Prominent historian cancels course at Columbia University over Trump deal
Historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, has cancelled plans to teach this fall in response to the school’s recent agreement with the Trump administration.
Khalidi made the announcement in an open letter to Columbia’s acting president published in the Guardian on Friday.Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer” but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June,” Khalidi wrote.
Columbia announced last week that it would pay more than $200m in a settlement with the federal government after the White House claimed the university failed to adequately address alleged antisemitism on campus amid protests over the Israel-Gaza war, and threatened to pull significant funding.
The Trump administration has accused several major US academic institutions of failing to tamp down on antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests and sought to cut millions of dollars in support if the schools fail to submit to the government’s demands.
Columbia, which was the site of major protests over the war in Gaza, has served as a test case in the administration’s efforts to gain greater control over higher education in the US.