University of Denver Professor Nader Hashemi has engaged in numerous forms of Jew hatred over the course of his academic career, which has included stints teaching at Harvard, UCLA, and Northwestern University. As director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Denver, Hashemi has a position of great influence within his field—and he has repeatedly used it to promote the terrorist organization Hamas, to whitewash violence against the Jews and Israel, and to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to the world at large.
In a lecture on Hamas that was broadcast on YouTube in 2015, Hashemi claimed that Hamas’s participation is necessary to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. The professor claimed that after the year 2000, there were “significant attempts by the leadership of Hamas to strike out and to present a more moderate face with respect to a political resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict”—a farcical claim given the 37 suicide bombings and thousands of rocket attacks launched by Hamas in the intervening years.
During his address, Hashemi also downplayed the horrifying sentiments stated in the Hamas charter which calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people and Israel. While acknowledging the “anti-Semitic” nature of these statements, Hashemi implied that this call for murder was nevertheless irrelevant to achieving peace in Israel/Palestine and quoted a statement from Hamas leader Khaled Mashal who claimed that the Hamas charter is “a piece of history no longer relevant but cannot be changed for internal reasons.” Hashemi also seemingly dismissed the significance of this call to murder the Jews, stating fatuously, “If I had a penny every time this topic was mentioned in the context of Israel-Palestine, I would be an incredibly rich person.”
On another occasion in March of 2016, Hashemi responded to a journalist who brought up the Hamas charter’s call to murder the Jews by labeling it “pro-Israel talking points.”
Professor Hashemi has also repeatedly sought to justify the anti-Semitism of others, claiming in November 2005 that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call that Israel should “be wiped off the map” was not due to “ancient ethnic hatreds or Muslim anti-Semitism, but primarily [due to] the trauma and enduring legacy of European colonialism and Israel’s perceived connection with this legacy.”
In November 2015, Hashemi tweeted: “Israeli soldiers kill another Palestinian in Hebron.” He linked an article about a Palestinian who had indeed been shot by Israeli soldiers after he attacked them with a knife during a riot (a fact conveniently not mentioned in his tweet).
Unsurprisingly, given his views on Hamas, Hashemi is a supporter of the genocidal Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel that aims to isolate and destroy the Jewish state. He has also promoted an academic boycott of Israeli universities on social media and has repeatedly demonized Israel on social media, referring to it as guilty of “occupation” and as solely responsible for the conflict in Gaza.
Professor Hashemi’s most controversial comments to date concern his bizarre and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding the violent attack on author Salman Rushdie, who was viciously stabbed in August of 2022 while he prepared to give a public lecture at Chautauqua Institution in New York. While discussing the attack on a podcast, Hashemi suggested that the attack was most likely instigated by “someone online who claimed to be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps supporter… [who] could have been the Mossad operative.”
Mossad is Israel’s national intelligence agency, the equivalent to the CIA in America. Hashemi further claimed that Mossad’s involvement is “much more likely” than other possible motives. Hashemi’s promotion of this completely baseless conspiracy theory is clearly rooted in Jew hatred.
While the University of Denver sought to distance itself from these bizarre claims, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) scolded the university for “singling out a faculty member for expressing an opinion, however speculative, and by issuing a statement that suggests agreement with the vicious attacks launched against him…”
For his repeated whitewashing of Hamas and anti-Israel terrorism and his blatant promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Professor Hashemi belongs on the list of the worst Jew-hating professors.