The Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke: An Introduction 

I have already written here about Duke Professor Frances Hasso and her anti-Israel animus that has sunk ineluctably into outright antisemitism. But Hasso is only one part of a much bigger problem. It turns out that her entire department, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, appears to be engaged in a multi-year orgy of anti-Israel outbursts. Just as the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, under the wise leadership of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, has been examining antisemitism on the campuses of, inter alia, Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and Columbia, that committee, according to UNC Professor Peter Rietzes, must be sure to include in its investigation the disturbing situation at Duke’s Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. More on this disturbing tale can be found here: “When Will North Carolina or Congress Investigate Duke University for Allowing Calls for Israel’s Destruction and Other False Claims?,” by Peter Reitzes, Algemeiner, May 12, 2025:

Duke University has apparently permitted an entire academic department to publicly align itself against Israel.

In 2021, Duke’s Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies endorsed a public statement declaring, “We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine …We do not subscribe to a ‘both sides’ rhetoric.”

The Duke’s department is behaving ultra vires, don’t you agree? What business is it of the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies to issue a statement on Israel and the Palestinians? Is it part of its remit? A question merely of virtue-signaling? Should every university department issue a “statement on Palestine”? Shoemakers, stick to your last. That means you, too, the malignantly anti-Israel members of Duke’s Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Or if you must make a statement about Gaza that is relevant to your fields of so-called expertise, then tell us what you think of the position of girls and women in a Muslim Arab society like that in Gaza. What do you make of the fact that in a Muslim court, a Muslim woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a Muslim man? Or that a Muslim daughter stands to inherit half of what a Muslim son inherits? Or that Muslim men have almost total control over their womenfolk, even a life-and-death power, where fathers can get away with killing daughters whose conduct “dishonors the family”? And shouldn’t the Duke Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies express their horror at the honor killings of females by male relatives who claim they have “dishonored” them — honor killings that result in no, or very little punishment? 99% of the world’s honor killings are committed by Muslim men. Shouldn’t this Muslim mistreatment of women in Gaza be the focus of attention for the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies if it wishes to contribute its mite to the discussion of “Palestine”?

The Duke gender studies website presently features a section titled, “Donation Suggestions for Palestine,” which provides links to 12 organizations including Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, which are both stridently anti-Israel publications. There are no suggestions for donations directed towards Israel.

Mondoweiss is run by one Philip Weiss, whose private demons no doubt explain his running an antisemitic website, but I’ll leave that one for the Viennese witch doctors to study. For obvious reasons, he puts one in mind of that other hater of Israel, Norman Finkelstein. And Electronic Intifada, run by one Abu Abunimah, wages unremitting war against Israel not on the battlefield, but on social media. Its goal is the disappearance of Israel, and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state. These are the sites which the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke thinks you should be supporting.

Anna Storti is Assistant Professor in the department. On Oct. 7, 2023, while Israelis were actively being murdered, raped, mutilated, and taken hostage by Hamas-led terrorists, Storti was reposting anti-Israel complaints on X.

In 2020, Storti tweeted “f[***]  the usa” and in 2024, posted, “F[***] these cops. Shame on the admin who call them on their own students…It’s all about Free Palestine…this month and always. Liberation within our lifetimes.”

She also reposted on X the slogan, “From the river to the sea.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) explains the meaning of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”:

This is a cry for Israel to not exist. It is calling for a Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – effectively erasing and destroying the entire Jewish state.

Emily Rogers, Secondary Faculty in Duke’s gender studies department, was detained at the UNC anti-Israel encampment in 2024 and banned from that campus. Rogers told a local progressive paper, “We won’t stop till universities disclose and divest” and “We won’t stop ‘til all of Palestine is free.”…

“We won’t stop ‘til all of Palestine is free” means that “from the river to the sea,” Israel has to disappear entirely, to be replaced by a 23rd Arab state. As for the Jews now in the colonial-settler state of Israel, they will be expelled. They can all go back to Poland, where they came from.