The Palestine Writes Literature Festival has come and gone — did anyone notice? — at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the speakers there was the obsessive antisemite Roger Waters, who for once did not come wearing his SS uniform, the “Death-To-Israel” harridan Aya Ghanameh, and the mountebank Marc Lamont Hill, who in 2018 at the UN, during its International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, spoke on behalf of “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” That last remark — in essence calling for Israel to disappear — cost him his gig at CNN. But you can’t keep a good man down. He’s still all over the place. Here’s his full description of himself; modesty is not his strong suit:
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.
He is currently the host of BET News, The Grio, Al Jazeera UpFront, and the Coffee & Books podcast. An award-winning journalist, Dr. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Hill is a Presidential Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he teach courses in Anthropology, Urban Education, and Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to that, he held positions at Morehouse College, Temple University, and Columbia University.
Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia, Dr. Hill has been a social justice activist and organizer. He has worked on campaigns to end the death penalty, abolish prisons, and release numerous political prisoners. Dr. Hill has also worked in solidarity with human rights movements around the world. He is the founder and director of The People’s Education Center in Philadelphia, as well as the owner of Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.”
Ebony Magazine has named him one of America’s 100 most influential Black leaders.
Dr. Hill is the author or co-author of eight books, including the award-winning Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on The Vulnerable from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest, and Possibility; Except For Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics; and Schooling Against The Prison.
Dr. Hill holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research and writing explore the relationships between race, culture, politics, and education in the United States and the Middle East.
In this oozy swamp of braggadocio, pseudo-thought and gobbledygook, there is very little — one book out of the eight he claims to have written — about the Middle East. His current “research and writing explore the relationships between race, culture, politics, and education in the United States and the Middle East,” so maybe, at long last, he really is swotting up the subject of what he calls, so very expansively, the “Middle East.” Do you think Marc Lamont Hill, one of the leading intellectual voices in the country, and also, let’s not forget, one of the 100 most influential black leaders in the country, has any idea about what the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine says, what it was intended to create, what territory it included? Do you think he’s familiar with the Treaty of San Remo (1922), or with Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, or with UN Security Council Resolution 242, and the authoritative gloss on that resolution by its main author, Lord Caradon? Do you think Marc Lamont Hill knows when the toponym “West Bank” was first invented, and why? Do you think he knows when the “Palestinian people” were invented, and why? Do you think he knows how long Jews have lived uninterruptedly in the Land of Israel? Or when the first Muslim Arab appeared in that land? Or why the Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on the very place where the First and Second Temples once stood?
Let’s look at his background for clues as to what entitles him to consider himself an expert on Israel and the Palestinians.
Here is the title of Marc Lamont Hill’s doctoral thesis:
(Re)negotiating knowledge, power, and identities in Hip -Hop Lit
And here is his Abstract of that thesis, a florilegium of gibberish:
This ethnographic study contributes to the growing body of literature in cultural studies and critical pedagogy by showing how knowledge, power, and student interpretations are negotiated and renegotiated as hip-hop culture becomes a part of the official curriculum in “Hip-Hop Lit,” a hip-hop centered English literature class that I co-taught at “Howard High School.” In this study, I highlight the complex relationships that the students and teachers in Hip-Hop Lit forged with the texts and each other through various forms of identity work and the intersections of in-school and out-of-school pedagogy. Further, I demonstrate how these relationships facilitated the reconfigured roles of student, teacher, and researcher within the classroom.
Yes, I know. Nonsense on stilts. Of course, let’s not forget his doctorate “with distinction.” He was given that doctorate for a dissertation on Hip-Hop Lit. Might it be that the UPenn professors wanted to part company with him as painlessly as possible, and to avoid any possibility of a lawsuit claiming “racism” if he wasn’t granted his degree “with distinction”?
More on this flim-flam man can be found here: “A brief history of Marc Lamont Hill’s “expertise” on the Middle East,” by Daled Amos, Elder of Ziyon, September 24, 2023:
Three years ago, Marc Lamont Hill was challenged on Twitter about whether he had the background necessary to talk knowledgeably about the Middle East…
In that Twitter exchange, Hill never names books that he has read that would qualify him to speak on Israel and the Middle East. When asked if he has read from a list of authors, he replies off-handedly “of course,” but when pinned down to name books, classes or degrees —
“o He replies he has read “exhaustively” (whatever that means), but doesn’t name any books or articles. There is no way to gauge whose work he has read or if his bothered to read different viewpoints.
o He points out that he has a “graduate degree,” but does not say what it is in. His Ph.D is in Hip-Hop Lit and he has a B.S. in Spanish and Education. According to Wikipedia, Hill has a Masters, but the source it links to makes no mention of it. Apparently, people are supposed to be impressed by degrees in subjects that have nothing to do with what he is talking about.
o Finally, Hill vaguely claims to have “many years scholarly experience/study on the subject,” and then resorts to claiming that this is more than the authors he was asked if he had read.When asked further on what qualifies him to speak on Israel and the Middle East, he claims to have been “trained” in the area and to have “read widely and deeply” in the area. But trained means more than reading a lot. It implies having a mentor and teacher who himself has some sort of expertise — someone who is directing the learning and perhaps even testing to measure comprehension….
The bottom line is there is no indication that Marc Lamont Hill has any particular qualification as an expert on the subject. He has no more expertise than the average tweeter.
For some reason, Presidential Professor Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D. has not put his doctoral dissertation on Hip-Hop Lit on-line, which is a pity, because a great many people, including me, would love to learn more about the subject. Perhaps he will reconsider. He must be proud of his dissertation, after all; he was awarded the Ph.D., he claims, “with distinction.” Remember what his website says: “Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.”
And if you want to hear Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D., speaking, and debating, with his wonted eloquence and passion, just click here, or here, or here.
I’ve come to appreciate Presidential Professor Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D. I hope you have, too.
zeca says
LOL! Hugh Fitzgerald really made my day happier with his article.
Marc Damon Hiil is a zero on the left (Ops!) but for nowadays academia his is so cool because he hates Israel and appease the American Muslims. Does he know about black slavery in Africa perpetrated by his Muslims friends? Oh, it doesn’t matter as long as he keeps his job in Al Jazeera.
SKA says
A furious little hate-monger with “Melanic Merit” (counterpoint to “White Privilege!”)
Bexarkat says
I wonder what hateful condemnation would befall Israel had they hosted a similar conference with opposing views? Certainly condemnation from the UN, EU, the PA, and the Biden Administrations token Jew, Blinken,