Three Columbia University deans who participated in a disturbing text exchange during an event called “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present, and Future” have resigned, The Daily Beast has learned.
Matthew Patashnick, Susan Chang-Kim, and Cristen Kromm came under fire for a text message exchange during the Columbia panel event that featured David Schizer, the head of Columbia’s antisemitism task force, and Brian Cohen, the director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the college’s branch of the largest campus Jewish living group in the U.S.
A spokesperson for Columbia University confirmed the deans were resigning to The Daily Beast, but the university offered no further comment.
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Before their resignation, Chang-Kim served as the vice dean and chief administrative officer, Kromm served as the dean of undergraduate student life, and Patashnick was the associate dean for student and family support.
The panel was held after a contentious spring semester, where pro-Palestine protesters clashed with university administrators—who eventually called the NYPD to forcefully remove them from campus grounds and an occupied building.
The exchange, which was later published in full by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, included vomiting emojis and accusations that a speaker was using the panel as a “huge fundraising opportunity.”
“I’m going to throw up,” Chang-Kim said in one text, to which Kromm responded “amazing what $$$$ can do.”
In another series of texts, Patashnick accused the speakers of “laying the case to expand physical space,” and predicting “they will have their own dorms soon.”
Patashnick, Chang-Kim, and Kromm were placed on leave by the university in June.
The deans’ conversation was later condemned by Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who said the conversation “revealed behavior and sentiments that were not only unprofessional, but also, disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.”
“Whether intended as such or not, these sentiments are unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community that is antithetical to our University’s values and the standards we must uphold in our community,” Shafik said in a statement in July.
The exchange was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon after another person at the fundraiser snapped a photo of the deans texting in real time.
There has been no news of resignation from Dean Josef Sorett, a fourth dean also involved in a controversial text exchange during the event.
Sorett, who serves as dean for Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education, previously apologized for comments in a letter posted in July.
Columbia College is one of the largest constituent schools at the Ivy League university, and where most of Columbia’s roughly 9,700 undergrads are enrolled. According to his faculty bio, Sorett “oversees the College curriculum, which includes the Core Curriculum, as well as the other academic, co-curricular and programmatic services that form the foundation of the undergraduate experience at the College.”
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