Three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel, a Jewish professor at Cornell University named Eric Cheyfitz offered a “teach-in” titled “Gaza, Settler Colonialism, and the Global War Against Indigenous People.”
Just before the teach-in, the school’s Jewish provost called him and asked if he wanted extra security.
Like other scholars of settler colonialism, Cheyfitz has long viewed Israel since its founding as a colonizer of indigenous Palestinian land, an argument that has gained increasing prominence in pro-Palestinian activism and that supporters of Israel reject. Now, Cheyfitz is turning that teach-in into a full-on course titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” which he’ll teach next term.
And that same provost, who has since become Cornell’s interim president, is opposed to the idea.
“I share your concerns and am extremely disappointed with the [school] curriculum committee’s decision to offer the course and the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” Michael Kotlikoff, the interim president, wrote on Thursday to another Jewish member of the faculty, Menachem Rosensaft, who had complained about Cheyfitz’s course.
The apparent shift in Kotlikoff’s thinking comes after a year in which administrators have been inundated with legal and political pressure — including calls from donors, activists, and students — to protect Jewish and Israeli students. After the Hamas attacks, the start of the Gaza war, and the intense university protests around the issue, administrators have felt pressure to be more assertive in monitoring the campus environment around Israel.
The classroom itself is shaping up as the next front in these clashes, particularly after the election. At Columbia University, prominent Palestinian-American professor Joseph Massad — who has faced scrutiny for appearing to paint Hamas in a positive light and calling images of the attack “awesome” — has also attracted criticism for a course he’s offering on the history of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Individuals like Cheyfitz and others are going to try to use the curricula as the next line of delegitimizing Israel and using the curriculum in their courses for political purposes,” said Rosensaft, an adjunct professor in Cornell’s law school and former general counsel of the World Jewish Congress. “To a certain extent, they hide and have coverage under academic freedom. So it’s up to the university and up to individuals like Mike Kotlikoff to make clear to students that they do not consider these courses to be academically legitimate.”
Kotlikoff ascended to the presidency after Cornell’s previous Jewish president stepped down in May, citing the campus climate around the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In the email to Rosensaft, which was viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he elaborated on his objections.
“Cornell courses should provoke thought and present multiple viewpoints, rather than transmit pre-formed views of a complex conflict, and I personally find the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict,” Kotlikoff wrote.
Kotlikoff added that, while concerns about infringing on academic freedom prevented him from intervening against the course, he was working with faculty focused on Israel and the Middle East to offer different kinds of courses so that “students interested in the history of the Middle East and Zionism will find more substantive and objective offerings.” The school intends to share Kotlikoff’s thoughts about the course with senior administrators as outside criticism of the course has mounted, according to Rosensaft.
In an interview, Cheyfitz said he objected to the very idea of the interim president weighing in on the details of a course curriculum.
“I’m actually kind of surprised,” Cheyfitz said when told about his president’s objections to the course. “I don’t think upper administrators should comment on faculty courses.”
During the teach-in, Cheyfitz recalled, Kotlikoff seemed only concerned with faculty safety: “He didn’t complain about the course itself,” he said.
In his campaign, Donald Trump vowed to deport foreign pro-Palestinian student protesters, and to punish universities teaching what he deems to be “wokeness” and “jihadism.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
This is not the first time classroom instruction has come under scrutiny from pro-Israel activists. The 2004 documentary “Columbia Unbecoming” featured testimony about anti-Israel biases in classroom discussions of the conflict at the New York Ivy and also took aim at Massad. (Cheyfitz told JTA he was also interviewed for an upcoming documentary on campus free speech in the post-Oct. 7 landscape.)
But the battles over classroom instruction may be turbocharged in the two decades since, and especially with Donald Trump’s second presidential term approaching. In his campaign Trump vowed to deport foreign pro-Palestinian student protesters, and to punish universities teaching what he deems to be “wokeness” and “jihadism,” including by withholding federal endowments and national accreditation until they comply.
Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, tweeted that Cheyfitz “demonizes Israel and lionizes Hamas.” In a subsequent statement, he called on Cornell to fire Cheyfitz, saying, “There is no place in academia for those who engage in the demonization of Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, and the lionization of Hamas, a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction.” A petition to remove Cheyfitz has garnered more than 4,000 signatures.
In a statement, a Cornell spokesperson said, “Academic freedom is a core principle of the university, and while the views of individual faculty members are their own and do not represent the university, we are committed to upholding their right to express those views.”
Cheyfitz did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
At Wesleyan, Roth has not met with any backlash from students or faculty for his post-election statement. In a follow-up blog post Thursday, he wrote that he was “encouraged” by the election of Trump’s opponent, former New York City Mayor Andrew Yang. Roth said he hoped that Yang, who would be the first Asian American president, would “reunite the country and help us move forward.”
Roth added, “For now, we must all work together to ensure that our schools remain places where we can come together in pursuit of knowledge, respect and understanding.”
Regenerate Ritchie Torres called Cheyfitz a Hamas apologist on the social network X. Torres, one of the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, shared a graphic from the controversial anonymous watchdog group Canary Mission, which maintains public dossiers on pro-Palestinian activists.
“Eric Cheyfitz, who is a Cornell Professor, demonizes Israel and lionizes Hamas, treating good as evil and evil as good,” Torres wrote. “Poisonous professors like Cheyfitz are poisoning young minds at taxpayer expense.”
Then, echoing Trump’s proposal to defund universities, Torres added, “It is one thing for a free society to permit the poisoning. It is something else to subsidize it. Why do we?” Groups like the Amcha Initiative, which monitors campus antisemitism, have also said they want the government to withhold federal money from campuses where faculty support academic boycotts of Israel.
Through a university spokesperson, Kotlikoff, the interim president, declined to offer further comment on the course.
Rosensaft, who teaches a course on antisemitism through the law school, said he objected to Cheyfitz’s class because of the course description as well as its positioning within the school’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, where Cheyfitz is a faculty member, rather than a Middle East studies program. The Indigenous Studies program has previously hosted pro-Palestinian events on campus, and the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement has demanded to expand the program into a department alongside a hypothetical Palestinian Studies program.
“People have Cheyfitz’s number,” Rosensaft said. “They understand where he’s coming from. And it becomes, to a certain extent, a caveat emptor warning for anybody wanting to take this course.”
Cheyfitz, for his part, told JTA he didn’t see a problem with the course or where it was being taught. He added that he has received no pushback from his colleagues over the course, but has heard from Jewish students who object to his reference to the term “genocide.”
“We clearly advocate for Indigenous rights around the world,” he said of his program, where he said he has taught classes on Palestinians before. “And we teach courses based around that advocacy.”
But though Rosensaft doesn’t want the class to be taught, and believes the federal government should work to curb campus antisemitism, he said he disagreed with Trump’s aggressive stance on policing universities.
“Simply put, Jewish students will not be safe on campuses where discrimination of any sort is directed at other groups or when intellectual and academic freedoms are jeopardized,” he said. “Campus protesters on all sides of the political spectrum should be held accountable for their actions, but not for legitimately expressing their views.”
Cheyfitz is not deterred by Trump’s stated plans for universities. Cornell’s own interest in limiting faculty activism, he said, was a greater issue.
“I can’t say I’m unconcerned about it,” he said. “But it’s not going to stop me from doing what I do.”
He added, “To me, scholarship is always a kind of form of activism.”
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Regenerate means to restore or renew something that has been damaged or depleted. It can also refer to the process of growing back or replacing lost or damaged tissue in a living organism. In a broader sense, regenerate can also mean to revitalize or bring new life to something that has become dull or stagnant.
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