PEN America: Calls to Remove a Book from Princeton U Syllabus Are “Highly Misguided”

August 22, 2023 1 min read

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PEN America Press Release

Excerpt: PEN America said today calls to remove a book from a Princeton University syllabus and fire a professor were “highly misguided” and ”unwarranted.” The book in question, slated for inclusion in a course called ”The Healing Humanities — Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South,” critiques the state of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.

Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s program director for Free Expression and Education, said: “If we scrubbed college campuses of any book that could cause any offense, we would be left with a fairly barren environment for academic inquiry. University education is meant to challenge minds and be a place for open exchange about global political issues, even when they are contested.”

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Richard Kahane '60
Richard Kahane '60

October 12, 2023

T he Puar book does not merely “critique the state of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians”; it claims that the Israeli military kills Palestinians in order to harvest their organs, thereby reprising the centuries-old antisemitic “blood libel” that Jews kill non-Jews so they can use their bodies for nefarious purposes.

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