American Colleges Are Partnered with Palestinian University That Praised Hamas as ‘Righteous Martyrs’

Several American colleges are partnered with Al-Quds Open University, a Palestinian university that called the Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel “righteous martyrs,” according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of university web pages.

Al-Quds Open University declared Sunday, Oct. 8 as a day to “mourn the souls of the righteous martyrs and to denounce the occupation’s continuing crimes against our people in the West Bank and Gaza,” following Hamas’ invasion of Israel. Al-Quds Open University ended its announcement by stating “glory and eternity to our martyrs.”

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Commentary: There Is No Room for ‘Privileging Feelings’ in the Marketplace of Ideas

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In 2015, the University of Chicago issued a statement, referred to as the “Chicago Statement,” in response to “recent events nationwide that have tested institutional commitments to free and open discourse.”  Through the statement, the University reaffirmed its steadfast commitment to free speech and expression, including its “overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.”  

The statement emphasized that:

“[E]ducation should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.”  

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Merit System Is Unjust Because It Rewards Productive Individuals, Professors Argue

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Professors from the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs are arguing that “success and merit” are “barriers” to the equity agenda. 

“Admitting that the normative definitions of success and merit are in and of themselves barriers to achieving the goals of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary but not sufficient to create change,” professors Beth Mitchneck and Jessi L. Smith recently wrote for Inside Higher Education.

Mitchneck and Smith attributed those definitions to a “narrow definition of merit limited to a neoliberal view of the university.” Specifically, they express concern that universities receive funding and recognition based on the individual performances of professors’ own work such as peer reviewed journals and studies. 

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