{"id":122632,"date":"2025-07-16T17:05:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122632"},"modified":"2025-07-16T07:53:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T05:53:40","slug":"17-05-112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122632","title":{"rendered":"Professor who called for Iran to strike US base removed, Georgetown says at House hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Professor who called for Iran to strike US base removed, Georgetown says at House hearing<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Andrew Bernard<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Interim president Robert Groves told the House Education and Workforce Committee that Jonathan Brown \u201cis no longer chair of his department. He\u2019s on leave, and we\u2019re beginning a process of reviewing the case.\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Robert Groves, interim president of Georgetown University, testifies before the House Committee on Education and Workforce in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., July 15, 2025. Photo by Win McNamee\/Getty Images.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, told members of Congress on Tuesday that the school removed a professor who called for Iran to attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at the House Committee on Education and Workforce\u2019s latest hearing on campus antisemitism, Groves said that Jonathan Brown was no longer the chair of Georgetown\u2019s department of Arabic and Islamic studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWithin minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed,\u201d Groves told lawmakers. \u201cWe issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He\u2019s on leave, and we\u2019re beginning a process of reviewing the case.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesman for Georgetown told JNS that Brown retains his faculty appointment as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at the university\u2019s School of Foreign Service.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after the U.S. concluded airstrikes against Iran in June, Brown wrote on social media, in a since-deleted post, that he wanted Iran to retaliate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops,\u201d Brown wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

A specialist in traditional Islamic sources, Brown has attracted controversy for years over his academic views and anti-Israel advocacy. In 2017, he issued an apology for a lecture about the morality of slavery and rape.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s morally evil to own somebody, because we own lots of people all around us and were owned by people, and this obsession about thinking of slavery as property,\u201d he said in the lecture. <\/span><\/p>\n

During questions from the audience, the professor cited the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. \u201cHe had slaves, there is no denying that,\u201d he said. \u201cAre you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A convert to Islam, Brown is also the son-in-law of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to a terrorism conspiracy charge over his support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was deported from the country in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, during a committee hearing about antisemitism on campus with leaders from Georgetown University, City University of New York and University of California, Berkeley, July 15, 2025. Credit: Courtesy of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Why did you give a medal?\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Tuesday\u2019s hearing, the ninth that the education committee has held on antisemitism, also featured F\u00e9lix Matos Rodr\u00edguez, chancellor of the City University of New York, and Rich Lyons, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the committee were generally divided along partisan lines for the scope of their questioning; Republicans asked the university leaders about faculty and student statements about Israel, and the war in Gaza. Democrats asked about the Trump administration\u2019s cuts to the Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is yet another hearing to demonize Muslims and their religion, to demonize Palestinians, including those in Gaza who have undeniably faced unspeakable harms\u2014a humanitarian crisis and human-rights crisis\u2014and particularly, the young student activists and faculty who are determined to stand up against human rights violations,\u201d said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is particularly another public opportunity for Republicans to pit Jewish Americans against Muslim Americans, Muslim against Christian, black against white,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another focus of the hearing was foreign funding for the universities, particularly Georgetown\u2019s relationship with Qatar, where the school has had a satellite campus for 20 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) asked Groves about the university\u2019s decision to award a humanitarian medal to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar\u2019s emir.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMonths prior to giving this award, Sheikha Moza had posted on social-media comments praising the Oct. 7 attack on Israel,\u201d Harris said. \u201cShe praised the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, saying, \u2018The name Yahya means the one who lives. They thought him dead, but he lives.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe added, apparently referring to Israel, \u2018He will live on, and they will be gone,\u2019\u201d Harris continued. \u201cI have to ask: Why did you give a medal to someone who had made such antisemitic comments?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Groves said Sheikha Moza\u2019s post \u201cis not consistent with Georgetown policy,\u201d but that the school would not consider revoking the award, which was given for Sheikha Moza\u2019s contributions to educating impoverished children around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The university leaders were also confronted with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas statements and incidents from students and professors, as well as questioned about whether they had adequately rooted out Jew-hatred on their campuses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018You get to decide who to hire\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) asked Lyons, Berkeley\u2019s chancellor, about Ussama Makdisi, professor of history and chancellor\u2019s chair at the university.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the fall of 2024, you named Ussama Makdisi the inaugural chair of a newly endowed program in Palestinian Arab studies. On Oct. 7, Makdisi described the Hamas attacks against Israel as \u2018resistance,\u2019\u201d Fine said. \u201cI understand freedom of speech, but you get to decide who to hire. Why would you give a position to someone who said Oct. 7 was justified?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Makdisi is a fine scholar,\u201d Lyons replied. \u201cHe was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), the committee chairman, stated in his closing remarks that he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the responses from the witnesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBerkeley admits abhorrence of the views of the professor rewarded with his own program, but won\u2019t do anything about it, and refers to him as a fine scholar,\u201d Walberg said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something I could not refer to him, when he misses the moral issue of humanity,\u201d he said. \u201cGeorgetown couldn\u2019t affirmatively say it wouldn\u2019t allow a member of the KKK to come speak. CUNY severely underrepresented the number of antisemitism complaints received. So those are concerns that we still have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Professor who called for Iran to strike US base removed, Georgetown says at House hearing Andrew Bernard Interim president Robert Groves told the House Education and Workforce Committee that Jonathan Brown \u201cis no longer chair of his department. He\u2019s on leave, and we\u2019re beginning a process of reviewing the case.\u201d . Robert Groves, interim president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122632"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122694,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122632\/revisions\/122694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}