For University of Pennsylvania grad Eyal Yakoby, the antisemitism at his alma mater is easy to spot. It’s coming straight from the faculty. Now he’s using his growing social media following to pressure Penn, which has a national reputation for allowing antisemitism on campus, to change course.
Yakoby’s latest example of blatant Jew hatred at his old college is a Penn professor who teaches a class called “Arabic Readings in Belles-Lettres: Resistance from Pre-Islamic Arabia to Palestine.” Yakoby is outraged that Penn is sanctioning a course featuring writings by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization.
Yakoby also joined a lawsuit targeting Penn over antisemitic incidents on campus, alleging federal civil rights violations. However, a federal judge recently dismissed that suit.
The professor, Huda Fakhreddine, was also part of the controversial September 2023 Palestine Writes Literature Festival at the university that included Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University professor who called Zionism a “bedfellow” to Nazism, among other with allegedly antisemitic views. At the time, Penn officials told DV Journal the festival was not affiliated with the university, although it was held on campus.
Noah Rubin, a 2025 Penn graduate, also mentioned Fakhreddine in his 2024 testimony to the state Senate Education Committee.
“Fakhreddine posted on October 7 in Arabic that ‘While we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life.’ She later clapped at a protest after the speaker told Jewish students to ‘’…go back to Moscow and Brooklyn and Gstaad, and f**king Berlin where you came from…’ and is now teaching a new course titled ‘Arabic Readings in Belles-Lettres: Resistance from Pre-Islamic Arabia to Palestine.’ Fakhreddine was also an organizer of the encampment,” Rubin said. While trying to attend classes, study, and take part in campus life, Jewish students heard chants of ‘From the River to the Sea,’ which means the elimination of Israel and the Jews who live there, and ‘Free, free Palestine.’”
Fakhreddine, a tenured professor, could not be reached for comment.
Former Penn president Liz Magill had testified before Congress about the school’s mishandling of the anti-Jewish protests and various antisemitic incidents on campus. Magill stated that calling for Jewish genocide at the school is permissible “in context,” causing outrage. She then issued a correction to her remarks but resigned shortly afterward.
“Penn is committed to upholding principals of free speech and academic freedom,” a spokesperson for Penn told DV Journal. “While faculty are entitled to their own views and opinions, they do not reflect on the official stance of the university.”
In the wake of the instances of antisemitism on campus, Penn announced an Office of Religious and Ethic Inclusion. It’s the first Title IX office in the country and devoted to creating a “safe and respectful environment.” It was one of the changes suggested by the university’s Task Force and Antisemitism and its Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community.
Penn was not the only area university to have pro-Palestinian protests and encampments, in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel.
Students at Drexel and Temple also demonstrated. Swarthmore and Haverford college students protested, as well.
In February, Swarthmore College officials removed pro-Hamas students who staged a sit-in in an administration building. A spring student encampment at Swarthmore ended with one student and one former student being arrested, as well as seven other people.
Pro-Hamas rhetoric has not remained on college campuses.
An Anti-Defamation League audit showed Pennsylvania had the nation’s fourth-highest number of antisemitic incidents in 2024. And at Passover 2025, Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro and his family were the victims of an arsonist who struck the governor’s mansion while the family slept. No one was hurt.
“This pervasive antisemitism has transformed American higher education from a space of learning and growth into one where many Jewish students face hostility, exclusion, and sometimes physical danger because of their identity or their beliefs,” the audit states.
In Pennsylvania, there were 465 antisemitic incidents in 2024, up 18 percent from 2023 and a 308 percent jump from 2022, the ADL said. Of the incidents reported, 72 percent involved harassment and vandalism, which comprised 25 percent. Two percent were physical assaults.
A May 21 antisemitic terror attack outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where two young employees of the Israeli embassy were gunned down, shook the country. The antisemitism that has taken root on American campuses has resulted in the deaths of two people who the killer presumed were Jewish.
“Free, free Palestine,” their alleged attacker chanted afterward.
