Pro-Palestine protests have been a feature of Columbia's campus since October 7. Now, Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to the university: get control of your campus or lose $400 million in Federal funding. But the target of the measures wasn't just security, but the Middle East Department too, which Columbia has agreed to place into five years of 'academic receivership'. 

This week we take a deeper look at the ideology behind the unrest. One protester’s placard stuck out, it read: “Why make me study Said if I’m not allowed to use it?”. The placard was referring to academic Edward Said and this question gets to the very heart of the Columbia protests and the anti-Israeli sentiment felt on many American campuses today. 

Edward Said was the author of a book called Orientalism that changed American universities forever. You can’t understand the Gaza protests without understanding Orientalism. But just how much is this radical 1970s academic text influencing contemporary thinking about the Middle East? 

If you liked this episode of Breaking History, Listen to Unpacking Israeli History.

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