‘Columbia endorses the intifada,’ says resigning Jewish professor

“Columbia’s values are fundamentally incompatible with my own,” writes Adjunct Business Professor Avi Friedman.

By World Israel News Staff

A celebrated Jewish professor at Columbia University‘s business school has resigned, saying that the institution’s systemic antisemitism was the reason for his departure.

Adjunct Associate Professor of Business Avi Friedman cited the appointment of an anti-Israel activist who justifies Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians as the catalyst for his resignation.

“The university’s decision to appoint Joseph Massad to teach a class on Zionism represents a complete abandonment of academic integrity and unbiased scholarship,” wrote Friedman in his resignation letter, which was published by the Washington Free Beacon. “This appointment was no oversight—it represents a deliberate choice that aligns with the university’s ideology.”

Massad, Friedman added, “stands as a celebrated figure in the intifada movement—a status that Columbia now continues to endorse.”

Just one day after the October 7 massacre, Massad published an article praising the terror onslaught.

“Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them,” he wrote, referring to the Hamas rampage as “innovative” and “awesome.”

Friedman noted that Columbia requires its staff to undergo bias and sensitivity training, ostensibly so that students will not suffer from racially motivated hatred on campus.

However, Friedman said, it’s clear that numerous statements by Massad violate Columbia’s own policies around ethnic discrimination.

Yet Massad has never been seriously punished for his remarks, which foment hatred and hostility towards Jewish and Israeli students and staff, Friedman wrote.

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

Since the October 7th attacks, Columbia has seen an explosion of anti-Israel and antisemitic activity on its campus.

Former Columbia president Minouche Shafik was forced to resign due to her failure to curb raucous campus protests, which rendered the campus a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli faculty and students.