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Why Is Duke Letting an Anti-Israel Hate Monger Teach — and Why Are Leaders Not Investigating?
Duke University. Photo: Ilyse Whitney / CC BY 2.0.
Let’s examine one department at Duke University to better understand the antisemitic fervor being experienced throughout academia, the campuses, and in academic publications.
Frances Hasso is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke “with secondary appointments in the Department of History and the Department of Sociology.” In 2024, she excitedly announced on X, “HAMAS OFFICIALLY DEFEATS ISRAEL!”
In 2024 and 2025, Hasso repeatedly made social media posts using the antisemitic slur “Zio.” For example, she tweeted “Just another Zio grifter … his page is for donations.”
A column in the politically left Slate explained, “‘Zio” [is] an anti-Jewish slur popularized by David Duke and his neo-Nazi followers.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, while Israelis were actively being murdered, raped, tortured, and dragged as hostages into tunnels in Gaza, Hasso shared the following post with her accompanying comment that she agrees “1000 percent”:
Anyone who mischaracterizes legitimate Palestinian resistance against colonial occupation as aggression or any other liberal inspired adjectives is not a friend of the Palestinians but a collaborator with liberal obscurantism & mass confusion that only benefits the colonialists.
The same month, Hasso posted, “The US empire cannot end soon enough.”
In late December 2023, The New York Times published an in-depth report detailing sexual assaults against Israelis during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led pogrom.
Hasso signed a letter calling the Times’ report “disgraceful.” She and the other signatories stated they, “Firmly reject The Times’ discreditable report and its exploitation of women’s bodies and struggles as a means to fabricate assault incidents and push propaganda for an unlawful occupation, thereby abetting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
Just last month, Hasso shared a post on X, in which the original poster said, “Noone was raped on October 7.”
It is concerning — to say the very least — that the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the gender and feminist program at Duke University rejected a prominent report on sexual assaults against Israelis. Perhaps the motto at Duke should be: Believe all women, except Israeli and Jewish women.
In November of 2023, Hasso was a panelist at the scandalous, “A Round-Table Talk about Social Justice in Palestine,” hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The event — which I attended — began with the audience being shown a short anti-Israel propaganda film titled “Gaza Concentration Camp,” chosen by Hasso. The film narrator stated that on Oct. 7, “Palestinians didn’t break through a border to enter Israel. … They destroyed a fence separating them from the homes they were forced out of.”
The film did not mention any of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7.
In a now-infamous moment at the event, a panelist, Rania Masri, said: “Oct. 7 for many of us from the region was a beautiful day. It was the day in which we saw that, we saw our brothers, we saw our fathers, we saw men break out of a concentration camp.”
Husso made no comment or objection to this.
Students took dutiful notes. Not a single panelist, moderator, or professor in the room objected to Masri’s hateful comments or even looked concerned.
Since the event, UNC administrators have made multiple apologetic statements distancing the university from Masri’s hateful comments.
But as far as I am aware, Hasso did not distance herself from Masri. In fact, the next year, Hasso made a post on X congratulating Masri for speaking out against the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, tweeting, “Great job @rania_masri.”
Hasso recently shared a post alleging that “Israel keeps trying to kill Israeli hostages… all as [an] excuse to prolong the Genocidal plan of erasing two million Palestinians from Gaza. Israel’s priorities are Nazi’s war-time policies – fastracking Genocide (Final Solution).”
According to the US Department of State, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is one example of antisemitism.
It is simply depraved to say that the government of Israel is trying to kill its own citizens being held hostage.
The Duke student newspaper estimates that tuition, board, and fees at the university for undergraduates will total $92,042 for the 2025-26 academic year. Why would Jewish families — or any families at all — pay such huge costs to send their children to be “educated” by professors like Frances Hasso?
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Why Is Duke Letting an Anti-Israel Hate Monger Teach — and Why Are Leaders Not Investigating? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.