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Amid fierce backlash to a Harvard Kennedy School event featuring controversial Palestinian professor Dalal Saeb Iriqat, the school and its dean distanced themselves from the event in a statement on Sunday.

Professor Tarek E. Masoud, director of the Middle East Initiative, invited Iriqat to speak at the Kennedy School on March 7 for a conversation as part of his “Middle East Dialogues” series. Masoud wrote in a Saturday post on LinkedIn that he organized the series of conversations to help students engage in “hard conversations about hard things with people we don’t agree with.”

Iriqat came under fire from some pro-Israel activists for several controversial posts on X following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In one post, Iriqat described Oct. 7 — a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians — as a “normal struggle for 4 #Freedom.”

In the statement, the Kennedy School wrote that Masoud “chose and invited the speakers for the series himself.”

“Dean Douglas Elmendorf personally finds abhorrent the comments by Dalal Saeb Iriqat quoted in the press that justify and normalize the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas,” the statement added. “An invitation to speak at the Kennedy School never implies an endorsement of a speaker’s views by the Kennedy School or members of the Kennedy School community.”

Masoud said in a Sunday interview that while he “obviously” disagreed with Iriqat’s views on the Israel-Hamas war, he believed her perspective was shared by many Palestinians and was important to hear.

“If you are going to engage with Palestinians, you’re going to have to engage with these ideas,” he said. “My view is that we have to subject these ideas — and all the ideas that we encounter — to polite but rigorous inquiry.”

Masoud said he chose the slate of interviewees to give his students the opportunity to “fearlessly and rigorously” interrogate a range of perspectives on the conflict in Gaza and broader struggles in the Middle East.

“For too long we haven’t done this work because we were more concerned with psychological safety rather than education,” Masoud said. “What I want is for our community to transcend emotions when confronted with ideas or speakers that we dislike, bring our best selves and strongest arguments to the table, and have it out.”

Iriqat is among five public figures invited to be interviewed by Masoud for the “Middle East Dialogues” series.

The other public figures Masoud will interview this semester include Jared C. Kushner ’03, the former senior advisor to president Donald Trump; Matt Duss, a former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); Salam Fayyad, the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; and Einat Wilf ’96, a professor and a former member of the Israeli Knesset.

The criticism comes as Harvard faces a congressional investigation over antisemitism on campus and a lawsuit filed by six Jewish students who alleged the University allowed “severe and pervasive” antisemitism.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, the outgoing Kennedy School dean, faced intense faculty backlash in January 2023 after reports emerged that he disinvited longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth from a year-long fellowship at the school over Roth’s criticism of Israel.

Elmendorf later reversed his decision and appointed Roth to a fellowship at HKS’ Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Masoud added that he views the participants in his series as interviewees, rather than speakers, to whom he “will pose tough questions in a civil manner.”

Despite the criticism of his series, Masoud said he has invitations for several additional interviewees “in the works” and hopes to finalize plans.

“It nonetheless is the case that anything you do on Israel and Palestine is going to ‘court controversy,’” he said.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.