Bowdoin College Professor Nasser Abourahme’s Anti-Israel Comments May Draw National Attention Amid Congressional Investigation

Bowdoin College, an elite liberal arts college on the coast of Maine, is coming under national scrutiny for its handling of anti-Semitism thanks to an investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce announced March 28.

That investigation may inexorably point to questions over Bowdoin’s hiring of Nasser Abourahme, an assistant professor of Middle East and North Africa Studies, who has consistently voiced support and praise for violent anti-Israel militants, describing the October 7 Hamas massacre — the deadliest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust — as part of a “heroic” resistance.

“I’m not shy about the fact that people engaged in armed struggle against this invasion are heroic,” Abourahme said in a Nov. 11, 2023 interview with Radio Zamaneh.

According to a transcript of the interview, Abourahme elaborated profusely on his moral and intellectual support for the terrorists who raped, murdered, and kidnapped civilians living in Israel, including American citizens.

During the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which Palestinian militants broadcast across social media, more than 1,200 civilians and Israeli armed forces were murdered, as well as at least 46 Americans. Another 251 individuals were taken hostage and brutally tortured in the months following the attacks.

There have also been well-evidenced claims of systematic rape against civilians by Hamas militants involved in the attack. In some social media videos, Palestinian civilians who did not participate in the attacks themselves can be seen cheering the abduction of non-Palestinian civilians and spitting on their blood-stained corpses.

Based on his comments, Abourahme may find himself in a similar position to the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose anti-Israel/pro-Hamas campus protests at Columbia University, where he was a graduate student, resulted in his arrest and deportation from the U.S.

“We have to refuse separating the ‘good’ types of struggle that people in the West like to relate to (civic struggle and non-violent protest) from the other forms of struggle that people have been waging on the ground and which the West finds less palatable (i.e. forms of armed struggle, forms of insurrection),” Abourahme said.

“People may talk about proportionality and get trapped in the language of international law only to miss the fact that the colonial response has to be disproportionate,” he said.

Those statements, made in an interview just one month after the October 7 terror attack, were only the tip of the iceberg.

In a fiery letter published May 25, 2024 by Mondoweiss, Abourahme cheered on radical student protests across American campuses and accused Israel of orchestrating a “mechanized slaughter of thousands of children.” Addressing students involved in illegal campus encampments, he declared: “What an honor it is to stand with you all … as comrade and accomplice”​.

“The fight for Palestine,” he continued, “is a fight for us all … You honor the martyrs of Gaza and Palestine.” He condemned “Western civilization and values” as perpetrators of “genocide,” and described the war in Gaza as Zionism’s “endgame.”

Rather than off-the-cuff, emotional reactions or slips of the tongue, Abourahme’s support for pro-Palestinian / anti-Israeli militants appears to be a well-developed, heart-felt position on the part of the visiting professor.

In Radical Philosophy, Abourahme wrote that “Zionism is being defeated,” and described the ongoing war against Israel as a “renewed war of national liberation.” He praised the role of “armed struggle in Palestine and the region,” and referred to the October 7 massacre as part of “Palestine’s long century of anticolonial struggle”​.

He went even further at a University of Toronto event, where he was quoted as saying, “Anti-Zionist knowledge and practice can only ever be abolition” — appearing to express support for the abolition of Israel.

According to an attendee who posted quotes from the Nov. 8, 2024 event on social media, Abourahme even directly linked the work of academics at Western colleges and universities to the violent attacks perpetrated by pro-Palestinian terror groups like Hamas.

“Anti-Zionist thought from the university must be imminent to the armed struggle in the field,” he said.

He rejected any distinction between peaceful protest and violent action, saying: “We have to refuse separating the ‘good’ types of struggle … from the other forms of struggle … forms of armed struggle, forms of insurrection.”​

“Any meaningful struggle to practice Anti-Zionism must be wholesale, and part of the concrete struggle to defeat Zionism, and not to reform it,” he said.

According to sources on Bowdoin’s campus on asked to remain anonymous, Abdourahme has played a significant role in helping organize and cheer on SJP, including street protests that have drawn involvement from the local Brunswick Police Department.

SJP was also responsible for a campus protest that took over the college’s Smith Union on Feb. 6. During that occupation, roughly 50 students, including many international students, refused to leave the first floor of the union, effectively blocking other students from accessing campus resources.

The encampment’s backers said the protest was about the college’s investment practices and its lack of response to the “Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum,” a document prepared by anti-Israel students that demanded a stand against Israel’s actions in Gaza and divestment from arms manufacturers.

Social media comments also indicate the protest was a reaction to President Donald Trump’s statements about U.S. “ownership” of Gaza.

Outside of a few corners of Bowdoin, where a virulent strain of strident progressivism stifles most heterodox public expression, Abdourahme’s anti-Israel and pro-Hamas commentary has garnered little attention.

That may change thanks to a new investigation from the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

A March 2025 letter from the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce criticized Bowdoin College for its leniency in handling a campus encampment organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

The committee questioned whether the college was complying with its federal obligations to combat antisemitism on campus​.

While Bowdoin has yet to comment publicly on Abourahme’s future at the college, the professor remains employed and active in student organizing.

Critics on campus, including students and professors, have kept a low profile for fear of attracting retaliation from likeminded students, staff or faculty at the college. But privately, they’ve argued that Abourahme’s rhetoric amounts to open support for terrorist violence.

A memo outlining Abourahme’s commentary on the conflict between Palestinian terrorists and Israel, a copy of which has been obtained by the Maine Wire, was shared with leadership at Bowdoin but did not result in any significant actions, according to one campus source.

“Is it really wise,” the memo’s author asks, “to give a Bowdoin platform to someone who thinks that the people who participated in the slaughter of October 7th are heroic?”​

Public records reviewed by the Maine Wire suggest that Abourahme, 42, only began working and living in the U.S. in 2015 when he held an address in New York City. But immigration records are not generally public knowledge, so whether Abourahme is vulnerable to deportation by the Trump Administration is uncertain.

Abourahme did not respond to a request for an interview from the Maine Wire.

If the visiting professor is not a U.S. citizen, however, his anti-Israel / pro-Hamas advocacy may cause federal immigration officials to re-evaluate any entry privileges he was granted to enter and work in the U.S.

As the actions taken against Khalil demonstrated, the State Department has broad authority — and a willingness — to order the revocation of any immigration privileges non-citizens enjoy if they’re found to be openly supporting designated terrorist organizations.

Non-citizen professors who have the privilege to live and work in the United States may do so with a number of visas or legal temporary immigration statuses, including the J-1 Exchange Visitor Visa, which requires a sponsoring institution, the H-1B Speciality Occupation Visa, the B-1 Business Visitor Visa, the Visa Waiver Program, the O-1 Visa for Individuals of Extraordinary Ability, or the F-1 Student Visa, which can apply for some postdoctoral work.

All of those statuses could make Abourahme subject to arrest and removal by U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) should the State Department decide to revoke his legal status.