Mohamed Abdou, a former Columbia University professor terminated for praising Hamas and advocating for jihad following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, is scheduled to speak at an event organized by New York University students on Tuesday. 

According to an Instagram flyer posted by Shut It Down NYU, a non-registered coalition of anti-Israel NYU students, faculty and staff, Abdou’s lecture — titled “The Student Movement is Dead. What Now?” — is the latest in a campus discussion series, the “Death to the Akademy” tour. His talk will evaluate the “successes and failures of the post Al Aqsa Flood [Oct. 7 attacks] student movement for Palestine,” according to the flyer, which features promotional art that depicts keffiyah-clad terrorists holding guns.

“NYU strongly condemns the brazen use of threatening language, as well as the imagery of violence in promotional posts for this event,” Wiley Norvell, senior vice president for university relations and public affairs, told Jewish Insider. “The group sponsoring the event is not an organization affiliated with the university, nor are the event or the invited speaker in any way supported by NYU. We are investigating several potential university policy violations associated with these posts.”

The event post does not identify a location for the event. As of Monday night, it was unclear whether the event will be held on campus or not. 

“Let us engage in jihad,” Abdou said in March, addressing Union Theological Seminary students by video. In the clip, he praised the May 2025 assassination of two Israeli Embassy employees outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. He went on to glorify the gunman, Elias Rodriguez, saying he “took action” against “two Zionists,” and encouraged students to similarly “be a threat.”

Abdou was one of several Columbia University faculty members named by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) during her April 2024 questioning of then-President Minouche Shafik. Stefanik asked Shafik about Abdou’s position at the university after he posted on social media on Oct. 11, 2023, “I’m with Hamas & Hezbollah & Islamic Jihad.” Shafik responded, “He will never work at Columbia again.” 

At Columbia, Abdou — who was active in Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment protesting the Gaza war — taught a class in the Middle East studies department called “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition in SWAN” in the spring 2024 semester, a graduate-level course on “(neo)colonial/(neo)imperial Euro-American informed modernity,” according to the course description.

“I believe in an Islam that hates America,” Abdou wrote in a Substack piece last summer. 

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is no stranger to policy conversations about homeland security and terrorist attacks. As a former CIA analyst and an official at the State Department and the Pentagon, national security has been a top issue for her since her first campaign for Congress, in 2018. 

Now she must apply her policy expertise to a tragedy that is immensely personal: the attack earlier this month at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., where a heavily armed man with ties to the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah drove an explosive-laden car into the building and opened fire, before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No one else was killed.

“As a senator, I’ve had to rush home for five or six mass shooting events. This one was by far closest to home. Knowing the actual people, knowing the head of security, who was the one who secured my family’s events a month and a half ago, it was just particularly personal,” Slotkin, who is Jewish, told Jewish Insider in an interview in her Capitol Hill office last week.

“I think about if my own family had been in the building. I think about my own staff [who] had family members in the building. It just brought it home in a very different way. The line between who I am as a person and who I am as a leader got completely blurred and still is,” she added. 

In an emotional conversation with JI, Slotkin proposed ways for Congress and the federal government to better respond to the threat of violent, antisemitic extremism. But even as she discussed ways to take action, she spoke with alarm about the growing prevalence of antisemitism on both sides of the aisle, which she described as out of control. 

And she was clearly shaken by an attack that was potentially inches away from being much worse.

“I think it could have been one of the worst mass killing events in U.S. history were it not for the private security that happens to be very top-notch there, and everyone doing their jobs almost perfectly,” she said. “I think it just has contributed to a feeling for many inside the state that the very things that make Jewish life valuable are becoming the soft targets.” 

During Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s confirmation hearing earlier this month, which took place days after the Temple Israel attack, Slotkin asked the former Oklahoma senator, a Republican, to work with her on improving the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program. She told JI that her conversations with him have continued.

“I don’t think we’re accurately staffed to the threat in the federal government,” she said. “My personal feeling is we’re at the level where we need, between FBI and DHS, a task force on countering antisemitic hate … Right now, we don’t have a special unit where the officers and the intel professionals get really deep on some of the the particularities of Jewish issues.” 

Congress allocated $274.5 million in 2025 to help nonprofits pay for security expenses, a figure Jewish groups believe is far too low. Slotkin wants to see more money for the program, but she also wants to improve the process for the organizations that are approved to receive those funds. 

“I think making that program, which is a very important program not just to the Jewish community, but making that more streamlined, is our responsibility,” she said. “The Temple Israel folks will tell you in detail how cumbersome that grant program is, that even when you get the money, there’s so much paperwork, so many hoops, such a lag, that it’s actually not meeting modern-day timelines.” 

Mullin said similarly in his confirmation hearing that “the amount of paperwork once you’re approved to get the funding flowing, and then the paperwork that’s followed up on is way too encompassing,” and vowed to work to “streamline” the program.

Temple Israel is one of the largest synagogues in the country and one of the best-protected. Not all institutions will be able to offer that same level of security, Slotkin warned. 

“​​Smaller institutions are just left to figure out how they could possibly protect themselves when Temple Israel became a threat,” she said. 

Slotkin is also pushing for a pilot program connected to the grant program that would give “quick reimbursement dollars for local law enforcement to help secure these locations.”

“The local law enforcement communities know how to help secure a location and know how to help secure on High Holidays or on Shabbat or all those things, but they’re often overstretched themselves,” Slotkin said. “If you pay that local police force for their extra time, it brings dollars into that police force [and] provides professional security for Jewish institutions. Nothing’s perfect, but it all just adds another layer.” 

The real issue, Slotkin pointed out, is antisemitism — and she said the playbook used to address extremism before a person becomes radicalized should be better applied to fighting antisemitism. 

“I think there’s a much bigger problem and question about, How do you deal with rampant antisemitism that’s just become normalized on both the left and the right, and sort of stop what we call the ladder of escalation when a person first starts? This is a very classic radicalization ladder that we see for groups like Al-Qaida,” said Slotkin.

She described the ladder like this: a “normal civilian” sitting on their computer who gets radicalized online, then posts hateful content to their profiles, before vandalizing a Jewish institution and perhaps getting into verbal or physical fights, which might then give way to plotting extremist violence. 

“We have to figure out how to stop and intervene before people start climbing that ladder,” she said. 

“I think [the attack] contributed to this feeling for some that this problem is completely out of control, but the threat is now coming from both the left and the right and from mentally ill people in the middle, and we are not positioned properly to deal with that threat,” Slotkin said. “I don’t think anyone in the Jewish community feels like we have figured out the best way, in particular, to deal with left-wing antisemitism. The Jewish community is pretty used to dealing with white supremacy and threats from the right.”

One day after the attack, Slotkin attended Shabbat services with the Temple Israel community. The gathering was held at Shenandoah County Club, which is located across the street from Temple Israel and serves the Chaldean community, a group of Iraqi Christians. A ballroom in the country club was where parents, teachers and children gathered when they were evacuated from the synagogue during the attack. 

Amid the bleak news that followed the attack, Slotkin wanted people to remember what the Chaldeans did. 

“I literally could not contain my emotion when the community was giving a standing ovation as they brought in the religious leaders, Iraqi American men in religious garb, to thank them,” said Slotkin. “In our hour of greatest need, they did not flinch. And I think Jews in our community for three generations will remember that.” 

The deputy inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Adam Kaplan, said on Tuesday that his office will investigate U.N. staff for ties to Hamas, noting that previous vetting requirements by the aid agency exempted employees of the international body. 

Following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, USAID’s Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) — responsible for conducting independent auditing and investigation of USAID and other foreign assistance programs — identified Gaza as a “high-risk for potential diversion and misuse of U.S.-funded assistance,” and has initiated investigations into several partners over connections to terrorism and fraud “to ensure humanitarian assistance in Gaza does not fall into the hands of Hamas and other foreign terrorist organizations.” 

Previously, the agency has looked into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides services to Palestinians, uncovering evidence in 2025 connecting three “current or former” UNRWA employees to the Oct. 7 attacks and affiliating 14 other “current or former” UNRWA employees with Hamas. UNRWA also itself dismissed nine of its employees for their potential participation in the attacks.

During a House Oversight and Intelligence Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday discussing wasteful foreign assistance spending, Kaplan noted that USAID “required partner vetting of organization staff” to ensure that “terrorists don’t get our money,” however, that action “exempted U.N. staff.” 

“To address this gap, USAID IG is investigating U.N. staff for ties to Hamas to ensure U.S. taxpayers do not pay their salaries,” Kaplan said. 

He also noted a lack of transparent access to information. Describing ongoing investigations, Kaplan said his department has sought information from “five different U.N. agencies on 10 investigations,” but that response times spanned six months to two years, something he called “unacceptable.”

“We encounter nonstop obstruction by the U.N. to share information about potential misuse of U.S. funds,” Kaplan said. “USAID heavily relied on award recipients operating in remote locations to self-disclose fraud allegations of all award recipients. The least transparent is the United Nations.”

“We urge the State Department to implement a clause mandating that awards to the U.N. provide us with access to information,” he added. 

Kaplan also said a major issue was that U.S. Anti-Terrorism Certifications (ATC), a legal promise required from organizations receiving U.S. foreign aid that they are not connected to terrorism and will not use U.S. funds to support terrorist groups, “applied only to grants, not contracts,” something that shielded contractors from being investigated over terrorist links. 

“This certification allowed the Department of Justice and Office of the Inspector General to bring cases against grantees for concealing past support to Iran and Hezbollah,” Kaplan said. “Inexplicably, however, contractors were not required to make the same representation.” 

Kaplan said that bad actors have “tried to exploit gaps” in the past, referencing a case in the Southern District of New York where a “British NGO [that] had falsified its past support provided to Hezbollah and Iranian affiliates” was dismissed because the office was not in the U.S.

“We brought the case, the judge in New York said, ‘Well, there’s really no ties. It’s a British firm, and other than the actual contract grant, there’s no ties to the United States. They don’t have an office in the U.S.,’” Kaplan said. “The case was dismissed. You have no idea how much that frustrated us, because it was a great case, and this contractor lied about his past affiliation with terrorist actors.” 

Pomona College opened an investigation on Thursday after an on-campus event held Wednesday commemorating the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks was disrupted by four masked and keffiyah-clad individuals who barged in chanting “Zionists not welcome here.”

“While we have not yet identified the individuals, we are examining video footage taken during the event, as well as security footage to determine how access could have been gained,” Gabrielle Starr, the college’s president, wrote in a campus-wide email. “We are also reviewing our security protocols for on-campus events.” 

“Antisemitic hate cannot be tolerated here,” Starr wrote. 

The memorial, sponsored by Hillel in a university building and scheduled on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the attacks, featured a talk by Yoni Viloga, who survived the attack on his family’s home in Kibbutz Mefalsim. 

“The event was meant to be an opportunity for students to reflect on what happened two years ago. The disruption was very unsettling, I saw students with tears in their eyes,” Bethany Slater, director of Pomona Hillel, told Jewish Insider. The disruption, which also included chants of “Zionism is still a colonial ideology” and “You’re all complicit in genocide,” lasted about two minutes, until campus safety officers arrived. 

While the liberal arts college in Claremont, Calif., has faced several anti-Israel demonstrations since the Oct. 7 attacks, Wednesday evening’s protest was the first to occur in an expressly Jewish space on campus. It also came days after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-release deal. 

“This is the first time Hillel has been targeted. Demonstrations have always been directed at the [university] administration because they were calling for [Boycott, Divest and Sanctions measures],” said Slater. “This is the first time a Jewish event has been targeted at all, which is just shocking that it would happen now in the context of the ceasefire agreement.” 

Pomona College is among the dozens of universities currently under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for its alleged failure to address campus antisemitism.

Pomona administrators have responded quickly to a number of anti-Israel incidents that have occurred on campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. In April 2024, police officers dressed in riot gear arrested at least 20 masked students after some 150 people stormed the university president’s office and refused to leave for more than three hours. Organized by the student-led group Pomona Divest Apartheid, the demonstrators from Pomona, as well as the affiliated Scripps and Pitzer Colleges, were protesting the removal of an anti-Israel “mock apartheid wall” on campus. 

The following October, when an on-campus demonstration — which involved anti-Israel students taking over and shutting off access to a campus building — took place on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, Pomona suspended 10 involved students through the end of the 2024-25 academic year.