#1: Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University

Amongst the litany of Jew-hating faculty currently teaching at American universities, one name rises above all the rest—that of San Francisco State University professor of Ethnic Studies Rabab Abdulhadi who is also the founding director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), an academic program which flouts its anti-Semitism by openly declaring Zionism to be racism and Israel to be the occupier of Palestine. AMED is known for sponsoring events which feature posters reading, “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers,” referring to Israel’s Jews.

On October 7^th 2023, following Hamas’s massacre, mutilation, and rape of over 1200 innocent Israelis, and the taking of hundreds more as hostages, Professor Abdulhadi quote-tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar—who has her own long record of anti-Semitism—not to agree with the Congresswoman’s remarks but to chastise her for condemning Hamas’s actions. “Seriously @IlhanMN? ‘Senseless’ #PalestineUnderAttack are merely defending themselves. Are you saying that #Palestinians should be exceptionalized from the right to defend themselves against colonial & racist violence? Check your facts! #FreePalestine #IsraeliCrimes” Abdulhadi tweeted. Apparently one of the House of Representatives leading anti-Semites isn’t extreme enough for the SFSU professor.

Also on October 7th, Abdulhadi tweeted, “It’s worth remembering how vicious colonists act when the colonized dare #breakTheirChains from #Palestine, #Algeria #Vietnam … to #TurtleIsland. No innocent bystanders here. Demand Immediate accountability for #IsraeliCrimes. #BDS.”  Abdulhadi’s clear support for Hamas and their paratroopers of terror is undeniable, as is her belief that none of the 1200-plus victims of Hamas’s barbaric violence—including children and babies who were beheaded and burned alive—can be seen as “innocent bystanders.”

Professor Abdulhadi’s comments promoting Hamas and their regime of terror should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed her academic career over the past two decades. Abdulhadi has repeatedly glorified anti-Israel terrorism in public talks.

A letter sent by a coalition of concerned Jewish groups to SFSU President Leslie Wong in 2014 describes in chilling detail how an Ethnic Studies Department event organized by Abdulhadi featured “wild inaccuracies, monstrous distortions, and blatant lies — all intended to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and promote a boycott that would hasten its demise.”

Professor Abdulhadi’s husband, Jaime Veve, a union activist, also spoke at the 2014 event she organized to exalt anti-Semitic terrorists and murderers.  The letter to President Wong describes how Veve “insisted that Palestinians who had injured or murdered Jews were not terrorists but rather ‘heroes or heroines’ who had ‘committed political acts of defiance and resistance,’ and he justified Palestinian terrorism by calling it ‘the cry of a baby calling for the attention of the world.’”

During her tenure at SFSU, Abdulhadi has sought to build relationships with anti-Israel terrorists. While attending a university-sponsored trip to Israel in 2014, she met with anti-Israel terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah. Abdulhadi has praised Khaled, a notorious airplane hijacker, as “an icon in liberation movements and…an icon for women’s liberation.” Salah served a prison sentence in Israel for aiding the terrorist group Hamas. He has also been charged for incitement to violence for giving a public speech in which he accused Jews of using the blood of Palestinian children to bake their bread.  Despite this, Abdulhadi has insisted that he does not have terrorist ties.

In September 2020, Abdulhadi and AMED held an event featuring Khaled. Abdulhadi planned to stream the event on Zoom, but the platform canceled its coverage citing Khaled’s terrorist record.

Abdulhadi also attempted to open a formal collaboration between SFSU and An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. An-Najah University has been described by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “known for its advocacy of anti-Israel violence and its recruitment of Palestinian college students into terrorist groups.”

The notorious professor has not hesitated to use her privileged position as a professor at SFSU to promote her anti-Israel agenda. Abdulhadi is a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), and also supports the wider Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, an anti-Semitic, Hamas-funded campaign to isolate and weaken the Jewish state. She frequently promotes BDS at university-sponsored events and forums.

In March 2019, she shared a live video and statement on the official Facebook page for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED). The statement demonized Israel and invoked anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes by accusing the SFSU administration of “collaborat[ing] with the Zionist designs to silence us… staff, faculty and community who view Israel (as I do) as a colonial, racist and occupying power…” and labeled the administration’s conduct as “the weaponizing of free speech in the service of Nazis, Zionists and other white supremacists…” In July 2019, she shared an image of a large banner exhorting “Zionism = Racism, Silence = Death, Palestine is a Queer Issue – Boycott! Divest! Sanction!”

Abdulhadi has repeatedly propagated anti-Semitic tropes accusing Jews of conspiring to orchestrate world affairs and of possessing dual loyalties—a slur implying that Jews have more loyalty to Israel than to America or other nations. In September 2020, the professor said on Facebook: “I think we need to go to [then U.S. vice presidential candidate] Kamala Harris and say to her: ‘…It’s not okay that some of our representatives actually have dual Israeli-U.S. passport. That’s not okay! That’s not okay!…”

In a February, 2019 interview with Arab Talk, Abdulhadi denigrated pro-Israel groups in America, saying [00:07:09]: “These groups are bullies…they push around in Congress and they bribe them, and they give them money, they twist their arms and so on, there are used to basically silencing everybody and crushing everybody.”

While Abdulhadi uses the public resources of San Francisco State to promote her Jew hatred, she is notably less tolerant toward pro-Israel views. When SFSU President Leslie Wong was forced to clarify that he welcomes Zionists at the University, Abdulhadi responded by equating Zionists with the KKK: “I’m waiting for him to say, white supremacists is welcome, KKK is welcome, David Horowitz is welcome, Richard Spenser is welcome, Neo-Nazis are welcome, homophobes are welcome, misogynists are welcome, why stop only at Zionists? Welcome them all. I mean bring the…whole club. Bring everybody who is right wing and racist, bring them to campus, why only stop at Zionists.”

This is the same toxic ethos that is now spouted by rabid Jew-haters and Hamas supporters on campuses across the nation—and Professor Abdulhadi was one of its earliest adherents and promoters.

Abdulhadi has also dedicated herself to encouraging the next generation of Jew haters. For several years she served as faculty advisor to SFSU’s chapter of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), an SJP surrogate group. During her tenure as faculty advisor, organization president Mohammad G. Hammad was exposed as having written a number of threatening social media posts describing his wish to attack students, teachers and Israeli soldiers and to ally himself with anti-Israel terrorists including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Hammad’s posts included a photo of himself holding a large knife with the caption, “I seriously cannot get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…” Hammad was investigated for terrorism by the FBI.

Despite her atrocious record, Abdulhadi is still being lauded as a leader in her field. In January 2023, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) awarded its 2022 Jere L. Bacharach Service Award to Abdulhadi—a dubious honor given MESA’s own record of anti-Semitism and extreme hostility toward Israel.

As one of the most extreme proponents of Hamas and other anti-Israel terrorist groups in academia, Professor Abdulhadi deserves to be first on the list of Hamas Loyalist Professors.

Previous Articles in the Series:

#2: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Hatem Bazian at the University of California-Berkeley.

#3: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Russell Rickford at the Cornell University.

#4: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Huda Fakhreddine at the University of Pennsylvania.

#5: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Joseph Massad at Columbia University.

#6: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Samer Alatout at UW-Madison.

#7: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Steven Thrasher at Northwestern University.

#8: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Noura Erakat at Rutgers University.

#9: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Jairo Fúnez-Flores at Texas Tech University.

#10: Hamas Loyalist Professor: Jeffrey McCully at Moraine Valley Community College.