Brown And Its Reputation Continue to Plummet

On February 3, the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an investigation of Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, and the medical schools of Columbia, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. The government’s press release noted that at Brown, the investigation was prompted by “reported incidents of antisemitism and displays of offensive symbols and messaging during [graduation] ceremonies, including alleged expressions of support for terrorist organizations” that raised “serious concerns” for Jewish students.

On March 14, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol deported Brown Medical School professor Rasha Alawieh to her home country of Lebanon. Brown students and faculty, as always without bothering to look into the facts and without regard to applicable law, immediately broke out their apparently always-at-the-ready masks, keffiyehs and signage and jumped to her defense. According to the Brown Daily Herald (“BDH”), the rally in support of Alawieh was organized by The Party for Socialism and Liberation along with “several members of the medical community” and attended by various members of the Brown medical school community. On March 17, Politico, hardly a right wing news outlet, published a piece on Alawieh. The article is attached below. There may or may not be procedural questions as to how Alawieh was handled by Customs and Border Protection. But there can be no question as to her support for enemies of the United States. Among the facts noted by Politico are the following:

• While in Lebanon, allegedly to visit her family according to George Bayliss, associate professor of medicine at Brown, she attended the funeral of Hezbollah terrorist chieftain Hassan Nasrallah whose teachings she followed “from a religious perspective”;

• Her phone contained “photos and videos of Nasrallah and other leaders connected to Hezbollah”, though she claimed to be apolitical explaining she “had the images because those leaders are revered by many Shia Muslims”;

• Nasrallah, who had orchestrated the murders of hundreds, arguably thousands, of Americans, Israelis and others but according to Alawieh “is a religious figure…highly regarded in the Shia community”, “a religious, spiritual person…he has very high value. His teachings are about spirituality and morality”, she supported and admired Nasrallah “from a religious perspective”;

• The photos on her phone of Iranian terrorist leader Khamenei “has nothing to do with politics…it’s a purely religious thing. He’s a very big figure in our community”;

• Explaining why she appeared to have deleted some photos from her phone a day or two before arriving in the U.S., she said “Because I don’t want the perception. But I can’t delete everything. But I know I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not related to anything politically or militarily” despite, seemingly reluctantly, conceding that she knew Hezbollah was a U.S. designated terrorist organization.

At some point Alawieh was represented by Arnold & Porter, a Washington, D.C. based law firm with a long and storied history of pro-bono work. Interestingly, according to the New York Times, “as a result of further diligence”, Arnold & Porter dropped her as a client.

How dumb must Alawieh think Americans are, including many at Brown and those who brought her to Providence, to believe in light of the above that she is “apolitical”? But at least fortunately for Hezbollah terrorists, they will now be able to make use of Alawieh’s medical skills. And, equally fortunately, the Rhode Island medical community will do very well without them.

Needless to say, the national press has made much of the Alawieh situation. Whether or not Brown faculty, students and administrators approve of social media in general or podcasts in particular, it is indisputable that they play a large, even outsized, role in society. Megyn Kelly hosts one of the top ten podcasts in the country. The Megyn Kelly Show on YouTube has 3,200,000+ subscribers which, according to available data, has had just under two billion views. Earlier this week, in the context of discussing Alawieh on her podcast, she opined that Brown was the most anti-Semitic university in the country. (Some time ago she had spoken of the undeniable anti-Semitism of the Goebbels-quality Hamas Charter as a component of the “resistance” so admired by so many faculty and students at Brown.) In the podcast this week she also implored her listeners to not send their children to Columbia or Brown. Given such events as the two-day, anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist hate fest recently held at Brown conducted by 20+ academic poseurs, which was the subject of much commentary, and the regular appearances of Hamas-supporting outside speakers at Brown, more of this kind of coverage is likely.

It is not surprising that the same people protesting on Alawieh’s behalf were also there for anti-Semitic terrorist supporter Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia “student”. Khalil is now deservedly jailed, albeit far more comfortably than the hostages taken in Israel on October 7, 2023. And it is highly unlikely that Khalil will be starved, tortured or shot or strangled to death unlike the October 7 hostages taken by his buddies. Brown graduate Ellen Simon recently posted a substack piece entitled “Dear Mahmoud”. Her piece is terrific. It also is attached below. It is written so plainly that, in the words of Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal, even “teenage-brained Hamasniks”, an apt description of far too many Brown faculty, students and administrators, ought to be able to understand it.

Much has been said and written in recent days by Brown president Paxson and others about “academic freedom”, including the right to “study, examine and debate” and a supposed commitment to the rule of law that I will address in the days ahead. But a few comments made by Michael Ziegler, a Brown graduate student and president of the Brown Graduate Labor Organization, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers - American Federation of Teachers, Local 6516 merit brief mention here. The BDH published his editorial on March 18.

Most of what Ziegler says is predictable, repetitive and yawn-inducing about “threat(s) to campus speech etc etc etc. But he also says:

“…the University should implement two key policies: destroying all surveillance footage of campus political demonstration (sic) and challenging any subpoena for community members’ records.”

At bottom he believes the university should not for any reason use security cameras for disciplinary reasons based on past or future conduct. He focuses on photographic evidence of events during what he called the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment”. His editorial is a stunning demonstration of naïveté, entitlement and cowardice. Leaving aside the value of security cameras for many reasons, those who protested, e.g., segregation in the South (or in the North) in the 1960s and those who protested the Vietnam War didn’t wear masks and didn’t demand anonymity - they basically demanded to be identified. For many jail was not necessarily to be avoided. The only masks I saw in Washington in the spring of 1970 as a law student monitor of protests against the Vietnam War were handkerchiefs held over the faces of those who were being tear-gassed. The masked, keffiyeh-draped “teenage-brained Hamasniks” at Brown are basically spoiled, uneducated and uneducable babies.

Gerard Baker in his Wall Street Journal column of March 18, entitled “Antisemitism Rears Its Head on the Right, too” is again worth noting because his comments apply to so much of what happens on the Brown campus as it relates to Israel/Palestinians.

“Sheer dumbness is part of the problem. Our culture is dominated by people with epic levels of historical, economic and scientific ignorance…The larger problem is the steady undermining of truth itself. So much contemporary ideology rests on eradicated standards of objective reality, so people can believe all kinds of impossible things. The abandonment of academic truth is partially to blame”.

It would be difficult to come up with a better summary and/or explanation of the Alawieh and Khalid protests and protesters and the years-long, abject and dangerous failings of Brown’s Center for Middle East/Palestinian Studies.

Willis J. Goldsmith, Brown Class of 1969

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/17/rasha-alawieh-deportation-026038

Dear Mahmoud