Columbia University promotes course from pro-Hamas organization that includes teachings from terrorist leader

Columbia University is promoting a course at the People's Forum, a pro-Hamas group, taught by anti-Israel professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi. This workshop, titled A Short Course on Palestine, requires students to read texts by a leader of the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, reported the Washington Free Beacon.

Khalidi originally planned to teach this class at Columbia during the Fall 2025 semester, but decided to move it to the People's Forum due to a university agreement with the Trump Administration. Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies also criticizes this agreement on a web page promoting the course, including a registration link. The page notes that Columbia "continues its complicity in covering up the U.S.-Israeli genocide against Palestine and capitulates to the Trump administration at the expense of academic freedom and student rights."

The course examines what it calls "the history of Palestine since 1917," on the premise that the conflicts are part of a "systematic, if intermittent, war that has lasted for over a century, aimed at dispossessing the Palestinian people and transforming their homeland into an exclusive Jewish national home." It also argues that the Zionist movement, from its inception, was perceived as a "nationalist and a settler-colonial project."

A history of anti-Semitic violence

The class will be held at the headquarters of the People's Forum, a group that has stirred up violent anti-Israel riots and has ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its major donor, Neville Singham, an activist who donated $12 million to the organization in 2019. This group has also been behind violent protests, such as Columbia's Hamilton Hall occupation in April 2024 and a riot at Union Station three months later.

Columbia's response

A Columbia spokesperson clarified that Khalidi's course "is not a Columbia University activity, and the University does not provide funding for, does not approve or endorse, or have oversight over its contents." However, they did not explain why the promotion on Columbia's website is not considered an endorsement. Following an inquiry from the Washington Free Beacon, the Center for Palestine Studies page was updated to clarify that the course "is not offered by Columbia University and is not available for course credit."

The course's pro-terrorism material

As mentioned, Khalidi, a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, moved his course due to Columbia's agreement with the Trump Administration, which included the adoption of the International Anti-Semitism Alliance's (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which considers inciting violence against Jews or denying the Holocaust, among other things, to be anti-Semitism.

Required readings for the course include three books by Khalidi and one by Ghassan Kanafani, a former PFLP leader involved in the 1972 Lod airport massacre in Israel. This book, The 1936-1939 Revolution in Palestine, is described as a "radical analysis of Palestinian resistance." Also recommended is a biography of Izz-ad-Din Al-Qassam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who inspired the name of Hamas's military wing.