An American journalist will offer her popular course on race, media, and international affairs online after it was cancelled by the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Karen Attiah, global opinions editor and a columnist for the Washington Post, has revealed that all 500 spots had sold out within 48 hours. She is the lead instructor at the new online Resistance Summer School.
Moreover, Attiah told Amanpour & Co. interviewer Michel Martin that there is a waiting list of 2,000 students for Race, Media and International Affairs 101. It has a sliding cost scale based on the student’s level of participation.
When Martin asked why she was no longer teaching this course at Columbia University, Attiah said she was informed that the “dean would not be renewing her funding” for 2025.
“To this day, I would still like to know exactly what that decision was about,” Attiah said on Amanpour & Co. “I still don’t have clarity on that. Of course, it was heartbreaking, frustrating. I was crushed.”
Attiah mentioned on-air that students from the previous year had already said they were looking forward to her course.
“So my heart, to an extent, was breaking for students who again said that they really needed this course—something like this—to be a part of their education,” she added. “And I wouldn’t be able to give it to them.”
Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs chose not to fund Attiah’s course as the Trump administration was revoking $400 million in funding. The administration linked this financial penalty to the Ivy League school’s response to student protests against Israel’s military attacks on Gaza.
To placate the U.S. president, the university agreed to appoint a new senior provost to review the curricula in Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian studies departments.
Watch Michel Martin’s interview with Karen Attiah (above) on Amanpour & Co.
Attiah refers to a “segregationist purge”
Attiah is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and was the editor for Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi columnist who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
She expressed deep concerns on Amanpour & Co. about the Trump administration’s demands around diversity, equity, and inclusion. She also criticized Columbia University’s willingness to capitulate.
“Why should I be held hostage, frankly, by an institution that is caving, basically, on its own values on education?” Attiah asked.
In her interview on Amanpour & Co., Attiah noted that there is a “segregationist purge” in higher education when it comes to teaching about race.
Columbia University issued a statement to Amanpour & Co. insisting that Attiah was invited to return to teach the same course in the spring 2025 semester, but she declined. Furthermore, the university declared that she has been given the opportunity to teach the same course in 2026 at Columbia, which she has not accepted.
Attiah, however, told Martin that the offer for 2026 was not in the School of International and Public Affairs—and it was a “workaround” that only came after her online course offering went viral. She added that the offer for 2025 also would not have been funded by the School of International and Public Affairs.
“This has little to do with me having a vendetta against Columbia,” Attiah emphasized on Amanpour & Co. “Columbia shaped me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Columbia. But for me as a person—as someone who cares about the subject matter—I just want to be able to be as free as possible to teach in the way I would like to teach. And not with the fear that at any moment, the axe could come again as the political climates changed.”
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