Anti-Semitic speaker doubles down on pro-Hamas comments during Harvard event

Harvard University recently hosted a controversial pro-Palestinian speaker who has previously made comments seeming to approve of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis. 

On March 7, Harvard’s Kennedy School hosted Professor Dalal Saeb Iriqat of the Arab American University Palestine as part of Harvard Professor Tarek Masoud’s “Middle East Dialogue” series, and Iriqat used the opportunity to defend her previous comments about the start of the Israel-Gaza War, The Harvard Crimson reported. 

As Campus Reform previously related, Iriqat took to X the day of the Oct. 7 massacre, writing: “The world tolerated watching >35000 Palestinian youth seek refuge via territorial waters, putting their lives at risk, choosing to drawn [sic] in the Sea over their miserable lives in a big prison called #Gaza after 17 yrs Israeli siege. Today is just a normal human struggle 4 #Freedom.”

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As Campus Reform wrote, Iriqat made further comments on X the day after the massacre, writing that “Justice shall prevail” and including a picture of text that read: “We will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for making us take their children and elderly as hostages.”

During the Harvard discussion with Masoud, Iriqat expressed no regrets about her comments, saying that at the beginning of the Oct. 7 attack “nothing was reported on any casualties, no kidnapping, no nothing. All we had been receiving was images of Palestinian young, elderly, children just fleeing into the border defense to try to break the siege — to try to break the deadly blockage — and see that they have been suffering from for 17 years,” continued The Harvard Crimson. 

Iriqat seemed to double down on her comments in an email to Campus Reform, saying: “In framing/contextualizing and explaining my statement, In the morning of October 7, civilians in Gaza broke into the fence, and images of children, youth, and elderly running, riding motorcycles, and even paragliding and using every tool possible to break the deadly siege. As hundreds of unarmed civilians were running randomly towards the fence seeking freedom, at 6:45 am, very early morning hours, as images were coming out of Gaza describing people breaking the blockade and running for freedom, no casualties or deaths were yet reported, it was when I tweeted ‘today is a normal struggle for freedom.’”

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When Iriqat was initially invited to speak at Harvard, Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf described her stance as “abhorrent,” a comment that Iriqat criticized, saying that “when I read the comments of the Dean, I was just really shocked. For a scholar to comment with such judgments without coming back to me, without inquiry, without climbing the ladder of inference — it simply lacks the basic one-on-one element of being an academic,” The Harvard Crimson wrote. 

Iriqat reiterated this view in her statement to Campus Reform. “For biased media to label me and take me out of context is simply unprofessional but for the dean of Harvard to say that my tweets are abhorrent before inquiring and before listening to my side of the story, is not acceptable, Academia 101 is inquiry, climbing up the ladder of inference is an obligation on academics otherwise they are judgmental and not fact promoter-researchers.”

“The dean didn’t criticize me, he judged me relying on one side of the story, without inquiry, without rigorous analysis, without context, and without hearing my narrative. There is a big difference between being critical and being judgmental,” she added. 

During the event, Iriqat claimed that her original X post on the day of the massacre “should not be interpreted as justifying violence against anybody,” The Harvard Crimson related.

Campus Reform has reached out to the Harvard Kennedy School for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.