Courtney Bender, the Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine Professor in Columbia’s Department of Religion, research focuses on contemporary American spirituality. But during the 2024–2025 campus crisis, she stepped into a very different role: faculty advocate for the Columbia encampment and a defender of the movement’s most radical activist narratives.
In April 2024, Bender participated directly in the pro-Hamas encampment, lending her faculty presence to a protest site that became synonymous with harassment complaints, intimidation of Jewish students, and escalating campus tensions. Her involvement, like that of several colleagues, provided institutional cover to a movement that repeatedly crossed lines into hostility and exclusion.
That same month, she signed a faculty letter framing congressional scrutiny of Columbia’s handling of antisemitism as an “assault on higher education,” not a response to student safety concerns. The message from Bender and other signatories was clear: the real problem was accountability, not the threats and hostility Jewish students reported inside the encampment.
Her activism didn’t focus on de-escalation, community safety, or the wellbeing of targeted students. Instead, it centered on defending the encampment’s legitimacy, positioning faculty activists as protectors of free inquiry while dismissing the documented consequences of the protests around them.
Across the crisis, Bender joined the pattern of faculty who insisted the protests were being unfairly suppressed, even as the NYPD was repeatedly called due to safety concerns, violations of university policy, and the deteriorating campus climate.
While she deleted her X and Academia accounts, her participation and signatures remain part of the public record. And like other faculty activists, she has played a role in shaping the narrative that campus antisemitism is overstated, that protest actions remain peaceful, and that administrative intervention is the true threat.
Record of Advocacy and Ideological Bias
Academic and Institutional Roles
Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine Professor, Department of Religion
Scholar of American religious life
Pro-Palestinian Activism
Apr 2024: Participated in the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia
Apr 2024: Signed faculty letter defending Columbia from congressional oversight
Longstanding faculty advocate for protest-aligned narratives
Digital Presence
Deleted X account: @achtungbender
Multiple academic profiles scrubbed or inactive
Impact on Campus Climate and Accountability Concerns
Courtney Bender’s involvement in the encampment is part of a broader faculty pattern: deploying academic freedom language to shield radical protests from scrutiny while denying the reality of student intimidation.
By publicly aligning herself with the encampment, Bender helped normalize a protest environment where Jewish students reported feeling unsafe and unwelcome and where antisemitic rhetoric and exclusionary behavior repeatedly went unchecked.
Faculty participation matters. When professors stand shoulder-to-shoulder with movements that create hostile conditions, they lend authority and legitimacy to that hostility. Bender’s role contributed to a Columbia climate where accountability was framed as oppression and student safety became secondary to political messaging.
