Finalist for Columbia Middle East Teaching Job Participated in Anti-Israel Encampment at Princeton
“has been at the center of anti-Israel campus activism”
This field is just full of people who hate Israel. How do you fix this?
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Finalist for Columbia Middle East Job Was Put on Probation at Princeton for Holding Class in Anti-Israel Encampment
A finalist to become Columbia University’s Edward Said chair in Arab Studies was put on probation at Princeton University for holding class inside an anti-Israel encampment.
Max Weiss, a professor of history and an outspoken advocate of an academic boycott of Israel, led a walkout of his History of Palestine/Israel class in April 2024 into McCosh Courtyard, where an anti-Israel encampment was established earlier that day. He taught his lesson from there, making him the first faculty member to lecture from the encampment, the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported. Weiss told the publication he hopes the illegal encampment will one day be commemorated with “a plaque.”
Princeton placed Weiss on probation through the 2024-2025 school year for the move, which dean of the faculty Gene Jarrett described as “unprofessional,” “coercive,” and “intimidatory” in a notice to Weiss, according to the PAW. Weiss’s career advanced anyway—Princeton granted Weiss tenure around the same time he was notified that he had been placed on probation.
Weiss has been at the center of anti-Israel campus activism. When 13 students and 2 faculty members stormed and occupied Princeton’s Clio Hall in April 2024 “in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza,” Weiss served as their spokesman. He was filmed standing on the steps of the building, bullhorn in hand, leading a call and response with assembled activists cheering on the occupiers.
“We will stay here until the student demands are met,” he proclaimed. The professors inside the building left voluntarily and the 13 students were arrested.
Weiss is one of four finalists for the Columbia job, according to a Jan. 22 notice to graduate students and faculty members in Columbia’s Department of History, the Washington Free Beacon reported. He was scheduled to give a presentation on Jan. 28 as part of the selection process, according to the notice, which came seven months after Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore the federal grant funding that had been put on pause in large part due to the school’s response to its own encampment.
Weiss joined Princeton in 2010 and led an initiative in 2014 inviting tenured faculty at Princeton to sign a petition calling on the university to “divest from all companies that contribute to or profit from Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
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Comments
So basically he’s in line to be the next president of Columbia Uni; his credentials fit their hate agenda perfectly.
How did it come to pass that this person is a finalist for a chaired professorship – and that at a prestigious university. Clearly, there is a real lack of sense here. Max Weiss is certainly free to voice his opinions but his actions should have consequences. Even Princeton saw that.
It’s only appropriate for a supporter of terrorism to be a finalist for a chair named after a board member of a terrorist organization, whose entire career was built on promoting antisemitism.
And whose “Palestinian” identity hinged on the fact that his parents traveled from their home in Egypt to Jerusalem, because his mother wanted to give birth at a Jewish hospital. They returned home as soon as mother and child were discharged from the hospital.
Deport this antisemitic, traitor to Gaza.
Colombia is simply emulating the Iranian strategy of promising reform while promoting the opposite. They are incapable of negotiating in good faith, and appeasement will accomplish nothing, so anyone who gives them one more dime of taxpayer money is just as corrupt as they are. The President is being suckered along, and risks losing credibility just like his predecessor did with the deceitful mullahs. Make an example of them that will inspire fear in their colleagues, and this conniving will cease. Otherwise nothing will truly change in Academia, and we will wind up having to write off another generation.