There are many courses in universities that seem not to be exercises in objective teaching and learning, but rather courses designed to foist certain political ideologies or points of view on students. One of them at this university was called to my attention by several in our community; it seems to be a course on how it’s justifiable to use violence to resist oppression. It was and is still taught by Alireza Doostdar, director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion. I’ll just cover what must be one of Doostdar’s biggest areas of interest: the settler-colonialist, genocidal, and apartheid state of Israel. Does that justify the violence of Hamas? You’d have to take the course to see, but from the syllabus it looks like terrorism against Israel is not demonized in the course.
Doostdar is one of the handful of professors here who have taken an active and visible role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and was, I believe, one of the 28 faculty and students arrested for trespassing at the admissions office in 2023 (disruption #3 described here; the city later dropped charges). His brother, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, was arrested in 2018 for spying for Iran, and was sentenced to 38 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and given a fine of $14,153.
Over the past couple of years Alireza Doostdar has issued a number of tweets showing his animus towards Israel, but then took them down, which is either an act of cowardice, contrition (which I doubt) or ambition (getting rid of stuff that makes you look bad). Here are three of them. First, plaudits for Iranian missiles:
Two more Doostdar tweets I posted that have now vanished:
The thought that Iranians will rise up against their government doesn’t seem so insane now, does it?
It is clear that the man has no love for Israel, promoting as he does the false narratives of Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.” There is, of course, no opprobrium for Hamas or other terrorist organizations.
Here’s the first page of the syllabus for one of Doostdar’s courses, which is still listed as a “Human Rights” course in the college catalogue:
Look at that image of the buff Palestinian man wielding a sling à la David and waving the Palestinian flag! Here’s a description of the course (bolding is mine):
From 18th century slave rebellions in the Americas to 20th and 21st century anticolonial revolutions, oppressed peoples’ struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against noncombatants. This course examines anticolonial violence in light of the work of the Martiniquan revolutionary Frantz Fanon and some of his interlocutors. We study specific freedom movements: the Haitian and Algerian revolutions against French colonialism, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Russian and American anarchism, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers’ mobilization against white supremacy and police violence, and the ongoing Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Throughout, we will pay attention to how revolutionaries evaluated the place of violence in their own movements, including criteria for justifiable and unjustifiable use of force.
Here are the readings for the section on Palestine. I haven’t looked all of them up, but looked at about a dozen, and all the ones I saw damned the apartheid, genocidal, settler-colonialist state of Israel.
None of the sources I examined condemned Hamas (the course, after all, is about justifiable violence), and all I saw were resolutely anti-Israel.
What is my conclusion? Well, first, Doostdar surely has a right to teach this course; to prohibit it because it may peddle hatred and lies (“apartheid”, “genocide,” etc.) would violate academic freedom. All I can do is say, that as a fellow faculty member, I think the course is biased and promotes misunderstanding and hatred. Is this an academic or a polemic course?
I would add that if any Jews want to take the course (and some of course should—to see what other side is arguing), they will not emerge having learned that there’s anything good about Israel, or that the IDFs war in Gaza was justifiable. It’s ironic since Israel’s response to the attack on October 7 could also be seen as “liberatory violence” in response to yearslong Palestinian attacks on Israel, though either missiles or acts of terror.
My inspection of the syllabus and perusal of the reading suggest that this is an example of the “one-sided” syllabi that I discussed in a post last year. The authors of the study I described looked at 27 million syllabi. I summarized their results thus:
The upshot is what you might expect: “anti-progressive” (or “conservative”) works were assigned with progressive ones far less often than were works that buttressed the progressive point of view. Conclusion: liberal academia is not exposing students to credible alternative points of view (and yes, the authors took care to examine cite only works that academically credible).
Classic “progressive” works used in their analysis include the following; you won’t know the critical views so much but you can see them in the paper. I’d recommend reading the big unpublished paper if you have time as it has a lot more data.
- The classic progressive views of racism in the criminal-justice system: Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me
- The classic progressive view of the Israel/Palestine conflict (and oppression of Arabs in general): Edward Said’s book Orientalism
- The classic progressive “pro-choice” paper: Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper “A Defense of Abortion“
In short, “progressive” courses did not assign views counter to the course’s own ideology nearly as often as they assigned papers buttressing that ideology. This seems to be the case in Doostdar’s course. Make of it what you will, but it looks like an example of “myside bias.“
Unsurprising and almost uniform in western (elite more than anything) unis.
I am writing an article about this very thing at the moment: “Why is the media/academia so anti-Israel” type of article.
I shall keep you posted.
D.A.
NYC/CT
T. N. Coates (the reason I unsub’d to The Atlantic) of course. What a race grifter.
And naturally … that tumor of post war “thought” – the cancer “Edward Said’s book Orientalism.”
(sigh)
D.A.
NYC
The long march through the institutions.
It would be best if the academy reformed itself from within to return to its roots as communities of seekers and teachers of objective truths. It would be next to best if the folks funding and supporting the academy’s efforts forced the academy to return to that mission. It would also be best or next to best if alternative credentialing and research efforts that are oriented to seeking truth but located outside the academy were supported and legitimized to create additional options for students and researchers. Higher ed is filled with and supported by many smart people who could make this happen internally. If the academy’s committed social justice warriors were rehomed into nonprofits, political organizations and consultant enterprises, that reform could happen swiftly and more smoothly.
I think I’m being an inexcusably naive and unimaginative thinker today by not factoring academic freedom into my idea. So, as Emily Latella might suggest: never mind.
This might be an unpopular and minority opinion, but:
I beg to differ! In the classroom an academic should be an educator, not an activist. That means they should aim to teach students how to think, not what to think. They have a duty to the students and a duty to the taxpayer (who, in the end, pays for much of this). That means that, on controversial topics such as Israel and politics, they should not take sides but should act the disinterested educator, attempting to develop the students’ knowledge and understanding of the issues.
Way too much of what has gone wrong in universities is because academics have come to see themselves as activists, not as educators.
I would accept a much wider concept of “academic freedom” in an academic’s scholarship and research outside the classroom, but they should not bring the activist mindset into the classroom. This sort of course should be banned, and I don’t see that as violating any freedom that an academic should properly have.
I think you’re on the right track, Coel. Under academic freedom, a scholar should be able to study and publish on any topic he is interested in and follow it wherever it leads him. However, courses require university resources (money and space) to put on. They are therefore properly subject to vetting by the University academic Senate (or whatever it is called in various schools) to make sure the demands of the course are appropriate for serious university-level learning.
In principle, a course looking at the history of violence in revolutionary liberation movements could have serious academic content and might stimulate young minds to think about when violence is permissible and how often it “works”. (However in actual fact, successful violence is usually carried out by unlearned peasants led by demagogues, simply because there are so many more of them and they have less to lose. Academics in such movements come across as poseurs.) And a course would also have to examine the right of the state to suppress with ruthless violence attempts by revolutionaries to undermine it with violence, which I don’t see here.
If the university Senate (delegated down through the Provost and Dept. Chair) judges this course to have no academic merit, because its activism is so one-sided that students enrolling would know they had to parrot the professor’s views in order to pass it, then it should axe it. It would be like teaching Creationism as fact and requiring students to give obeisance to the teachings. That’s not protected by academic freedom, either. The archeologist barred from teaching it can still go to Turkiye and look for Noah’s Ark if he wants to.
Honestly, who would even want to take this course? How does it help you get a job on Wall Street? I suspect too many foreigners whom we don’t even want in our countries in the first place.
A more apt analogy to this situation would be a hardcore Nazi teaching a course on the history of Nazism. The professor in question is clearly an Islamic supremacist, which overlaps with Nazism in crucial ways (thus Hitler regarded Islam as the only religion worthy of respect). Of course the real oppressor in the Middle East that the people deserve liberating from is Islam itself, as the long-suffering people of Iran increasingly recognize.
John Stuart Mill argued that if one really wants to understand an idea, one should hear it from a true believer to get the argument’s full force. Surely there’s value in knowing what others think, especially if their thoughts attempt to justify violence. I prefer my revolutionaries come out of the shadows and into the light, taking up dry erase markers rather than arms. So I don’t have much problem with this course — teaching students what others think about a subject isn’t the same as “teaching them what to think.” Academic freedom applies equally to students, who are free to reject the ideas presented in class. All they’re being asked to do is consider and understand the ideas, not accept them. It’s a necessary first step toward refuting bad ideas. My concern would be over whether interested students can take a course or courses that present other perspectives on the use of violence, objective or otherwise. If there is no ideological diversity within the school, department, or institution, that’s the problem.
The “hearing it from a true believer” can be satisfied by assigning readings from true believers (along with readings from contrary opinions). The problem with an activist course is that the student doesn’t encounter the criticisms and the contrary opinions (and they may not get graded fairly if they don’t take the instructor’s line).
Now, yes, a student could then try to obtain a balanced education by selecting a course on the same topic presented by an academic with the opposite view. But, in practice, this is just not practical. The department will not be running a wide-enough selection of courses and the student will not take a sufficient number of course overall for that to work.
And, of course, many students will do the opposite, they are quite likely to want a highly biased selection of courses that fit with their own current opinions, and so use any flexibility to cut out anything that might challenge their current opinions.
Asking a more basic question, what do we (society, overall) gain by having universities run activist courses? That’s not why society funds universities.
Problem is that the schools are so hypocritical, the right-wing equivalent to this left-wing, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance would never be allowed.
Imagine a course taught by a hardline Israeli that argues that the Palestinians are an incompetent people that are incapable of self-governance, and that their entire project of “free Palestine” is really just cover for the real goal… the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Given these circumstances, it is best for all parties if Israel just takes over and manages the entire area, including Gaza and the West Bank. Such a scenario would be better for the Palestinians than living under a genocidal, mafia-like organization like Hamas or even the Palestinian Authority.
Imagine how well THAT would go over. That is why free speech is not really operable here…only extreme left and centrist positions are tolerated.
I’m not sure I understand how this ever reached “academic freedom.” Presumably, at UofC proposed courses must be vetted and approved before they are permitted into the curriculum. How did this course make that cut?
Agreed, Coel. This would be like having former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke teach a university class on the “Proper Relations of the Races in Law, Governance, and Morality—with Discursions on the Jewish Question.”
This Professor of Islamic Studies comes across as crass, impulsive, and dim. Hard to see rigorous academic work coming from someone who tweets and behaves like this.
Also, any examples of pro-Israeli academics tweeting “fuck Palestine” or similar such cretinous utterances? If there are, they must be as rare as hen’s teeth.
Yes, they are rare or nonexistent, but despite that the academy still sides (in general) with Palestine and its aims.
You mean they side with Jordan?
Interesting article in The Atlantic about the funding of the humanities:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/mellon-foundation-humanities-research-funding/685733/
The National Endowment for the Humanities grant budget was $78 million in 2024. The Mellon Foundation awarded $540 million in 2024.
In 2020 Mellon prioritized social justice in its grants.
The Blocked and Reported podcast did an episode about the article:
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-295-gone-broke-go-woke
Doostdar’s funding is more likely from middle east sources, but I was not aware how much one organization funds the humanities.
Interesting to see Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the readings.
Here’s his piece, which didn’t have a link but I looked up: https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
It argues thar Arabs will never voluntarily accept Zionism. A quote:
“In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement
with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders whose watchword is “Never!” And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.”
In high school in Florida, there was a legislature-mandated course called the “Four Isms” that was one-sided, showing how Americanism was the best form of government in the world. It presented a picture similar to the purified curriculum that once again is being introduced in some schools, where white European men save the world. In college, I deliberately took an American History course taught by a Marxist professor to gain a contrasting perspective. It made me a stronger devotee of Democracy, despite its many weaknesses. Perhaps the course listing and syllabus should have a cautionary note that the course presents a biased perspective and should not be seen as an accurate representation of the geopolitical situation?
During the encampment at Chicago, this charlatan had an insane press conference where among other insane comments he claimed that UChicago was complicit in genocide through its research partnerships with physicists studying quantum computing at Weizmann.
It’s incredible that unaccomplished self-discrediting lunatics like that get hired to permanent positions when infinitely more accomplished junior scientists struggle for years to secure faculty positions. Add that to the list of long reasons to treat the things those people say as the inversion of what’s true.
The principle of academic freedom may permit this class to exist, but one can hope that students use their college opportunity wisely and choose not to take it.
“… it seems to be a course on how it’s justifiable to use violence to resist oppression”
… isn’t this then verging on inciting violence, intimidation, by stealth using an ideology course.. It seems a fine line because we have seen how it is used to do exactly that.
The course is premised on demonstrable lies in service to the instructor’s revisionist religious political ideology. Israel is NOT guilty of historical Colonialism, genocide or apartheid. How is this course properly taught in the History Department?
How is this different from from a Fundamentalist Christian teaching Creation Science in a Biology Department, or a Flat Earther teaching in a Department of Physics?
This course belongs in a Religion Department. Hopefully in Gaza, not Chicago.