Last fall, shortly after Columbia College instructor Iymen Chehade showed the documentary 5 Broken Cameras in his course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was summoned to a meeting with Steven Corey, chair of the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Science.
In a phone interview Corey said he and Chehade talked at the meeting about presenting “multiple perspectives” in the course. He denied ever telling Chehade to be “more balanced,” and said he told the student to talk with him, then come back if things weren’t resolved. He also said the class was canceled because the school had to cut back and in the previous spring term the class had only been half filled.
A group of supporters, mostly Columbia students and faculty, organized a March 20 forum at the college that attracted about 60 people. In a brief speech there, Chehade admitted he’d received complaints about the course before, but said no student had ever accused him of a bias that affected a grade. And he maintained that to present as balanced a conflict pitting a powerful state against an occupied people would be “absurd” and “a lie.”
Columbia College issued a statement last week objecting to the AAUP committee’s findings and accusing it of relying on one-sided information. According to the statement, Chehade’s course was dropped because of “scheduling and enrollment demands” and the problem is a “pending labor-relations matter.” Columbia maintains that it firmly supports academic freedom, and that “the AAUP failed to produce any credible evidence to suggest otherwise.” Love wasn’t available for comment.
