StandWithUs has urged Yale University President to remove and investigate Professor Zareena Grewal after she praised Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, describing Israel as “murderous” and “genocidal.
By Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner
A leading nonprofit that promotes education about Israel has implored Yale University President Peter Salovey to remove from the classroom and investigate a professor who praised Hamas’ atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
“We urge you to investigate this matter fully, remove Professor Grewal from the classroom pending the outcome of the investigation, and, if any violations of university values or policy are found, to impose immediate consequences,” StandWithUs said in a letter sent to Salovey on Tuesday, explaining that such a step would protect Jewish and Israeli students from academic bias.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Zareena Grewal — an associate professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and Religious Studies at Yale who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” — called Israel “murderous” and “genocidal” on the day of the Hamas massacre.
“Prayers for Palestinians. Israeli [sic] is a murderous, genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity #FreePalestine,” Grewal tweeted on Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 240 others to Gaza as hostages.
The professor seemed to justify the onslaught, arguing that “settlers are not civilians” and later posting, “No government on earth is as genocidal as this settler colonial state,” referring to Israel.
Grewal continued to defend and seemingly delight in Hamas’ violence, saying at one point: “It’s been such an extraordinary day!” In the ensuing days, she compared Israel’s military response to the Hamas atrocities to the Holocaust.
The disturbing tweets prompted over 55,000 people, including Yale affiliates, to sign a petition demanding that she be fired.
In Tuesday’s letter, StandWithUs (SWU) criticized Yale University’s response to Grewal’s tweets, which the school only commented on in a statement that affirmed its commitment to free speech and noted that Grewal had spoken for herself on her “personal” social media accounts.
“This entirely misses the point, and more importantly, attempts to abdicate Yale of responsibility,” the letter continued, arguing that declining to punish hateful rhetoric aimed at Jews while forcefully doing so when other minority groups are targeted constitutes a civil rights violation. “Instead of pretending that principles of free speech and academic freedom require it to shield Professor Grewal from accountability, Yale, as a private institution, can and should take action here to address the abhorrent and antisemitic rhetoric of this professor.”
The group also suggested that Grewal is benefiting from a left-wing bias, referencing how in 2018, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua was subjected to investigations and rumor-mongering after she expressed approval of then-US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanuagh in a Wall Street Journal column.
“Your administration’s failure to treat this matter with the appropriate level of seriousness unfortunately speaks volumes about Yale’s lack of concern for the Jewish and Israeli members of its campus community,” the letter concluded. “We urge you to send a clear message to your community that you protect your Jewish and Israeli students, that there is no place for discrimination or bigotry at Yale, and that all members of your community are valued and protected equally.
The best way to start is through action and enforcement of your own policies and applicable legal provisions.”
SWU’s missive to Salovey comes amid a surge in antisemitism on college campuses across the West.
Universities have been hubs of such antisemitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, with students and faculty both demonizing Israel and rationalizing the Palestinian terror group’s onslaught.
Incidents of harassment and even violence against Jewish students have also increased. As a result, Jewish students have expressed feeling unsafe and unprotected on campuses.
Grewal is not the first faculty member employed by an elite American university to make public statements that have drawn accusations of antisemitism, and responses to such utterances have varied.
In October, Cornell University President Martha Pollack condemned history professor Russell Rickford for saying during a rally held on campus that Hamas’ violence on Oct. 7 “exhilarated” him, describing his remarks as “reprehensible” and “showing no regard whatsoever for humanity.” Rickford later requested and was granted a leave of absence.
Columbia University, however, issued no statement nor took any action after professor Joseph Massad, said in a column published in Electronic Intifada that Hamas’ invasion was “awesome” and that the terrorists who para-glided into a music festival in Israel to rape and murder the young people there were “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
Neither did the University of California, Berkeley after Gender and Women Studies Department lecturer Brooke Lober falsely claimed during a city council meeting in Oakland, California that Israel fabricated accounts of Hamas’ atrocities and that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), not Hamas, murdered Israeli civilians.
“The notion that this was a massacre of Jews is a fabricated narrative,” Lober said. “Many of those killed on Oct. 7, including children, were killed by the IDF.”