March 2023
Open Letter to President Bollinger and President-Designate Shafik Regarding a Possible Global
Center in Israel
Open Letter to President Bollinger and President-Designate Shafik:
We understand that Columbia University is considering opening a new Global Center in
Israel. This expansion of Columbia’s network of Global Centers raises significant issues relating
to academic freedom, the university’s compliance with U.S. non-discrimination law when
operating internationally, and the role of a university in global politics. As members of the
Columbia faculty, we ask that you provide meaningful responses to the concerns enumerated in
the attached Bill of Particulars before proceeding further with this Center.
Signed,
- Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfeld Trent Professor Emerita, English and Comparative
Literature, Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
- Yinon Cohen, Yosef H. Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies, Department of
Sociology
- Barbara J. Fields, Professor of History, Department of History
- James Schamus, Professor of Professional Practice, School of the Arts
- Shelly Silver, Professor, Visual Arts, School of the Arts
- Michael Thaddeus, Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics
- Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History,
Department of History
- Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor, Anthropology, Department of
Anthropology; Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
- Premilla Nadasen, Professor of History, Barnard College
- Michael Harris, Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics
- Hannah Chazin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
- Ralph Ghoche, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Barnard College
- Patricia Dailey, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Department of
English and Comparative Literature
- Wael Hallaq, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Department of Middle
Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- Jack Halberstam, The David Feinson Professor of the Humanities, Department of English
and Comparative Literature
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- Celia E. Naylor, Professor of Africana Studies and History, Department of Africana Studies,
Barnard College
- Bruno Bosteels, Professor, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
- Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English, Professor of Africana Studies
- Elizabeth Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Art History, Barnard College
- Ross Hamilton, Professor of English, Barnard College
- Wayne Proudfoot, Professor Emeritus of Religion, Department of Religion
- Zainab Bahrani, Edith Porada Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Department of Art
History & Archaeology
- Vani Natarajan, Departmental and Program Librarian for the Humanities and Global
Studies, Barnard College
- Nick Bartlett, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures and
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
- Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Department of History
- Gregory Mann, Professor of History, Department of History
- Jeffrey Fagan, Professor of Law, School of Law
- Susan Bernofsky, Professor of Writing and Director, Literary Translation at Columbia,
School of Arts
- Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and
Cultures
- Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History, Emerita, Department of History
- Nadia Abu El-Haj, Ann Whitney Olin Professor, Department of Anthropology
- George Saliba, Professor Emeritus, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and
African Studies
- Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and
Comparative Literature
- Sailakshmi Ramgopal, Assistant Professor, Department of History
- Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
- Brinkley Messick, Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Department
of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
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- D. Max Moerman, Professor and Chair, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures,
Barnard College
- Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Department of
English and Comparative Literature
- Nico Baumbach, Associate Professor, School of Arts
- Natasha Lightfoot, Associate Professor, History, Department of History
- Jennifer Wenzel, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature;
Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
- Zoe Crossland, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia Anthropology Department
- Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian, Italian Department
- Jean Howard, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and
Comparative Literature
- Debbie Becher, Associate Professor, Sociology, Barnard College
- Christia Mercer, Professor, Philosophy, Department of Philosophy
- Karen Seeley, Lecturer, Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
- Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Department of Art
History and Archaeology
- Brent Hayes Edwards, Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
Department of English and Comparative Literature
- Elizabeth Bernstein, Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Professor of
Sociology, Department of Sociology, Barnard College
- Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law, School of Law
- Courtney Bender, Tremaine Professor of Religion, Department of Religion
- Kaiama L Glover, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies, Department
of Africana Studies, Barnard College
- Bette Gordon, Professor, School of the Arts/Film
- Susan S. Witte, Professor, School of Social Work
- Gray Tuttle, Lelia Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibet, Department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures
- Louisa Gilbert, Professor, School of Social Work
- Elwin Wu, Professor, School of Social Work
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- Nabila El-Bassel, Professor, School of Social Work
- Louisa Gilbert, Professor, School of Social Work
- Alexander Alberro, Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology
- Alissa Davis, Associate Professor, School of Social Work
- Marc Van De Mieroop, Professor of History, Department of History
- Martha Howell, Miriam Champion Professor, Emerita, of History, Department of History
- Gil Eyal, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology
- Brian Boyd, Senior Lecturer & Director of Museum Anthropology, Department
of Anthropology
- Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor Arts of Islam, Department of Art History and
Archaeology
- Timothy Mitchell, Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African
Studies
- Felicity Scott, Professor, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
- Yannik Thiem, Associate Professor of Religion, Department of Religion
- Walter Frisch, Professor of Music, Department of Music
- Mary McLeod, Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
- Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative
Literature, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- Paige West, Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
- Rebecca Jordan-Young, Ann Whitney Olin Professor and Chair, Department of Women's,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
- Kathryn S Poots, Senior Lecturer, Columbia University
- Najam Haider, Professor of Religion and Chair, Barnard College
- Anupama Rao, Professor of History, Barnard College; Department of Middle Eastern,
South Asian and African Studies
- Andre Ivanoff, Professor, School of Social Work
- Audra Simpson, Professor, Department of Anthropology
- Mana Kia, Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African
Studies
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- Josh Whitford, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
- Nina Berman, Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism
- Alisa Solomon, Professor, School of Journalism
- Michael T Taussig, Class of 1933 Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Department of
Anthropology
- Nara Milanich, Professor of History, Barnard; Chair, FAC, Latin America Global Centers
- J. Blake Turner, Assistant Professor of Clinical Social Science, Division of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Katherine Franke, James L. Dohr Professor of Law, School of Law
- Nan A Rothschild, Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology
- Tey Meadow, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology
- Deborah Paredez, Associate Professor of Professional Practice, School of the Arts
- Marwa Elshakry, Associate Professor of History, Department of History
- Thea Abu El-Haj, Professor, Department of Education, Barnard College
- Ann Douglas, Professor Emeritus
- Manan Ahmed, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Amy Chazkel, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Seth J. Prins, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman
School of Public Health
___________________________________________________________________________
Bill of Particulars
Relating to a Possible
Columbia University Global Center in Israel
March 2023
Preamble:
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With the understanding that President Bollinger and Columbia University’s Board of
Trustees have taken significant steps toward the creation of a Global Center in Israel, serious
concerns related thereto have arisen among a range of persons and entities affiliated with
Columbia University. While Columbia’s faculty and students support the overall mission of the
Global Centers’ programs to “promote and facilitate the collaborative and impactful engagement
of the University’s faculty, students, and alumni with the world, to enhance understanding,
address global challenges, and advance knowledge and its exchange,” many members of the
Columbia community believe that “the objective of connecting the local with the global, to create
opportunities for shared learning and to deepen the nature of global dialogue,” would not be
furthered. Indeed, those objectives would be undermined by the creation of a Global Center in
Israel.
There is already a Columbia Global Center well-established in the region, only 70
miles/111 kilometers from Tel Aviv. If the idea behind establishing a global center is to establish
a point of intellectual connectivity in a specific region, the Amman Center already fulfills that
role. A center in Tel Aviv will not be able to replicate it. At the same time, the state of Israel,
through formal and informal law, policy, and practice, refuses to abide by international human
rights laws and norms both domestically and in its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories.
What follows is a set of fundamental questions related to the potential establishment of a
Columbia Global Center in Israel. These questions concern the ways such a Center would
undermine the mission of Columbia’s Global Centers programs through its violations of
university and official U.S. policies of non-discrimination in education and the protection of
freedom of expression.
1. We are particularly concerned that Columbia University would take the bold step of
opening a Global Center in Tel Aviv at this particular moment, with the newly seated
government that is widely, if not almost universally, regarded as the most conservative,
reactionary, right wing government in Israel’s history. It will be impossible for the University to
announce the establishment of this new Global Center and avoid creating the impression that it
is endorsing or legitimizing the new government.
2. How can Columbia University establish a Global Center in a state that will ban entry to
many current and future faculty and students on the basis of their national, ethnic, or religious
identity? As a matter of policy, the state of Israel bans entry to citizens of Lebanon, Syria,
Libya, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the vast majority of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. It is worth noting that the decision to approve a Global Center in Amman relied, to a
significant degree, on the fact that the state of Jordan would not bar entry to nationals from
other countries, including Israel. Columbia University would not have established a Global
Center in a country that denied entry to Israelis; similarly, it should not establish a significant
institutional footprint in country that routinely bans entry to Arabs, including Palestinians, and
Muslims. There are already multiple examples across a range of Columbia departments of
graduate students denied entry to Israel and the Occupied Territories because of the students’
ethnic or national identity. This includes U.S. citizens of Arab origin.
3. How can Columbia University establish a Global Center in a state that will ban entry to
many Columbia faculty and students on account of their political speech and research? It is well
known that Columbia faculty, while traveling on university business, have been denied entry to
the state of Israel, deported, and banned from reentry on account of their political speech critical
of Israel’s human rights record. Given that an Israeli court has upheld the domestic law that
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authorizes a denial of entry to Israel for political reasons, there is no doubt that many Columbia
faculty and students will be banned from entering Israel to visit and/or use a Columbia Global
Center. Moreover, Israeli immigration officials rely on privately maintained and slanderous
blacklists to determine eligibility for entry to Israel at the border, and hundreds of Columbia
faculty and students are named on such lists. In at least one case, records of such a denial of
entry were passed on to US Immigration and served as the basis for a false claim that the
faculty member in question had a “criminal record.”
4. How can a Tel Aviv center operate as a Global Center when events held there cannot
include scholars, students, speakers, or other participants who come from banned countries?
One of the stated missions of the Global Centers program is “to drive teaching and research
across disciplinary boundaries, in partnership with experts and scholars from their
regions.” This would be impossible in Tel Aviv since most regional scholars, including those in
the nearby Occupied Palestinian Territories, would be prohibited from entering. Recent Israeli
policies have extended to the denial of visas and refusal of entry even to U.S. nationals of
Palestinian origin who hold teaching positions at Palestinian universities.
5. What topics, in addition to which persons, will be banned from discussion at a Columbia
Global Center in Israel? Israeli policy directly and indirectly censors discussion of certain topics,
by direct “withdrawal of funding” by the Ministry of Culture of Israel, for example, and/or ex ante
categorizes them as illegitimate topics for robust discussion, even in an academic setting.
6. How would a Columbia Global Center in Israel comply with the University’s clear policy
that it is “committed to providing a learning, living, and working environment free from unlawful
discrimination and harassment and to fostering a nurturing and vibrant community founded upon
the fundamental dignity and worth of all of its members,” especially since this policy “governs
the conduct of all Columbia University students, faculty, staff and visitors that occurs on the
University’s campuses or in connection with University-sponsored programs”? Of course, the
University can anticipate that there may be incidents of discrimination in violation of its clear
policies that occur in any of its campuses or Global Centers, including in the United States. Yet,
with respect to a possible Global Center in Israel, violations of the University’s Non-
Discrimination Policy would be baked into the Center itself, thus establishing a structural
exemption from compliance with otherwise universally applicable principles. Not only would a
possible Global Center in Tel Aviv discriminate against students, faculty, and staff on the basis
of their national origin/religion, but the new government has gone on record supporting
affirmatively homophobic, racist, and sexist positions, particularly in academic settings.
7. Similar to item 6 above, how would Columbia University avoid violating Titles VI and IX
of the Higher Education Act if it establishes a Global Center in a country that, as a matter of
official government policy, would require Columbia University to discriminate against students
on the basis of their sex, race, and/or national origin with regard to their access and ability to
benefit from or participate in programs at a Global Center in Israel? Moreover, insofar as
Columbia University has a stated commitment to protecting and promoting “the fundamental
dignity and worth of all of its members” in all of its programs, how can the University avoid
undermining the fundamental dignity and worth of many members of our community if it
establishes a Global Center in a country whose laws and policies have been widely described
as discriminatory, if not apartheid in nature, as is evidenced by the Nation-State Law passed by
the Knesset in July 2018, and the radical reforms rolled out by the new Israeli government?
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8. There is wide concern that principles of faculty governance and the expectation of
leadership, oversight, and consultation with regional experts for programming at the Global
Centers have not been followed in the case of planning, preparation, or setting of priorities for a
possible Global Center in Israel. There is also substantial concern about the power of donor
money to direct major decisions, such as the establishment of this Global Center in Tel Aviv, in
lieu of consultation with the faculty. Decisions about establishing Global Centers should be
subject to the same procedures of faculty governance as are all major decisions about
academic programs at Columbia. Global Centers should in general, like academic departments
and institutes at Columbia, be subject to regular academic reviews.
