A Northwestern University biomedicine course sparked national attention after students reported a lecture that veered sharply into anti-Israel propaganda, accusing the Jewish state of killing its own people on Oct. 7, 2023. According to slides obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, associate professor Helen Tilley used her “Biomedicine and World History” class to argue that Hamas’s actions were justified while Israel “does not” possess the right to self-defense.
Tilley held the Nov. 17 session under the title “Discussion on Palestine and Israel: Past and Present,” which the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) described as “hostile to Jewish and Israeli students” in a formal complaint. The lecture featured two anti-Israel activists—medical professor Peter Sporn and medical student Ramzy Issa—both of whom, along with Tilley, signed the 2024 “Northwestern People’s Resolution” accusing Israel of “genocide” and calling for a boycott of the Jewish state.
Slides from the lecture presented claim that “Representatives of Hamas left the occupied territory of Gaza and entered the sovereign space of Israel” and that “the Israeli military made a snap decision to enact its ‘Hannibal directive,’ meaning its officers deliberately fired on and killed some of its own citizens.” Another section argued Palestinians “have rights of self-defense” while Israel does not.
The reading list included works by Rashid Khalidi—who blamed Oct. 7 on Israeli “settler colonialism” and “apartheid”—and Noura Erakat, who said “any condemnation of violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid.”
CAAN told the university that the lecture amounted to “political indoctrination” unrelated to biomedicine. The complaint follows earlier concerns, including a film course teaching that Israel commits “genocide in Palestine,” contributing to growing scrutiny of Northwestern’s academic environment.
