College and University Monitor

The Iranian regime has found Columbia University to be a hospitable ground for years. The most vivid example was the school’s widely-criticized decision in 2007 to host then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest speaker.

Columbia also accepted funding from the regime in the past. The New York Post reported that $100,000 was donated after Ahmadinejad’s event. In 2006 and 2004, the Alavi Foundation, a regime-front, donated $20,000 and $50,000, respectively.

The Post also reported the Alavi Foundation financed at least two professorships, Gary Sick of the School of International and Public Affairs and Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature.

Sick was known for whitewashing Ahmadinejad’s calls to destroy Israel and Dabashi gained dubious distinction for praising Iraqi, Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists as heroes for “resisting this [American] empire.”...