Mohamed Abdou

Introduction

Mohamed Abdou, also known as Mohamed Jean Veneuse, is a Canadian-Egyptian academic and self-described Muslim anarchist who was fired from Columbia University after he posted “I’m with Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad” days after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. The former visiting professor is now on an international campus lecture tour he calls “Death to the Akademy,” and in October 2026 he was booked to address student groups at UC Berkeley and the Claremont Colleges on the attack’s third anniversary, with UC Berkeley confirming he would appear by Zoom and refusing to cancel the event. He has urged students to “be proud of your hate for America,” praised the Mujahideen as “the greatest people on the face of the earth,” and told an audience there was much to learn from “the cunningness of our Mujahideen, particularly Sinwar.”

Background Information

Abdou was born in Egypt and raised in Canada. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Political Science and Islamic Studies from Queen’s University in Ontario, and he describes himself as a “North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar.” He taught at Queen’s University, the University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, spent 2021–2023 as a postdoctoral fellow on Global Racial Justice at Cornell University, joined the faculty of the American University in Cairo in 2022, and in 2024 served as Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian & African Studies program, where he taught a course titled Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition. In 2022 he published the book Islam and Anarchism with Pluto Press.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Fired over a pro-Hamas post; statements, not crimes. Abdou has not been charged with any crime. His removal from Columbia followed his own public statements — chiefly an October 11, 2023 social media post declaring support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — and the consequences he has faced have been professional and reputational, not legal.

On October 11, 2023, four days after the Hamas-led attack that killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, Abdou wrote on Facebook: “I’m with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad but up to a point — given ultimate differences over our ethical political commitments; that’s the difference between a strategy and tactic too.” The post drew criticism from Columbia donors and faculty, and in April 2024 his hiring became an issue at a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing on campus antisemitism. Then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik testified that Abdou had been terminated, “not just terminated, but his file will show that he will never work at Columbia again.” Abdou and supporters have characterized the departure as disputed, and he subsequently styled himself as pushed out of academia.

Rather than recede, Abdou launched the “Death to the Akademy” tour in early 2026, encouraging students across several continents to reject what he calls the Euro-American academy. At a March Ramadan gathering hosted by Students for a Liberated Palestine at Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary, he encouraged students on Zoom to engage in jihad and praised Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of the May 2025 shootings of two Israeli Embassy staff members in Washington. On April 21, 2026, he addressed a Shut it Down NYU event via Zoom — an event falsely billed as an NYU affair — telling about ten in-person and thirty virtual attendees: “Be proud of your hate for America… You love Islam, and you should be loving Islam more than this barbarous colony. It’s a plague upon the Earth. And yes, in that sense, you need to be a threat. We all need to be a threat.” He added, “If you think somehow you’re going to free Palestine and keep America, forget it… You need to actively work to destroy,” said “If we are to meet Muhammad, then our blood serves as a testimony. We do not fear death,” and told a questioner there was “much that one can learn, again from the cunningness of our Mujahideen, particularly Sinwar” — a reference to the Hamas leader who orchestrated the October 7 attacks.

Event flyers for the tour have featured inverted red triangles and sketches of gun-wielding Hamas militants, and a May 1, 2026 stop advertised at Virginia Tech — which the university said was not sponsored or registered by any university-affiliated organization — carried a poster image of what appeared to be a jihadist leader holding a gun. Abdou’s own Instagram post instructing attendees to “please wear masks!” promoted the talk titled “Islam & Revolution.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The tour has drawn condemnation from watchdog groups — Safe Campus called the NYU event a “terrorist recruiting event,” and the account Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia said Abdou “encourages literal violence in the name of Allah” — and forced successive universities into damage control. NYU said organizers “simply lied” about the event being an NYU one, condemned the “encouragement of violence expressed by speakers,” and opened an investigation into several potential policy violations by the student group involved. Virginia Tech publicly distanced itself from the advertised stop. The pattern repeated in October 2026, when UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine booked Abdou for a Zoom talk on October 6, the eve of the attacks’ third anniversary, and the Claremont Colleges for October 7. A UC Berkeley spokesperson confirmed the university knew of and regretted “how upsetting the event and the rhetoric will be for many members of the Jewish community on our campus, and far beyond,” but said it would not cancel the event “based on fears or expectations of what might be expressed.” The student group, for its part, wrote that it “will not police our speech.”

Current Status

As of October 2, 2026, Abdou remains unemployed by any university and is mid-tour: he announced he was “honored” to give the UC Berkeley talk, “1492: From Palestine to Turtle Island,” on October 6 and a Claremont Colleges talk, “Re-Igniting Student Organizing Against Settler-Colonial Amerika,” on October 7 — the third anniversary of the attacks. UC Berkeley confirmed he would appear via Zoom from an on-campus event space and declined to cancel; neither UC Berkeley nor Claremont has announced any discipline, and Abdou faces no known legal proceedings stemming from any of his statements. His supporters continue to frame the criticism against him as politically motivated and an academic-freedom issue, a characterization his critics reject.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Abdou’s firing from Columbia — once a single congressman’s talking point in a 2024 hearing — has become a brand: he now markets himself through the “Death to the Akademy” tour as a scholar expelled from the academy for his politics, self-publishing through his Endtimes Substack and appearing wherever student groups will host him. The mainstream academic career his credentials support — the Cornell postdoc, the Columbia visiting professorship, the AUC faculty line — is closed to him; Shafik’s testimony that his file shows he will “never work at Columbia again” remains the public marker of his standing in mainstream academia. What began as a firing has become a rolling reputational controversy that follows each host campus, with every new stop renewing scrutiny of the institutions that let him speak and the statements that got him removed in the first place.

Sources

• *New York Post, “Hamas-backing professor booked for Oct. 7 anniversary speaking event by UC Berkeley pro-Palestine student group” (October 2, 2026) — source
• *New York Post, “Jihadist ex-Columbia prof on vile college tour tells NYU students to be proud of hating America” (April 25, 2026) — source
• *Fox News, “Fired Columbia professor who backed Hamas set to speak at Virginia Tech ‘Death to the Akademy’ event” (April 30, 2026) — source
• *The Forward, “Former Columbia professor tells NYU students to learn from Hamas at off-campus event” (April 22, 2026) — source
• *Washington Square News, “NYU investigates student group that hosted anarchist, anti-Israel speaker” (April 27, 2026) — source
• *Wikipedia, “Mohamed Abdou (political scientist)” (accessed October 2, 2026) — source
• *New York Post, @nypost post on X (October 2, 2026) — source