L: Mohamed Abdou (mei.columbia.edu) R: Union Theological Seminary banner (utsnyc.edu) The Union Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Columbia University that is the oldest independent seminary in the United States, is set to host a talk from the self-styled “North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies” Mohamed Abdou. The talk is titled, “Death to the Akademy: How to be a Thorn in Their Throat Amidst Snakes in the Grass.” Columbia, which hired Abdou as a visiting professor in January 2024, ditched him later that year after he said he was “with Hamas & Hezbollah & Islamic Jihad.” In a banner showing for the Ivy League, Abdou had spent a year at Cornell before he landed at Columbia. His talk promises “decolonial organizing lessons from Gaza’s warrior mujahideen” and “strategies for student organizers who seek to confront the liberal Akademy and topple [the] Euro-Amerikan empire where they are.” Its sponsors are Queer Muslims of NYC—an “antiracist, abolitionist, grassroots collective rooted in Islamic Liberation Theology, committed to gender justice, queer justice, anti-capitalism, and decolonization”—and Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, a radical campus group that has called for an “intifada revolution” at Columbia. Abdou’s presence at UTS, the Free Beacon‘s Jessica Schwalb notes, is notable given then-Columbia University president Minouche Shafik’s statement before Congress that he will “never work at Columbia again.” The school brought him on as a visiting professor in modern Arab studies in January 2024—days after he declared his support for Hamas and “the resistance” and lauded the terror group’s “dedicated few” for working in “stealth mode” on Oct. 7 to defeat a “larger enemy” in Israel. “Abdou has ratcheted up his radical rhetoric since leaving Columbia,” Schwalb writes. “Following the launch of Operation Epic Fury, Abdou posted to X, ‘If you want to stop imperialism abroad you must destroy Amerikkka from within. … Settlers in the imperial core & belly of the beast need to stop invoking int’l law & wage war against Euro-Amerikkka where they are locally.” READ MORE: ‘Decolonial Organizing Lessons from Gaza’s Warrior Mujahideen’: Union Theological Seminary, A Columbia Affiliate, To Host Talk From ‘Activist-Scholar’ Banned By Columbia for Endorsing Hamas