Dr. Denis Sullivan is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He additionally serves as the co-Director of the Middle East Center, a branch of Northeastern’s International Center. Dr. Sullivan is known for including anti-Israel elements into his curriculum, and for his defense of the terrorist organization Hamas.

Founded as the offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization. The organization’s charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews.

The group has ruled the Gaza strip since 2005 and explicitly targets Israeli civilians while using its own citizens as human shields during military operations. Hamas regularly fires rockets and directs suicide bombers into crowded areas. The organization is responsible for the death of thousands of Israelis and at least 25 Americans.

In a lecture dated to 2009, Denis Sullivan can be heard trivializing Hamas atrocities during a lecture about foreign relations with Israel. In the clip, captured by the organization Canary Mission, Dr. Sullivan begrudgingly admits that Hamas is a terrorist organization, but proceeds to praise them for having “great healthcare and kindergartens.”

 

Further in the same lecture, while discussing peace negotiations, Dr. Sullivan claims that it’s irrelevant that Hamas will not recognize the right of Israel to exist.

 

According to reports from the group Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), Dr. Sullivan regularly assigns extreme anti-Israel materials in his class. One text is, “The Holocaust Industry,” by author and former professor, Norman Finkelstein. The book alleges that Israel uses the Holocaust to shield itself from criticism when committing war crimes on par with that of the Nazis.

“The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a “victim” state, and the most successful ethnic group in the US has likewise acquired victim status.” – Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry

Another assigned text is titled, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by IIan Pappe. The book falsely charges Israel with committing mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of the region’s Arabs during the nation’s founding.

Dr. Sullivan has directed numerous university-sponsored trips to introduce students to meet Syrian and Egyptian officials. As APT has documented, his students met with at least one Egyptian minister who believes in the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews manipulate and control the world economy.

In addition to his duties in the Middle East Center, his biography lists him as a member of the organization, “Human Rights Watch.” The group has been accused by a number of watchdog organizations of publishing slanted and falsified information about Israel. The organization has become so maligned, that its founder, Robert Bernstein, once lambasted his organization for focusing its efforts solely on Israel while ignoring actual authoritarian regimes.

The full investigative report by Americans for Peace and Tolerance may be viewed below.

 

Students and Parents may contact the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern University at (617) 373-5173 or at CSSHDean@northeastern.edu. 

 

Updated – November 30, 2021