After Speaker Calls Oct. 7 a ‘Beautiful Day’ and Other Offenses, UNC Center One of Many Set to Close

In 2021, this UNC center published a webinar that featured a map of the Middle East and Africa which erased Israel and replaced it with “Palestinian Occupied Territories.”

At one point, the webinar presenter spoke for more than six minutes while attendees looked at a slide saying “Free Palestine.”

In 2023, the same UNC center co-sponsored a notorious anti-Israel event in which one of the speakers, Dr. Rania Masri, said: “Oct. 7 for many of us from the region was a beautiful day.” Masri went on to fawn over Hamas paragliders and called for “the eradication of Zionism.” I attended the event. Not a single panelist, moderator, or UNC professor objected or even looked concerned. Several panelists openly agreed with Masri.

Within a week of my report of the event, the UNC Provost at that time sent a scathing letter to the current director of the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, along with other faculty members:

I am not used to hearing members of the academy appear to be enthusiastic about violence against innocent human beings. Yet I see a recurring theme in the classroom, in seminars, in public statements, in emails I receive, and in the public square in which some scholars are unapologetic (at the least) about the rapes and murders of their fellow human beings. Do we have a contingent of faculty who think these things are necessary?…One thing is clear: from the outside, the academy appears to be fostering a banal kind of evil.

UNC repeatedly apologized for the “appalling remarks” made at the event. Months later, I met with a top UNC leader who had listened to the event recording I provided and appeared genuinely concerned and pained.

In 2019, the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies hosted and co-sponsored the Conflict Over Gaza conference, which made international news for featuring an antisemitic rap performance.

I attended a day of this three day Israel-bashing event. A large screen in the conference lobby played a photo collage on repeat, celebrating and glorifying Palestinian terrorism against Israel. I personally witnessed an invited anti-Israel panelist refuse to speak with a Jewish student from nearby Duke University who attended. It was appalling.

A panelist was asked by a local synagogue leader to contrast the Palestinian experience with the plight of more than 800,000 Jews who were expelled and exiled from Arab lands and Iran in the 20th century, with no “right of return” — along with Jordan’s expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem in 1948.

I was sitting close to the stage and heard the speaker talk off-microphone and tell the other panelists that she wasn’t interested in answering the question. Then, with audible disgust, the speaker told the audience it was a “dehumanizing” question.

I was in contact with Jewish UNC students and asked them why they did not attend. The students expressed they felt neither welcomed nor included, and they were fully aware of what lay ahead: three days dedicated to demonizing Israel.

Approximately two weeks after the event, antisemitic posters were found at the UNC library, which many viewed as a natural consequence of this antisemitic conference.

UNC ended up publicly apologizing for “inexcusable” comments made at this conference. One of the event organizers expressed a heartfelt apology to me during our in-person meeting.

In response to an antisemitism complaint filed with the US Department of Education stemming from this conference, UNC entered into a Resolution Agreement with the Department’s Office of Civil Rights, requiring UNC “to ensure that students enrolled in the university are not subjected to a hostile environment.”

The expected closure of the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies is a positive development that hopefully reduces the hate, antisemitism, and anti-Israel demonization that has been normalized at the university for years.

Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.