On February 8th, 2023, the Department of English and the Princeton Committee on Palestine will host activist Mohammed El-Kurd as the Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture Fund speaker. The decision of the English Department to invite El-Kurd, who has a history of antisemitism in his writing and public addresses, has sparked outcry across campus and the broader Jewish community. Students and administrators have questioned the relationship between the English Department and Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) following the condemnation of PCP’s activism as crossing the line into antisemitism by Princeton’s Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity.
El-Kurd Accused of Being Unqualified and Antisemitic
Princeton’s Department of English began hosting the Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture in 2004 following Said’s passing in 2003. Said, the University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a controversial figure in his own right, was known for work on behalf of Palestinian nationalism.
The Said Lecture prides itself on bringing intellectually serious voices to campus to discuss the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Previous speakers have included statesmen such as members of the Israeli Knesset and professors. Some on campus have argued that this year’s speaker, 24-year-old Mohammed el-Kurd, who began his career as a reporter for the progressive magazine The Nation in 2021, is unfit to deliver the Said Lecture because of his provocative and antisemitic statements.
El-Kurd was born in eastern Jerusalem, a territory that includes the Western Wall and was under Jordanian control until 1967, at which point it switched into Israeli hands. According to an interview with Vice News, El-Kurd later moved to the United States and was educated in New York. He moved back to Jerusalem at age 22 in 2021 amid a flare-up in tensions between Israelis and Palestinians to become an activist and journalist.
That year, he and his twin sister, Muna el-Kurd, recorded their protests on social media, garnering millions of followers and views on Instagram. The two earned a spot on the TIME 100 ranking list for their “online posts and media appearances” that “challenged existing narratives.” El-Kurd has since published a book of poetry, Rifqa, through Haymarket Books, a left-wing independent book publisher based in Chicago.
El-Kurd’s rapid rise to fame has put his writing under closer scrutiny. Many have called out his language as antisemitic. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international Jewish non-governmental organization, El-Kurd has a “troubling pattern of rhetoric and slander” and has engaged in “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism.” He has written that Zionists “harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their warriors our own,” an echoing of the historical blood libel, the antisemitic medieval canard that Jews eat the organs of Christians. In other instances, El-Kurd has compared Israelis to Nazis. The ADL considers aligning Israelis with the Nazi regime that murdered six million Jews antisemitic. Among other controversial positions, El-Kurd has expressed support for a USC student who to called to “kill every m*****f***ing Zionist.”
Students and administrators have expressed shock and concern over the Department of English’s decision to invite El-Kurd. The Tory has learned that the CJL and the student presidents of the CJL and Chabad, Princeton’s two Jewish chaplaincies, have written to the Department expressing distress over the decision to host El-Kurd.
A letter signed by over 40 students and sent to the Department of English on February 6, 2023, called on the Department to “condemn the event and pledge to work with Jewish partners on campus… [to] host another speaker event to bring healing to the Jewish community for the harm the department has caused.”
The letter argued that El-Kurd’s past comments demonstrate that he fails to match the values of “mutual respect, empathy, and careful listening” that President Eisgruber has outlined as the parameters of speech on campus. The letter’s signatories include students from a diverse group of communities on campus, including the student presidents of J-Street, a self-styled progressive pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel group, and Tigers for Israel, Princeton’s pro-Israel advocacy group.
“As a politically progressive member of the Princeton community, I am really disappointed to see that the English Department condones and supports a speaker who so overtly proclaims that the Jewish people have ‘internalized’ nazism, diminishing all the Jewish people have gone through and throwing [it] back in our faces,” Orli Epstein ‘24 wrote the Tory. “This is a truly harmful and hurtful claim and certainly not a sentiment I would like to see on campus.”
The Center for Jewish Life has also taken a stand against El-Kurd.
“Mr. El-Kurd has a track record of using antisemitic, dangerous, and inciting language that can only be described as hate speech,” said Rabbi Steinlauf, Princeton’s CJL executive director.
National Jewish publications have picked up the story. The Algemeiner, a New-York based Jewish magazine, published an article calling attention to the event. In March 2022, The Jewish Journal carried an op-ed that argued that “El-Kurd’s track record of inciting violence, spreading antisemitic tropes, and antagonizing the Jewish state is clear evidence that his motives are not to inspire critical thinking, civil discourse, or anything of value for society or academia.”
Students Question Relationship between the Department of English and PCP
Though the Said Lecture has been co-sponsored by PCP for over a decade, recent PCP activism has called into question the relationship between the academic departments and the student group. Students and administrators from across campus have challenged the intentions of PCP and argued that the English Department’s decision to partner with the group is a mistake.
In 2019, the group hosted Norman Finkelstein, who called Jacob Katz ’23, a Jewish student, a “concentration camp guard” and accused the “very rich Jewish community” of buying influence in Washington. Two years later, PCP invited Lamis Deek, who charged “thieving US-zionist-aligned fascist bankers” as the cause of international crises.
PCP’s activism was characterized as crossing the line into antisemitism by the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, Michele Minter, in November of 2021.
2022 marked a high point for PCP’s controversial activism. The student group’s leadership organized a protest outside the CJL during its “Israel Summer Program Fair.” Several students who attended prayer services reported hearing jeers and expletives as they entered the building. The group’s Co-Vice-President, Eric Periman ‘23, was recorded blaming the Jewish community on campus for alleged human rights abuses by Israel and has been accused of antisemitism by several students. PCP co-vice president Harshini Abbaraju ’22 was accused of verbal assault during the protest.
The Wall Street Journal later published that Abbaraju used a “no-communication order,” a sexual assault protection, to prevent the Tory from reporting on Abbaraju’s activism. PCP proposed a referendum in the Spring 2022 semester that aligned with the national Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that ultimately failed to win majority student support.
A November 2022 statement by PCP calling on students to boycott Israel TigerTrek, a Princeton University trip to Tel Aviv, that played on antisemitic tropes provoked the condemnation of the CJL. Since 2021, the CJL shared with the Tory that efforts towards discussion with PCP have been rebuffed.
Many Jewish students have questioned the relationship between the Department of English and PCP. “I don’t begin to understand why the English department continues their partnership with PCP considering all the hate PCP has directed at the Jewish community,” Daniel Friedman ’24 wrote to the Tory. “This partnership will alienate Jewish students from their department,” said Alex Ostrin ‘25.
In a statement provided to the Tory, Rabbi Gil Steinlauf wrote: “We have reached out repeatedly to Professor Jeff Dolven in the Department of English, expressing our disappointment in this invite, and respectfully asking that his department publicly provide context for Mr. El-Kurd’s rhetoric: our request is for the English Department to acknowledge and call out his dangerous language. Our goal, while supporting free speech on campus, is to safeguard the safety of all our students in our current climate of increased antisemitism in this country.”
Antisemitism on the Rise
El-Kurd will speak at Princeton amid a rise of antisemitism on campus and nationwide. The Tory previously reported on verbal assaults against students wearing yarmulkes on Princeton’s campus. New York City has seen antisemitic attacks double over the past two years. Many on campus are asking how the Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture fits into this broader trend.
When antisemitism takes the form of anti-Zionism, it gets a pass,” said Ostrin. “Princeton should make no such delineation. All forms of antisemitism should be off the table.”
The Department of English declined to comment on this article. PCP did not respond to requests for comment.
Hoffman is a former student officer of Tigers for Israel and president of Israel TigerTrek.
The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the Tory, both signatories of the letter to the Department of English, recused themselves from this story.
(Poster Courtesy of Princeton Department of English)
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