Mission | Columbia Law School

Mission

The Open University Project works to encourage, enable, and defend university-based teaching, learning, and discussion of the history and politics of Israel/Palestine. Led by prominent faculty with expertise in Middle East studies, as well as student leaders and activists, the Open University Project utilizes scholarly analysis to explore the terms and meanings of political Zionism, the tensions inherent in the founding of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and the nature of Palestinian claims to sovereignty and self-determination. In addition to the development of study materials that explore these challenging issues of ethics, politics and law, the Open University Project works to defend academic freedom and to resist censorship of or orthodoxy toward particular viewpoints on notions of dispossession, belonging, and justice in Israel/Palestine.