Wake Forest University to Host Pro-Hamas Speaker on October 7 Haley Strack
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wake-forest-university-to-host-pro-hamas-speaker-on-october-7/
Wake Forest University will host a pro-Hamas speaker on October 7, one year after the terrorist organization attacked Israel, to discuss “One Year since al-Aqsa Flood: Reflections on a Year of Genocide and Resistance.”
Rabab Abdulhadi, who will deliver the talk, is slated to speak at Wake Forest on the evening of Monday, October 7, according to a poster obtained by National Review. The school’s Humanities Institute, Department of Politics and International Affairs, and Middle East South Asian Studies Program are co-sponsoring the event. Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups named the operation, during which terrorists invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 civilians, “al-Aqsa Flood.”
Abdulhadi is a Palestinian scholar who is an associate professor for San Francisco State University’s ethnic-studies program. On October 8, Abdulhadi responded to Ilhan Omar’s statement on the attacks, in which the congresswoman condemned Hamas’s “senseless violence” and “horrific acts.”
“Seriously @IlhanMN? ‘Senseless,’” Abdulhadi said in response. “#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.”
On October 7, the professor said on social media that “it‘s worth remembering how vicious colonists act when the colonized dare #breaktheirChains from @Palestine . . . No innocent bystanders here.”
The professor’s speech has attracted ire from some Wake Forest students, who started an online petition this week to “express [their] strong concern and opposition to the event scheduled for October 7th with speaker Rabab Abdulhadi, a self-proclaimed Hamas sympathizer.”
“While we strongly support free speech on campus, we believe that hosting a speaker who promotes terrorism and espouses hate speech against Jewish students is a failure to protect all members of the Wake Forest community,” the group wrote on Change.org. “Choosing to host this event on October 7th fosters a hostile environment and detracts from the importance of allowing students to feel safe while mourning the anniversary of these atrocious attacks.”
Wake Forest administrators have previously faced internal conflicts over the Israel–Hamas war. Last year, on October 12, Kenan Chair of the Humanities at Wake Forest, Laura Mullen, said on social media, “So it’s kind of a Duh but if you turn me out of my house plow my olive grove and confine what’s left of my family to the small impoverished state you run as an open air prison I could be tempted to shoot up your dance party yeah even knowing you will scorch the earth.” Mullen said that people’s backlash to her post confused “the attempt to understand human beings” with “the condoning of violence.”
Barry Trachtenberg, Wake Forest’s Michael H. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, said at the time that he didn’t interpret Mullen’s post as a justification for Hamas’s violence.
“The explosions that happen when people are placed in pressure cookers are always painful and horrible, but they’re also preventable,” Trachtenberg said. “And this is my reading of Professor Mullen’s post.”
Mullen eventually took the post down after the president and provost of Wake Forest released a joint statement saying that they “do not condone or support the views expressed in these posts,” later resigning from Wake Forest altogether.
“As a matter of principle, we affirm the right to individual freedom of expression,” the pair wrote. “And, to be clear: statements that diminish the value and dignity of human life or condone the use of violence are counter to the values inherent in the Pro Humanitate ethos of Wake Forest University.”
When anti-Israel students formed an encampment on Wake Forest’s Winston-Salem, North Carolina campus, school administrators reached a “peaceful outcome” with students to take down the encampment.
“We respect and uphold the rights of our community to peacefully assemble, and are committed to protecting free expression while ensuring the safety of all on campus. This requires us to uphold our policies and practices in support of a campus environment conducive to our academic mission,” administrators said. “Students will be permitted to continue to demonstrate, in accordance with our policies and in an area designated by the University for free expression with appropriate displays, which may include signage and unoccupied tents without an encampment.”
A Wake Forest spokeswoman told NR in a statement that “the University actively fosters a culture of respectful dialogue on the most pressing social, political and religious issues of our time. Academic departments and organizations bring speakers with a variety of viewpoints to campus each year. The University continues to discuss the event with organizers and those opposed.”
Comments are closed.
