Pro-Israel students, others rally near Columbia for bans on masked protesting

(JNS) — Some 120 protesters gathered near the Columbia University campus on Tuesday evening to call on U.S. universities to ban people from protesting on their campuses with face coverings masking their identities.

Columbia was one of many sites of anti-Israel encampments that spread across campuses. In April, school’s president Minouche Shafik, who has since resigned, called police to campus to remove anti-Israel vandals who occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, largely dropped charges against the alleged offenders.

The grassroots civil rights group End Jew Hatred, which recently launched an “unmask the hate” initiative pushing for legislation barring face masks at protests both on and off campus, organized the rally on Tuesday.

“We all witnessed the disaster that happened at Columbia University last spring,” Michelle Ahdoot, director of strategy and programming at End Jew Hatred, told JNS. “Masked pro-hamas agitators were disruptive and scared students as they were literally walking to their classes on campus.”

Supporting a mask ban is a “true” civil rights issue, because it upholds democratic values, according to Ahdoot.

“There is no value for civil rights when we see lawless pro-Hamas students create havoc with impunity,” she said at the rally.

Columbia students who attended the hour-long rally told JNS that they expect protests to “escalate” on campus as the new semester gets underway.

Maya Zuckerman, a Columbia freshman from New York, told JNS that groups like Students for Justice in Palestine had already disturbed the university’s convocation. 

“After everything that happened last year, it is definitely a concern that protests could grow again,” she said. “Even though there are all these people who are trying to drive us off campus, Jewish students here just don’t want to leave and give up on a great education.”

‘Show us who they are’

The ubiquity of masked, pro-Hamas protesters on campuses last academic year inspired the Nassau County Legislature on Long Island, N.Y., to enact the Mask Transparency Act—the first face-mask ban since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The law criminalizes using masks to hide one’s face during a protest, with up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine per offense. 

Mazi Pilip, an Ethiopian-born, Orthodox Jew and Israel Defense Forces veteran who vied, unsuccessfully, earlier this year for George Santos’s former seat in Congress, is a Republican who represents the 10th district in the Nassau County Legislature.

She told JNS that the Mask Transparency Act was “common-sense” legislation. 

“Banning the use of face masks has been the law in New York State for the past 175 years to protect minorities from hate speech,” she told JNS. “I supported the law in order to protect our Jewish brothers and sisters, because it was the same law that was here until the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Columbia could enforce a similar ban to protect students, according to Pilip. 

“Our legislation specifically makes an exception for masks worn for health or religious reasons, so there is no reason it cannot be implemented in a campus environment,” she said.

Shai Davidai, an assistant management professor at Columbia Business School who has been a leading critic of the university for tolerating Jew-hatred, told rallyers that a university-enforced mask ban was a “reasonable” method for countering pro-Hamas violence on campus.  

“If protesters on campus want to be hateful, they have the freedom of speech to do so,” he said. “But they must show us who they are.”

“Over the past 10 months, I’ve been to dozens of rallies and protests, and I have never once covered my face,” he said. “I have never needed to cover my face because I have nothing to be ashamed of.” 

“Only people that are ashamed of what they are advocating for cover their faces,” he added.

David Lederer, a junior at Columbia studying financial engineering, told JNS that he supports a mask ban, because it would finally bring accountability for disruptive demonstrators. 

“Students were able to get away with their crimes last year because they were masked,” he said. “It was a horror show for Jewish students on campus. You really felt like you were not welcome.” 

Other students think the policy could improve student relations on campus.

“When the masks come down, we will finally be able to have a dialogue with one another,” Sam Nagin, a graduate student at Columbia, told JNS.

Gerard Filitti, a senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, which helped draft the legislation of the Mask Transparency Act, told JNS that private universities like Columbia are uniquely suited to enforce a mask ban, because they can enforce their own regulations without awaiting state legislation. 

“They can pass whatever rules they feel are appropriate, and it is astounding that they have not done so yet—especially since enforcing a mask ban would protect student speech rights from all sides,” Filitti said.

“When your identity is known, the appeal of threatening or intimidating people significantly decreases,” he added. “It is anonymity which fuels violence, because those values are not appreciated in our society.”