By the time history professor Nancy Stockdale began her lecture Thursday, the Jade Ballroom at the University of North Texas Union was almost at capacity, with some attendees standing. One month earlier, her presentation had been challenged by five Republican state representatives who serve Denton County, but UNT officials didn’t cancel the event.
“One of the things that’s good about the university is that we can have all of those discussions,” Stockdale said when a student asked her about resisting the pressure to accept the status quo and Israeli injustice. “What I think is really upsetting is when you have people that literally went after my talk because of the title. They didn’t even have a description. We added a description last week on the events calendar. They got really mad at a title. And I thought, ‘That’s really a sad commentary on the purpose of the university.’ There’s all kinds of things I don’t personally agree with, but I learn about them all the time.”
Stockdale, the Jean Schaake Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, was chosen to present the Dr. Emile Sahliyeh Commemorative Lecture on Middle Eastern Politics last week. Sahliyeh, a retired professor who founded UNT’s international studies program, attended the lecture and was seated in the front row.
Last month, freshman state Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, took to social media to share a letter he sent to UNT administrators demanding they remove an art exhibit and cancel Stockdale’s lecture, titled “Palestinian Children and the Politics of Genocide.”
The letter said the representatives had received “a hundred or more” correspondences from constituents alleging that the art and the lecture were antisemitic. The letter was signed by fellow Republican Reps. Richard Hayes of Hickory Creek, Jared Patterson of Frisco, Andy Hopper of Decatur and Ben Bumgarner of Flower Mound.
The university ultimately chose to keep the art exhibit up an additional three days, so that it closed on schedule. One of the student artists removed a work of art that had prompted criticism from Jewish students and supporters of Israel.
The state representatives asked that Stockdale’s lecture be canceled within 48 hours.
In his letter, Little objected to the use of the word “genocide” in both the art exhibit and the title of the lecture. Texas Republicans and some in the North Texas Jewish community have argued that accusing Israel of genocide is problematic. The Anti-Defamation League updated a post about the subject in February, which reads: “Genocide is a very specific crime with legal elements requiring intent and action that are difficult to meet, and in no way do Israeli policies and actions reach this legal threshold.” ADL leadership said critics use the term sensationally, and to diminish what it calls “recognized acts of genocide.”
The contested lecture follows a year of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus, and the university’s recent confirmation that it is complying with a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into alleged antisemitism on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
The Denton Record-Chronicle called all five state representatives’ offices and emailed each representative’s media relations team asking for a statement about the university’s decision to host the event.
So far, only Patterson responded, but said he had no reply.
Stockdale’s lecture focused on the work of Palestinian girls to publicize their lives before and during the war in Gaza, highlighting Ahed Tamimi and Janna Jihad before the 2023 war, and Bisan Owda, Lama Jamous and Renad Attallah since the war began in 2023. She focuses on girls, she said, because, while Palestinian girls become aware of their precarity as children just as boys do, they experience it differently. Palestinian girls grow up in private and public spheres having more responsibility at younger ages than boys, Stockdale said. And while they mature, they do so in a world that “assaults their honor” even as their world expects them to behave to protect their family’s honor.
“So, what I argue is that Palestinian girls have been and continue to be essential activists who take up the challenge of samud — and samud is a Palestinian value that translates something like ‘steadfastness’ — in the face of dispossession, occupation, discrimination,” Stockdale said.
In the measured, civil discussion that followed the lecture, tempers flared once, when a guest said Stockdale had mentioned the Oct. 7 strike on Israel by Hamas, and said he “assumed you condemn that attack.” Stockdale called the question disingenuous.
“You’re trying to goad me, right?” she said. “I completely abhor innocent people being killed, and all of that. And I think that that seems should be obvious from my talk.”
Students and visitors raised their voices when the guest pushed back.
“It seems to me that the energy of the Palestinians would be better spent trying to get their leadership” to engage with Israel politically instead of violently, the guest said.
“I mean, I think people’s energy right now is literally trying to survive,” Stockdale said. “And I don’t say that in a flippant way. That is the literal truth.” Stockdale said Israeli policy has controlled the amount of food that moves into Gaza since 2008, and said the war has left Palestinians without water.
The discussion calmed when a man, who identified himself as a Zionist Jew who was born and raised in North Texas, asked Stockdale how she would recommend people approach a dialogue about thorny issues, such as Hamas.
“What’s a little bit discouraging for me — and I almost didn’t want to ask this — is why, when the gentleman asks and even suggested that maybe Hamas leadership ought to be reconsidered, multiple people jumped and just quieted him,” he said. “So I’m just curious if that wouldn’t perhaps contradict the idea of an open stage or exchange of ideas? I’m asking you to educate me as if I were a student. How can I approach the conversation around Hamas? We saw another student can bring up resistance and talk a lot about what it meant to them and to their family, and that is their opinion. That is their truth. But when the gentleman just tried to go in the direction of his, it’s talking point. It’s a trap. Is there a better way?”
Stockdale suggested the guest was on the right track and should bring his personal story into the discussion that she said is often unfairly reduced to hot buttons.
“I think that one of the ways to do that is literally to say what you said: ‘I’m from North Texas. I’m a proud Jew. I’m a proud Zionist. I have these experiences. I don’t have these experiences. I have experienced things. October 7th shook me to the core. It terrified me.’ Whatever it is. ‘I want to learn how to talk to people who ... have a different viewpoint.’ How do we do that? How do we sit down in good faith and really talk? I think that’s how to do it. And it can be very difficult. And you know, that’s a journey that I think we’re all on our whole lives about pretty much everything.”
Özlem Altiok, a UNT senior lecturer in the women and gender studies program and the international studies program, said after the event that some of her former students told her they wanted to come, but stayed away
“This is a former student who’s still a student, an international student. She said, ‘I saw this poster, and I’m so, so interested, and I want to attend. But, honestly, professor, I’m scared. Do you think it’s safe?’ And then she asked me, ‘Did you see the video of the Turkish Ph.D. student, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was taken into detention?’”
Altiok said international studies faculty are following the news about students in danger of losing their visas, and offering what comfort they can to UNT international students.
Altiok said the lecture gave her a little of her own comfort.
“And, like, the whole time I was looking at people, and feeling so good that so many people turned out. ... Our students who are here to learn are not able to come to lectures because they are afraid,” she said.
Students asked Stockdale how she is able to continue her work during what they called an attack on subjects or discussions about race, gender and identity on college campuses.
“My response as a scholar isn’t to shrink away and go, ‘I’m not going to do that anymore,’” Stockdale said. “My response as a scholar is, ‘OK, that’s interesting. Why are they doing that? How can I function in this environment?’ I’m the sole breadwinner of my family. I don’t have the privilege to just go and forget this. I’m not going to do it. Also, I have passion for teaching. I have passion for history. I love UNT. I love all these things and it’s my job. So, am I worried? Well, I’m worried about a lot of things. I also think that, now, with the federal government that we have, Texas isn’t so unique.”