I subscribe to an email list owned by a group called Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), which just today put out an open letter to Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, in advance of tomorrow’s speech by Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I don’t ordinarily feel the need to respond to statements by PFS, but in this case, a brief comment is in order. Continue reading
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
We Won’t Stop
The New York Times has yet another article on the Trump Administration’s attacks on higher education. As a former academic, I feel bad for higher education, but as an activist right now, I feel fine. Here’s my unapologetic comment in the comments section of the article:
When campus activists called for divestment, we were mocked. Now, as Defense Dept contracts are being canceled at those very universities, invoking our activism as a pretext, it’s our turn to mock. Don’t expect sympathy. It’s not forthcoming. You wanted us in jail. We want you broke. May the antagonist with the greatest moral endurance win.
My comment elicited a rejoinder from someone named Al Orin from New York City: Continue reading
Meir Kahane at Princeton: April 1984
Princeton in the Service of Ethnic Cleansing
Here is the first installment of the supplementary posts to my April 5 post, “Princeton’s Genocide.” This one consists of screenshots from the Daily Princetonian (April 27, 1984) of Meir Kahane’s first visit to Princeton in April 1984, at the invitation of Yoram Hazony. As you’ll see from the last screenshot, Kahane explicitly advocates the apartheid and ethnic cleansing likewise defended in his book, They Must Go. “If necessary to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel, Arabs might need to be deported.” Since Kahane regarded Israel as encompassing everything it held in 1984, that meant that “Arabs” would have to be deported from the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Golan, and Israel proper. Continue reading
Not a Rhetorical Question
How is it that a foreigner, Naftali Bennett, can come to the United States and suggest that Americans be blown up—yet no American has the legal right to suggest that we do the same to Naftali Bennett? I can guarantee that there would be volunteers. At least one.
The Reporters that Didn’t Bark in the Night
The New York Times is the paradigm of mainstream legacy reporting, but its business reporting is so fucking bizarre–so outlandish and downright weird in its selectivity–that you can understand why people who work in business resort to conspiracy theories to explain what its reporters are doing.
It’s widely been reported in tech news that Oracle’s Cerner data has been hacked, and that while Oracle is trying hard to downplay the hack, it is in fact a big deal. CloudSEK has called it “the biggest supply chain hack of 2025,” adding that six million records have been exfiltrated from Oracle Cloud, affecting over 140,000 clients. According to CloudSEK, the hacker was active for several weeks across January and February before being detected. Feel free to Google “Oracle hack,” and read the dozens of articles that come up. All of them have scooped legacy media by weeks. Continue reading
Princeton’s Genocide
In October 2024, after several years of activism (most recently spearheaded by Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divestment, or PIAD), the Council for the Princeton University Community (CPUC) invited written comments from members of the Princeton University community weighing in for and against divestment from Israel. The CPUC rejected the bid for divestment about a month ago.
What follows below is my written statement to the CPUC, which essentially speaks for itself–and likewise speaks to the title I’ve given this post. I will, in the near future, be posting some supplementary material, including screen shots from The Daily Princetonian of Meir Kahane’s two appearances at Princeton advocating ethnic cleansing and genocide (April 1984 and February 1988), the written version of my follow-up question to the CPUC about the issue of complicity, and the transparently evasive “response” to my question offered by Hilary A. Parker, Vice President and Secretary of Princeton University. I’ll also be posting a written response here to John Groves, chair of CPUC’s Resources Committee. Both Parker and Groves refused my repeated requests to offer a candid disclosure of the facts concerning the University’s investments, opting for concealment and evasion. Continue reading
Naftali Bennett at Princeton
What follows are screenshots of a long message from the Instagram page of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) of Princeton University (with the Princeton/Palestine Liberation Coalition and SJP’s national and state affiliates), regarding the forthcoming visit to campus on April 7th of Naftali Bennett. I’ll write up a longer comment this weekend, but for now, suffice it to say that I agree with SJP, and wanted to amplify its message. If you click the first thumbnail to enlarge, you should be able to click directly through the whole series. Otherwise, click each thumbnail to enlarge, reading them left to right across the page.
By Diverse Means
I saw a news item the other day that wasn’t funny, but still made me laugh. “Trump Pauses Dozens of Federal Grants to Princeton,” read the headline:
The Trump administration moved this week to suspend dozens of federal grants to Princeton University, the fourth Ivy League school that has seen its financial support from Washington reduced or explicitly threatened since March.
Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, told the university community in an email late Tuesday morning that “several dozen” grants had been suspended. …
Mr. Eisgruber said that the university had been told on Monday and Tuesday that it was losing at least some research support from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and NASA.
You don’t see the humor? Let me explain. Continue reading
The Oracle Speaks
OK, so let’s get this straight. TikTok had to be sold because given its Chinese ownership, it was a danger to our privacy, and on top of that, a danger to national security. But no worries, because according to business guru and data analyst Donald Trump, all-American Oracle had the technical capacity to “handle” the TikTok acquisition and handle TikTok itself. Nothing that a $100 billion Trump-inspired AI initiative couldn’t solve.
Meanwhile, back in 2022, Oracle acquired Cerner, the healthcare data company. It has now managed, as of just a few weeks ago, to get precisely its Cerner data hacked. So while Oracle could, at least in Donald Trump’s mind, handle TikTok, it couldn’t, in fact, manage to handle Cerner.
Continue readingFear of the Dark
This ridiculous letter to the Wall Street Journal is making the rounds in certain quarters as though it enunciated some profound “gotcha”-level truth.
Policy of Truth 