‘Canary in the coalmine of totalitarianism’: how Columbia went from a home for Edward Said to a punching bag for Trump
The
university had a history of being a home for cutting-edge discourse on
Palestine – until it capitulated to the administration’s demands
Last week, Columbia University announced that it would cave to demands by the Trump administration
and adopt sweeping measures against pro-Palestinian activity on campus,
including new restrictions on protest and the takeover of an academic
department from faculty control.
The news sent
shock waves across higher education institutions nationwide for what
appeared a stunning capitulation to attacks on academic freedom and the
independence of the department of Middle Eastern, south Asian and
African studies, or Mesaas, which became a scapegoat for what the
administration viewed as a pro-Palestinian climate on campus. It was
also a remarkable turn of events for a university that had for years
been a home for cutting-edge academic discourse on Palestine, beginning
with the scholarship of Edward Said, a leading Palestinian intellectual.
It
was precisely that legacy that also made Columbia a target of campaigns
to censor Palestinian narratives – long before the protests that kicked
off after 7 October 2023 drew the attention of conservatives and others
who believe American campuses have become too leftwing. In the latest
twist in the drama engulfing the university, its interim president,
Katrina Armstrong, announced Friday she was stepping down. She is the
second president of the university to resign in eight months.
Columbia’s
announcement followed the Trump administration’s cancellation of $400m
in federal funding, mostly for scientific research, over what the White
House said was the university’s failure to protect faculty and students
“from antisemitic violence and harassment”. Notably, Columbia’s bending
to the government’s demands did not immediately restore the funding,
with Trump administration officials indicating they would continue to monitor adherence to the policies they forced on the university.
Columbia’s
submission prompted the condemnation of academic freedom advocates
nationwide, who warned of more government interference to come.
Edward Said in his office at Columbia University in 2003. Photograph: Jean-Christian Bourcart/Getty Images
“Columbia is the canary in the coalmine of totalitarianism,” said Sheldon Pollock,
a Columbia professor and former chair of the Mesaas department. “This
is a very worrying development across the board for university faculty.”
Trump
had demanded Columbia place the Mesaas department under “receivership” –
meaning, outside control, and the university has, at least in part,
agreed. The department played no formal role in last year’s protests,
and Said and other prominent scholars of Palestine,
like Rashid Khalidi, were more closely affiliated with other
departments. But Mesaas became a symbol for what was viewed as a
pro-Palestinian climate on campus that some faculty note is a function
of the university’s longstanding commitment to the humanities, which has
long attracted more progressive scholars.
“Columbia
has been associated with the Palestinian cause for a long time because
it was possible to say things on the Columbia campus that in many places
it was not possible to say,” Bruce Robbins, a professor of English
literature, who is Jewish, said. “People who were involved in Palestine –
in the issue, and in the study of the subject – found a home at
Columbia where they might not have found a home somewhere else.”
A history of backlash
Columbia
scholars have been studying the Middle East since the 18th century,
when the university appointed its first professor of “Oriental
languages”, as the academy at the time referred to the study of
non-western cultures. Two hundred years later, Said’s book Orientalism
became a foundational work of postcolonial scholarship. But it was his
writing about the Middle East, and Palestine in particular, that
established him as an icon for Palestinian scholarship.
In
one of his seminal works, The Question of Palestine, Said wrote that
discussion of the Arab world, and Palestinians in particular, was “so
confused and unfairly slanted in the west that a great effort has to be
made to see things as, for better or worse, they actually are”.
Elsewhere, he noted that there was no “permission to narrate” the
Palestinian experience in western discourse, and that those who tried
were punished. In dozens of articles and books, Said forcefully insisted
on the need for Palestinians to reclaim dominant narratives of their
history, fundamentally reframing what was then a discourse largely
echoing the Israeli perspective.
Rashid Khalidi speaks at the Geneva press club in in Switzerland on 24 November 2003. Photograph: Laurent Gilliéron/EPA
But what made his work so groundbreaking also made him, and Columbia, where he spent his entire career, a target.
On multiple occasions, Said’s office at Columbia was raided and vandalized. The FBI kept tabs
on him. And he was often the subject of smear campaigns, including an
article in the conservative Jewish magazine Commentary, which memorably
called him “Professor of Terror”.
Said’s
career coincided with – and likely contributed to – the gradual
shifting of American students’ views on Israel, particularly following
the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the two intifadas, or Palestinian
uprisings. When he died in 2003, the backlash shifted on to Columbia
itself, and other critics of Zionism who had found a home there, like
the Mesaas professors Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad. (Neither responded to an interview request.)
In
2004, four Columbia undergraduates were interviewed in a documentary,
Columbia Unbecoming, in which they accused three university professors
with what at the time was the Middle East and Asian languages and
cultures department, or Mealac – including Dabashi and Massad – of
unfair treatment and intimidation over their pro-Israel views. The
documentary was produced by the David Project, a Boston-based group
created to counter negative narratives about Israel on US campuses. The
documentary ignited a sweeping controversy and calls on Columbia to fire
its faculty, including from the then congressman Anthony Weiner.
Some of the students featured in the film, as well as the conservative
journalist Bari Weiss, who was an undergraduate at Columbia at the time,
launched an initiative called Columbians for Academic Freedom, which
represented students who said they had been intimidated by their
professors for their views.
Following the
Columbia Unbecoming controversy, the university convened a panel to
investigate the allegations and found no misconduct. But it also
reorganized the Mealac department, tacking on south Asian and later
African studies and cross-appointing faculty from other disciplines to
expand its scope. Now called Mesaas, it remained a cosmopolitan home for
critical theory, the academic critique of social structures and systems
of power. But it is only one of several venues in which Columbia
students are exposed to scholarship on Palestine, which is also hosted
by the university’s Middle East Institute and Columbia’s Center for
Palestine Studies, established in 2010 as the first of its kind at a US
university. (The center is also to be placed under receivership.)
Antisemitism accusations
Since
Israel’s war in Gaza started after the 7 October Hamas attacks,
Columbia has been at the forefront of the debate over alleged
antisemitism on campuses. A conversation that had previously centered on
“tolerance” of pro-Israel views had made way for mounting allegations
of antisemitism, a strategy that has been increasingly pursued by
pro-Israel groups. Such allegations have resulted in congressional
hearings, several lawsuits, the former president Minouche Shafik’s resignation, faculty and student expulsions, and the targeting by immigration authorities of foreign students who expressed pro-Palestinian views.
There was internal pushback as well, including a letter
last month signed by about 200 Columbia faculty calling on the
university to implement “concrete action” to protect the Jewish
community on campus. That letter included many of the same demands later
presented by the Trump administration, including a mask ban and the
adoption of a definition
of antisemitism that critics argue wrongly conflates some criticisms of
Israel with antisemitism. It also asked for an investigation of Massad,
who faced backlash and calls on the university to remove him after an
op-ed he published in the Electronic Intifada a day after the Hamas
attacks, referring to scenes from the attacks as “awesome” and
“stunning”.
People are beginning to wonder who is vetting their syllabus, who may be listening in class and reporting on them
Sheldon PollockThe
letter also called for measures against faculty who participated in
last year’s encampment, the expulsion of students who “disrupt
teaching”, and the hiring of at least three tenured “pro-Israel” faculty
at Mesaas “to allow ideological diversity and to combat indoctrination
against the west and Israel under the guise of ‘academic independence’”.
(It did not, however, call for the department to be put under
receivership. The Guardian reached out to the four faculty who led the
letter effort but got no response. The only Mesaas faculty member who
signed it, the retired professor Nehama Bershon, declined to comment.)
Last
year, Robbins, the English professor, taught a class on literary
representations of atrocity. The syllabus included a week dedicated to
the war in Gaza,
which happened to coincide with the protest encampment. Robbins took
his students to visit the encampment, offering those who didn’t want to
go the possibility to opt out. The timing was a “historical
coincidence”, he said. “It would almost be crazy not to take advantage
of this.” In response, two students filed a formal complaint, accusing
Robbins of interfering with their education by holding the class at the
encampment. The university has launched an investigation, and Robbins is
“awaiting judgment”, he says.
“I got into the profession thinking that making students uncomfortable is part of my job description.”
A canary in the mine
Many
Columbia faculty and students were away for spring break last week and
were stunned by the news that the university would bend to the Trump
administration’s demands. On Tuesday, the American Association of
University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, two
unions representing faculty, sued the Trump administration on behalf of
their members at Columbia over the cancellation of federal funding.
Faculty have also talked about a possible strike. Some scholars outside
Columbia have called for a boycott of the university.
Pollock
said that a chill was sweeping through faculty. “People are beginning
to wonder who is vetting their syllabus, who may be listening in class
and reporting on them; colleagues who are green card holders have looked
at the Mahmoud Khalil
attack as a test case,” he said. (The Guardian reached out to several
scholars affiliated with Mesaas and other departments, but few agreed to
talk on the record, with one senior professor citing a “dangerous”
situation on campus.)
What is clear to all is
that this is just the beginning, said Jeremy Young, a historian and
higher-education advocate who until recently worked as the director of
state and higher-education policy at PEN America.
“It’s
a terrible precedent to set,” he said of the Trump administration’s
demands and Columbia’s response; Young emphasized he was not speaking
for PEN. “The government is acting like a bully, and if a bully gets
what they want from using bullying tactics, they’re just going to keep
going until someone stands up to them. And that wasn’t Columbia, but I
hope it’ll be another institution.”