The Massachusetts Institute of Technology faces a House investigation and student lawsuit over alleged antisemitism, and faculty neuroscientist Afif Aqrabawi isn’t doing the university any favors with his drumbeat of anti-Israel screeds.
Mr. Aqrabawi, a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, mocked Jewish students as “precious, superior, and divine,” blasted the Israel Defense Forces as “bloodthirsty and perverted Nazis,” and ripped Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican, as a “treasonous Zionist tool, genocide enabler, and disgusting s—- stain of a human” in a recent post on X.
His comments were prompted by a Friday letter to MIT from Ms. Foxx, who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, requesting information as part of the panel’s investigation into surging campus antisemitism at MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
A committee spokesperson said Monday it was “quite evident that this MIT employee is consumed by anger and hate.”
“His Israel-hating, antisemitic rant on [X] serves as a perfect example of why the Committee’s investigation into MIT’s learning environment is warranted,” the spokesperson told The Washington Times.
The letter to MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that multiple faculty and staff “have made antisemitic remarks and justified Palestinian terrorism,” including Mr. Aqrabawi, who previously compared Zionism to a “mental illness” and said that “Jewish fundamentalists” want to “enslave the world in a global Apartheid system.”
Mr. Aqrabawi responded to the committee’s letter by declaring that the “agenda is to crush any dissent from Zionism,” and accused Zionists, or supporters of the Jewish state, of controlling the West.
“Who you cannot criticize, informs who controls you,” said Mr. Aqrabawi in a Saturday post. “In the Middle East, it’s the monarchies; in China, the CCP; in America and much of ’the West’, it’s the Zionists.”
Comments on his latest X post ranged from “More power to you” and “May Allah protect you” to “You should be fired. Disgrace.”
Yesterday, a House Committee sent a demand letter to MIT regarding antisemitism on campus and have generously exploited my tweets to make their case.
— Afif Aqrabawi (@AjAqrabawi) March 9, 2024
The agenda is to crush any dissent from Zionism. Who you cannot criticize, informs who controls you. In the Middle East, it’s… pic.twitter.com/8ZRKjBXwnE
MIT landed on the committee’s radar after Ms. Kornbluth, along with then-Harvard President Claudine Gay and UPenn President Liz Magill, told the panel at a Dec. 7 hearing that whether calls for “genocide of Jews” violate the campus conduct codes would depend on the context.
Both Ms. Gay and Ms. Magill have since resigned. The MIT Corporation has stood behind Ms. Kornbluth, who is Jewish, lauding her “excellent work” in addressing “antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate” hours after the disastrous committee hearing.
Even so, two Jewish students at MIT filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing MIT of violating Title VI with its alleged “approval, support, and enablement of antisemitism” on campus, including tolerating harassment of Jewish students and faculty.
MIT told The Associated Press that it does not comment on ongoing litigation, but that the university “has established processes in place to address concerns of discrimination and harassment.”
The Jewish group Canary Mission was skeptical, citing comments by several faculty members, including Mr. Aqrabawi, and the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid, which said after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians that they “hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence.”
“The continued spread of antisemitic rhetoric by professors and faculty members without consequences is hardly convincing that the university is taking the issue seriously,” said Canary Mission in a Monday statement.
Miriam Elman, executive director of the pro-Israel Academic Engagement Network and a former Syracuse professor, said that faculty should be free to speak “without fear of university sanctions or punishment,” but that universities also have a right to make their views known.
“When faculty repeatedly engage in hate speech, the university cannot be silent,” Ms. Elman told The Washington Times. “In the case of Dr. Aqrabawi, MIT should have long ago publicly condemned his remarks as antithetical to the university’s values of respect, inclusion, belonging and civil discourse.”
Instead, students said they have received little support from the university’s Department of Equity, Inclusion and Justice. One DEIJ officer endorsed posts online after Oct. 7 that claimed, for example, “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist,” according to the lawsuit filed by the StandWithUs Legal Center for Justice.
Students who complained in November to DEIJ about Mr. Aqrabawi’s post accusing Israelis of Palestinian “organ harvesting” were told that “I would be very cautious of accusing any one of our colleagues, staff, or trainees of hate speech,” the lawsuit said.
In his latest post, Mr. Aqrabawi also called U.S. officials, including President Biden, “loyal prostitutes of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu” and “eager cucks for defense contractors and AIPAC,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“Despite working in an isolated laboratory over the past 5 years at MIT, minding my own f—-ing business and having no interactions with these precious, superior, and divine Jewish students is, they fear me,” he said.
Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center, which advocates for civil and human rights for Jewish people, said that Mr. Aqrabawi’s latest post “advances many of the hallmarks of traditional antisemitic bigotry including its association of Jews with bloodthirst, money, perversion, criminality, and power.”
“It is hard to find a more condensed distillation of antisemitic stereotypes and defamations outside of Nazi or neo-Nazi propaganda,” Mr. Marcus said.
Mr. Aqrabawi said he has repeatedly distinguished Judaism, an “Abrahamic religion,” and Zionism, a “settler-colonial project and political ideology,” but that “these comments are conveniently ignored because it doesn’t serve their narrative.”
“I don’t know how MIT will respond. I may lose my job, maybe not,” he said. “I guess I am the litmus test of whether freedom of free speech truly exists in America.”
Jewish groups argue that clearly antisemitic comments are frequently framed as criticism of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League said that anti-Zionism becomes antisemitic when its adherents “vilify and negate Zionism — the movement for Jewish self-determination and statehood — or utilize anti-Jewish tropes or hold all Jews responsible for Israel’s actions.”
The Washington Times has reached out to MIT for comment.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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