For the last two years, Huda Fakhreddine has endured a barrage of harassment by the US government and her employer, the University of Pennsylvania, for the simple reason that she writes about, teaches and translates Palestinian poetry.

The witchhunt for academics associated with Palestine is not new, but has ramped up immensely since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in the autumn of 2023. The stage has been set over the years and the villains have been pre-decided. In December 2023, Harvard, Columbia and UPenn were questioned at congressional hearings supposedly investigating rising antisemitism on American campuses. In a cartoonish portrait presented to Congress, Huda was held up as an example because of her involvement in the Palestine Writes Festival held some months before at the UPenn campus, where she has worked for several years in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Slander, slurs and death threats followed, and the danger to Huda’s life was palpable. Over the ensuing months, any semblance of a normal working environment fell away, and there was a “dropping of masks.” Everything one had suspected about the violence and racism embedded in American university structures had become so transparent that Huda found it “unfathomable that we had navigated these systems” for so long.

Today, as the agonizing genocide of Palestinians continues, Huda says that “Gaza has offered us so much that we don't deserve,” and one of these offerings “is the courage to just not accept this anymore.” And so her voice only got louder as she refused to back down, even as the situation at her university got worse.

UPenn, like several other universities, received a letter from the congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce demanding they hand over records and all emails of UPenn staff to aid in their “antisemitism” inquisition. There was no subpoena, nor was this a legally binding order, but UPenn had decided to capitulate to these demands. Refusing to let this McCarthyism go unchecked, Huda and a colleague filed a lawsuit against UPenn in January 2024 to stop the university from sharing private information with Congress, saying such disclosures endangered them.

A year later, their case was dismissed with prejudice, but Huda explains that there was no expectation of winning. “The win here is that you're not silenced,” and the goal was “to use the lawsuit to say things around it - in the media, on social media, in the school paper.”

“You make use of every platform to make the statement. And our statement was Gaza.”

What does it feel like to be a problem? I ask her. “It feels like a responsibility,” she replies. Unsurprisingly, Huda is writing and translating more than ever, and has made sure that Palestinian resistance is at the core of everything she teaches. “Nothing should be smooth. I'm going to be a pain and it’s fine. I'm paying the price. If every moment can become a return, a refocusing on Gaza, because we are so easily distracted, and if this is resisting that distraction, then I'm glad to be that problem.”

Huda recently wrote that “Gaza is no longer just a place; Gaza is a locus and ethos; it is a signpost in place that has also become a source point of time.” This is her most urgent insight and message to the world. She explains that, “everything has to launch from Gaza, whether it's in literature and politics and climate studies and gender studies, anything. We are witnessing it and literally witnessing it like nothing has ever been witnessed in history before. It's on our pillows, in our car, all the screens are massacres and bloodshed.”

Huda is painfully aware that the many forms of resistance she articulates certainly do not assure success, and that the situation is devastating. “But there have been breakthroughs. I think being a problem, and we're placing “problem” in quotation marks, is not making it easy for the system.

Further reading:

Intifada: On Being an Arabic Literature Professor in a Time of Genocide by Huda Fakhreddine https://lithub.com/intifada-on-being-an-arabic-literature-professor-in-a-time-of-genocide/

“Palestinian” by Ibrahim Nasrallah. Translated by Huda Fakhreddine https://proteanmag.com/2024/03/24/palestinian/

Huda Fakhreddine on ArabLit https://arablit.org/tag/huda-fakhreddine/

Huda Fakhreddine & Yasmeen Hanoosh: Translating Arabic & Gaza https://themarkaz.org/huda-fakhreddine-yasmeen-hanoosh-translating-arabic-gaza/

“Pull Yourself Together” and “Seven Skies for the Homeland” By Hiba Abu Nada. Translated by Huda Fakhreddine https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2024-01/pull-yourself-together-and-seven-skies-of-homeland-hiba-abu-nada-huda-fakhreddine/

University Presidents Testify Before House on Anti-Semitism and Violent Protests Transcript https://www.rev.com/transcripts/university-presidents-testify-before-house-on-anti-semitism-and-violent-protests-transcript

Judge dismisses Penn faculty group’s amended ‘McCarthyism’ lawsuit with prejudice. By Ayana Chari https://www.thedp.com/article/2025/02/penn-faculty-palestine-lawsuit-dismissed-prejudice