A number of Columbia school members — Joseph Andoni Massad, Katherine Franke and Mohamed Abdou — had been within the highlight at Wednesday’s listening to earlier than the Home Committee on Schooling and the Workforce.
All three had taken pro-Palestinian stances, and lawmakers grilled college officers over how they responded to what Columbia’s President Nemat Shafik agreed had been “unacceptable” feedback by the college members.
On the listening to, Dr. Shafik divulged that two of the professors — Dr. Massad and Ms. Franke — had been below investigation for making “discriminatory remarks,” and stated that Dr. Abdou “won’t ever work at Columbia once more.” Such responses drew a pointy rebuke from some professors and the American Affiliation of College Professors, which stated she capitulated to political grandstanding and, within the course of, violated established tenets of educational freedom.
“We’re witnessing a brand new period of McCarthyism the place a Home Committee is utilizing school presidents and professors for political theater,” stated Irene Mulvey, nationwide president of the AAUP. She added, “President Shafik’s public naming of professors below investigation to placate a hostile committee units a harmful precedent for tutorial freedom and has echoes of the cowardice usually displayed in the course of the McCarthy period.”
Dr. Massad, who’s of Palestinian Christian descent, was the main target of Consultant Tim Walberg’s questioning. He teaches fashionable Arab politics and mental historical past at Columbia, the place he additionally acquired his Ph.D. in political science.
Lengthy identified for his anti-Israel positions, he revealed a controversial article in The Digital Intifada final October, within the wake of the Hamas assault, describing it as a “resistance offensive” staged in retaliation to Israel’s settler-colonies close to the Gaza border.
The piece drew a visceral response and calls for for his dismissal in a petition by a Columbia pupil that was signed by tens of hundreds of individuals. The petition particularly criticized Dr. Massad’s use of the phrase “superior” to explain the scene of the assault.
Dr. Massad’s posture has drawn controversy for years. When he was awarded tenure in 2009, 14 Columbia professors expressed their concern in a letter to the provost. Typically, professors with tenure face a a lot larger bar for termination than these with out the standing.
Extra just lately, nonetheless, professors nationally have rallied to help him, emphasizing his educational proper to voice his opinion.
In an announcement after the listening to, Dr. Massad stated that the Home committee members had mischaracterized his article. Mr. Walberg stated that Dr. Massad had stated Hamas’s homicide of Jews was “superior, astonishing, astounding and unbelievable.”
“I definitely stated nothing of the kind,” Dr. Massad stated.
In testimony responding to questions from Mr. Walberg, a Michigan Republican, Dr. Shafik stated that Dr. Massad had been faraway from a management position on the college, the place he headed an educational assessment panel.
However Dr. Massad stated in an e-mail that he had not been notified by Columbia that he was below investigation, including that he had been beforehand scheduled to finish his chairmanship of the educational assessment committee on the finish of the semester, an announcement {that a} spokesman for Columbia verified after the listening to.
Dr. Massad stated it was “unlucky” that Dr. Shafik and different college leaders “would condemn fabricated statements that I by no means made when all three of them ought to have corrected the file to point out that I by no means stated or wrote such reprehensible statements.”
Katherine Franke, a regulation professor at Columbia, was additionally talked about within the listening to for her activist position and a remark that “all Israeli college students who served within the I.D.F. are harmful and shouldn’t be on campus,” referring to the Israel Protection Forces.
Ms. Franke, who didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark, just lately wrote a bit in The Nation elevating questions on educational freedom at Columbia, the place she has taught since 1999.
Mohamed Abdou was additionally named within the listening to. Dr. Abdou was employed as a visiting scholar for the Spring 2024 time period, and was instructing a course known as “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition.”
A biography on Columbia’s web site describes Dr. Abdou as “a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, crucial race and Islamic research, in addition to gender, sexuality, abolition and decolonization.”
Consultant Elise Stefanik requested why he was employed even after his social media submit on Oct. 11 that learn, “I’m with Hamas & Hezbollah & Islamic Jihad.” Dr. Shafik stated, “He won’t ever work at Columbia once more. Dr. Abdou didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Sheldon Pollock, a retired Columbia professor who serves on the manager committee of Columbia’s American Affiliation of College Professors chapter, known as such feedback about particular professors “deeply worrying,” including that he thought Dr. Shafik was “bullied by these individuals into saying issues I’m certain she regrets.”
He continued, “What occurred to the thought of educational freedom in at the moment’s testimony? I don’t assume that phrase was used even as soon as.
A spokesman for Columbia declined to touch upon the criticism of Dr. Shafik.