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The conflict in the Middle East is a potent conversation topic which has spilled into the Middle Eastern studies departments of numerous universities. One University with an ongoing debate is Columbia University's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages (known as MEALAC). The school has been accused of anti-Semitism and intimidation toward students supporting Israel.

Some students made a documentary called "Columbia Unbecoming" through a group called 'The David Project". Mission is to promote "fair and honest understanding of the conflict. We believe that the values of tolerance, pluralism, and civil society are prerequisites for achieving genuine peace for all people in the Middle East . We do not endorse a political agenda beyond Israel ’s right to exist securely and peacefully among its Arab neighbors."

In order to investigate this alleged antiSemitism and anti-Israel bias, Columbia formed the Dirks Committee. According to the David Project site, the committee failed to accurately characterize the use of the podium for distinct and hateful rhetoric against Israel. The website says: "What the committee refused to consider is the possibility that these “teachings” are lies and propaganda. When Professor Massad teaches that the word “Zion” means “penis,” and therefore Zionism is a macho movement, this is not an uncongenial view, but a lie—or at best an egregious error for a Middle East studies professor. When at Columbia it is taught that the Israelis are Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews, and that the Jews slaughtered Arabs in Jenin, these are not “rhetorically combative” modes of teaching—they are blood libels, anti-Semitic provocations, deceptions, and Arabist propaganda.  Will only brave Jewish students stand up and say so? Does academic freedom”give professors license to teach incendiary, hateful lies?" Columbia also cratd an endowed chair for Edward Said who was on the Palestinian National Council. He wrote a book, Orientalism, in 1978 which holds that Westerners cannot write valid accounts of the Middle East due to their inherent cultural bias. In The Weekly Standard, Stanley Kurtz writes: "The founding text of postcolonial studies, Orientalism effectively de-legitimated all previous scholarship on the Middle East by branding it as racist. Said drew no distinction between the most ignorant and bigoted remarks of nineteenth-century colonialists and the most accomplished pronouncements of contemporary Western scholars: All Western knowledge of the East was intrinsically tainted with imperialism."

Discover the Network link on Edward Said: Even Alan Dershowitz got into the investigation at Columbia University.  Campus Watch also serves to Monitor Middle East Studies on Campus. They document numerous instances of educational bias against Israel.