After a doctor who is the daughter of a senior Iranian government official departed from Emory University’s medical school, the professor who serves as head of Emory’s faculty leadership council criticized the school for letting her go, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Noelle McAfee, a professor in Emory’s philosophy department, sent a scathing e-mail to the university and School of Medicine faculty expressing concern that the school’s dismissal of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security, was a politically motivated firing. 

McAfee, who was arrested in April 2024 for her participation in a campus anti-Israel encampment, said faculty members have expressed to her that Ardeshir-Larijani’s departure is “an act of unbecoming of our tolerant, free, academic community.”

“It’s extremely disappointing to see that our leadership here at Emory are consistently caving to political pressure and never taking the side of faculty,” McAfee wrote, quoting an anonymous faculty member, expressing concern that Ardeshir-Larijani, whose father is responsible for the Islamic Republic’s national security, didn’t receive due process. 

On Jan. 19, demonstrators gathered outside Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute to protest the university’s employment of Ardeshir-Larijani. 

But McAfee claimed that many faculty members were outraged over the loss of Ardeshir-Larijani to the medical school staff. (In an email to medical school faculty, Emory School of Medicine Dean Sandra Wong did not specify whether Ardeshir-Larijani, who was an assistant professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the medical school, was fired or quit.)

McAfee wrote that faculty also told her, “This is creating an actively hostile work environment here at Emory… motivated by a desire to minimize political pressure on Emory to ensure continuance of federal funding” and “it’s extremely disappointing to see that our leadership here at Emory are consistently caving to political political pressure and never taking the side of faculty.” 

In a statement to JI, McAfee said her email was “not weighing in on an employment matter one way or another.” 

In 2024, Emory School of Medicine fired another oncologist, Professor Abeer AbouYabis, due to her social media posts glorifying Hamas in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. The school’s University Senate Committee for Open Expression submitted an investigation report at the time, stating that “AbouYabis’s Open Expression rights likely were violated.” 

Emory University did not respond to a request for comment from JI inquiring whether the school was aware of Ardeshir-Larijani’s familial ties when it hired her. 

The Columbia University task force overseeing efforts to combat antisemitism on campus released its fourth and final report on Tuesday, spotlighting Columbia’s lack of full-time Middle East faculty who are not explicitly anti-Zionist.

According to the report, “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.” The absence of ideological diversity is having an impact on course offerings — in listening sessions, the task force said it heard from students that classes at the university more often than not treat Zionism as entirely illegitimate. 

The report calls on the university to “work quickly to add more intellectual diversity to these offerings” and to “establish new chairs at a senior level in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy.” 

Furthermore, it claims that “academic resources available for teaching and research on Jewish and Israeli topics at Columbia are insufficient, especially in comparison to the resources available for teaching and research on other parts of the Middle East. The University should work quickly and energetically to build up its capabilities here, through academically first-rate full time tenure line additions to the faculty and the curriculum.” 

The report also cites numerous instances in which the academic freedom of Jewish and Israeli students was not protected in classrooms and suggests remedies — while trying to find a delicate balance between allowing for free expression and cracking down on discrimination.

“We urge the University to protect freedom of expression to the maximum extent possible while also complying with antidiscrimination laws,” states the report, titled The Classroom Experience at Columbia: Protecting the Academic Freedom of Faculty and Students. “Censorship has no place at Columbia. Neither does discrimination.”

Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman said in a statement on Tuesday that the university will “continue to work on implementing the recommendations of the task force and addressing antisemitism on our campus.”

“We have also been working this semester to focus on discrimination and hate more broadly on our campuses — which has long been a strong recommendation of the task force. All of this work must become part of our DNA,” said Shipman. 

Columbia’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism was formed in November 2023 as a response to a surge of antisemitism on campus that began as an immediate response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. Throughout the following two years of war in Gaza, scenes of masked anti-Israel protesters barging into classrooms and hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus calling for an “intifada revolution” became commonplace at Columbia, which has faced some of the worst antisemitic incidents of any college campus since Oct. 7. 

The new report is the first one released since Columbia reached a deal with the Trump administration in July to restore some $400 million in federal funding. 

The funding was frozen by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. The campus has seen less turbulence since the deal was struck and reforms aimed at combating antisemitism — some based on the task force’s earlier recommendations — were announced over the summer.  

The 13-member task force, which is led by by Ester Fuchs, professor of international and public affairs and political science; Nicholas Lemann, professor of journalism and dean emeritus of Columbia Journalism School; and David Schizer, professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia Law School, suggested a range of free expression and anti-discrimination policies that Columbia could adopt.

Among the recommendations are that the university disclose, before students enroll in a course, if the material has the potential to cause students to feel excluded or silenced. If students are not aware in advance, or if it is a required course, and a controversial topic — such as the Middle East — is not the stated topic, “it’s not appropriate to make it a central part of the course,” the report states.  

The authors write that academic freedom “entails openness to scholars and students from other countries.” As such, the report states that boycotts of faculty, students, researchers or scholars from other countries “are not consistent with academic freedom.” The academic boycott movement consistently targets Israel, “proposing to restrict the research, teaching, and studying opportunities available to a cohort whose members are overwhelmingly Jewish,” the report continues. Student protesters at Columbia have frequently demanded that the university end its partnership with Tel Aviv University.   

In addition, the task force calls for consistency across all university anti-discrimination policies to include Jewish and Israeli students and for applying anti-discrimination policies in regards to classroom disruptions targeting students or instructors for their identity in a protected class.

The latest report builds upon a series of earlier ones released by the antisemitism task force in March 2024, August 2024 and June 2025, each offering solutions to a different key issue impacting Jewish students at the Ivy League university. Each report was based in part on two dozen listening sessions the task force conducted with hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia. 

The 70-page fourth and final report includes recommendations from the three prior reports and recaps several of the most egregious incidents of antisemitism in the classroom at Columbia since Oct. 7. Those include reports of several instructors encouraging their students, during class, to participate in the 2023-24 academic year’s anti-Israel protests. Some professors held their classes or office hours within anti-Israel encampments (where in several cases it was indicated Zionists were not welcome).

Editor’s note: After publication, Columbia’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism updated language in the report to read: “Columbia would benefit from full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.”

Much of the antisemitism on college campuses is fueled by faculty and staff — both on campus and within professional academic organizations — according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League and the Academic Engagement Network. 

Seventy-three percent of the 209 Jewish faculty members polled from universities around the U.S. reported observing antisemitic activities or statements from faculty, administrators or staff on campuses, including calls to boycott Israel and doxxing campaigns. Forty-four percent said they were aware of an organized Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter on their campus.

“My chair is pro-Hamas (explicitly so) and has turned our department into an encampment, full of ‘river to the sea’ slogans and propaganda,” an anonymous faculty member shared in the survey. “When I and a few other Jewish faculty objected, the chair organized about 50 people to verbally attack us, including one who told me that we had all the money and power. Consequently, my department is a hostile work environment, and I can no longer attend events or participate in departmental life there.”

Another wrote that they are “attacked in all directions” and “no longer feel safe on campus.”

Due to these experiences, more than one-third of all of the surveyed respondents (38%) reported having felt a need to hide their Jewish and/or Zionist identity from others on campus. Twenty-five percent of those who are members of academic associations said they feel pressure to hide their identity in those groups. 

The study comes as calls for the adoption of academic boycotts of the Jewish state have gained momentum in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war, within several professional associations and among some prominent classroom professors. 

Last month, the American Association of Geographers faced pressure from its members to adopt a boycott of Israel, and shortly after, the head of the American Association of University Professors said that the United States should not send defensive weapons to Israel amid its war against Hamas, which he called a genocide in Gaza. 

“What we’re seeing is a betrayal of the fundamental principles of academic freedom and collegiality. Jewish faculty are being forced to hide their identities, excluded from professional opportunities, and told by their own colleagues what constitutes antisemitism — even as they experience it firsthand. This hostile environment is driving talented educators and researchers  away from careers they’ve dedicated their lives to building,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement about the survey.  

“Colleges and universities are meant to be open, safe learning environments where faculty and students alike feel comfortable sharing ideas and having open discourse,” said Miriam Elman, AEN’s executive director. “It’s disturbing, but perhaps unsurprising, that Jewish and Zionist faculty on campuses across the country are experiencing antisemitic hostility and retaliation for their beliefs.” 

“What’s even more alarming,” Elman continued, “is that much of this animosity is driven by the faculty and staff themselves, creating an unsafe work environment for their colleagues and an unwelcoming learning environment for their students. Administrators must address these issues head-on and take meaningful action to protect the flow of free ideas and open inquiry on their campuses, or their institutions will suffer for generations to come.”

The first day of the new school year on Tuesday at Columbia University was met with a wary sense of relief from Jewish students and faculty, who returned to campus unsure whether recent reforms aimed at combating campus antisemitism would make any difference. 

Scenes that have become commonplace on Columbia’s campus over the past two years — masked anti-Israel demonstrators barging into classrooms and the library banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine” or hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus of more than 100 students calling for an “intifada revolution” — were nowhere to be seen. 

Still, in quieter ways, there were moments behind the tall iron entrance gates reminiscent of the antisemitic turbulence that grew commonplace on the Morningside Heights campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Three members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence, protested Columbia Hillel’s club fair, distributing fliers urging Jewish students to “drop Hillel” because it “supports genocide.” 

Elsewhere on campus, an organizer of the 2024 anti-Israel encampment movement, Cameron Jones, paraded a sign that read, “some of your classmates were IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] criminals committing genocide in Palestine.” 

Within hours, Columbia announced it had “initiated investigations into incidents that involve potential violations of the University’s Student Anti-Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment Policies and University Rules.”

“The individuals involved are being notified that the University will immediately pursue its process for disciplinary action regarding their conduct,” the school said.

Jewish students and faculty praised Columbia’s swift response, which some attributed to the recent reforms, part of a deal made in July between the university and the Trump administration to restore the school’s federal funding that was slashed over the school’s alleged failure to address antisemitism. 

Tal Zussman, a third year PhD student in computer science, called the quick investigation a “significant change from a year ago.” 

“Last year’s first day of classes was marked by a protest that completely blocked the campus entrance and vandalism of [the sculpture] Alma Mater,” Zussman told Jewish Insider. “There were a few isolated instances [on Tuesday] that the university seems to be handling, but they were minor compared to last year’s drama. Hopefully things remain calm, but the university’s clear communication and quick response is a significant change from a year ago.” He said he felt that the change was “absolutely” due to the reforms. 

Civil engineering professor Jacob Fish similarly described a “situation in and around campus [that] is much better compared to previous fall and spring.” Fish, the director of Kalaniyot, the university’s new initiative to bring Israeli researchers to the Columbia campus, lauded the program as a way to further “make a difference on campus,” he told JI. 

“More than 200 first-year students participated in joyful and welcoming on campus activities,” Columbia’s Hillel director Brian Cohen told JI. “Three students disrupted these activities. We will continue to work with Columbia University’s rules process and hope that students who violate University rules continue to be held accountable.”

Columbia’s settlement with the federal government to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was slashed in March was met at the time with cautious optimism from Jewish leaders. 

Some expressed hope that the settlement could lead to a safer environment for Jewish students following nearly two years of antisemitic protests and disruptions on campus in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Others, however, raised concerns that the settlement did not include key structural reforms to protect Jewish students. 

Lishi Baker, a senior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, told JI he is “optimistic” that Columbia’s recent changes, “particularly around discipline and policymaking, will make a big difference in improving life on campus for Jewish students and in preventing campus chaos.”