The Death of Integrity in Academia

Recently, the University of San Francisco’s Jewish Studies & Social Justice program, under the leadership of Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, announced that it had brought in Hadar Cohen to teach a course titled “Arab Jews: Histories, Politics, and Identity.” At first glance, it might sound like a welcome step — a Mizrahi Jew given a platform in academia — but Cohen is not a historian or a scholar of Middle Eastern Jewry and she holds no advanced academic training in Jewish or Middle East Studies. Her background is in engineering, “alternative divinity programs” and “spiritual activism.” She openly states that “each aspect of her work is done through a political lens.” What qualifies her to teach is not academic rigor, but that she fits the ideological script academia demands. And that is the point.

Universities once upheld rigorous standards: advanced degrees, peer-reviewed scholarship, years of study. Increasingly, those have been replaced by the ability to embody activist frameworks that align with a particular brand of “social justice.” This is not education; it is indoctrination, and it compromises the very integrity of academia by prioritizing ideology over scholarship.

Even the course title reveals bias. “Arab Jews” is not a neutral term, it is a politicized label largely rejected by Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. It collapses Jewish identity into Arab nationalism and erases the truth that Jews were indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa long before Arab conquest. For centuries, Jews in Arab lands were not considered Arabs but second-class dhimmis, tolerated but legally subordinate. Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi put it bluntly: “The term ‘Arab Jews’ is obviously not a good one … We would have liked to be Arab Jews, [but] centuries of contempt and cruelty prevented it.” To frame our narrative through a term we overwhelmingly reject is distortion, not representation.

Cohen herself has written: “Zionism has no space for an Arab Jew like me.” But Zionism was, and still is, fundamentally a decolonization project. Jews are not colonizers in the Middle East, we are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, whose presence long predated both European imperialism and Arab conquest. If we are speaking honestly about colonization, it was the Arab-Muslim empires of the seventh century onward that spread across the region, supplanting local languages and cultures. To accept the label “Arab Jew” would be to adopt the identity of our colonizers — the very people who treated us as inferiors for centuries and expelled us en masse in the 20th century.

The story of Jews from these countries cannot be told without naming Islamic antisemitism. Under the dhimma system, Jews were taxed, humiliated and often attacked. Pogroms like the Farhud in Iraq or expulsions from Egypt, Libya and Yemen were not anomalies but the culmination of a long history of subjugation. This is precisely why so many Mizrahi Jews are staunchly pro-Zionist. Our Zionism is not abstract but born of lived experience: centuries of Islamic antisemitism, followed by dispossession and exile. To erase this reality in the name of “Arab Jewish” identity politics is not only offensive, it is profoundly unacademic.

Yes, Mizrahim faced hardship in Israel’s early decades, but the country also did remarkable work to unify Jews of all backgrounds. Shared schools, neighborhoods, military service and culture fused Mizrahim and Ashkenazim together. Intermarriage is widespread, and today Israeli identity is inseparable from Mizrahi music, food and politics. While gaps remain, Israel is not a place where Mizrahi identity is erased by Zionism. On the contrary, it flourishes.

Meanwhile, highly qualified Jewish faculty with advanced degrees, peer-reviewed work and years of teaching experience are often run out of academia or made to suffer the moment they teach honestly about Zionism or antisemitism. Professor Andrew Pessin at Connecticut College was hounded into isolation after a pro-Israel post was misquoted as racist, while Columbia’s Shai Davidai was investigated, banned from campus and ultimately driven out despite being cleared.

I also spoke with a Mizrahi Jewish professor who lived this reality. She had published two books and taught a course on modern Israel that Jewish students requested after being inundated with revisionist narratives in their Middle Eastern Studies program. In her class she presented both Jewish and Arab perspectives, even inviting the Palestinian history professor to speak. That invitation was never reciprocated. Her students — Jews, Christian Arabs and others — appreciated her balanced approach, and not one filed a complaint. Yet the Palestinian history professor ensured she was not offered additional courses. Without tenure, she was quietly pushed out. At another prominent university, she refused to sign anti-Zionist faculty statements. Knowing tenure would be denied, she left academia altogether — driven out by the same ideology that once drove her family from the Middle East.

The pattern is clear: universities only want Jewish Studies professors who conform to what is deemed an “acceptable Jew.” This was evident in the appointment of Shaul Magid at Harvard Divinity School, brought in amid rising antisemitism on campus. Rabbi David Wolpe, who once served on Harvard’s antisemitism advisory board, described Magid as “a gracious human being & an estimable scholar of Jewish texts, notably Hasidism,” but added, “I profoundly disagree with his stance on Israel and wish HDS would appoint someone whose views reflect the mainstream of the Jewish community.”

Even when Jewish scholars are respected, their political reliability, not their expertise, determines whether they are elevated or erased. Others are denied tenure, disinvited or pressured into silence. And in their place, universities elevate voices like Hadar Cohen — individuals with little scholarly training whose rhetoric fits the ideological mold academia wants. This is not education, it is politics. It’s a collapse of integrity.

The uncomfortable reality is this: Cohen has been elevated not because she represents Mizrahi Jews, but because she doesn’t. Her narrative aligns with the propaganda academia prefers, framing Jews from Muslim-majority countries as “Arab Jews,” downplaying Zionism and providing ammunition for anti-Zionist rhetoric. In doing so, she allows herself to be tokenized — the rare Mizrahi voice weaponized to legitimize a broader project hostile to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahi Jews and our lived experience. And here is the danger: students, already primed to obsess over this issue, will run to her class, tokenize her as an “as-a-Jew” voice, and then regurgitate her rhetoric as proof that their own antisemitism, cloaked as anti-Zionism, is justified.

This is what makes the situation so infuriating. The organization I work for, JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, is dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of Jews from the region and elevating the work of scholars who teach our Sephardic and Mizrahi identities with rigor and integrity. Our Distinctions journal, a quarterly online publication amplifying scholars, artists and activists, is one vehicle for this work. Our efforts are supported by leading contributors, by our advisory board, and by 63 members of our Sephardic Leaders Fellowship advisory committees. JIMENA is also supported by synagogues, schools, summer camps, and legacy institutions nationwide — evidence of broad communal backing.

The appointment of Hadar Cohen is not progress, it’s tokenization. It is propaganda dressed up as education. And for Mizrahi Jews, it is a painful reminder: our story is still being told for us, by those who do not speak for us, in institutions that care more about the narrative than the truth.

At the end of the day, Cohen herself is not to blame. She is seizing opportunities as anyone would. The fault lies with a system of academia that elevates unqualified voices because they serve an ideological agenda, while sidelining those best equipped to teach our history with honesty and rigor. The crisis is not about one course or one individual. It is about a university culture that has abandoned truth for tokenization, and scholarship for propaganda. That is the stain on academia… and it will be remembered.

Matthew Nouriel is an Iranian Jewish LGBTQ activist and writer based in Los Angeles. He serves as Director of Community Engagement for JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and is active in public discourse on Middle Eastern human rights, antisemitism, and identity. @matthewnouriel (Instagram, Substack)