Disclaimer: This piece does not represent Platypus in any way—neither the Columbia chapter, nor the organization altogether. It is written in a purely personal capacity.
As vice president of Columbia’s Platypus Affiliated Society—a Marxist reading group—I co-organized a March 26 panel discussion examining imperialism, with a specific focus on Iran.
The panel featured speakers from vastly different corners of the left: Arash Azizi, an Iranian writer, academic, and contributor to The Atlantic; Layla Saliba, a pro-Palestinian activist and social worker; Jon Brooks, a representative of the Spartacist League, a Trotskyist group; and Spiros Tsonos, New York chapter executive for the American Communist Party (ACP). It went a full three hours and drew dozens of people from both within, and outside, our University gates.
I opened X on the morning of Monday, March 30 and saw a post about our event from Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia University (DJH), an account with 20,900 followers. It was odd reading this post from an account devoted to exposing antisemitism when, as far as I recall, at no point did anyone speak of Judaism, nor was Israel a primary topic of conversation.
The account baselessly claimed that Platypus’ use of a photo of the 1979 Iranian Revolution in the event promotion evidenced support for the Ayatollah. The post goes on to question, rather suggestively, whether Platypus is “linked to the Iranian regime.”
If DJH had done some quick research—as simple as visiting Platypus’ website—they’d see that the organization is far from supportive of the regime. For what it’s worth, the very day of the panel, Platypus reprinted a letter from the Anarchist Front of Iran and Afghanistan that was highly critical of the Islamic Republic. It ended with the anti-regime slogan, “Women, life, freedom.”
Platypus, however, isn’t about taking sides on geopolitical issues. Erin Hagood, GSAS ‘30, and the president of the entire Platypus organization beyond Columbia, told Sundial that Platypus “doesn’t think anything in a sense. We’re not trying to take positions, we’re trying to reopen questions.”
To the assertion that Platypus might be “linked to the Iranian regime,” Hagood replied in a chuckle: “We only get funding from schools, and then we have $10 a month dues, and it costs $0.00 to get four people in a room and have a conversation. So just in case people wonder where our money comes from, we don’t have any.”
She continued, “If you read the panel description, we ask, ‘Why did some of the left support the Islamic Revolution?’ We ask if it was a ‘mistake’ for the left to do so.” Far from seeking the mindless anti-imperialism all too common amongst, say, the Democratic Socialists of America types, Hagood maintains, “We’re actually trying to get people to justify their anti-imperialism.”
Nonetheless, DJH fired an uncompromising tirade at us: “Columbia Platypus should be shut down immediately. This group’s goal is to encourage extremism and promote violence on campus by sharing radical anti-American ideology.” Promote violence? Shut down immediately? You can imagine our confusion as Platypus’ members messaged back and forth in our WhatsApp group chat. Lamentably, as I’d seen similar rhetoric on this account and those like it before—Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students, Canary Mission, Stop Antisemitism, to name a few—I couldn’t say I was totally shocked.
DJH’s stated goal is to “Put pressure on academic institutions to oppose Jew-hatred by exposing toxic anti-Israel climate on their campuses.” The first part, opposing Jew hatred, is something I’d hope we can all get behind. Columbia has witnessed several deeply disruptive incidents, alienating to many Jewish students—regardless of one’s individual conception of antisemitism—which include the occupation of Hamilton Hall and Butler Library, the distribution of pamphlets straight out of the Hamas Media Office, the drawing of Swastikas, assaults, Khymani James’ notorious “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists” provocation, and countless other policy violations.
The trouble is that “anti-Israel” can mean a lot of things. It can entail opposing AIPAC and U.S. foreign aid for Israel, decrying the barbarism Israel unleashed upon Gaza, or simply disliking Benjamin Netanyahu. But in the case of DJH, any association with the left—even on issues unrelated to Israel, and certainly unrelated to “the Jews”—is seen as an expression of antisemitism.
When I reached out to DJH via Instagram, they claimed on April 7 that they chose to disparage Platypus on the simple basis that, “In the experience of our group members, Marxist groups on campus are antizionist and often promote intimidation of Israeli and Jewish students.” That line of reasoning is incredibly faulty. Just because some self-identified Marxists, socialists, or leftists have engaged in antisemitism, however defined, does not mean all actually do. Now, while I’m intellectually informed by Marxism, I’m no partisan eagerly awaiting the revolution; and coincidentally, another influence I have—nationalism (especially through the New Right)—could be accused of the same thing: there are some antisemitic nationalists, therefore all nationalists are antisemites. You could do that, in fact, for any ideological canon, for any party, for any group of people.
The account offered to remove the post if Platypus would confirm that it is “not a supporter of the current Iranian regime and/or terrorism,” which I agreed to in my capacity as chapter vice president. But the next morning, they demanded to see “a post that clarifies publicly that this is the position of the whole group,” as if it were Platypus’ burden to publish that for DJH to correct the record. Platypus would not be publishing any post like that, I told the account.
Ultimately, on the afternoon of April 8, DJH quote-tweeted their original post, stating in a manner equal parts comical and pretentious (spelling mistakes are theirs, not Sundial’s): “Although Platypus’s collaborators and speakers are questionable at best, we were happy to learn that Platypus does not in fact supports [sic] the IRG. Thank you, Platypus for cleaning this up for us, and we recommend that in the future you select your speakers and collaborators more carefully.”
I believe that DJH’s rationale went something like this: the pro-Palestinian protests were dominated by self-proclaimed leftists and left-leaning rhetoric, the pro-Palestinian protests were antisemitic, and so all those on the left must be antisemitic too. Such a train of thought allows for no nuance. It’s the enemy of rationality, universalism, and any remote sense of truth.
It should also be noted that part of the reason DJH chose to attack Platypus—maybe even the sole real reason—appears to be that we invited activist Layla Saliba.
Saliba is one of our campus’ loudest pro-Palestinian voices, who graduated from Columbia last year. Inviting her does not mean we condone or condemn her, or that we’re involved in our capacity as a University club in pro-Palestinian activism on campus—and certainly not in Jew hatred. Platypus invited Saliba on the pretext of “basic liberalism,” in Hagood’s words. To act as though she should be made anathema, as DJH suggests, is in direct violation of Platypus’ values.
The issue with all of this is that DJH isn’t just another X account—they are one of the most politically influential accounts in the Columbia sphere, and powerful people could read their one-sided exaggerations and baseless smearing campaigns as evidence of something real. Their followers include Harmeet Dhillon, associate attorney general for civil rights and a key figure in the Trump administration’s crusade against Columbia; Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s spokesperson to the U.N.; and Canary Mission, the aforementioned group, which aggregates profiles on “antisemitic” college students and others, often conflating relatively mild and non-bigoted critiques of Israel with antisemitism. Court records show the Trump administration used Canary Mission to target activists for deportation.
In an appearance on Scott Atlas’ show last December, Dhillon said, “For every institution [disguising DEI offices to hide from government scrutiny], we have whistleblowers on campus. We have a great new cadre of creative independent journalists telling us online that this is happening. I read on @X every day what’s going on.” Clearly, Dhillon—the person in charge of civil rights at the Department of Justice—is likely taking cues from X accounts like DJH on who to target.
The day before Mahmoud Khalil was detained by ICE, DJH called Khalil a “foreign student who is one of the leading agitators on campus,” tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and ended the tweet with, “#DeportMahmoudKhalil.”
If anything, my latest interaction with Documenting Jew Hatred further proves that we live in an endless cycle of the worst, most hysterical, and anti-intellectual type of activism, and that at some point, it just has to end. Otherwise, we will continue in the pedestrian misery that has engulfed Morningside Heights as Columbians become increasingly perturbed by the uncompromising antics of both sides.
Mr. Mohammadi is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in American studies. He is a senior editor for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.
The use of that photo at minimum suggests sympathy for the Iranian 1979 revolution. I don't think that specific part of DJH's accusation was much of a stretch.
I disagree that non bigoted critiques of Israel is something that is benign and dismissive. It’s like a tumour that spreads and gets worse and worse. The hyper focus on Israel and their policies in a war started by Hamas raping and murdering people in Israel (both Jews and non Jews that happened to be in Israel on October 7th) stems from antisemitism and ignorance. The intense and exclusive focus on Israel (which is super small by the way compared to the surrounded Arab nations and Arabised nations) by ‘Pro Palestine’ activists and critics often reflects a glaring double standard especially when compared to the relative silence surrounding real catastrophic human rights crises across the globe. While the international community hyper fixates on a tiny single landmass in the Middle East severe atrocities like the systematic oppression in Iran and Afghanistan, the targeted killing of Christians in Nigeria, and the catastrophic famine in Sudan receive only a fraction of the same outrage or engagement. This disproportionate scrutiny, combined with a disregard for systemic religious persecution elsewhere in Muslim majority nations, strongly suggests that much of this outrage is driven by bias and goes back to the concept of supporting dhimmitude ideologies rather than a consistent commitment to human rights. Condemning Israel the ONLY democracy in the Middle East while ignoring its demographic reality erases the history of the millions of Mizrahim and Sephardim Jews who were forced to flee persecution in Arab and Muslim majority nations like Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Israel is nearly half of the world Jewish population… Israelis reside in the region because they have no other home to return to making the delegitimisation of the world only Jewish country not just historically inaccurate but rooted in underlying antisemitism