Princeton University will offer a new course titled ‘Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide’ next spring, examining the intersection of gender studies and the ‘genocide’ in Gaza. The course, part of the anthropology and gender studies curricula, will be taught by visiting scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, an Israeli-born feminist known for her critical stance on Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The 200-level course, called Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide, will be offered to students at Princeton University next spring. ‘This seminar explores genocide through the analytic of gender, with a central focus on the ongoing genocide in Gaza,’ says the course description on Princeton’s website. ‘Drawing on decolonial, Indigenous, and feminist thought, we examine how genocidal projects target reproductive life, sexual and familial structures, and community survival.’
The course is part of the school’s anthropology curriculum, as well as its gender studies and sexuality curriculum. Students will engage reproductive justice frameworks, survivor testimony, and Palestinian feminist critiques of colonial violence, while situating Gaza within comparative histories of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocide against Black and Indigenous populations, according to the description.
The class also promises that students will interface with ‘leading feminist scholars.’ Visiting scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, an Israeli-born feminist scholar who abruptly retired from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem amid scandal last year, will instruct the class. Princeton described Shalhoub-Kevorkian as a ‘feminist whose scholarship on the settler colonial state’s brutality, unchilding, securitized and sacralized politics, state crime, law and society, and global feminist politics, challenges epistemic violence.’
In Israel, she was an outspoken critic of the war in Gaza and reportedly cast doubt on reports of sexual violence by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli concertgoers. Over the past several years, she faced significant backlash from state leaders.
President Donald Trump successfully negotiated a peace deal between Israel and Hamas on the two-year mark of the beginning of the war. That deal included a ceasefire and Israeli troop withdrawal in exchange for the return of Israeli hostages held in brutal conditions in Gaza. Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after the historic agreement.
Princeton referred Fox News Digital to a letter by its president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, regarding the school’s commitment to academic freedom. The school said that Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s appointment as a visiting scholar concludes next July. Shalhoub-Kevorkian did not return a request for comment.