Princeton to Introduce Anti-Israel Course Titled "Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide"
The course is taught by Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who has denied that Hamas committed sexual violence on October 7th and stated that “It’s time to abolish Zionism"
Princeton University is offering a new course in Spring 2025-2026 titled “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” that lists as its central focus “the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” according to a Jewish Onliner review of Princeton’s official course offerings. The course description states students will explore “how genocidal projects target reproductive life, sexual and familial structures, and community survival,” comparing Gaza to “the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocide against Black and Indigenous populations.”
The instructor is Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, whom Princeton named its Global South Visiting Scholar in October 2024—six months after she was briefly arrested in Israel for suspected incitement.
The appointment comes as Princeton navigated a federal funding freeze over antisemitism concerns, with the Trump administration having frozen approximately $210 million in April 2025.
From Arrest to Ivy League
Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s path to Princeton began with mounting controversy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she had been a professor. In October 2023, just weeks after the Hamas attacks of October 7th and shortly after Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza began, she signed an open letter accusing Israel of “genocide.”
In March 2024, Hebrew University suspended her after she appeared on Israeli television and stated: “It’s time to abolish Zionism. It can’t continue, it’s criminal.” In the same interview, she cast doubt on reports of Hamas’ sexual violence on October 7th, saying: “They will use any lie. They started with babies, they continued with rape, and they will continue with a million other lies.”
Hebrew University said her statements “took advantage of her academic freedom of expression for incitement and to create division,” making suspension necessary to “ensure a safe and conducive environment for our students on campus.”
One month later, Israeli police arrested Shalhoub-Kevorkian on suspicion of incitement, though released her after a court found insufficient evidence to extend her detention.
In August 2024 she retired from Hebrew University. Shalhoub-Kevorkian was appointed Princeton University’s Global South Visiting Scholar in October 2024 and is featured in both the Anthropology and Gender and Sexuality Studies departments of the university website. She first taught a six-week graduate seminar in Fall 2024 titled “Monstrosity and Colonialism.”
Glorifying Former PFLP Leader
Two weeks after her suspension from Hebrew University, on March 26, 2024, Shalhoub-Kevorkian posted on Facebook a tribute to Ghassan Kanafani, featuring his photograph and a quote from one of his books.
The post did not mention that Kanafani was one of the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. State Department designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for its role in numerous terrorist attacks, including airline hijackings. The group began executing suicide bombing attacks during the Second Intifada, a violent uprising in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered.
According to Time Magazine, in 1972, “It was Kanafani’s office which in May dispassionately bragged of the P.F.L.P.’s role in the Lod Airport massacre,” an attack that killed 26 people, including 17 Americans.
A Curriculum of “Reproductive Genocide”
The course’s sample reading list centers on a framework called “reproductive genocide”—though the Princeton University Bookstore’s course page states: “Textbooks are still being determined for this course. Please check back.”
Examples from the sample reading list include Sarah Ihmoud’s “Countering Reproductive Genocide in Gaza.” Published in March 2025, the work applies this framework directly to Gaza, with the abstract stating: “Israel’s genocidal project, hypervisible now in the intensification of warfare against the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, but also unfolding across occupied Palestinian territory since the 1948 Nakba, should be understood centrally as reproductive genocide, a systematic assault on Palestinian reproductive health, and an attempt to prevent the reproduction of present and future generations of Palestinian lives.”
An additional reading listed is Hala Shoman’s “Reprocide in Gaza,” which introduces the concept of “reprocide,” defined as “the systematic targeting of a group’s reproductive capacities, both biological and social, as a deliberate strategy of erasure.”
Princeton’s Promotion During Federal Freeze
The timing of Princeton’s embrace of Shalhoub-Kevorkian overlaps with federal investigations into multiple universities and funding freezes over their handling of antisemitism on campus. In January 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14188, directing agencies to “combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools.” The order specifically instructed the Department of Homeland Security to monitor “alien students and staff” for terrorism-related activities.
Three months later, in April 2025, the Trump administration froze approximately $210 million in federal funding to Princeton—about half the university’s federal grants. The freeze came from NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy, with no explanation provided.
The freeze was part of a broader crackdown: Columbia lost $400 million and was forced to pay a $200 million fine; Penn saw $175 million frozen; Harvard faced review of $9 billion in grants. About half of Princeton’s funding was restored in August 2025.
During this period of heightened federal scrutiny, Princeton’s Anthropology Department published a glowing 5,000-word interview with Shalhoub-Kevorkian. In it, she repeatedly referred to “the genocide” in Gaza, stating: “The current genocide has underscored for students the necessity of engaging in deeper analytical inquiry.”
She described her fall course “Monstrosity and Colonialism” as “shaped and impacted by the genocide” and said her spring course would help students “connect what happened, for example, in Yugoslavia and in the Yugoslav War, to the genocide today in Gaza.”
Princeton did not respond to requests for comment on how Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s course—which the university’s official registrar describes as exploring “the ongoing genocide in Gaza”—aligns with President Eisgruber’s April 2025 pledge to combat antisemitism.
The university also did not address what mechanisms it has in place to ensure that the professor’s public statement that “It’s time to abolish Zionism” won’t result in hostility towards Zionist students.
Given the description of the course as “situating Gaza within comparative histories of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocide against Black and Indigenous populations” one can only wonder about Holocaust trivialization.
I doubt any student will have the courage to point out that the only position Gaza holds in this list is as the item that does not belong. And that’s assuming that the Black genocide is a reference to the Rwandan genocide, though it will more likely focus on slavery in the West to the exclusion of any mention of the brutal Arab slave trade.
“the systematic targeting of a group’s reproductive capacities, both biological and social, as a deliberate strategy of erasure.”
I wonder how she will square this accusation with the documented fact that the population of Gaza has almost doubled over the past 20 years. Since when have Jew haters cared one whit for such niceties as truth, history and facts.