FLASHBACK: At an event just two months after 9/11, Columbia University's current president Minouche Shafik remarked that terrorism "is a form of protesting" pic.twitter.com/UkSP4iqDZu

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) April 22, 2024

Just two months after the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik remarked that terrorism was a “form of protesting against a system,” according to a video unearthed by The Daily Wire. 

Shafik, who was a vice president at the World Bank at the time, was asked about the economic roots of terrorism in developing countries during an event with the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies. While she condemned “extreme views” held by terrorist groups, she said the reason they are popular is because terrorism is a “protest.”

“You’ll always have individuals who will have extreme views,” Shafik said at the November 2001 event, “but what’s really troubling in the region is that there’s actually quite a broad base of society which has some sympathy for the terrorists, not so much because they approve of their methods, but it’s a form of protesting against a system which is not delivering for them on the economic or the political front.”