James Schamus

James Schamus’s Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia) & Justification of Hamas Terrorism

James Schamus showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. He has also justified Hamas terrorism, supported anti-Israel activism on the Columbia and demonized Israel.

Schamus is a supporter [p. 3] of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He reportedly served on the board of directors of the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) in 2015.

As of September 2024, Schamus was listed as a professor of professional practice in film and media studies at Columbia.

Also as of September 2024, Schamus was listed as the former CEO of Focus Features. He was also listed as a screenwriter, film producer and film executive. 

As of the same date, Schamus was listed online as having received a PhD in English from the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 2003. UC Berkeley is located in Berkeley, California.

Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia

On April 21, 2024, Middle East Eye uploaded a video to YouTube featuring Schamus. In the interview, Schamus claimed [00:01:34]: “The events unfolding on the Columbia campus are part of a broad national movement of brave truth-speaking young people.”   

Schamus’s comments came after Columbia University president, Minouche Shafik, authorized the New York Police Department (NYPD) to sweep the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on April 18, 2024. 

On April 22, 2024, Schamus posted on X a photo from the encampment and wrote: “Today @columbia the faculty showed up for the students and the students showed up for the faculty.” 

On April 22, 2024, Columbia faculty members participated in the “‘Faculty Walkout’ rally…to support Palestine and Liberated Zone Encampment.” The event was held in support of the students arrested by the NYPD and suspended by the university. Bender can be seen [slide 1] standing in the center left of the second row.

Faculty members carrying signs that said [00:00:35]: “END STUDENT SUSPENSIONS NOW” and HANDS OFF OUR STUDENTS” walked out of their classrooms and made their way to the steps of the library facing the encampment. A crowd gathered and chanted: “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” Many walkout participants addressed [00:00:14] the crowd, expressing faculty support for their students and the encampment.

The encampment was also in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas encampment on campus to protest Israel’s war against Hamas and promote BDS. The encampment was forcibly dismantled and approximately 80 Columbia students were arrested.

Justification of Hamas Terrorism

Schamus joined with other Columbia faculty to sign an October 30, 2023 “Open Letter from Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty” justifying the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks against Israel. The open letter also aimed to defend a student-written “Joint Statement from Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia University regarding the recent events in Palestine/Israel…” 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped hundreds and wounded thousands. War crimes included mass rape and torture. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” For more information, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

The faculty letter called [p. 2] the Hamas atrocities a “military response” by “an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation,” as well as “just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies.”

Among anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” is a euphemism for terrorism and is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence.  

The letter Schamus signed also defended [p. 1] the Columbia students who had signed on to their joint statement, claiming the students’ document “situated the military action begun on October 7th within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.”  

Supporting Anti-Israel Activism at Columbia

Schamus was a leader in the establishment of Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), which was launched in 2010 and has been criticized for promoting anti-Israel activity and BDS campaigns on campus. Schamus moderated a discussion at the launch event for CPS and stated that he “plans to host similar events in the future.”

According to an article chronicling CPS’s establishment, it was reported that Schamus got involved because he felt that “the campaign against Columbia faculty members organized by the pro-Israel non-profit… in response to the alleged bullying represented ‘a real assault on fundamental academic freedoms’.”

In February 2009, Schamus signed a letter calling on Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to “make public [his] opposition" to Israeli security measures in the West Bank and Gaza.

The letter was sent one month after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (OCL), which was launched to stop Hamas weapons smuggling and rocket fire from the Gaza strip targeting Israeli civilians.  

Demonizing Israel

Schamus signed a letter, published on December 12, 2017, condemning United States President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, claiming that “The Palestinian people of Jerusalem are already subject to municipal discrimination at every level, and a creeping process of ethnic cleansing.”

The letter went on to say that “We reject Trump’s collusion with such racist manipulation, and his disregard for international law. We deplore his readiness to crown the Israeli military conquest of East Jerusalem and his indifference to Palestinian rights. As artists and as citizens, we challenge the ignorance and inhumanity of these policies, and celebrate the resilience of Palestinians living under occupation.”

Shamus is an executive producer of the 2016 anti-Israel film “Junction 48.”

In an interview published by Electronic Intifada (EI) on March 31, 2017, the film’s director, Udi Aloni stated that “In order for us to deliver a true universal message, we have to be extremely particular in the details of what Lydd is… What it [means] to be a Palestinian within Israel, who we call 48ers, what is this place that you live [in], the apartheid that is not so obvious to the people outside of Israel.”

In the same interview, Aloni described the film as part of Palestinian “spirit of resistance.”

On February 4, 2015, Schamus signed a petition condemning a local Jewish organization’s opposition to an event featuring anti-Israel Professor Ilan Pappe.

The petition argued that “Prof. Pappé opposes the violent form of Zionism that justifies the ethnic cleansing of Arab people—and denies them their rights” and went on to state that “Inspired by his example, we will not remain silent in the face of the oppression of Palestinians and all other people of the Middle East, no matter what regime deprives them of life, liberty, and the pursuit of their most basic human needs.”

Schamus was interviewed for the 2013 anti-Zionist film, “Some of my Best Friends are Zionists,” alongside fellow anti-Israel activists Judith Butler and Bruce Robbins.

On July 14, 2011, Schamus published an article about his experience teaching a film course in a Palestinian village. In the article, Schamus described weekly protests of Palestinians and alleged that the Israeli “army starts lobbing tear gas grenades. If they are feeling particularly annoyed, they just shoot the tear gas canisters directly at the protestors. If they’re in a really bad mood, they open up with rubber bullets and chase people up the hill.”

In March 2011, Schamus signed a petition condemning the cancelation of a screening of the anti-Israel film, “Miral.” Signatories of the petition claimed that the cancelation “is part of a deeper pattern of reactively muzzling perceived criticism of Israeli polices [sic] and human rights violations.”  

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

Schamus signed a letter, published on January 5, 2018, expressing support for singer Lorde’s decision to cancel her performance in Tel Aviv. Signatories stated that “We deplore the bullying tactics being used to defend injustice against Palestinians and to suppress an artist’s freedom of conscience. We support Lorde’s right to take a stand.”

Schamus also signed a 2017 letter to the president and the chair of the board of Lincoln Center, calling on them to cancel an upcoming performance by Israeli theater artists.

The letter stated that “It is deeply troubling that Lincoln Center, one of the world’s leading cultural institutions, is helping the Israeli government to implement its systematic ‘Brand Israel’ strategy of employing arts and culture to divert attention from the state's decades of violent colonization, brutal military occupation and denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people.”

The letter concluded with a “call for a boycott of those Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit in the denial of Palestinian rights.”

Schamus signed an open letter published on April 24, 2017, calling on the band Radiohead to cancel their upcoming performance in Tel Aviv. The petition stated that “you’ll know that Israel denies freedom to the Palestinians under occupation, who can’t live where they want, can’t travel as they please, who get detained (and often tortured) without charge or trial, and can’t even use Facebook without surveillance, censorship and arrest.”

The petition concluded with a call to “Please do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression: stay away, until apartheid is over.”

Schamus signed a petition, published by the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) organization on November 14, 2016, to express support with “University of Michigan as they call upon their university to divest from corporations complicit in Israel’s occupation, dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Signatories of the letter went on to state that “we stand in full support of the Palestinian call for the international community to apply Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) pressure towards Israel.”

Schamus also signed a Faculty Petition at Columbia, in which signatories expressed that they “take issue with our financial involvements in institutions associated with the State of Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, continued violations of Palestinian human rights, systematic destruction of life and property, inhumane segregation and systemic forms of discrimination.”

The petition went on to state that “We now stand with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine as well as with Jewish Voice for Peace” and demanded “that the University divest from corporations” doing business with Israel.”

Schamus signed a letter to the New York State Assembly, published on February 13, 2014, calling for its members to oppose a piece of anti-BDS legislation.

Signatories of the letter affirmed: “we all firmly believe that academics have a right to express their political views through a wide range of protected speech, including boycotts.”

Schamus also signed a petition to the New York Times, published by Change.Org and Electronic Intifada (EI) on April 30, 2012, condemning anti-BDS activism. Signatories defended BDS activists, characterizing the movement as an expression of “Free speech and thought.”

The petition signed by Schamus was reportedly started by Snehal Shingavi, an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas (UT) who co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) with Hatem Bazian in 2001.

The petition decried a strongly worded advertisement by The David Horowitz Freedom Center, published in the New York Times on April 24, 2012.

The petition said the signatories were “alarmed at your carrying an advertisement that misinforms and names individuals who do not have the money that Horowtiz [sic] has to defend themselves through his chosen medium.”

Schamus signed a petition, published in March 2011, calling on the financial consultant company, TIAA-CREF, to “divest from Israeli occupation.” The petition provided a list of Israeli companies from which signatories demanded TIAA-CREF divest its funds.

Schamus signed a petition, published by JVP on September 5, 2010, to express support for Israeli artists who refused to perform at a theater in Ariel, which they described as “one of the largest of the West Bank settlements, which by all standards of international law are clearly illegal.”

Signatories of the petition wrote that “It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Schamus  signed a letter published on May 10, 2010, authored by the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), calling on the organization to withdraw its recognition of Ariel University, which the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s (USACBI) website labeled a “settler colonial university.”

Signatories of the letter specifically condemned ISIS’s inclusion of a professor from Ariel University in their upcoming event. The letter claimed that “by hosting a representative of such ‘university,’ your organization… lends legitimacy to the brutal military occupation of a people’s homeland. By recognizing this ‘university,’ the ISIS is endorsing the illegal and immoral occupation of Palestine.”