Alleged CCP-Linked People’s Forum to Host Columbia University Panel Featuring Hasan Piker
The People’s Forum, a Manhattan venue under congressional scrutiny over alleged CCP ties, is set to host a Columbia-Palestine panel featuring Hasan Piker, radical activists, and DSA-aligned candidates
On April 27 at 7-8pm, a panel discussion titled “Columbia & Palestine: A Test of Democracy” will convene at The People’s Forum in Manhattan. The event, organized by the Morningside Peace Forum, brings together several speakers who have drawn scrutiny over disputed biographical claims, campus controversies, radical political activism, and rhetoric that critics have characterized as glorifying terrorism.
The venue, The People’s Forum, is the subject of a House Ways and Means Committee records demand alleging that the nonprofit may have operated as a CCP-aligned propaganda outlet after public reporting linked it to more than $20 million in funding connected to Shanghai-based tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham.
Mohsen Mahdawi’s Disputed Biography
The event’s first panel features Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia graduate student whose recent ICE detention sparked national outcry and sympathetic coverage from outlets including The New York Times and CBS News. But a detailed investigation by British journalist David Collier, along with reporting in Newsweek and The Free Press, raises critical questions about many elements of Mahdawi’s widely publicized life story.
Mahdawi has repeatedly claimed that at age 10, he watched his best friend “Hemeida” get shot and killed by Israeli forces while playing in the al-Fara refugee camp. Yet Collier’s examination of B’Tselem’s documented fatality records from the Second Intifada shows that “not a single child was killed at the al-Fara refugee camp during the time period Mohsen was 10 years old.” No individual named “Hemeida” appears in any fatality lists for the camp.
Mahdawi has also stated that during one night as a 12-year-old, he was forced to scrape seven bodies off walls and collect human remains after an alleged IDF attack. According to documented records, only four people total died in al-Fara during the entire Second Intifada period—roughly one person per year, not seven in a single night.
More troubling are Mahdawi’s family connections and early activism. Collier identified multiple family members Mahdawi commemorated on social media as victims of alleged Israeli aggression who were actually members of terrorist groups eliminated while conducting terrorist operations. These include Taher Muhsein Madawi, Hikmat Samir Muhammad Milhem, and others with documented ties to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and other U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
By 2012, Mahdawi was running a Facebook group titled “In the Home of a Fighter,” centered on long-term prisoners convicted of terrorism. The group featured his mother, Abeer Shamali, hosting a show that visited homes of convicted terrorists and honored their actions. Mahdawi publicized the program with rhetoric praising “martyred heroes” and “valiant prisoners.”
His social media posts included videos lauding terrorists such as Mahmoud Wahdan (involved in suicide bombings) and Ibrahim Farhoud Engas. Even as he prepared to move to the U.S. in 2014, Mahdawi continued posting pro-terrorist content, including a video featuring the antisemitic “Khaybar chant” that threatens violence against Jews.
Despite spending approximately 17 years in universities—nearly a decade of that on U.S. campuses starting anti-Israel groups and organizing protests—Mahdawi does not appear to have earned a single degree, according to Collier’s investigation.
A. Kayum Ahmed: From Columbia Controversy to Harvard Revocation
Another panelist, A. Kayum Ahmed, brings his own history of institutional controversy. Ahmed taught at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health until 2024, when his contract was not renewed following allegations of “pro-Palestinian indoctrination” in his health and human rights advocacy courses.
A March 2024 Wall Street Journal article featured lecture recordings in which Ahmed referred to Israel as a “settler-colonial” state. Shortly after the article’s publication, Ahmed was removed from Columbia’s Core Curriculum teaching team, his health and human rights course was canceled, and his contract was not renewed past 2024.
In April 2025, Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights offered Ahmed a fellowship—then withdrew it weeks later. Kennedy School spokesperson Daniel Harsha stated the offer was extended “prematurely without going through Harvard Kennedy School’s full review and vetting process.”
Hasan Piker: Mainstreaming Support for Terrorism
Headlining the event is Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer with 11.3 million combined social media followers whose rhetoric the Anti-Defamation League characterized as sanitizing violence and denigrating Jewish people.
Piker’s record includes explicit statements in support for U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. In an April 2026 Pod Save America interview, he stated: “I’m a lesser evil voter and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.” He has praised Hezbollah’s flag as “dope” because “it’s got an AK on it,” declared Houthi attacks “not only moral, but just,” and endorsed “every type of armed resistance”.
Piker has called Zionism a “mental illness” and suggested that “in a totally just world,” anyone with “Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a fucking rabid neo-Nazi.” He has disputed reports of October 7 sexual violence despite a March 2024 UN report finding reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the attacks.
At the August 2025 People’s Conference for Palestine, Piker wore a Palestinian Youth Movement shirt celebrating the October 7 attacks, featuring an image of a terrorist on an overturned IDF tank with the caption: “Gaza is the cemetery of occupiers.”
The Supporting Cast
Robab Vaziri, a Columbia political science PhD student and vice president of Student Workers of Columbia–UAW Local 2110, has written for left-wing publications, including a recent Spectre Journal essay titled “Toward an Iranian Socialism.”
Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor known for exposing Columbia’s U.S. News ranking scandal, represents a more complicated case. While he called the administration’s arrest of encampment protesters “unprecedented” and a “dereliction of duty,” Thaddeus has emphasized academic freedom and faculty governance concerns rather than endorsing divestment demands. His presence at the event may signal an attempt to broaden the panel’s appeal beyond activists to include faculty critics of university administration.
The Political Candidates: DSA’s Anti-Israel Cohort
The second panel features left-wing and socialist-aligned candidates, including two congressional candidates and one New York State Assembly candidate.
Kat Abughazaleh, who lost the Illinois 9th District Democratic primary in 2026, delivered an expletive-filled concession speech after her primary defeat.
Andre Easton, a Bronx high school English teacher, is challenging Rep. Ritchie Torres—who has been a vocal critic of antisemitism in progressive spaces and specifically wrote to Twitch executives about Hasan Piker’s “amplification of antisemitism.”
Conrad Blackburn, a Harlem-based public defender, is running as a “proud Democratic Socialist” for New York’s Assembly District 70.
The panel will be moderated by Nick Laparra, founder of “Let’s Give A Damn” and co-founder of Broadway Voices for Palestine, an activist group that has organized in the theater community.
The Venue: Under Congressional Investigation
The event’s location at The People’s Forum raises serious questions. In September 2025, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith demanded records from the 501(c)(3) organization following “mounting evidence” it has acted as “a foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The People’s Forum justified Hamas’s October 7 attacks shortly after it was initiated, and has organized radial protests across the U.S. According to the Washington Free Beacon, hours before protesters occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, more than 100 activists attended a meeting involving People’s Forum leadership.
The People’s Forum has co-organized the annual People’s Conference for Palestine, which included convicted terrorists among its speakers and featured rhetoric calling for opponents to be “taken out” or “neutralized.”