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Amid criticism, Columbia University announces a new research center in Tel Aviv
(JTA) — Columbia University has announced that it will launch a “Global Center” in Tel Aviv amid dueling letters from faculty supporting and opposing the decision.
The university’s Global Centers act as hubs for local scholars and researchers to work with the New York City school’s faculty, students and alumni to study and address a range of local and global issues. The center in Tel Aviv will join 10 others across the globe.
The Tel Aviv Global Center will enable the university “to connect with individuals and institutions, as well as with the alumni community in Israel, drawing them closer to the ongoing life of the University,” Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger said in a statement Monday. He added that the center will focus on climate change, technology, entrepreneurship, arts, the humanities, biology, health and medicine.
Columbia already has ties to Tel Aviv through Tel Aviv University, with which it began a dual degree program in 2019, despite also facing faculty and student objections.
For decades, Columbia has been the site of heated debate among both faculty and students over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in the months leading up to the announcement, a group of Columbia faculty urged the school to halt plans for a center in Tel Aviv. In February, law professor Katherine Franke began circulating an open letter against the center, which as of Tuesday morning had received 95 faculty signatures, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator, a student publication.
The letter references accusations of Israeli human rights violations, as well as the policies of Israel’s governing coalition, which includes far-right parties and which has put forward a proposal for a judicial overhaul that has led to massive street protests and upheaval in the country.
“We are particularly concerned that Columbia University would take the bold step of opening a Global Center in Tel Aviv at this particular moment, with the newly seated government that is widely, if not almost universally, regarded as the most conservative, reactionary, right wing government in Israel’s history,” the letter reads. “For Columbia to preemptively invest in a new Global Center in Israel at the very moment when the domestic and international community is pulling away as part of a concerted and vehement objection to the new government’s policies would render Columbia not only an outlier, but a collaborator in those very policies.”
While the letter notes broadly that Global Centers have served as a “liberal academic footprint” in other countries with restrictive regimes, it does not reference the individual human rights records of any of the other countries where the centers are located. The 10 existing centers are in Amman, Jordan; Athens, Greece; Beijing; Istanbul; Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; Santiago, Chile and Tunis, Tunisia.
The letter also argues that Israel would ban Columbia alumni and affiliates based on their citizenship, identity and politics.
Franke herself was barred from Israel in 2018, along with attorney Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, based on accusations that they supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israel. Both denied the accusations at the time, according to Haaretz. Around that same time, according to an opinion column by Roger Cohen in The New York Times, Bollinger was in Israel to discuss plans for the Global Center.
The letter also notes “substantial concern about the power of donor money to direct major decisions, such as the establishment of this Global Center in Tel Aviv, in lieu of consultation with the faculty.” The letter does not name any specific donors or detail how the alleged donor pressure was deployed.
In response to the opposition letter, faculty supporters of the Tel Aviv Global Center composed their own statement. They argue that the centers are independent of their governments’ host countries and do not signal approval or disapproval of each country’s government.
“The decision to locate a center in all of these countries was never determined by political considerations, but rather to enhance Columbia as a global research university,” the statement reads. “For a country its size, Israel has an unusually rich infrastructure of universities and other scholarly, cultural, religious, scientific, technological, legal, and artistic resources that have intellectual connections to every school at Columbia University.”
The statement of support, signed by more than 170 full-time faculty, was written by political science professor Ester R. Fuchs; Nicholas Lemann, dean emeritus of the Columbia Journalism School; David M. Schizer, dean emeritus and professor at the Columbia Law School and law professor Matthew C. Waxman.
The supportive letter says that Israel has a better human rights record than other countries that host the university’s centers — such as China or Jordan — and adds that many signatories do not approve of Israel’s current government.
“One does not have to support the policies of the current government of Israel — and many of us do not — to recognize that singling out Israel in this way is unjustified,” the letter says. “To apply a separate standard to Israel — and Israel alone — would understandably be perceived by many as a form of discrimination.”
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Israel Says US Gaza Executive Board Composition Against Its Policy
FILE PHOTO: Displaced Palestinians shelter at a tent camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer/File Photo
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday that this week’s Trump administration announcement on the composition of a Gaza executive board was not coordinated with Israel and ran counter to government policy.
It said Foreign Minister Gideon Saar would raise the issue with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The statement did not specify what part of the board’s composition contradicted Israeli policy. An Israeli government spokesperson declined to comment.
The board, unveiled by the White House on Friday, includes Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Israel has repeatedly opposed any Turkish role in Gaza.
Other members of the executive board include Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process; an Israeli‑Cypriot billionaire; and a minister from the United Arab Emirates, which established relations with Israel in 2020.
Washington this week also announced the start of the second phase of President Donald Trump’s plan, announced in September, to end the war in Gaza. This includes creating a transitional technocratic Palestinian administration in the enclave.
The first members of the so-called Board of Peace – to be chaired by Trump and tasked with supervising Gaza’s temporary governance – were also named. Members include Rubio, billionaire developer Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
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Iran’s Leader Khamenei Accuses Trump of Inciting Deadly Protests
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, January 17, 2026. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday blamed President Donald Trump for weeks of demonstrations that rights groups said have led to more than 3,000 deaths.
“We consider the US president criminal for the casualties, damages and slander he inflicted on the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said, according to Iranian state media.
The protests erupted on December 28 over economic hardship and swelled into widespread demonstrations calling for the end of clerical rule in the Islamic Republic.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene, including by threatening “very strong action” if Iran executed protesters.
But on Friday, in a social media post, he thanked Tehran’s leaders, saying they had called off mass hangings. Iran said there was “no plan to hang people.”
In comments that appeared to respond to Trump, Khamenei said: “We will not drag the country into war, but we will not let domestic or international criminals go unpunished,” state media reported.
IRAN’S WORST UNREST IN YEARS
Iran’s ultimate authority Khamenei said “several thousand deaths” had happened during the nationwide protests, which are Iran’s worst unrest in years. He accused Iran’s longtime enemies the US and Israel of organizing the violence.
“Those linked to Israel and the US caused massive damage and killed several thousand,” he said, adding that they started fires, destroyed public property and incited chaos. They “committed crimes and a grave slander,” he said.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, said it had verified 3,090 deaths, including 2,885 protesters, and over 22,000 arrests.
Last week, Iran’s prosecutor general said detainees would face severe punishment. Those held included people who “aided rioters and terrorists attacking security forces and public property” and “mercenaries who took up arms and spread fear among citizens,” he said.
“All perpetrators are mohareb,” state media quoted Mohammad Movahedi Azad as saying, adding that investigations would be conducted “without leniency, mercy or tolerance”.
Mohareb, an Islamic legal term meaning to wage war against God, is punishable by death under Iranian law.
INTERNET SERVICES ARE RESTORED IN PART
Reuters has not been able to independently verify the numbers of casualties or details of disturbances reported by Iranian media and rights groups.
Getting information has been complicated by internet blackouts, which were in part lifted on Saturday.
Iran’s crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests, according to residents and state media, and the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported on Saturday that internet service had been restored for some users.
The ISNA news website said SMS service had also been reactivated.
“Metrics show a very slight rise in internet connectivity in #Iran this morning” after 200 hours of shutdown, the internet monitoring group NetBlocks posted on X. Connectivity remained around 2% of ordinary levels, it said.
A resident of Karaj, west of Tehran, reached by phone via WhatsApp, said he noticed the internet was back at 4 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Saturday. Karaj experienced some of the most severe violence during the protests. The resident, who asked not to be identified, said Thursday was the peak of the unrest there.
A few Iranians overseas said on social media that they had also been able to message users in Iran early on Saturday.
ARRESTS HAVE FOLLOWED INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS, MEDIA SAY
State media has reported the arrest of thousands of “rioters and terrorists” across the country, including people linked to opposition groups abroad that advocate the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
The arrests included several people Iranian state media described as “ringleaders,” including a woman named as Nazanin Baradaran, who was taken into custody following “complex intelligence operations.”
The reports said that Baradaran operated under the pseudonym Raha Parham on behalf of Reza Pahlavi – the exiled son of Iran’s last shah – and had played a leading role in organizing the unrest. Reuters could not verify the report or her identity.
Pahlavi, a longtime opposition figure, has positioned himself as a potential leader in the event of regime collapse and has said he would seek to re-establish diplomatic ties between Iran and Israel if he were to assume a leadership role in the country.
Israeli officials have expressed support for Pahlavi. In a rare public disclosure this month, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio that Israel had operatives “on the ground” in Iran.
He said they aimed to weaken Iran’s capabilities, though he denied they were directly working to topple the leadership.
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Protesters Rally in Denmark and Greenland Against Trump Annexation Threat
A protester takes part in a demonstration to show support for Greenland in Copenhagen, Denmark January 17, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little
Protesters in Denmark and Greenland demonstrated on Saturday against President Donald Trump’s demand that the Arctic island be ceded to the US and called for it to be left to determine its own future.
Trump says Greenland is vital to US security because of its strategic location and large mineral deposits, and has not ruled out using force to take it. European nations this week sent military personnel to the island at Denmark’s request.
MARCHING IN COPENHAGEN AND NUUK
In Copenhagen, demonstrators chanted “Greenland is not for sale” and held up slogans such as “No means No” and “Hands off Greenland” alongside the territory’s red-and-white flag as they marched to the US embassy.
Some wore red baseball caps resembling the “Make America Great Again” caps of Trump supporters, but with the slogan “Make America Go Away.”
In Greenland’s capital Nuuk, thousands led by Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen carried flags and similar banners as they headed for the US consulate chanting “Kalaallit Nunaat” – the island’s name in Greenlandic.
“I’ve come here today because I think it’s important to show that Greenland is not for sale. It is not a toy. This is our home,” said Naja Holm, a civil servant.
By the consulate, Nielsen addressed the crowd, drawing loud cheers.
Organizers estimated over 20,000 people attended the protest in Copenhagen – akin to the entire population of Nuuk. Police did not provide an official figure. Other protests were held across Denmark.
“I am very grateful for the huge support we as Greenlanders receive … we are also sending a message to the world that you all must wake up,” said Julie Rademacher, chair of Uagut, an organization for Greenlanders in Denmark.
TRUMP TRIGGERS DIPLOMATIC RIFT
Trump’s repeated statements about the island have triggered a diplomatic crisis between the US and Denmark, both founding members of the NATO military alliance, and have been widely condemned in Europe.
The territory of 57,000 people, governed for centuries from Copenhagen, has carved out significant autonomy since 1979 but remains part of Denmark, which controls defense and foreign policy, and funds much of the administration.
Some 17,000 Greenlanders live in Denmark, according to Danish authorities.
All parties in Greenland’s parliament ultimately favor independence, but they disagree on the timing and have recently said they would rather remain part of Denmark than join the US.
Only 17 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, and large majorities of Democrats and Republicans oppose using military force to annex it, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Trump called the poll “fake.”