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Editor’s note: Over the past several decades, few places in America have become more hostile to free speech than our universities. Yet in the wake of rising anti-Semitism and the pro-Hamas campus rallies and occupations that were sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre, university administrators seem to have had a sudden change of heart.
The Freedom Center is exposing the most egregious perpetrators of these double standards in free expression as the Top Ten Ivory Tower Hypocrites. These are universities whose leaders have permitted woke leftist activists to run roughshod over campus rules and violate codes of conduct with impunity, while failing to extend even basic free speech protections to students and faculty with opposing views. Wake Forest University in North Carolina is #6 on our list.
#6: Wake Forest University:
Wake Forest University, located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, waxes eloquently about the importance of freedom of expression in its policies and promotional materials. But the prestigious university is guilty of a double standard when it comes to deciding who truly deserves free speech on campus.
In late April of 2024, a student group calling itself Free Palestine established an illegal 3-day encampment on Hearn Plaza on campus. Demonstrators chalked genocidal and Jew-hating messages on the sidewalk reading “From the river to the sea” (a call to destroy the totality of Israel as a Jewish homeland) and “F*** Israel.” The Amcha Institute, an anti-Semitism watchdog group, reports that “several university faculty and staff members volunteered to watch over the protesters in shifts” and that “one faculty member tried to prevent a student from pouring water out on the antisemitic chalk messages, while another confronted students for taking videos of the huddled group.” When “One student said that they were bothered by the protesters’ presence on their campus…a faculty member replied that the student could go back to their room.”
Instead of immediately shutting down this illegal pro-Hamas rally, Wake Forest administrators instead negotiated with the agitators. “Throughout the evening, our shared goal was to keep everyone safe and avoid disruption of our academic mission and planned campus activities. It was a priority to seek a peaceful outcome. Administrators and the organizers of the demonstration remained in dialogue throughout the evening, night and early morning, and reached an agreement shortly after 9 a.m. that led to students agreeing to take down the tents in the encampment,” explained a statement from administrators that was emailed to the full university community.
“We respect and uphold the rights of our community to peacefully assemble, and are committed to protecting free expression while ensuring the safety of all on campus,” the statement added.
Yet when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Sam Fried was invited to speak on campus by the Office of Jewish Life in February of 2025, he met with quite a different reception. Fried is an American from Queens, NY, who joined the IDF in 2020. Following his service there, he enrolled in college, but felt called to rejoin the IDF following Hamas’s barbaric October 7 massacre of innocent Israelis. “I felt it was my obligation to be one of the fighting Jews in history,” he said.
Upon returning to America, Fried was horrified by the pro-Hamas climate he witnessed on campuses and in major American cities, and started speaking out about his experiences.
“It’s very simple,” Fried said. “We are speaking the truth. We are on the right side of history […] the most common misconception about the IDF is that we want war. We do not. We are a defense force. We want peace.”
Instead of welcoming Fried’s unique perspective on the conflict, university faculty sought to bar him from campus. Three professors—Dean Franco (English), Barry Trachtenberg (history) and Mir Yarfitz (history)—published an op-ed in the campus paper claiming that that allowing Fried’s speech to go forward would “misrepresent the diversity of Jewish perspectives on [the Israel-Hamas] conflict.”
“The invitation of Mr. Fried […] represents more than just a speaking engagement –– it signifies an institutional choice to amplify voices directly connected to military actions that have drawn international condemnation,” the oped claimed.
In an unintentionally ironic statement, the three professors argued that their attempt to cancel Fried’s speech “stems not from a desire to limit discourse, but rather from our commitment to meaningful academic dialogue.”
Despite a total lack of concern for the Jewish students who may have felt threatened by the pro-Hamas illegal encampment the previous year, the professors claimed to be “especially concerned about how a Jewish Life-sponsored event will affect our students and colleagues who remain traumatized by the war in Gaza.”
The University responded to these sentiments by caving immediately and rescinding funding for Fried’s speech, resulting in its cancellation.
Wake Forest University Chaplain Chris Donald expressed his agreement with the three professors who objected to Fried’s speech, claiming that the event “would not meet th[e] objectives” of “meaningful dialogue on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” an absurd standard for any one event to aspire to.
In reporting on this story, campus media were quick to point out that the university also cancelled a planned speech by San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s brutal October 7th massacre, but to compare the two cancelled events is equating apples and oranges.
Abdulhadi is a notorious anti-Semite, who has explicitly celebrated the October 7 massacre of over 1200 innocent Israelis, the rape of women, and the taking of hostages including children and babies, as a victory for the Palestinian cause. On the day of that massacre, Abdulhadi tweeted “It’s worth remembering how vicious colonists act when the colonized dare #breakTheirChains from #Palestine, #Algeria #Vietnam … to #TurtleIsland. No innocent bystanders here. Demand Immediate accountability for #IsraeliCrimes. #BDS.” In the professor’s eyes, the children who were burned to death while their parents watched and women who were raped at a music festival were not “innocent bystanders” but “colonizers” deserving of their fate.
Abdulhadi has also sought to build relationships with anti-Israel terrorists. While attending a university-sponsored trip to Israel in 2014, she met with anti-Israel terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah. Abdulhadi has praised Khaled, a notorious airplane hijacker, as “an icon in liberation movements and…an icon for women’s liberation.”
In September 2020, Abdulhadi held an event featuring Khaled as an invited speaker. Abdulhadi planned to stream the event on Zoom, but the platform canceled its coverage citing Khaled’s terrorist record.
Furthermore, in cancelling Abdulhadi’s speech, university administrators cited, not the professor’s abhorrent views, but rather security concerns.
“Inviting a scholar to give a lecture titled ‘One Year since al-Aqsa Flood: How do We Review a Year of Genocide and Resistance?’ on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel led to a series of cascading events that eroded the University’s confidence in ensuring security in the rapidly-evolving environment surrounding the public event date,” Wake Forest administrators explained in a statement.
Despite the university’s official cancellation of Abdulhadi’s speech, the event organizers, who included Professor Tratchenberg and WFU Free Palestine, proceeded with the speech at a church off-campus.
To compare Abdulhadi, a Jew-hater of the first degree, who planned to celebrate Hamas on the anniversary of October 7, with IDF solder Sam Fried who selflessly risked his own life to defend the Jewish homeland, is the height of hypocrisy. Wake Forest deserves its place on the list of Ivory Tower Hypocrites.
Previously in this series…
#7: University of Nevada-Las Vegas
Hiding underneath white sheets and advocating the lynching of n°iggers is fine…..just fine.
Keep it up Wake Forest U
Tomorrow we burn you down.
This reads like a bot that is off topic. Editors take note.