State: New York
City: New York City
Campus: Columbia University (Columbia)
Born in Beirut and raised across Kuwait, Washington, D.C., and Lebanon, Randa Serhan teaches sociology at Barnard and is affiliated with the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut. Her academic work centers almost entirely on Palestinian identity, displacement, and refugee narratives, a focus that mirrors her public activism on and off campus.
In April 2024, Serhan participated in Columbia’s pro-Hamas encampment, a protest space widely documented for its aggressive rhetoric, harassment of Jewish students, and refusal to follow university safety protocols. Photos and eyewitness accounts placed her directly among student activists, offering faculty validation at a moment when the environment was deteriorating into one of the most hostile periods Jewish students had experienced in years.
Her activism continued well beyond the encampment. She appeared publicly with student protesters when charges were dropped in court, signed petitions defending activists under federal scrutiny, and joined a 2025 faculty campaign arguing that the attempted deportation of protest leader Mahmoud Khalil was unconstitutional. At Barnard’s 2025 commencement – a ceremony disrupted by pro-Palestinian protests – Serhan presided over the closing, a symbolic culmination of her alignment with student activists.
Her politics run deep. As early as 2022, a petition circulated by CU Jewish students named her as a professor “known to assign antizionist readings” and alienate Jewish students. Her publications repeatedly foreground Palestinian victimhood, and her panel appearances regularly center on themes of Palestinian oppression, refugeehood, and claims of dispossession. Her involvement in a 2001 refugee documentary even included translating descriptions of Israelis “killing and massacring children and women”, rhetoric that mirrors the extreme narratives now common in campus activism.
Serhan’s academic work gives intellectual scaffolding to political narratives about Palestinian displacement and resistance. Her affiliations and publications routinely reinforce activist framings of Israel as a colonial aggressor.
Apr 2024: Participated in the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia.
Jun 2024: Seen leaving court with student protesters whose charges were dropped.
Feb 2025: Warned at a Barnard panel that mass deportations echo post-9/11 repression.
May 2025: Closed Barnard’s commencement amid protest tension.
Sep 2025: Joined faculty defending Mahmoud Khalil’s political protest as protected speech.
2001–2024: Consistently produced work centered on Palestinian refugee narratives, often using highly charged and accusatory framing toward Israel.
Signed the Palestine & Praxis “scholars for Palestinian freedom” statement.
Serhan consistently aligns with networks of activist scholars who portray Palestinian resistance as a struggle for liberation, frame Israel as a colonial power, and seek to integrate these narratives into academic spaces.
Let’s be clear: Randa Serhan is not a passive scholar observing campus activism; she is a faculty participant who has repeatedly lent her authority, presence, and voice to movements that Jewish students describe as intimidating and exclusionary.
Her participation in the 2024 encampment gave institutional legitimacy to a protest environment where antisemitic hostility was openly displayed. Her appearance in court with charged protesters and her vocal defense of Mahmoud Khalil signaled to activists that faculty had their backs, regardless of the impact on campus safety. And her classroom reputation, flagged by Jewish students themselves, shows that these political commitments extend into her teaching.
When a professor consistently reinforces one-sided narratives, minimizes Jewish concerns, and endorses protest actions that have already triggered Title VI complaints, she becomes part of the machinery enabling campus hostility to grow unchecked.
Serhan’s long record of politically charged scholarship and activism did not create Columbia’s crisis alone but it undeniably contributed to the climate that allowed it to take root.
Accountability matters. Faculty influence carries weight, and when used to validate movements that alienate and intimidate students, it becomes part of the problem, not the solution.
