As debate continues over whether or not Sheherezade “Sherry” Jaafari,  former press aide to Bashar al-Assad, should have been granted admission to SIPA, some of our own weigh in. David Fine, CC ’13, interviewed Columbia professors, students, and alumni in a piece published on Tablet. Interviewees include Elazar Barkan, the director of Columbia’s Institute for the […]

A lot has been written about Sheherezade “Sherry” Jaafari, who’s scheduled to start classes at SIPA this fall. In an email to a J-school professor, ABC journalist Barbara Walters said she “is brilliant, beautiful, [and] speaks five languages.” On the other hand, Haya Dweidary, the only Syrian student in SIPA’s class of 2012, told the […]

Hundreds of posts appeared today on Columbia’s Facebook page an unofficial Facebook page for Columbia University unaffiliated with the university declaring support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Washington Post reports. The furor is apparently a backlash against a Wall Street Journal story that ran this morning, quoting Columbia prof Hamid Dabashi: “This whole […]