Congressman Calls To Investigate Academic Conference Over ‘Anti-Semitic Song’
Duke University Image by Getty Images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis April 16, 2019
A Republican congressman from North Carolina is asking the federal Department of Education to look into a conference hosted by two North Carolina universities that he claims had a “radical anti-Israel bias,” the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
In a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Congressman George Holding asks for an investigation into a Middle East Studies conference hosted by the University of North Carolina and Duke University. The conference, titled “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities,” was partially funded with $5,000 in federal dollars, according to the News & Observer.
Holding cited in his letter a video posted by a pro-Israel filmmaker that includes a clip of a performer at the conference singing what Holding described as a “brazenly anti-Semitic song.”
The song, a ballad by the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM called “Mama, I Fell In Love With A Jew,” was performed at the conference by one of the group’s members, Tamer Nafar. In the clip posted by a pro-Israel filmmaker who recorded the performance, Nafar refers to the song as his “anti-Semitic song.”
One student who attended the conference told the Daily Tar Heel, a student paper, that the clip was taken out of context. “When he said, ‘This is my anti-Semitic song,’ I think he was alluding to that, like, if you criticize Israel, people are going to call you an anti-Semite,” Fouad Abu-Hijleh told the paper. “That’s how I perceived it as a Palestinian. Now obviously for an American audience, I don’t know if that translated well or if that carried its meaning.”
In his letter, Holding asked the DOE to investigate whether the conference constituted grounds to revoke the remainder of a $235,000 federal grant, a piece of which supported the conference.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
