28 March 2025 Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, describes in this Guardian article Columbia’s own corruption that led to its downfall, comparing it to the Vichy regime in wartime France which actively collaborated with its Nazi conquerors. Does Columbia still merit the name of a university?…
25 March 2025 The Columbia University administration, having already applied intense repression of student demonstrators and their faculty sympathisers, has now knuckled under to federal pressure even though Washington has signalled that this is just the start of its campaign to neuter US higher education as a whole. As the New York Times reports, a…
20 March 2025 As Joseph Massad (pictured) explains in this Middle East Eye article, academic specialists have radically altered their analysis of relations between Israel and the Palestinians since the 1970s, for the most part seeing it as a settler colonial relationship. Unfortunately, the political class, the mainstream media and non-specialist academics in the West…
19 March 2025 Israeli society is inordinately proud of its contributions to science and Western culture, notwithstanding its crudely racist public policies. It also attempts to whitewash its international image as well as flattering itself by associating foreign scientists and intellectuals with the country by means of expensively funded awards, the Wolf Prize in particular….
17 March 2025 Israel has done its utmost to destroy the physical evidence of Palestine life and culture in Gaza, even as it monopolises archaeology in the Occupied West Bank while barring Palestinian researchers from legitimate investigation of their own heritage. Yet, as Ayman Hassouna explains in this interview for FOBZU, the teaching and practice…
A year ago a Congressional committee accused Minouche Shafik, the then president of Columbia University, of harbouring antisemitic staff and students on campus. Rather than rejecting this charge and affirming that they were critics of Israel’s systematic human rights violations who displayed no hostility towards Jews, Shafik threw them under the bus. That however did…
14 March 2025 Pressured by a small group of Zionists, Goldsmiths unwisely agreed to launch a formal inquiry into antisemitism on campus nearly two years ago. Suspicious of the motives of the initiators, unhapy with the terms of reference and worried about the outcome, BRICUP and other anti- or non-Zionist civil society groups sought to…
14 March 2025 After lengthy deliberation the University of Minnesota has largely exonerated student protestors earlier charged with a host of offences, as this report from Palestine Legal confirms. Its decision makes a welcome departure from the repressive action of other public and private US universities. Palstine Legal is circulating the following statement from UMN Students…
13 March 2025 The administration of the University of Amsterdam have halted their exchange agreement with the Hebrew University out of concern for reputational damage. It would be gratifying to hear that they are doing this on principled grounds, but even if only for self-interest their decision is good news. UvA: no renewal of exchange…
13 March 2025 Regrettably this report in Haaretz will probably never reach the Western mainstream media. Jewish Columbia Alumni Protest ‘Illegal’ Detention of pro-Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil – U.S. News – Haaretz.com Judy MaltzMar 13, 2025 5:09 pm IST More than 120 Jewish alumni of Columbia have signed a public letter denouncing what they termed the…