July 17, 2025
Georgetown University, which identifies as Catholic, has a Muslim problem. There is nothing new about this, but now that it is front and center, it can no longer be ignored.
On July 15, Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown, testified before the House Committee on Education and Workplace. He told the panel that one of his tenured professors, Jonathan Brown, is no longer chairman of the university’s department of Arabic and Islamic studies.
Brown, who is a convert to Islam, is stridently anti-Jewish, and he is quite open about it. He also defends slavery and rape. I wrote about this in my 2019 book, Common Sense Catholicism. I will address his enthusiasm for slavery shortly, but the reason why Groves was grilled by the congressional committee has to do with an X post that Brown made last month.
Iran is the primary source of terrorism in the Middle East, and a potential nuclear threat to Israel and the U.S. It was due to the escalating attacks on Israel that the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June. Brown, who holds an endowed chair at Georgetown, responded by saying Iran should attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East. “I am 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.”
The Georgetown interim president told federal lawmakers that “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed. 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.”
Brown’s hatred of the Jewish state was made plain after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In an unprovoked barrage, the Iranian-backed terrorists killed 1,200 men, women and children, leaving 3,000 injured. Brown, the son-in-law of convicted terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian, defended Hamas. More than that, he said, “Israel has been engaged in a genocidal project for decades.”
This is vintage Brown. He is such an extremist that he claims Israel has a Nazi-like history. “Israel will go down in history as a country whose main claims to fame are genocide, racial fanaticism on the level of the Third Reich and religious fanaticism that makes ISIS look mellow.”
Similarly, Brown wonders why so many Jews have “embraced genocide as a core tenet.” Indeed, he contends that this is “an inalienable part of their faith.” Just as obscene, he portrays the Israeli army as evil, saying it is “objectively the most effective child-killing machine in modern history.”
That any professor would tell such an outrageous lie is mindboggling. That it is said by a professor at one of the nation’s most prestigious Catholic universities is all the more astounding.
Georgetown has known for years that Brown is a radical activist, not a scholar. As I previously documented, he has publicly maintained that slavery is okay, provided it is grounded in Islam. In 2017, he spoke at the Institute for Islamic Thought. He informed the crowd that “there is no such thing as slavery in Islam until you realize that there is no such thing as slavery.” This was not a throw-away line.
In a classic expression of moral relativism, Brown contended that “Slavery cannot just be treated as a moral evil in and of itself.” In fact, he flatly said, “I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody because we own lots of people all around us.” As I said when I first read this, “He did not say whom he owns, though it if he does, he should be reported to the police.”
Perhaps Brown feels guilty about the fact that his hero, Muhammad, was a slaveowner. During the Q&A that followed his talk, he said the following about the Islamic prophet: “He had slaves, there is no denying that.” But so what? Brown quickly berated the audience, saying, “Are you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you’re not.”
It should not come as a surprise that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is standing by their man, even after Brown’s admission that he hopes Iran strikes U.S. military installations. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) designated CAIR a terrorist organization. And on July 15, Rep. Elise Stefanik said that CAIR was a co-conspirator in a terrorist-financing case and has ties to Hamas.
In a letter to Groves, CAIR pleaded its case for Brown.
“We urge Georgetown University to immediately cease any investigation or disciplinary action related to Dr. Brown’s tweet. Instead, the university should affirm its commitment to protecting academic freedom, resisting political intimidation, and standing with faculty members who have dedicated their careers to the pursuit of knowledge, justice, and dialogue. Dr. Brown should be fully reinstated as chair and no further action should be taken against him.”
I wrote to Groves as well, but my recommendation is very different from the one CAIR made.
Contact Robert Groves: presidentsoffice@georgetown.edu
