Until last week, I had been seriously considering teaching at Columbia University next year as a visiting professor. But I’m now convinced that to do so would be folly—to serve as a prop or a fig leaf. Moreover, I feel doing so would mean putting myself and my students at risk.
I have spent most of my professional career on American campuses, teaching courses on religion and history. I took a brief break to serve in the Biden administration as the United States’ Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism from May 2022 to January 2025.
It was from that perch that I watched the alarming unraveling of campuses that claimed to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth transform themselves into places where basic morality had been inverted. Following Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023, things went from bad to worse.
