A view of Georgetown University. Photo: Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz via Wikimedia Commons

A campus speaking tour by a notorious pro-Palestinian activist stoked further controversy this week at Georgetown University, which faced calls from Jewish students and national groups to denounce his antisemitic rhetoric before a planned Tuesday night appearance at the law school.

The event — billed by Georgetown Law Students for Justice in Palestine as a session on “Law as a Tool of Dispossession” against Palestinians in Jerusalem — is set to feature Mohammed El-Kurd, whose recent appearances at several US colleges have been condemned by Jewish students. A poet and current columnist for The Nation magazine, El-Kurd has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitism, including accusing Israelis of harvesting the organs of Palestinians and having an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood.”

On Tuesday, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that protects Jewish university students, called on Georgetown President John J. DeGioia to “use this disgraceful event as a teaching moment to educate the University community about the world’s oldest form of hatred, antisemitism.”

“The remedy for hate speech is neither to silence it nor to remain silent,” the Brandeis Center said in a letter. “Instead, the University should use its own voice to clearly and unequivocally condemn antisemitic speech that runs counter to the University’s values of inclusivity, ‘mutual reverence,’ ‘civility and mutual respect,’ and that threatens to create a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus.”

The Center noted a recent controversy over Georgetown Law professor Ilya Shapiro, who was placed on administrative leave and rebuked by the law school’s dean after comments about a Supreme Court nominee that were deemed contrary to the school’s values.

“Certainly the University’s previous stern treatment of actual or allegedly offensive speech necessitates its clear and unequivocal rejection of Mr. El-Kurd’s blatantly antisemitic and offensive rhetoric that maligns Jewish students and all Jews who support Israel,” the Brandeis Center argued. “Georgetown should not have a blind spot when Jews are the target.”

Outcry over Tuesday’s planned talk had earlier come from the head of the Anti-Defamation League, which has previously documented what it describes as El-Kurd’s “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism.”

“Mohammed El-Kurd has a long, ugly history of antisemitic incitement & conspiratorial rhetoric that goes far beyond reasoned criticism of Israel,” Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, tweeted Monday. “Outrageous & indefensible that @GeorgetownLaw invited him to bring his hate to their campus.”

The StopAntisemitism group called on Georgetown to cancel the event, revealing a message received from an anonymous law student attesting that “many students voiced their concerns over this and the deans have done nothing.”

The group pointed to audio it previously published of El-Kurd’s recent appearance at ASU, in which he can be heard telling students, “I suspect some apartheid lovers are here too” — and that “if you heckle me, you will get shot.”

“Administrations like Georgetown’s state they’re against antisemitism yet allow Jew haters like Mohammed El-Kurd to freely spread hatred against Jews on their campuses,” StopAntisemitism said Monday. “Enough is enough — cancel El-Kurd’s speech ASAP!”

On Monday, the National Review magazine reported that the law school’s dean of students defended tolerating El-Kurd’s appearance as part of a commitment to free speech, during a meeting with Jewish students over the controversy.