Georgetown University professor placed on leave over misrepresented X post

Middle East Eye

5 days ago

A programme director and tenured professor at Georgetown University has been placed on administrative leave after he was attacked by pro-Israel groups over a post on X where he called for an end to hostilities between Iran and the US.
Georgetown University interim president Robert Groves told lawmakers on Tuesday during a House committee hearing on campus antisemitism, more than three weeks after the X incident, that Brown was no longer chair of his department and that they were "beginning a process of reviewing the case".
On 22 June, just a day before Iran fired missiles at al-Udeid air base in Qatar in retaliation for President Donald Trump's unprecedented strikes on its three nuclear facilities, Jonathan AC Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal chair of Islamic Civilisation in the School of Foreign Service, predicted that such a move could wrap up the conflict.
"I'm not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops," Brown wrote on X.
A day later, on 23 June, Iran struck the base, and Trump thanked the Islamic Republic for giving him an early warning about the choreographed response.
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Hours later, Trump announced he had brokered a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran, ending what he coined "the 12-day war".
Within the next few days, Brown faced a series of attacks from pro-Israel groups and activists, and some on the American right who saw his post as a call for harm against US troops.
Brown later clarified that he was not calling for an attack on the US base and wrote: "I deleted my previous tweet because a lot of people were interpreting it as a call for violence. That's not what I intended.
"I have two immediate family members in the US military who've served abroad and wouldn't want any harm to befall American soldiers," he added.
'The idea that the university would pursue punitive action... is troubling and, frankly, unbecoming of Georgetown'
- Cair
On Tuesday, Grove told lawmakers during the House committee hearing that Brown was being disciplined and investigated.
"Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted professor Brown. The tweet was removed," Groves said. "We issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He's on leave, and we're beginning a process of reviewing the case."
Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx responded: "He's made similarly appalling statements for years, but he has been kept around. So now you're investigating and disciplining him?"
"Yes," Groves said.
Brown has been a longtime vocal critic of Israel's war on Gaza, where more than 58,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are women and children.
'Troubling and unbecoming'
Within hours of the hearing, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) issued a statement containing a copy of its letter to Groves urging that Brown be reinstated.
The organisation said it has deep concerns about "misleading and bad-faith mischaracterizations of [Brown's] social media activity", as well as the university's decision to announce the disciplinary action at a public hearing "arranged by openly anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic members".
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Cair said that Brown "is known not only for his scholarly contributions to Islamic Studies, but also for his work advancing racial justice, interfaith understanding, and academic freedom".
"The idea that the university would pursue punitive action against such a faculty member based on a politically motivated smear campaign related to his private speech, instead of any actual misconduct, is troubling and, frankly, unbecoming of Georgetown."
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the foremost pro-Israel advocacy groups in the US, lauded the university for its decision.
Middle East Eye reached out to Brown for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Since Trump entered office, his administration has cracked down on Ivy League schools where mass protests have called for an end to Israel's war on Gaza, as well as an end to US involvement in perpetuating the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The president has withheld critical public research funding from institutions such as Harvard University and Columbia University.
Not the first incident
Georgetown University has been under scrutiny for several months, ever since another one of its professors faced the full might of Trump's war on pro-Palestine voices, aided by lists provided by pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission, Betar and the Middle East Forum.
On 17 March, masked federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested Badar Khan Suri in Rosslyn, Virginia, just as he returned home from breaking his Ramadan fast.
His arrest came amid a wave of attacks on the academic freedom of pro-Palestinian voices in the US.
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Suri is an Indian citizen and a post-doctoral scholar at Georgetown. Like Brown, he also worked at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
The agents told him that his student visa had been revoked and that he faced imminent deportation.
Suri's wife, Mapheze Saleh, a Palestinian with American citizenship, watched as the masked agents took him and his passport and drove off.
"Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas. The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable," a statement sent to MEE at the time said.
Suri's wife, Saleh, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the then-leader of Hamas. Yousef left that post many years earlier.
After being held in what he described as squalid conditions inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centre 1,500 miles away from his family for two months, a federal judge ordered his release on bail in May.