Mike Pompeo to join Columbia University as fellow
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Mike Pompeo speaks on stage at the RNC in July 2024 in Milwaukee. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be headed to Columbia University this spring to teach a course on diplomacy, the university confirmed to Axios Monday.
Why it matters: The former Trump administration official's arrival at the school comes roughly a year after the Ivy League university became the epicenter of college campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
- The campus encampments sparked an outcry from conservatives, with the pro-Palestine protests becoming a rallying issue for GOP lawmakers, who lambasted them as purportedly antisemitic.
- Columbia, like other elite institutions, has faced accusations from conservatives of being overly liberal.
Driving the news: Pompeo will join Columbia as a distinguished fellow at its Institute of Global Politics starting March 1, and will serve through Feb. 2026, a university official confirmed to Axios.
- Pompeo will teach students about diplomacy, decision-making and organizational leadership, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.
- Pompeo's post at Columbia will be "invaluable" to students as "addressing our most pressing challenges, from the local to the global, requires collaboration and cooperation across partisan and ideological divides," the university official said.
- "We can't ask the students to engage in a dialogue across the aisle if we are not actively modeling this to them," they added.
What they're saying: Pompeo told the Wall Street Journal he was looking forward to engaging in "fair, reasoned and fact-based discourse."
- Pompeo also called the liberal atmosphere on many college campuses "alarming" and said he believed Columbia intentionally brought in "someone with a view that is very different than most of the faculty on their staff."
State of play: As the secretary of state during the first Trump administration, Pompeo played a key role in crafting the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements between Israel and other Arab states.
- Pompeo's arrival at Columbia comes as the second Trump administration marks a rightward shift across much of the country.
- President Trump has commenced rapidly executing his agenda, including cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at federally-funded schools.
Go deeper: GOP takes the offensive on pro-Palestinian protests
