The University of Pennsylvania is hosting a controversial event this weekend called the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, from Friday to Sunday. More than the topic is the list of speakers that is creating concern. The list of speakers includes Roger Waters, who wore a Nazi-style uniform during his concert in Berlin back in May; Aya Ghanameh, who has tweeted "Death to Israel" on more than one occasion, and Marc Lamont Hill, who while at the UN during its International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People spoke on behalf of "a free Palestine from the river to the sea."
Who is Marc Lamont Hill?
Hill is "one of the leading intellectual voices in the country." We know that because he says so himself:
He has a Ph.D with distinction, but though various sites mention this fact, no site seems to actually provide the topic of the thesis. I finally found the title of his thesis online (H/T SabraBat-Seraph)
From the back-and-forth on Twitter defending the lack of information on the topic of the Ph.D., it seems that people are far more interested in what Hill says than whether he is qualified to say it authoritatively.
His website indicates he is currently researching "the relationships between race, culture, politics, and education in the United States and the Middle East."
That is where things get interesting.
Three years ago, Marc Lamont Hill was challenged on Twitter about whether he had the background necessary to talk knowledgeably about the Middle East
In that Twitter exchange, Hill never names books that he has read that would qualify him to speak on Israel and the Middle East. When asked if he has read from a list of authors, he replies off-handedly "of course," but when pinned down to name books, classes or degrees --
o He replies he has read "exhaustively" (whatever that means), but doesn't name any books or articles. There is no way to gauge whose work he has read or if his bothered to read different viewpoints.
o He points out that he has a "graduate degree," but does not say what it is in. His Ph.D is in Hip-Hop Lit and he has a B.S. in Spanish and Education. According to Wikipedia, Hill has a Masters, but the source it links to makes no mention of it. Apparently, people are supposed to be impressed by degrees in subjects that have nothing to do with what he is talking about.o Finally, Hill vaguely claims to have "many years scholarly experience/study on the subject," and then resorts to claiming that this is more than the authors he was asked if he had read.
When asked further on what qualifies him to speak on Israel and the Middle East, he claims to have been "trained" in the area and to have "read widely and deeply" in the area. But trained means more than reading a lot. It implies having a mentor and teacher who himself has some sort of expertise -- someone who is directing the learning and perhaps even testing to measure comprehension.
Marc Lamont Hill apparently did not see any irony when he tweeted in an argument with David Horowitz:
David Horowitz has made his career calling people communists and/or anti-semites. He sees no irony in challenging credentials, while exercising the freedom to talk about whatever he wants with NO training at all. How does his Masters in literature allow him to write books on Islamic radicalism? [emphasis added]
The bottom line is there is no indication that Marc Lamont Hill has any particular qualification as an expert on the subject. He has no more expertise than the average tweeter.
Let's see what he has been saying about Israel, both on and off Twitter.
Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers [on Facebook], followed Mazzig’s argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone. Hill responded that Mazzig ignores “the racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.”
Mazzig posted a screenshot of another exchange with Hill in which Hill wrote that “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.” (emphasis added)
At least Hill had the decency to delete the post.
In a 2019 article for Ami Magazine, Black Intellectuals Embrace Anti-Semitism // A Worrying trend is emerging, Rafael Medoff writes
In 2018, Hill accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian water:
"I can't just think about political prisoners here in the states; I have to think about political prisoners in Palestine," Hill said. "And I have to ask questions about what the face of those prisoners look like, and what legitimate resistance looks like."
Hill also said that people who struggle tend to favor a "civil rights tradition" that "romanticizes nonviolence."
"How can you romanticize nonviolence when you have a state that is at all moments waging war against you, against your bodies, poisoning your water, limiting your access to water, locking up your children, killing them?" Hill asked. "We can't romanticize resistance." [emphasis added]
In 2018, CNN fired Hill from his position as a contributor because of his "river to the sea" comment -- 9 years after he was fired from Fox News in 2009, where he was an analyst. The reason, though, was not necessarily because of his anti-Israel or antisemitic statements:Here is video of @TempleUniv university professor @marclamonthill telling the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights in September that Israel is "poisoning" the water of Palestinians
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) December 6, 2018
He also appears to compare himself favorably to convicted Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled pic.twitter.com/r4ryjZFr1Y
Murdoch also said that Hill has been fired. He revealed the move after a shareholder had raised the question of how Hill was hired, citing his “reputation of defending cop killers and racists.”
Hill, a frequent guest on “The O’Reilly Factor” and other Fox News shows, has been the target of increasing criticism on the blogosphere for alleged sympathies to controversial figures including Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Though Hill bills himself as an expert on hip-hop culture, he also drew fire for serving as a liberal foil for various Fox News personalities on subjects far from his stated area of expertise.
And this person is speaking at the University of Pennsylvania.
Marc Lamont Hill has replicated what he achieved in his Ph.D. thesis.
He is an antisemite with distinction.
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