Moshe Vardi February 19, 2025
Starting in December 2023, I have documented at length the proliferation of antisemitism and Israelophobia at Rice University, and the total inadequacy of Rice’s response.
Amazingly, even when Rice tries to do the right thing, it does not seem to be able to get it right. For example, in the spring of 2024, Rice leadership convened an advisory group of “faculty experts”. Sounds like a good move. But that group included Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti. Professor Takriti is a historian of the modern Arab world, so he does seem to be indeed a “faculty expert”. But he is also the faculty advisor of Rice’s student club of Students for Justice in Palestine (RiceSJP), which has been the major instigator of Israelophobic protests at Rice. For example, one of the chants at the RiceSJP encampment in the spring of 2024 was “We do not want Zionists here”. To appreciate the vileness of this chant just replace “Zionists” by “Blacks”. To get a better picture of how objective is Professor Takriti with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I suggest browsing his Twitter stream, which is virulently Israelophobic. Is he the right person to advise Rice leadership on how to deal with the tensions on campus? I doubt it.
On Feb. 11, 2025, the Office of the Provost announced a new initiative, Rice Reflects, “to highlight opportunities for students, faculty and staff to have constructive conversations across differences, informed by scholarly expertise from within and outside the Rice community. The events and educational offerings address ideological, political, religious, cultural and other differences.” The first even in this initiative is a talk, on March 10, 2025, by Sandy Tolan, professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Professor Tolan was selected, I assume, as the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, described as “The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people, one Israeli and one Palestinian, that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.” So far so good, but I decided to dig a little deeper, and I went to Professor Tolan’s Twitter stream. I found another virulently Israelophobic stream. Here is an example of a repost by Professor Tolan: “Palestinians: We just want to live freely and in peace in our homeland. Zionists: We would push a button to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza if we could. Idiots: It’s such a complex conflict, a riddle really, who even knows who is at fault?”
Professor Tolan is also a signatory of an April 2024 letter to the New York Time, protesting their December 2023 story about sexual violence on by Hamas on October 7, 2023, notwithstanding the fact that in March 2024, the UN Security Council was informed by Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, that sexual violence did occur in Israel during the October 7 attack.
And Professor Tolan is coming to Rice University to lead a “constructive conversation across differences.” Pardon me if I elect not to attend his talk. As I wrote in December 2023: “I have always been proud of being a faculty member at Rice University. With deep chagrin, I have to admit that I can no longer say that.”
