Professor Marc Lamont Hill is leaving Temple for CUNY

Marc Lamont Hill, a prominent professor who held an endowed chair in Temple University’s college of media and communication and who had drawn criticism in the past over his comments about the Middle East, is leaving this week for a new post at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

He’s been hired to be a presidential professor of Urban Education.

Hill said he could have stayed another 20 years at Temple if not for the opportunity at CUNY.

» READ MORE: Uncle of CNN's Marc Lamont Hill inspires Germantown bookstore/coffee shop

“It’s something I’ve always dreamed of,” Hill, 44, said Tuesday afternoon of the opportunity to teach graduate students and work more closely in his areas of interest, with other “public-facing” scholars. “It was much more a pull from CUNY than a push from Temple.”

He already appears on CUNY’s graduate center faculty website, and is described as “a cultural anthropologist, critical policy scholar, and radical educator whose work explores issues of race, education, citizenship, and state violence in the United States and Middle East.”

Hill’s most recent stint at Temple began in 2017, and a few months ago, his chair position was renewed for another five years. He previously taught at Temple from 2005 to 2009, right out of graduate school, then left for a job at Columbia, then Morehouse, before returning to Temple.

» READ MORE: Temple trustees condemn controversial remarks by Marc Lamont Hill, but affirm his right to free speech

He’s a 2000 graduate of Temple and got his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.

David Boardman, dean of Temple’s media and communication college, said he wished Hill well.

“I was proud to have Marc as a colleague and am excited for this new opportunity for him,” Boardman said.

In 2018, Temple trustees condemned Hill’s comments about Israel, though defended his right to free speech. Hill had said he supported “a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” which critics said was a phrase used as a rallying cry to destroy Israel. Hill subsequently apologized and said he rejects antisemitism.

The Temple Association of University Professors, the faculty union, defended Hill’s remarks as protected by the principles of free speech.

“I think in general Temple has been fairly hands off when it comes to intellectual freedom,” Hill said Tuesday. “There was one moment when the board voiced its displeasure, but if I look at the full 11 years ...I would say I’ve had the space to be a very public intellectual and I’ve managed to be promoted to full professor and get tenure and get an endowed chair.”

Hill has been a political contributor for Fox News and MSNBC and formerly a CNN commentator, a post he lost after the controversy over his comments about Israel.

He said he intends to maintain his ties to Philadelphia and will continue the Germantown bookstore and coffee shop he started and named after his uncle, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I will remain a member of the Philadelphia community.”