Columbia taps prof who once backed ‘resistance’ against Israel to lead dialogue program

Columbia University in New York City has tapped a professor who signed a 2021 statement backing “indigenous resistance” against Israel to lead a campus dialogue program.

Columbia announced the appointment of Jonathon Kahn as the senior associate dean of community and culture last week.

Kahn will “lead initiatives that cultivate curiosity, civic purpose and meaningful dialogue” in the role, and will teach a course on contemporary civilization in the spring, the statement said.

A group of Jewish students objected, pointing to a statement that Kahn had signed during a previous round of fighting between Israel and Gaza terrorists. That statement said, “We affirm that the Palestinian struggle is an indigenous resistance movement confronting settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.”

The May 2021 letter was signed by more than 200 members of the Vassar College community, where Kahn taught religion.

The letter also said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was connected to racism and police brutality in the US, and backed the Palestinian right of return, the movement to have millions of Palestinians move to Israel that critics say would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority state.

Kahn’s appointment at Columbia was announced by Josef Sorett, dean of Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education. Sorett was involved in a scandal last year in which three university administrators sent a series of derisive text messages during a panel on campus Jewish life.

In response to the criticism, Kahn told The Washington Free Beacon that he identifies as a Zionist who backs Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, as well as Palestinian statehood aspirations.

He added that the 2021 letter “did not fully capture” his beliefs regarding the conflict and that he did not agree with all of the letter’s statements.

“I put my name to that letter at a time when I felt in deep disagreement with actions taken by the Israeli government and I wanted to signal my support for the Palestinian civilians who were suffering,” Kahn told The Free Beacon, a right-leaning outlet.

Kahn was appointed at the start of the fall semester at Columbia. The start of the semester has not seen any major disruptions thus far by anti-Israel activists, although one activist student leader was pictured on campus with a sign targeting IDF veterans as genocidal “criminals.”

Unacceptable conduct from @Columbia students on the first day of classes, including Cameron Jones, who was an encampment spokesperson in 2024. Why is he still on campus? Telling students to be automatically suspicious of Israelis is textbook discrimination. pic.twitter.com/lFUvyzcHSC

— Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students ✡️???????? (@CUJewsIsraelis) September 2, 2025

The university said it was opening an anti-discrimination investigation, without providing specifics on the incident.

At the start of the last semester, in January, Columbia students held a raucous protest outside the campus gates and anti-Israel activists barged into an Israeli professor’s class on the history of Israel.

Columbia was an epicenter of anti-Israel protest activity following the start of the war that began with the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack.

Columbia and other universities have come under heavy pressure from the Trump administration to rein in antisemitism on campus, and the school reached a $200 million settlement with the administration on the issue in July. Columbia has clamped down on anti-Israel activism in recent months, including by suspending students who violated campus protest rules.

A university antisemitism task force reported widespread antisemitism on the campus last year.

Columbia has previously come under fire for anti-Israel activism by faculty, such as Professor Joseph Massad, who hailed the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel as “awesome.”