Jewish professor quits Columbia, citing ‘systematic’ anti-Israel bias on campus

NEW YORK — A Jewish professor at Columbia University in New York City has resigned due to “systematic” anti-Israel bias on campus.

Prof. Avi Friedman, an adjunct professor at Columbia’s business school, sent a letter last week to the university’s leadership announcing his resignation, he confirmed to The Times of Israel.

The letter was addressed to Columbia president Dr. Katrina Armstrong; Prof. Costis Maglaras, the dean of the business school; and Prof. Tano Santos, the director of the Heilbrunn Center, part of the business school.

Friedman said in the letter that he was resigning due to the campus climate since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in Israel.

The university’s response to the Hamas attack and campus protests “have made it impossible for my conscience to justify remaining at Columbia,” he wrote.

“Initially, I found myself making excuses: that these were misguided students, that they were merely exercising free speech,” he wrote. “But these rationalizations can no longer mask what has become inexcusable and systematic.”

Friedman condemned the university for having Joseph Massad, a professor who celebrated the Hamas attack on Israel, teach a course on Israel, calling the appointment “a complete abandonment of academic integrity and unbiased scholarship.”

Massad, a longtime anti-Zionist activist, on October 8, 2023, applauded the Hamas attack, calling it “a stunning victory” and “awesome,” and characterizing the victims as “cruel colonizers.”

Massad received tenure from Columbia in 1999 and has long taught about Israel and the Middle East. His Israel course, called “Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies,” drew widespread criticism ahead of the spring semester this year. New York Congressman Ritchie Torres said, “What’s next at Columbia? David Duke teaching a course on antiracism?”

Another professor, Lawrence Rosenblatt, said in December he was resigning due to the course. Days later, Columbia released a statement saying Massad’s comments about the Hamas attack “created pain for many in our community and contributed to the deep controversy on our campus.”

Friedman called the statement “inadequate and disingenuous.”

“His comments were not mere slip-ups,” Friedman wrote. “They represent his consistent worldview, one he continues to promote.”

“He stands as a celebrated figure in the intifada movement — a status that Columbia now continues to endorse,” Friedman said, adding that he had previously believed that it was important for him to remain on campus as a “Zionist voice.”

“However, the university has made its position clear by platforming and empowering a known radical antisemite to indoctrinate impressionable minds,” Friedman wrote. “Columbia has revealed itself to be complicit in this ideological agenda.”

Friedman added that Columbia’s role as an “epicenter of the intifada movement” in the US was not an accident, but resulted from “years of institutional cultivation.” (One of the student protest leaders who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” claimed in a recent court filing that the statement was partially based on university reading material.)

“Columbia’s values are fundamentally incompatible with my own. I can no longer maintain my association with this institution,” Friedman said.

Friedman taught a class called Credit Superhighway and received an award from the business school last year.

Columbia did not respond to a request for comment on Friedman’s resignation.

Protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict plunged Columbia into turmoil last year, culminating in an unsanctioned protest encampment on campus property, protesters’ forcible takeover of a campus building, and dozens of arrests. Israeli and Jewish students have said the protests and rhetoric, including from faculty, created a hostile and unsafe environment for them on campus.

The university administration struggled to tamp down tensions and implemented some countermeasures, including a task force on antisemitism. The university’s Office of Public Affairs has repeatedly condemned infractions by the protesters in recent weeks.

Masked demonstrators renewed their efforts with the start of the spring semester last month by protesting and disrupting an Israeli professor’s class on Israeli history — an alternative to Massad’s course. The university senate is considering a ban on masking on campus in response to the protesters.

Columbia’s anti-Israel protest alliance last week posted an “anonymous” video of activists blocking campus sewage lines and vandalizing a university building.

Last month, an anti-Israel professor left Columbia’s law school after a university investigation found that she had discriminated against Israelis.

The recent turmoil comes as the Trump administration pressures universities to take action against campus antisemitism.

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