning on-campus crisis.
Some of the public cash that flows into Columbia and Cornell universities comes as direct aid — Cornell pulls about $127 million from the Empire State to help fund the four SUNY schools it operates, according to a Post analysis.
Meanwhile, Columbia has tens of millions in state and city grants and rental deals, including a $40 million lease agreement to provide space to city agencies at the school’s uptown properties.
That’s angered some activists and politicians, who say the schools aren’t doing enough to fight antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ savage assault on Israel earlier this month.
“My taxpayer dollars should not be going to universities that promote hate,” said former Brooklyn state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism.
“It has been outrageous what’s been going on with antisemitism on college campuses,” he continued. “You want the universities to do the right thing? Cut their funding! You will get them to address the situation.”
Cornell operates four different SUNY colleges: NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell, NYS College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell and NYS College of Human Ecology at Cornell.
In total, the school will get about $200 million in state money this year, the Post’s analysis showed.
It’s harder to figure out how much Columbia benefits from New York’s taxpayers, given its Byzantine web of deals, grants and aid.
But the university got a $1.5 million grant for work related to the NY biodefense program, more than $1 million to train state psychiatric hospital workers and a $2.2 million management service contract with the NYPD/Police Management Institute.
Columbia also got a $5 million, 10-year professional and research contract with the city Department of Design and Construction — on top of the $40 million lease agreement.
The schools — and others like them — also benefit because their New York students get state-subsidized tuition assistance grants, totaling about $700 million a year.
Still, the environment on each campus has taken a decided turn in recent years — especially following Hamas’ assault on Israel that began Oct. 7.
Since then, both schools have seen their share of antisemitic incidents.
At Cornell, associate history professor Russell Rickford said during a rally that Hamas’ terror attack was “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
He has since taken a leave of absence.
And on Tuesday, an unnamed suspect was being grilled by New York State Troopers over anti-Jewish online death threats that paralyzed the Ithaca campus over the weekend, Gov. Kathy Hochul said on social media.
At Columbia, about 20 Jewish students denounced the school’s “inaction against antisemitism.”
The students — who wore yarmulkes, Star of David necklaces and blue and white wristbands — said they found it “incredibly disheartening” that the university hasn’t put together a “meaningful” response to incidents including the attack of a Jewish student, online death threats and hate graffiti scrawled on the campus of the elite university.
That’s left a lot of angry politicians saying things need to change — now.
“Not one taxpayer dollar should go to institutions such as Cornell until professors like Russell Rickford are removed from their posts,” State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt told The Post.
“Our Republican Conference does not want to see New Yorkers’ tax dollars going to fund anti-Semitic and anti-American indoctrination.”
Neither school could immediately be reached for comment.
Jeffrey Lax, a CUNY/Kingsborough Community College professor and the founder of Students and Faculty for Equality at Campus, agreed on Monday
“Funding definitely should get pulled from the public and private colleges – unless they overhaul how Jewish students are treated on campus,” Lax told The Post. “What happened at Cornell is just not to be believed … Jews can’t live that way.”
But stripping away the cash won’t be so easy.
On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said the city has to “operate within the law” — no matter how badly it wants to do otherwise.
“As much as we like it or dislike it, First Amendment rights are what this country is about; it’s the foundation of our country,” Adams said, citing a time when he was a cop and had to work a Ku Klux Klan rally.
“I wish we could have stopped them,” he added. “But as a police officer, I had to be there watching my officers protect them.”
“There’s a lot of stuff I wish I could ban, but that is not within my constitutional powers.”
