Faculty at George Washington University declared last week the terrorist group Hamas has a “right of resistance” against Israel.
The New York Post reported Sunday it obtained video footage from a Dec. 4 faculty panel titled “Understanding the Conflict in Israel and Palestine,” sponsored by the School of Medicine and Health Science’s Anti-Racism Coalition and the Institute for Middle East Studies.
During the event, panelists characterized Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip to free it from Hamas’ control as an “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.”
However, faculty members ignored the events leading up to the war, most notably the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, where Hamas terrorists massacred more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and took more than 200 others hostage.
“All of us have been shaken by the events of Oct. 7,” Shira Robinson, a professor of history and international affairs, said during the discussion. “But we all recognize that those events have a history.”
It appeared that only one panelist, Michael Barnett, a professor of international affairs and political science, overtly affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. Others, such as Robinson, argued the Gaza invasion was part of a larger “colonial project.”
“Israel launched an unprecedented carpet-bombing campaign in the strip that for the past eight weeks, we now know, has deliberately targeted and continues to deliberately target high-rise residential buildings, bakeries, schools, universities, and UN shelters,” Robinson said.
After Jewish students expressed their concern about the panel, Yolanda Haywood, the medical school’s senior associate dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Faculty Affairs, apologized in a statement but stopped short of denouncing antisemitism on campus.
“The primary goal was to offer an experience that would result in thoughtful reflection and be a stimulus for broader, open communication,” the statement read. “As the webinar proceeded, it became clear that this program was not a balanced presentation on this most divisive and difficult subject.”
Jewish students at George Washington told the Post the statement was just another corporate apology by administrators who have not “taken any actionable steps to make their Jewish students feel safe on campus.”
George Washington is among dozens of top American universities struggling to approach campus and faculty responses to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a firestorm for their responses during a House hearing last week when asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct. Each said, “It depends on the context.”
The controversy led to the resignation of Penn President Liz Magill and calls for Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth to resign.
