Columbia “doubling down” on a Hamas-supporting professor reveals its management don’t wish to cease “radicalizing youngsters,” based on one professor who stop in disgust.
Columbia Enterprise Faculty’s Avi Friedman resigned after the college introduced Professor Joseph Massad will educate a course on Zionism, known as “Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies,” this spring.
Massad beforehand known as Hamas Oct. seventh terror assault on Israel “astounding” and “superior,” resulting in accusations of him condoning and supporting terrorism — however the college has stood by him since.
Massad has been a tenured professor at Columbia since 1999, however his newest appointment confirms strikes the college’s efforts to fight antisemitism have been merely performative in Friedman’s eyes.
“They appointed this committee on anti-Semitism, and I don’t know what they got here up with.” Friedman instructed The Publish in his first interview since leaving.
“I don’t suppose the change is coming from inside. The within is totally hollowed out, and it’s full of individuals that don’t wish to change.”
“Once they gave Massad the category to show on Zionism… that was deliberate… There are good folks sitting in a room and saying really that is advantageous.”
Friedman, an award successful professor, cites mismanagement of the pro-Palestine encampment within the quad and a normal lack of civil dialogue as contributing components to his departure from the Ivy League faculty.
However the brand new class for Massad, whose title is Professor of Fashionable Arab Politics and Mental Historical past, was a step too far.
Friedman stated it “represents a deliberate alternative which aligns with the college’s ideology,” and “represents an entire abandonment of educational integrity and unbiased scholarship,” in his scathing open letter to interim college president Katrina Armstrong saying his departure from the college.
“You’ve got these college professors which might be radicalizing youngsters,” Friedman added to The Publish. “Tenured professors have this explicit, normally very progressive worldview… [and] they’ve been instructing this oppressor-versus-oppressed mindset for years.
“I used to be disenchanted when the college simply saved making dangerous reactive decisions,” Friedman stated. “They reacted poorly and slowly to every little thing that was coming at them…. They appear to be paralyzed.”
Columbia responded to outrage over Massad with a press release mentioning his class is proscribed to 60 college students and isn’t a required course.
Additionally they claimed “[Columbia has] taken decisive actions to deal with problems with antisemitism, together with by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes.”
Nonetheless, the assertion was the ultimate straw for Friedman.
“Once they have been challenged on it, and so they stated… it’s not a required course, blah blah blah — the choice was dangerous, after which doubling down on it simply made it worse,” Friedman stated. “That was once they misplaced me.”
Friedman wrote in his letter to Armstrong that this transfer proved “Columbia’s values are basically incompatible with my very own.”
“We have now established a centralized Workplace of Institutional Fairness to deal with all stories of discrimination and harassment, appointed a brand new Guidelines Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Security Workplace.
“We’ll proceed and construct on this important work to fight antisemitism and make sure the security and wellbeing of our college students, school, and workers,” a spokesperson for the college stated.
Freidman left Columbia after 4 years as an adjunct professor. He had taught second-year MBA college students a course known as The Credit score Superhighway. Beforehand he was senior advisor at Davidson Kempner Capital Administration, the place he oversaw $37 billion in belongings.
“I used to be having a good time [teaching at Columbia],” he stated. “Strolling away from one thing that you simply love doing is de facto arduous.”
Friedman isn’t ruling academia out completely, saying he “may undoubtedly return to instructing.” Different universities have already reached out expressing curiosity in hiring him.
He says he was capable of maintain out amidst the chaos at Columbia so lengthy as a result of the enterprise faculty, which has a separate campus on a hundred and thirtieth Avenue, was freed from protests whereas the primary campus devolved into insanity final spring with an encampment and the occupation of Hamilton Corridor.
He did go to the encampment, the place he discovered college students to be extra confused than something and feeding off an “echo chamber”.
“In the event you regarded on the indicators round within the encampment, there have been extra issues there that have been anti-America, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, the West is dangerous, all people’s racist, than there have been about Israel and Gaza,” he recalled.
When he approached a pupil within the encampment and requested her why she was taking part, she instructed him, “We’re holding house for Gaza.”
“I don’t perceive what which means. I don’t suppose she understands what which means,” he stated.
Friedman additionally stated he thinks Columbia’s $14.8 billion endowment ought to not be tax exempt until it adjustments its message.
“In the event you’re going to show your college students to hate America… why ought to the nation that you simply’re really hating on and having curriculum to say the way it’s essentially the most evil, horrible factor on this planet, provide you with a tax break?”
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