The latest report on campus antisemitism from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is one of the most shocking ever issued by a congressional committee. It details the failure of university leaders to confront antisemitism on their campuses, and exposes, in respect of events at Columbia University, a spinelessness on the part of Senator Schumer, who suggested they not treat with Republicans.

The senior senator from New York, who tells voters that his surname derives from shomer, or guardian, is disclosed to be more solicitous of Columbia’s public relations than any mistreatment of Jewish students on Morningside Heights. It offers a context for Mr. Schumer’s avoidance of bringing forth a bill to require the Education Department to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

The 300-page report — a depressing though invaluable document — relates with respect to Columbia that “When asked, Schumer and his staff indicated they did not believe it was necessary for the University’s leaders to meet with Republicans,” who were leading an investigation in the House. Columbia’s erstwhile president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, swooned that he was “very positive and supportive (and quite the storyteller).”

The committee supplies evidence in the form of private emails and text messages of university leaders that Mr. Schumer encouraged Ms. Shafik to tune out the criticism from the House Republicans, who had begun to investigate the university’s antisemitism problem and recommended that the “best strategy is to keep heads down.” It would be fitting if that bit of invertebrate senatoring were to go down as Mr. Schumer’s political epitaph. 

The report identifies Columbia as “the site of some of the most disturbing and extreme antisemitic conduct violations in the country.” Though those anti-Israel student agitators faced “shockingly few” disciplinary consequences for their infractions. None of the 22 students who were arrested in April for violently taking over Hamilton Hall have been expelled from the school, even though the administration promised they would “face expulsion.”

Columbia wasn’t the only source of cringeworthy material. If it is possible, Harvard was even worse, vindicating reporting by our Ira Stoll at his The Editors substack and elsewhere. Administrators even stripped out the word “violent” in respect of October 7 because a dean complained that it “sounded like assigning blame.” The school’s new provost, John Manning, removed reference to the hostages taken by Hamas for fear it would be a trigger. 

Despite all this Mr. Schumer’s diagnosis was that the Morningside Heights redoubt’s “political problems are really only among Republicans.” It’s hard to remember in Washington such a currying of favor at the expense of the Jews. We acknowledge that much of it is hearsay and that Mr. Schumer will try to make the best of it. The Senator has a book due out in February called “Antisemism: A Warning.” It could be called “Chutzpah: A Definition.”