An upcoming Princeton University course will include reading material alleging the Israeli military deliberately attempts to cripple Palestinians for profit — outraging critics who have called on the Ivy League school axe the professor and apologize to students.
The book “The Right to Maim,” by Rutgers University professor Jasbir K. Puar, is part of the upcoming Princeton class called “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South.
“Debilitation is extremely profitable economically and ideologically for Israel’s settler colonial regime,” Puar writes, adding that Israel’s efforts to avoid the loss of innocent life during conflicts with Palestinian terrorists are actually a shrewdly contrived scheme to strengthen its stranglehold over the West Bank.
“Perhaps differing from earlier colonial and occupation regimes where deprivation was distributed in order to maim yet keep labor alive,” another passage reads. “There is less need for Palestinian labor, for Palestinian production. Rather, profit is derived from the dismemberment of reproduction, a function of capitalism without labor. ... This inhuman biopolitics flourishes through and beside human populations — economic life growing without human life.”
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, demanded that the 2017 tome be yanked from the seminar, taught by Satyel Larson, an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
“Princeton University is not only sanctioning hate speech, but establishing fertile ground for a new generation of antisemitic thought leaders” said. Lauder. “I am calling on Princeton University to cancel the course in question immediately, fire its professor, Satyel Larson, and issue a public apology to its students, the global Israeli community, and Jews all over the world.”
Reps for Princeton did not respond to a request for comment.
The book is not the first time Puar has raised eyebrows with controversial claims about the Jewish state. In a 2016 speech at Vassar College, she alleged that Palestinian bodies “were mined for organs for scientific research.” Puar is also a passionate supporter of the antisemitic Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
