Columbia leaders doubling down on a Hamas-supporting lecturer caused me to quit: ex prof

Columbia “doubling down” on a Hamas-supporting professor shows its leadership do not want to stop “radicalizing kids,” according to one professor who quit in disgust.Columbia Business School’s Avi Friedman resigned after the school announced Professor Joseph Massad will teach a course on Zionism, called “Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies,” this spring. Massad previously called Hamas Oct.7th terror attack on Israel “astounding” and “awesome,” leading to accusations of him condoning and supporting terrorism — but the university has stood by him since. Massad has been a tenured professor at Columbia since 1999, but his latest appointment confirms moves the university’s efforts to combat antisemitism were merely performative in Friedman’s eyes. “They appointed this committee on anti-Semitism, and I don’t know what they came up with.” Friedman told The Post in his first interview since leaving.“I don’t think the change is coming from inside.

The inside is completely hollowed out, and it’s full of people that do not want to change.”“When they gave Massad the class to teach on Zionism… that was deliberate… There are smart people sitting in a room and saying actually this is fine.”Friedman, an award winning professor, cites mismanagement of the pro-Palestine encampment in the quad and a general lack of civil dialogue as contributing factors to his departure from the Ivy League school. But the new class for Massad, whose title is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, was a step too far. Friedman said it “represents a deliberate choice which aligns with the university’s ideology,” and “represents a complete abandonment of academic integrity and unbiased scholarship,” in his scathing open letter to interim university president Katrina Armstrong announcing his departure from the school. “You have these university professors that are radicalizing kids,” Friedman ad...