Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now a fellow at Columbia’s Institute of Global Politics to teach diplomacy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Pompeo was hired by the university to “teach diplomacy, decision-making, and organizational leadership.” The hire was presented as attempting to expand the school’s diversity of thought.
“The Academy cannot be an ivory tower,” Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “We should engage with the world because we learn a lot from engaging with practitioners with differing positions and ideologies who also ultimately can learn from us.”
“I suspect that [Columbia’s] outreach was intentional in the sense that they were seeking to bring onto campus…someone with a view that is very different than most of the faculty on their staff,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo is a Zionist who advocates for robust US support for Israel. Columbia was one of the most active locations for the campus protest movement in 2024, which saw thousands of students demand an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
At the time, Pompeo smeared the activists as a “violent, pro-Hamas mob threatening and attacking Jewish students.”
Pompeo currently sits on the board of directors at Cyabra, a firm founded by two Israelis who served in an IDF “information warfare” unit. The company claims to be able to scan social media and identify fake profiles. After Israel invaded Gaza, Cyabra claimed that one in four accounts engaging in discussion about the war in Gaza were fake accounts amplifying “pro-Hamas views.”
Cyabra worked for X after Elon Musk acquired the company in 2022. The State Department hired the Israeli firm to scan 30,000 profiles. Cyabra reported that 33% of the discourse was fake, asserting the fake accounts were attempting to discredit criticisms of the Chinese government. The company, Pompeo said, is a tool to identify threats to our “democratic institutions.”
“Cyabra’s efforts are not only safeguarding our digital realm, but also strengthening the foundations of free and fair discourse,” he stated. “Cyabra’s contributions are invaluable in the fight against malicious actors who seek to undermine our democratic institutions.”
While Pompeo billed his and Cyabra’s cause as noble, he previously bragged that “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.” The agency has an infamous legacy of conducting influence operations, even in the US.
Pompeo largely expresses views in line with the Washington consensus on foreign policy, including other Columbia professors such as Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland. Pompeo has fallen out of favor with his former boss’ base, and Trump announced that he would not rehire Pompeo into his second administration shortly after he won the election in November.
Pompeo has called on Washington to take an aggressive posture for the proxy war in Ukraine, pushing for the US to offer Kiev a $500 billion “lend-lease” program to keep Ukrainian forces armed.
