The College Fix

Had taught course on decolonialism and queerness

Students at Columbia’s Union Theological Seminary want the rehiring of a professor who posted “I’m with Hamas & Hezbollah & Islamic Jihad” on social media shortly after the October 7 attack against Israel.

According to the students’ petition, modern Arab studies professor Mohamed Abdou’s statement merely was an expression of “support of the movement to liberate Palestine.”

At a congressional hearing in April, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said Abdou “will never work at Columbia again,” the Columbia Spectator reports.

Indeed, Abdou (pictured) told a media outlet in mid-May that his teaching contract with Columbia was set to expire at the end of that month anyway.

The petition contends the “targeting” of Abdou by Columbia “is in keeping with the broader trend, whereby people of color, especially Muslims, Arabs, and those not afforded the protections of tenured employment are most vulnerable to the McCarthyist backlash against pro-Palestinian speech.”

“Part of the legacy of [the Union Theological Seminary] is how it has been a meeting point and place of cultivation for many progressive movements in theology and its intersection with the public square,” the petition continues. “Black Theology, Latin American Liberationist Theology, Womanism, Feminism, and Queer Theologies have grown in the UTS community, and students come here for the opportunity to journey into how their faith can be active in the world around them.”

This past spring Abdou taught the graduate-level “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition in SWANA” (“SWANA” being a “decolonial” term for “South West Asian/North African”), a course on “(neo)colonial/(neo)imperial Euro-American informed modernity.”

According to the course description, the class delved into

[…] the continuing impact, since 1492, of a (neo)colonial/(neo)imperial Euro-American informed modernity animated by (neo)liberal-Enlightenment values (free will/humanity, secularism, racial capitalism) and individualist identity politics on past and contemporary conceptualizations of family, kinship, and friendship in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities within the context of settler-colonial societies (as the U.S./Canada) as well as in postcolonial nations and regions (as Southwest Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) that arguably never underwent adequate decolonization.

The course was highlighted earlier this year by The Daily Wire as one of the more “bizarre” 2024 college spring semester offerings.

For more insight into Abdou’s views, check out @thestustustudio’s video compilation of his remarks at this spring’s “CUNY 4 Palestine Teach-in.”

MORE: Noose found at Columbia-affiliated seminary conveniently keeps race/hate narrative alive

IMAGE: Jessica Schwalb/X

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