Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, sent a letter to Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber and Dean of the Faculty Gene Jarrett to express “profound condemnation” of a book promoting “antisemitic blood libel” featured in an upcoming course.
The fall course “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South,” taught by assistant professor Satyel Larson in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, includes the book The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability by Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar in the sample reading list on the course listing.
The International Legal Forum, an Israel-based non-profit, also criticized the decision to include the book in the course curriculum.
“The book in question contains a number of very serious and defamatory accusations, primarily that the Israel Defense Forces is harvesting the organs of Palestinians, including by ‘shooting to maim, rather than to kill,’ in order to create a ‘mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies,’” the International Legal Forum wrote in an August 6 letter to Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber and chair of the Near Eastern Studies department Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi. “This charge is not only demonstrably false, but a modern-day antisemitic blood libel.”
The Israeli Minister and the International Legal Forum called for removing the book from the course.
“We would also recommend that the university conduct a thorough review of the academic materials taught in this specific course, as well as in other courses, to ensure that they align with the principles of academic integrity and are free from any form of discrimination, including antisemitism,” the Israeli Minister concluded his letter. “Antisemitism has no place at Princeton or any other institution.”
Although the International Legal Forum affirms that “we firmly believe in the notion of open debate on campus and do not take the call to exclude any kind of reading material lightly,” it argues that “the book in question does not contain any educational merit, but only promulgates a dangerous conspiracy and age-old antisemitic trope.”
The executive director of Princeton’s Center for Jewish Life, Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, released a letter expressing concern about “the potential impact of including this text” and the “well-being of our Jewish and Israeli students.”
The Center for Jewish Life has requested that the department chair and professor “explore alternative ways to teach the course without including an author whose rhetoric and other writing have deeply hurt many in the Jewish community, and could do real harm to Jewish students on our campus.”
Others have advocated for more than removing the book. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, called for canceling the course and terminating the professor.
“Princeton University is not only sanctioning hate speech, but establishing fertile ground for a new generation of antisemitic thought leaders,” Lauder tweeted. “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.”
Princeton University did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
A letter issued by the Princeton student organization the Alliance of Jewish Progressives, which now has over two hundred alumni and student signatures, condemned “the attempt to censor” Professor Larson. The Alliance of Jewish Progressives is a self-described “collective of non-, post-, and anti-Zionist Jewish students” who “stand in solidarity with Palestinians, against Israeli apartheid, and for intersecting anti-colonial struggles for human rights and justice around the world.”
“We are deeply troubled by the attempt to censor Professor Larson, ban Puar’s book, limit intellectual inquiry, and silence faculty-student exchange within and beyond the classroom, particularly on issues of such political, moral, and philosophical significance,” the letter states.
By faculty vote, Princeton adopted the University of Chicago Free Speech Principles in 2015. The principles provide expansive protections for free expression.
“Although the University greatly values civility . . . concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community,” states Princeton University’s “Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities.”
“There are, to be sure, a very, very small category of types of speech that are not protected under the Principles, but none of those, so far as I can tell, are relevant to the current dispute,” Princeton professor Robert P. George wrote to National Review.
Keith Whittington, a Princeton politics professor, and chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance, noted that the request to change the course curriculum was not suggested by the professor’s superiors.
“I’d be more concerned if the ‘request’ came from somebody with some authority over [instructor Satyel Larson], such as a president or department chair,” Whittington told National Review. “Especially for an assistant professor, it’d be hard to take the request as anything other than a directive in that case.”
Bernard Haykel, a Princeton professor of Near Eastern Studies, noted that including the book in a curriculum does not necessarily endorse its content.
“What if the professor is using this book to educate about anti-Semitism?” Haykel wrote to National Review. “I often assign highly inflammatory and disgusting material (e.g., texts by Islamists like Al-Qaeda). I clearly don’t endorse their views, but I feel students ought to know about them in a course on Islam and politics.”
This past spring, Princeton University faced a similar controversy surrounding free expression protections and antisemitism.
Forty-one Princeton undergraduates signed a letter in February requesting the English Department condemn the “anti-Jewish bias and remarks” of a Palestinian writer and activist, Mohammed el-Kurd, before his speech.
“El-Kurd has also made outlandish claims that echo the execrable historical blood libels against Jews that characterized medieval time . . . in his book, Rifqa, he wildly asserts the baseless charge that '[Israelis] harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their warriors our own,’” reads the students’ letter.
The English department chair Jeff Dolven declined to condemn El-Kurd, explaining that “the Department as a whole does not issue statements” and “it is an important principle for us that neither I nor anyone else among us attempts to speak for a diverse collective.”
The Princeton English department website currently features a “Statement on Anti-Racism” that states, “We strive for active anti-racism in our classrooms and our scholarship as a means of raising awareness and changing consciousness. We seek to investigate racist beliefs and practices with rigor and compassion.”