Kai Nip

Faculty affiliates of Yale’s Council on Middle East Studies, or CMES, are concerned about their academic freedom as federal pressure has reshaped similar programs at Columbia and Harvard. 

Amid President Donald Trump’s accusations that peer institutions are tolerating antisemitism, faculty are calling on Yale to stand by its Middle East programs and scholars. They also expressed hope that University administrators may take a different approach to political threats that protects the independence of Middle East studies at Yale.

“We are currently witnessing concerted efforts to force universities to retreat from the world and abandon core humanistic values of free inquiry and open exchange,” CMES Chair Travis Zadeh wrote to the News. “These developments are alarming and unprecedented.”

After the federal government canceled $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia University on March 7, citing its alleged failure to combat antisemitism on campus, the school announced on March 21 that it will place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department and its Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost. 

On March 25, Harvard University dismissed two faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies following pressure from the federal government to address alleged instances of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would review over $8 billion in federal grants to Harvard as part of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.

Yale faculty have started to weigh in on developments at other schools. Aslı Bâli LAW ’99, a professor at Yale Law School and the president of the Middle East Studies Association, recently co-wrote a letter on behalf of MESA calling on Harvard administrators to reinstate faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“We regard Harvard’s action in this matter as an egregious violation of longstanding and widely accepted norms of faculty governance as well as the principles of academic freedom,” the letter reads. “Rather than facilitating or acting in the interests of government repression, we must all take a collective stance to defend higher education in the United States.”

Faculty have also expressed that they expect the University to stand up to external pressures to reshape Middle East studies.

Hussein Fancy ’97, a history professor affiliated with CMES, told the News that submitting to these pressures will do nothing to curb them.

“Of course, I am concerned about academic freedom,” Fancy wrote. “I suspect Yale’s administrators recognize that capitulating in advance to external pressures to curtail that freedom will only embolden those who are using the cover of antisemitism to attack higher education.”

Fancy added that “curtailing inquiry, shuffling administrators, or imposing crude definitions” will not solve campus antisemitism or any form of racism.

One lecturer affiliated with CMES, who asked to remain anonymous due to their lack of tenure, suggested that the size of Yale’s endowment could enable the University to stand up to potential funding freezes.

“Yale must stay the course in fulfilling its mission to provide outstanding research and education through ‘free exchange of ideas’ in the face of external pressure, even if that means it must draw on its endowment to preserve programs and scholars under attack,” the faculty member wrote.

In the 2024 fiscal year, Yale’s endowment grew to $41.4 billion. In the same year, Columbia’s endowment reached $14.8 billion, while Harvard’s increased to $53.2 billion.

Jonathan Wyrtzen, a professor of sociology and history affiliated with CMES, wrote to the News that, to his knowledge, the Council has not yet faced explicit pressure from donors, alumni or the administration to alter academic programming. Wyrtzen also wrote that CMES faculty and Yale administrators have not met to discuss concerns about academic freedom.

“Every faculty member working on the Middle East in any institution in the United States, including Yale, has concerns right now about the exceptional threats to our academic freedom in researching and teaching about the MENA region,” Wyrtzen wrote. “Middle East-related studies are at the front line of a deeper, defining struggle about freedom of speech, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy.”

Defending this front line is all the more important at Yale, Wyrtzen continued, because of the University’s background as one of the first American colleges to offer academic programs related to the Middle East. In 1841, Yale became the first American university to establish a professorship in Arabic and a Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, per the CMES website. 

According to Wyrtzen, the University has continuously expanded research and academic offerings related to the modern Middle East and North Africa across its schools during his 16 years of teaching here.

“Now is a time where a line in the sand is being drawn and decisions are being made that define what we stand for and are committed to doing as a whole university,” Wyrtzen wrote.

Yale appointed the first professor of Arabic in 1841.

Correction, April 2: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yale awarded its first doctoral degree in Middle East studies in 1861. The correct year is 1888.