University-sponsored 9/11 event features speakers with ties to terrorists
Rutgers University and San Francisco State University are sponsoring a virtual event today that includes speakers with ties to a hijacker and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The roundtable discussion is called 'Whose Narrative? 20 Years Since 9/11 2001' and is part of the 'Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice' series.
Rutgers University and San Francisco State University are sponsoring “Whose Narrative? 20 Years Since 9/11 2001,” a virtual “roundtable discussion” today, the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, that features speakers with ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Sami Al-Arian, a speaker and former professor at the University of South Florida, pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide amenities to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
Al-Arian was terminated from USF shortly after his arrest. Al-Arian was then deported to Turkey in 2015.
Another speaker, San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi, has participated in other events with known terrorist Leila Khaled.
Campus Reform reported in May that Abdulhadi was set to moderate the virtual event “Whose Narratives? What Free Speech for Palestine?” which featured Khaled. Zoom shut down the event due to Khaled’s terrorist background.
As Campus Reform reported in 2020, Khaled had previously “hijacked two airplanes as a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally recognized terrorist organization.” In September of that year, YouTube cut the live stream of an event with Abdulhadi and Khaled.
That incident prompted the Department of Education to investigate SFSU to “determine whether any federal laws were violated when terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled was invited to speak at a virtual event in September.”
Today’s event description reads:
“Moderated by renowned historian dr. Robin D. G. Kelley [sic], this inaugural roundtable kicks off a semester-long intergenerational conversation that challenges the exceptionalization [sic] of 9/11/2001; legitimization of ‘war on terror’ and other imperialist wars and interventions; justification of the ‘Security’ State, and promotion of hyper masculinity and a colonial gender and sexualized order of modernization and ‘civilization.’”
Other speakers include Deepa Kumar, Fahd Ahmed, Hatem Banian, Jasmin Zine, Lisa Hajja, Rabab Abdulhadi, Rania Masri, Ronnie Kasrils, and Sami Al-Arian.
Campus Reform has reached out to SFSU, Rutgers University, and all of the panelists participating in the event; this article will be updated accordingly.
