FAQ

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Dr. Mohamed Abdou is one of three Columbia University professors defamed at a Congressional hearing last April for their support of the liberation of Palestine. Abdou was hired to teach at Columbia based both on his acclaimed anti-colonial scholarship and his years as a seasoned movement organizer. After slandering him on a global stage, Columbia President Minouche Shafik declared about Dr. Abdou specifically: “He will never work at Columbia again.” The public ouster occurred on the same day that Columbia students established a “liberated zone” encampment, which expanded to “Hind’s Hall”, and ignited a global wave of student encampment protests.

After the Congressional hearing, Mohamed’s life changed dramatically. President Shafik undercut active efforts by students and faculty to hire Mohamed on a more permanent basis, beyond being an Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor. Additionally, he was — and still is — harassed, stalked, doxxed, and blacklisted from academia. 

He has endured online and in-person attacks daily and has become a target in conservative media. Mohamed has been hunted by the Proud Boys, and spat on by detractors. Because he was a non-tenured professor with his work visa tied to his faculty position at Columbia, in addition to being “unhirable” in American academia, Mohamed was forced to leave the country.

The targeted harassment campaign against Mohamed goes beyond the standard racism and Islamophobia that fuels Zionist persecution campaigns against academics and others across fields who advocate for Palestine. Mohamed’s scholarly work itself has also come under fire, with opponents particularly threatened by how he links the struggle in Palestine to the struggle for Land Back on Turtle Island.  

Mohamed filed a wrongful termination suit against Columbia University on August 26, 2024, citing prejudice surrounding his anti-colonial academic discourse and vocal support of Palestine. 

Dr. Mohamed Abdou is an acclaimed interdisciplinary scholar-activist and author of Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances (Pluto Press, 2022).

Mohamed graduated from Queen’s University with a Doctorate in Cultural Studies and holds an BAH/MA in Sociology. In Spring 2024 he was the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Middle-Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Program at the Middle-East Institute. 

Mohamed was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s Einaudi Center’s Racial Justice Program and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as anti-racist feminist, gender, sexuality, women, decolonial and post-colonial studies with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East-North Africa and Turtle Island. He is a self-identifying Muslim anarchist and diasporic settler of color. 

While at Cornell, he was living on Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ, Haudenosaunee territory. While lecturing and organizing at Columbia U in New York City (NYC) he was on the ancestral and traditional homelands of the Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger peoples. He has taught (under) graduate courses on Settler-colonialism, Abolition, Anti-Colonialism, and Anti-Imperialism, Intimacy, Family & Kinships, North African, Islamic, BIPOC, queer-feminist, and radical newest social movements, as well as on overarching subjects as Research Methodologies, the Global Political Economy of Development, (Pre-) Modern/Classical and Poststructuralist Political Philosophy and Social Theory at the American University of Cairo, as well as Cornell and Queen’s University. He has also taught a course on Indigenous Land Education and Black Geographies at the University of Toronto-OISE-SJE. 

He wrote his transnational ethnographic and historical-archival Ph.D. on Islam & Queer-Muslims: Identity & Sexuality in the Contemporary. It investigates the inseparability of studies of race from religion and gender from sexuality. His current project examines how spiritual orientations/practices can inform non-racial conceptualizations of indigeneity and troubles current decolonial social movements that are animated by secular anti-global and anti-Capitalist aspirations. 

His research stems from his organizing towards BIPOC and Palestinian liberation and involvement with post-anti-Globalization Seattle 1999 movements, some of which include the Tyendinaga Mohawks and the sister territories of Kahnawake, Akwesasne, and Kanehsatake, during the standoff over the Culbertson Tract, as well as the anti-War protests of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Indigenous Zapatista movement in Chiapas, and the 2011 Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. Learn more: www.mabdou.net

In the Spring of 2024, a group of people who straddle academia, traditional and independent media, and activist communities, decided to volunteer their time and resources to support Dr. Mohamed Abdou in his fight against Columbia University. 

The team's ongoing conversations revealed that Mohamed is far from the only person currently being blacklisted for being open about their support for Palestine.

In July of 2024, the team decided to launch the #WeAreMohamed campaign as a platform for Mohamed and all people around the world who are being attacked and blacklisted for challenging settler-colonialism in Israel and the US.

Our goals are to help Mohamed fight back against Columbia University and to win his lawsuit, while supporting others worldwide in accessing justice through amplifying their stories through our campaign. 

#WeAreMohamed because what is happening to our friend can happen to anyone and we are stronger together in resisting US/Israeli colonial genocide and the repression that too often comes with speaking up.

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