Professor cancels Middle East course over Columbia’s antisemitism deal with Trump
New antisemitism definition makes course ‘impossible to teach,’ professor says
An anti-Israel professor at Columbia University canceled his course on Middle Eastern history over the school’s recent agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration.
Professor Rashid Khalidi penned an open letter to Acting President Claire Shipman, published by The Guardian, detailing his reasons for the decision.
Khalidi asserted that the school’s newly adopted definition of antisemitism, implemented as part of the agreement with President Trump, renders the course “impossible to teach.”
“Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a ‘special lecturer’, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June,” the professor wrote.
The school adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which “deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews,” according to Khalidi.
This definition makes it “impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe,” he wrote.
The professor also criticized Columbia for undermining the academic freedom and free speech of its faculty through the deal with Trump, claiming students and staff are now “seriously constrained” in their classroom discussions.
“I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall,” Khalidi wrote.
However, he intends to still cover elements of the course in a public lecture series in New York, which will be streamed live and archived for later access.
Any proceeds will be donated to universities in Gaza, “every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word,” he wrote.
Last month, Columbia announced it will pay over $200 million in a settlement to resolve federal investigations into alleged breaches of anti-discrimination laws, The College Fix previously reported.
The university also agreed to provide the government admissions data, including race, GPA, and test scores of accepted and rejected students to restore its federal funding.
Meanwhile, Khalidi’s controversial views have surfaced elsewhere. He recently spoke at Rutgers University where he argued Palestinian war crimes need to be understood in “context.” The professor has also compared supporters of Israel to rodents.
MORE: Columbia will suspend, expel dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, Rashid Khalidi, during an interview on Gaza; Al Jazeera English/Youtube
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