In February, while Israeli rescue crews worked through the Sabbath to save lives in Turkey, the English department at Princeton University paid and sponsored someone who, in his writing, claims Israelis eat the organs of Palestinians and threatened to shoot protestors at an earlier speech at Arizona State University. At Princeton, Mohammed El-Kurd made many such hateful references, such as describing the Anti-Defamation League, which has fought antisemitism and racism for more than a century, as the “Apartheid Defense League.”
This is not a First Amendment issue. Mr. El-Kurd is free to spout his poison on the internet or on a street corner, but why is Princeton sponsoring this?
For a Princeton University department to sponsor (i.e., pay or use University resources to support) a speaker who would like to exterminate me and my two Princeton sons, Benjamin ’13 and Theodore ’20, as well as everyone who lives in Israel, is appalling.
Such targeting of any other racial, ethnic, religious, or national group would be unthinkable at Princeton. And yet it is somehow appropriate for the English department at Princeton to invite and support such a speaker targeting a minority group — Jews.
Apparently, the only University-connected figure with the courage to confront El-Kurd’s hatred was Rabbi Eitan Webb of Chabad at Princeton, who got up and shouted, “I would like to thank you very much for giving a masterclass on how to be an antisemite.”
I am already a 1746 Society donor to the University. But tell me, why should I support this?