Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, hasn’t just built a career on scholarship – he’s built it on pushing antisemitic speech and extremist rhetoric under the cover of his academia. His commentary doesn’t just “challenge perspectives,” but regularly slips into conspiracy theories and straight-up justification of violence dressed up as analysis. And somehow, even after being investigated for antisemitism in 2004, Dabashi has remained at Columbia, and even teaches required Middle East courses. Apparently, that’s not so much a ‘red flag’ at Columbia as much as a resume booster.
How Does Hamid Dabashi Promote Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories?
Dabashi has repeatedly suggested that “Zionists” secretly control American political life, recycling long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theories about hidden Jewish influence.
• January 13, 2026: in an article for the Middle East Eye he wrote that the “exaggerated” Iranian protests had been “mostly manufactured” by Israel and the U.S. in order to distract from the “genocide in Gaza”. In the same article, he refers to Shah Pahlavi as a “Zionist stooge.”
• May 20, 2018: he wrote on Facebook that “every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world” ultimately traces back to Israel.
• June 23, 2016: he stated that Hillary Clinton should “pick up Benjamin Netanyahu as her VP” to end the “charade” of the United States and Israel being separate countries, calling members of Congress “stooges” of AIPAC.
• December 2009: he claimed the “pro-Israel lobby” had “infiltrated, bought, and paid for” American political institutions.
• July 2008: he referred to a “Zionist cabal” manipulating U.S. politics.
This isn’t foreign policy critique. It’s sweeping claims about “secret control” and global evil, straight out of the classic antisemitic conspiracy playbook, just dressed up to sound intellectual.
How Has Hamid Dabashi Glorified Hamas?
Dabashi doesn’t just blur the line between protest and violence, he erases it entirely. During the May 2018 Gaza border riots, he praised the Hamas-led demonstrations as a “master class” in dignity while calling Israeli soldiers “mass murderers.” He even framed attempts to breach the border as “nonviolent revolutionary mobilization,” ignoring the violence, casualties, and Hamas involvement documented at the time. By branding Hamas-linked unrest as “resistance,” Dabashi isn’t analyzing events. He’s sanitizing them.
Hamid Dabashi’s Comparisons of Israel to ISIS and Nazis
Dabashi has repeatedly compared Israel to some of history’s most reviled regimes and terrorist organizations.
• July 2025: Compared Israeli leaders to Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels and stated that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s support for Israel “reflects the country’s deep investment in Islamophobia, Orientalism and colonial domination across the Middle East.”
• June 2025: he accused “genocidal Zionists” of “weaponizing” the Holocaust and Jewish suffering to create “ethnic nationalism.”
• April 2019: Compared Israel to ISIS, saying the only difference between them was that “ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured [sic] columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”
• September 2015: he called Israel “the most well-funded terrorist organization on planet earth.”
• August 2014: in comparing Gaza to Auschwitz, he questioned whether Israelis were defined by a “murderous history.”
• July 2014: he juxtaposed images of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising with Gaza, equating Jews with Nazis.
• 2012: he praised former Waffen SS member Günter Grass for publishing a poem attacking Israel, describing the Jewish state as a “racist apartheid state” and “an extension of European colonialism.”
He doesn’t just criticize Israeli government policy. He tries to to rebrand the Jewish state as the moral equivalent of genocidal regimes, a textbook example of Holocaust inversion dressed up as analysis.
Hamid Dabashi’s Demonization of Israel, Zionism, and America
Across lectures and publications, Dabashi sticks to the same script, describing Israel as a “racist apartheid state,” a “colonial outpost of American military barbarism,” and a “militant band of European colonizers.” He’s also labeled U.S. presidents and Israeli leaders “war criminals” responsible for “incremental genocide,” because apparently nothing short of the most extreme language will do.
• January 13, 2026: on The New Humanitarian podcast, he stated that Israel was a “military base” that “doesn’t have anything, doesn’t have a culture, a civilization, nothing, and has nothing to do with Jewish civilization and Jewish culture.”
• April 2025: in a Middle East Eye article, he wrote, “Xenophobia is as American as apple pie,” and called Americans “white European settlers” who conquered America as a “haven for white supremacy.”
• May 20, 2024: In the Middle East Eye, he celebrated U.S. campus encampments and declared that 2023 marked the year “genocidal Zionism was finally put on trial at American university campuses.”
By going after Zionism, a core part of identity for many Jewish students, Dabashi chips away at Jewish belonging on campus and pushes the idea that Jewish self-determination is something inherently suspect, or even outright illegitimate.
Support for Columbia’s Pro-Hamas Encampments
Dabashi’s activism plays out on campus too. After declaring that “US college campuses are today the site of the end of Zionist hegemony,” he showed up at Columbia’s April 2024 “Faculty Walkout,” siding with students arrested during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, holding a “RESTORE FACULTY GOVERNANCE” sign as if it was a routine academic dispute.
He didn’t just observe the encampment – he backed it. This was the same encampment tied to antisemitic rhetoric, vandalism, and the takeover of Hamilton Hall, where activists barricaded themselves inside. And instead of distancing himself, Dabashi praised it as historic resistance.
Seeing a pattern?
Conclusion: Hamid Dabashi’s Negative Role on Campus
Hamid Dabashi hasn’t just used his Columbia platform to critique policy. He’s used it to push conspiracy theories, compare Israel to Nazis and ISIS, attack the U.S., and legitimize movements tied to violence. His vocal support for the pro-Hamas encampments isn’t an outlier – it fits neatly into a long pattern of rhetoric that fuels hostility toward Jewish students.
Columbia is still looking the other way. At some point, this stops being about academic freedom and starts looking a lot more like institutional tolerance for extremism that’s actively degrading campus safety and credibility. And that is a violation of Title VI, a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal funding: a.k.a Columbia University.
