Columbia University is considering expanding and refocusing its Middle Eastern studies department’s instruction on Israel, the provost’s regional review committee announced in a set of recommendations this week, marking a pivot in a field and at a school that have come under immense scrutiny from the federal government and Jewish leaders following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.  

Among its recommendations, the review committee urged the department to strengthen its relationship with the school’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies through visiting professorships. The IIJS will host a multiyear visiting appointment for a professor to teach about the history of modern Israel beginning this fall, the report said.

Some faculty in Middle Eastern studies departments at Columbia and other elite institutions praised Oct. 7 as “resistance” against the “settler-colonial” Israeli state. Critics of the field have long alleged that it teaches students a one-sided history of the Middle East, describing Israel as the perpetual villain.

A December report by the Columbia University task force overseeing efforts to combat antisemitism on campus spotlighted Columbia’s lack of “full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.” The task force found that the absence of ideological diversity had an impact on course offerings — in listening sessions, students said that classes at the university more often than not treat Israel as entirely illegitimate. 

The provost’s review committee is headed by Miguel Urquiola, senior vice provost for academic initiatives, whom the university appointed to oversee the department as part of a settlement with the Trump administration after $400 million in federal funding was cut last year over Columbia’s alleged failure to address antisemitism. 

Among Trump’s demands for funding to be restored was a mandate to place the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) department under academic receivership. While Columbia did not commit to academic receivership, it appointed Urquiola and created the review committee in September, selecting the Middle East as the first region to be reviewed. 

The committee’s report additionally states that the School of International and Public Affairs is “finalizing” arrangements for a visiting professor to teach about economic and other policy issues in Israel, scheduled to begin this fall. SIPA partnered with the IIJS to appoint a visiting professor to teach courses on the Jewish world and Middle East policy for a three-year term. The two schools are searching for a joint professor of Israel and Jewish studies, which the review committee notes “may be on the tenure- or practice-track.” The review committee also suggested offering a new undergraduate major or minor in Middle East social sciences and policy, which would fall under SIPA’s undergraduate offerings. 

The report further states that the school’s political science department is “actively considering” launching a search for a permanent faculty member to be appointed together with IIJS. 

“Columbia’s MESAAS department is notoriously lacking viewpoint diversity, particularly as it relates to Israel,” Lishi Baker, a senior studying Middle East history, told Jewish Insider. “I am grateful that Columbia is finding other ways to increase its course offerings about Israel so that students interested in the region are not stuck with the MESAAS propaganda.” 

The recommendations also noted that the search to fill the Edward Said professorship in modern Arab studies and literature is ongoing. The role has been open since Rashid Khalidi retired in August after two decades at Columbia, stating that the university’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism — which he said conflated criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism — made it “impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history.” 

Two professors under consideration for the position have faced disciplinary action from their universities for participating in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity, The Washington Free Beacon reported this week. 

Rosie Bsheer, an associate professor of history at Harvard and formerly the associate director of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies was removed from her role at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies after events she hosted “very likely” violated the IHRA definition of antisemitism, according to former Harvard President Lawrence Summers. 

Max Weiss, a Princeton University professor of history and an advocate of an academic boycott of Israel, was put on probation for holding class inside an anti-Israel encampment.

A university professor who resigned from her position following a Title VI antisemitism investigation, and another who organized large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations, are among several controversial speakers scheduled to speak at an event on Friday hosted by the University of Washington. 

The day-long conference, called “The World as Palestine: On Advocacy, Activism, and Justice,” is organized by the Middle Eastern Studies department and is scheduled to be held in the university’s student union building. 

Andrea Brower, a former instructor in a “Solidarity and Social Justice” program at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington, is scheduled to speak during the program’s opening panel, “Reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian Liberation Movement.” She resigned in 2024 after the school opened an antisemitism investigation into the protests she led on campus against Israel’s war in Gaza and her criticism of the university’s investment in companies with ties to Israel.

The panel will examine “academic dissent, critical thought, and resistance with reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian liberation movement,” according to its registration page.  

Another speaker on the panel will be Majid Sharifi, the director and professor of international affairs at Eastern Washington University. When Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in October 2024, Sharifi told CBS News Miami that Iran was “defending itself” after its “sovereignty was violated” by Israel’s assasination months prior of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. 

The third speaker alongside Brower and Sharifi is Kathryn DePaolis, an associate professor and interim chair and director of the School of Social Work at Eastern Washington University. DePaolis helped create a new group called the Inland Northwest Coalition for the Liberation of Palestine two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. During Israel’s war in Gaza, the organization staged Palestinian “die-ins” in front of the Spokane courthouse. 

“The event isn’t about the scholarship of activism, which would be different — it’s activism itself,” a Jewish faculty member at UW told Jewish Insider. “It’s using state resources to promote an ideology and worldview that contributes to antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus.” 

Other panel topics are “Lessons from the Palestinian and Filipino Struggles for Liberation” and “Activism and Civic Engagement in Washington State.” Laila Taji, an author speaking on the latter panel, has ties to the radical student group Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), which led a destructive protest on campus last year over the school’s ties to Boeing — and Boeing’s ties to the IDF — that caused more than $1 million in damages to the university’s engineering building. 

The event will also screen “The Palestine Exception,” a documentary about “professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians,” according to the film’s synopsis. 

Neither the UW administration nor Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson responded to requests for comment from JI about the selection of speakers for the event at the university, which is a public college. 

The event comes days after students from SUPER UW who were suspended and arrested last spring for their participation in the engineering building vandalism were allowed to return to campus, Victor Balta, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed to JI. “The student conduct hearing process has been completed and the students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable. The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters,” said Balta. Twenty-one students were suspended at the time.

“Suspensions also resulted in forfeiture of tuition paid or the repayment of tuition by any student who must remain in good standing in order to receive financial aid, such as tuition exemption grants for graduate students or work study. Once a suspension is concluded, any outstanding balances due must be paid in order to be eligible for re-enrollment,” Balta continued.

The students could still face criminal charges, though none have been brought in the nine months since the protest. The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

SUPER UW was suspended as an official student organization in December 2024 after its members were charged with “vandalism,” “unauthorized keys, entry, or use,” “failure to comply” and “disruption and obstruction” by the school’s administration, according to the group. As a result, SUPER UW does not have access to school resources but can still gather on campus. 

In August, Secure Community Network, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024. 

The U.S. Department of Education blasted a joint Middle Eastern studies program between the University of North Carolina and Duke University for providing a biased curriculum to students. The department ordered UNC’s vice chancellor for research to provide an updated curriculum for the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies (CEMS) in order for the program to retain its federal funding.

Written warning: The letter, sent by Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Robert King, warned that the school was potentially in violation of Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. “Congress authorizes grants to protect the security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States by teaching American students the foreign languages and cultural competencies required to develop a pool of experts to meet our national needs,” he wrote. 

Uneven emphasis: The letter flagged several areas of concern about the consortium, noting that the Duke-UNC CEMS curriculum “lack[s] balance as it offers very few, if any, programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East.” King flags the “considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.”

Weighing in: Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, tells Jewish Insider: “Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA) was enacted in 1965 to fund academic programs that would benefit national security by teaching students a foreign language, instructing them on international affairs, providing them with a comprehensive understanding of foreign countries, and training students for future roles in government or national security. For years, however, many university area studies programs [called National Resource Centers or NRCs] have misused these funds; as Middle Eastern Studies Centers, in particular, have become havens of biased, anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda.”

Lewin said that the DOE’s letter “suggests that the Department is at long last seriously reviewing the NRCs that receive Title VI funding and working to ensure that these federally funded programs advance the HEA’s national security goals.” The DOE demand “sends a loud and clear message to other federally funded NRCs that before they re-apply for Title VI funding, they had better be certain their programs are balanced and promote national security interests as the Higher Education Act requires.”

Background: The Duke-UNC program came under fire in the spring for a conference titled “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities.” Reports indicate that both participants and speakers made antisemitic and anti-Israel remarks — with some of those remarks captured on film. During a performance by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar, the artist told the crowd, “I can’t be antisemitic alone, try it with me together” and “Think of Mel Gibson. Go that antisemitic.” 

While King’s letter makes no mention of the conference, the inquiry began after Rep. George Holding (R-NC) sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in April calling for a federal investigation into the program.

What’s next? The Department of Education has given UNC until Sunday to respond with a plan and timeline for bringing the program into compliance with existing laws.