The saga of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) hosting the deplorable Palestine Writes Literature Festival – which features too-many-speakers-and-organizers-to-count with backgrounds in terrorism, terror-support and/or antisemitic statements – is even more scandalous than first thought, with news that attendance was, until recently, a mandatory requirement for Penn students in some Arabic classes.
Penn students in some Arabic classes can now waive the requirement to attend the Palestine Writes Literature Festival as part of their course requirements.
Executive Director and Rabbi Gabe Greenberg announced the update in an email to a Penn Hillel mailing list on Tuesday. Previously, several Arabic courses, including ARAB 0100: “Elementary Arabic I” and ARAB 0300: “Intermediate Arabic III,” had required that students attend, according to students taking the courses and copies of the course syllabi obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Both courses fall under the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department, a School of Arts and Sciences department that is listed as a sponsor of the Palestine Writes festival.
“This term at UPENN, during the month of September Palestine Writes will take place… [A]ttending will be mandatory as activities in class will be structured around the events,” the ARAB 0100 syllabus reads.
One student taking ARAB 0100 this fall, who was granted anonymity by the DP, said that it seemed as though the syllabus language wanted students to attend but that it would not be a key part of the course curriculum. She said that she learned that students would be exempted from attending if they requested it.
The student said she did not plan on attending the event but felt that it had been communicated as an expected requirement until Greenberg’s email. Lecturers for ARAB 0100 and ARAB 0300, the Office of the Provost, and SAS did not respond to requests for comment.
As this piece mentions, UPenn’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department is actually a sponsor of the hate-fest. Which is not all that surprising, given that Huda Fakhreddine, the department’s Undergraduate Chair and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature, is one of the event’s organizers. But it is disgraceful and makes a mockery of their stated goals:
Our department upholds a conscious commitment to scholarship within the University of Pennsylvania and the world. We seek to sustain a community that is diverse in terms of gender, national origin, ethnicity and race, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and more. The intellectual life of the Department is collaborative and flourishes from its culture of inclusion, which aspires to make everyone feel welcome. We aim to build connections to scholars across the University of Pennsylvania campus and elsewhere at local, national, and international levels as we exchange ideas and spread knowledge. This commitment to collegiality, inquiry, and exploration makes our department a vibrant center for the humanistic study of the Middle East from ancient times to the present.
