Mohamed Abdou’s ‘Death to the Akademy’ discussion at Union Theological Seminary will offer ‘strategies for student organizers who seek to confront the liberal Akademy’
Columbia University banned the self-styled “North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies,” Mohamed Abdou, from teaching at the school over his public support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Now Abdou is set to deliver a talk on “decolonial organizing lessons from Gaza’s warrior mujahideen” at the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary (UTS), a registration form reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
Abdou’s Wednesday “Iftar dinner & galvanizing talk” is titled, “Death to the Akademy: How To Be a Thorn in Their Throat Amidst Snakes in the Grass.” It will offer “strategies for student organizers who seek to confront the liberal Akademy and topple [the] Euro-Amerikan empire where they are” and explore “the spiritual and racial-religious war our peoples have been fighting since 1492,” according to an event description from the event’s sponsor, Queer Muslims of NYC, an “antiracist, abolitionist, grassroots collective rooted in Islamic Liberation Theology, committed to gender justice, queer justice, anti-capitalism, and decolonization.”
A flyer advertising the event features the inverted red triangles used in Hamas propaganda videos to identify Israeli targets. Its cosponsor is Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, a radical campus group that has called for an “intifada revolution” at Columbia and protested alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the anti-Semitic student organization behind the encampments that plagued Columbia in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.
It will also provide an “anti-imperialist geopolitical analysis of rapidly shifting events across the so-called ‘Middle East’ and West Asia as they map onto religious end times prophecies, the spiritual and racial-religious war our peoples have been fighting since 1492,” the event’s description reads. A section regarding “Covid Safety” urges participants to “[p]lease get tested and wear a mask to keep yourself and others safe.”
The event was co-organized by Queer Muslims of NYC, which describes itself as an “antiracist, abolitionist, grassroots collective rooted in Islamic Liberation Theology.” The group has shared radical posts such as one calling the U.S. “the great satan” and blaming “Euro-American imperialism” for the “primary violence shaping our world.” The other host, Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, has posted flyers calling for an “intifada revolution” decorated with multiple Hamas triangles and declared its solidarity with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which was behind illegal encampments and violent building occupations.
Abdou’s presence at UTS—the event will take place in the school’s Stewart Room, which Columbia’s Earl Hall Center for Religious Life has used to host reading groups—is notable given Abdou’s controversial history with Columbia.
Columbia’s Middle East Institute tapped Abdou to serve as a visiting professor in modern Arab studies in January 2024. Days earlier, during an interview with socialist podcast Revolutionary Left Radio, Abdou declared his support for Hamas and “the resistance,” lauding the terror group’s “dedicated few” for working in “stealth mode” on Oct. 7 to defeat a “larger enemy” in Israel, the Free Beacon reported. His visiting professorship included a weekly class on “Decolonial-Queerness & Abolition,” which focused on “transnational feminist discourses” and “queer of color critiques.”
Abdou’s pro-Hamas sentiments and disruptive campus activism—Abdou wrote in a since-deleted February 2024 special media post that he was “really proud” to organize a protest in which Columbia students interrupted a panel featuring Hillary Clinton to call the former secretary of state a “war criminal” who “will burn”—emerged as a thorn in Columbia’s side as it faced congressional criticism over its handling of campus anti-Semitism.
In April 2024, then-Columbia president Minouche Shafik faced questions from members of the House Education Committee on Abdou’s pro-Hamas rhetoric. Shafik said he had “been terminated, and not just terminated, but his files will show that he will never work at Columbia again.” The Free Beacon later spotted Abdou lounging in the unsanctioned “Gaza Solidarity” encampment on Columbia’s campus before his exit from the school at the end of the spring 2024 semester. He refuted Shafik’s testimony, saying he was “not terminated” but rather his contract was “coming to an end.”
UTS did not respond to a request for comment. A Columbia spokesman said Abdou’s “event is not taking place at our institution. Union Theological Seminary is an independently operated school and Columbia University does not have jurisdiction over the individuals nor the events they allow on their campus.”
“Mohamed Abdou is no longer an employee at Columbia, and we find the imagery used to promote this event abhorrent,” the spokesman added.
Columbia and UTS do, however, hold a close partnership. As a Columbia affiliate, UTS students can access Columbia’s campus and some of the school’s facilities, like libraries. Columbia and UTS also offer dual degree programs.
UTS is roughly a four-minute walk from Columbia’s campus. Its faculty includes former Green Party presidential candidate Cornel West, who is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice, and former vice president Al Gore’s daughter, Karenna Gore, who is the teaching professor of practice of earth ethics and executive director of the seminary’s Center for Earth Ethics.
Abdou has ratcheted up his radical rhetoric since leaving Columbia.
Following the launch of Operation Epic Fury, Abdou posted to X, “If you want to stop imperialism abroad you must destroy Amerikkka from within. ‘Hands off Iran’ slogans/protests/call your reps won’t do it. Settlers in the imperial core & belly of the beast need to stop invoking int’l law & wage war against Euro-Amerikkka where they are locally.” He also called on “Amerikkan anti-imperialist settlers” to stop “cheering on the sidelines for Iran to drop bombs.”
“You are not on the sidelines,” Abdou wrote. “You’re in the belly of the beast. Start acting like it.”
Abdou did not respond to a request for comment.
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