A recent graduate of Columbia University has shared her story of facing antisemitic attacks and bullying on campus in posts on X that have gone viral, reaching over 1.3 million views.
Eliana Goldin, an Orthodox Jew, wrote she was fired from the Columbia Daily Spectator, where she served as a contributing columnist seeking to build bridges over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s one part of a larger incident which she described as part of the “worst antisemitic attack I faced personally on campus.”
The post comes as the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigates Columbia along with dozens of other colleges and universities over accusations of antisemitic discrimination and harassment. The Trump administration in March also canceled approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, citing a failure to stop the persistent harassment of Jewish students.
In response, the university agreed to enact several measures to combat antisemitism.
As for Goldin, much of her story centers on the spring semester which just concluded, roughly the same time the university promised reforms.
“I was fired from the Columbia Daily Spectator for being an Orthodox Jew. It had nothing to do with my opinions on Israel. Here’s the story,” Goldin posted May 20 on X.
Now that I’ve graduated Columbia University, it’s time to talk about the worst antisemitic attack I faced personally on campus.
I was fired from the Columbia Daily Spectator for being an Orthodox Jew. It had nothing to do with my opinions on Israel. Here’s the story🧵:
— Eliana Goldin (@Eliana_Goldin) May 20, 2025
Columbia University’s media relations departments and the Columbia Daily Spectator did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment. Goldin initially agreed to an interview, but has since stopped responding.
On May 21, Forward reported that Milene Klein, deputy editorial page editor, disputed Goldin’s account. She said Goldin was only a contributor, not an employee, and never fired.
Instead, it “was in response to the harassment Goldin received after her first column” and to protect her from more, the outlet reported.
In Goldin’s X thread, she wrote she was a staff writer and then a senior staff writer for the Spectator for two years. In September 2023, she decided to take a break. After the events of Oct. 7, 2023, when there was a Hamas-led attack on Israel, she focused her efforts on advocating for Israel on campus.
In February 2024, Goldin applied to be a columnist for the paper’s opinion section, wanting to write about making “common ground” between Palestinians and Jews. She wrote she was accepted and published her first opinion column a month later.
Soon after, fellow students found an Instagram poll that Goldin had posted months before the Oct. 7 attack asking her followers, “Would you kill someone from Amalek?”
Goldin explained in her X thread that the question was a Jewish experiment rooted in a biblical concept of Amalek, a symbolic enemy in Jewish tradition that is often used to explore moral dilemmas. She wrote “Amalek has nothing to do with Palestinians” and that she had never heard the term being applied to Palestinians until Oct. 7.
“The poll, posted in July 2023 — months before Hamas attacked Israel — asked Goldin’s Instagram followers: ‘Would you kill someone from Amalek?’ It was one of dozens she regularly shared with her more than 2,000 followers, some playful (‘What’s the best way to slice a potato?’), others more profound,” Forward reported.
“… An anonymous Instagram account reposted it with a caption indicating that Amalek was a ‘dog whistle’ for Palestinians. Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine followed with a similar post,” it added.
Once news of her poll spread, and despite her explanations that it was a thought experiment, Goldin wrote she received death threats and faced hostile treatment from peers.
“People were saying I needed to be dealt with,” she told Forward. “I went to Public Safety. I got threatening DMs. It felt like the whole campus thought I was a monster.”
Days after the incident, the Spectator’s opinion section fired her as a columnist. Goldin wrote, “In the time when I needed support the most, the Columbia Daily Spectator … left me to fend for myself.”
“Ultimately what we decided was that, in light of the extreme amount of harassment that she was receiving and the fear that she was expressing, we felt that it would not be safe for her, or really tenable for us, to continue publishing this column,” Klein, who is also Jewish, told Forward. “We didn’t want her to be given this platform on a weekly basis that would expose her to a really large audience that was, at that time, really hostile.”
The student publication also posted an op-ed that linked to Goldin’s poll, suggesting it was calling for the execution of Palestinians, which Goldin claimed was a “lie that actively put me in more danger.”
Goldin’s experience reflects broader tensions at Columbia University, where antisemitism allegations have escalated.
The university has taken steps to address these issues. On March 24, the Trump administration reported that the university has agreed to enact several measures to combat antisemitism on campus.
Columbia’s then-interim president, Katrina Armstrong, also issued a statement on March 7 acknowledging that “incidents of anti-semitism…are completely unacceptable.”
“I wish I had a nice way to wrap up this story, but I don’t. I dealt with the backlash, worked through the emotional turmoil, and kept living life because that’s what I had to do,” Goldin stated in her final X post.
“It sucks, and the school paper still constantly receives recognition for balanced journalism lol, but I guess that’s life. All I know is I’m very excited to have graduated college and am excited for whatever my future has in store. I trust it’s all part of God’s plan for me, and it has certainly made me more empathetic to people who are subject to personal character attacks by a bunch of people who have never even met them.”
“In that regard, I am grateful for what I experienced as a Jew on Columbia’s campus because it made me a better version of myself and definitely a better Jew.”
MORE: Pro-Palestinian protesters rip off hundreds of flower heads at U. Michigan garden
IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: A statue at Columbia University / Lauren Orr, Shutterstock
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