Dean Linda Fried,

CC: Senate Faculty Affairs Committee

As faculty at Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College, we wish to express our unwavering support for Dr. A. Kayum Ahmed’s reinstatement to teach the human rights module in the Core curriculum at the Mailman School of Public Health. We believe that the decision to remove Dr. Ahmed from the Core teaching team because he taught a session on the settler colonial determinants of health, is in direct violation of §70 of the University Statutes that protect academic freedom. The University Statutes provide that: “Academic freedom implies that all officers of instruction are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects…”

Furthermore, the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has previously protested the treatment that Dr. Ahmed received in planning his October 20th, 2023 event, “On Palestine, Epistemic Coloniality, and the University.” The AAUP found that, “we believe that this treatment constitutes a violation of his academic freedom—particularly given his focus on health and human rights.”

The AAUP is once again investigating Columbia’s latest attempts to silence Dr. Ahmed, following the publication of a Wall Street Journal article on Friday, March 8, in which Dr. Ahmed was wrongly accused of “indoctrinating” students. He was informed on Monday, March 11 that he will no longer be able to teach the human rights module in the Core because he applied the settler colonial framework in an “unbalanced” way to portray Israel as a settler colonial state.

These ongoing systemic attacks on Dr. Ahmed’s academic freedom are deeply concerning for us as faculty who often discuss contentious subjects in our classrooms. If Dr. Ahmed can be silenced for talking about Israel as a settler colonial state, we fear that those of us who teach topics that may be deemed by Columbia as “controversial”, could be next.

Furthermore, we note that in Dr. Ahmed’s Core student evaluations, 94.67% of the 319 students who responded to the survey strongly agreed or somewhat that he was an effective teacher. 93.73% of students strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that Dr. Ahmed created an inclusive learning environment, while 94.98% believed that he facilitated critical thinking. The Mailman Administration’s decision to remove Dr. Ahmed from the Core teaching team ignores the perspectives of more than 90% of students and is a disservice to them.

Lastly, we are outraged by the unfair process employed in removing Dr. Ahmed from the Core teaching team, since he was not afforded a fair hearing. He was only informed about student complaints on December 17, three months after delivering his lectures in September 2023. In addition, Dr. Ahmed never had the opportunity to discuss the matter with the Vice Dean of Education, prior to the March 11 meeting, when the Vice Dean informed Dr. Ahmed of his removal from the Core teaching team.

We therefore call on the Dean of the Mailman School to (1) immediately reinstate Dr. Ahmed to teach the human rights module in the Core; and (2) issue an apology to Dr. Ahmed recognizing that the decision to remove him from the Core was both procedurally and substantively unfair. Furthermore, we urge Columbia’s Senate Faculty Affairs Committee to investigate this case as a matter of urgency in terms of §73 of the University Statutes.