Columbia professor under fire for alleged anti-Israel hostility

Jewish and pro-Israel organizations are demanding that Columbia University in New York fire a Jordanian professor of Palestinian origin who allegedly expressed anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views in class and displayed a hostility toward Israeli and Jewish students.

Joseph Massad is assistant professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department. The organizations claim that Massad's lectures compared Israel to the Nazis and argued that the Jewish state has no right to exist.

A Boston-based pro-Israel organization named The David Project recently produced a documentary in which Jewish students allege they were discriminated against by Massad and other Columbia professors. The film was screened on Wednesday in Jerusalem for participants of the Global Anti-Semitism Forum, headed by Minister Natan Sharansky. Columbia administrators had seen the film several days earlier.

The film features, among others, a student who identified himself to Massad as an Israeli. According to this student, Massad asked him in class whether he had served in the army, and when the student said he had, Massad asked him, "How many Palestinians did you kill?"

The conservative newspaper The New York Sun reported earlier this week that a U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner from Queens (a Democrat), had called for Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to fire Massad.

The Israeli student interviewed in the film told the Sun reporter that Massad's conduct is not representative of the MELAC department, which he termed "usually balanced."

A review committee appointed by Bollinger in 2003 found no evidence that Columbia professors had expressed anti-Israeli views or intimidated students identified as pro-Israel.