Matthew E. Engelke, born 1972, is Professor and Chair of Columbia’s Department of Religion and a former Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life. He is one of the highest-ranking faculty members to visibly align himself with the 2024 Columbia encampment, a protest that generated Title VI complaints, mass student suspensions, and documented reports of Jewish student intimidation.
In April 2024, Engelke was photographed at a faculty protest supporting the encampment, standing alongside colleagues who helped shield the demonstration from institutional consequences. His presence signaled something crucial: not only were students occupying space, but faculty leadership, including department chairs, were endorsing the movement’s framing and giving it academic legitimacy.
Engelke’s patterns of involvement extend back years. As an editor in 2018, he commissioned “Moods of Betrayal in the Story of Palestine,” an article that presented an overtly political narrative of Palestinian dispossession and resistance. While scholarship on conflict is entirely valid, this editorial choice foreshadowed Engelke’s broader alignment with faculty activism that increasingly treats pro-Palestinian advocacy as synonymous with academic insight.
During Columbia’s crisis, Engelke offered no public concern for the safety of Jewish or Israeli students, even as they reported harassment, hostility, and exclusion around the encampment. Instead, the faculty narrative he joined emphasized solidarity with protesters and downplayed the climate of fear on campus, contributing to the broader faculty failure to acknowledge how activism had crossed into targeted hostility.
As a department chair, Engelke holds real influence. And when influential faculty take sides in campus conflicts, they shape the climate far beyond the classroom. His decision to stand with the encampment sent a message: faculty authority will be used to protect the movement, not the students endangered by it.
Record of Advocacy and Ideological Bias
Academic and Institutional Roles
Professor and Chair, Department of Religion
Member, Executive Committee, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Former Director, Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Pro-Palestinian Advocacy
Apr 2024: Participated in and supported the pro-Hamas encampment
2018: Commissioned a strongly pro-Palestinian article by Lila Abu-Lughod
Longstanding editorial and academic alignment with activist narratives
Impact on Campus Climate and Accountability Concerns
As a department chair, Engelke’s endorsement carried weight and it helped legitimize a protest environment repeatedly linked to antisemitic harassment and student intimidation. Faculty of his stature don’t just observe campus activism. They shape it.
Engelke’s visible support reinforced the message that Columbia’s intellectual establishment stood with the encampment even as Jewish students described feeling unsafe, excluded, and unprotected. When leaders in the Religion Department validate political extremism on campus, they blur the line between scholarship and activism and weaken the university’s ability to enforce basic standards of safety and respect.
This is how campus climates shift: not only through student actions, but through faculty signaling. Engelke’s involvement contributed to Columbia’s escalating crisis and underscores the urgent need for accountability when faculty activism crosses into enabling a hostile environment.
