Randa Jarrar

On April 17, 2018, following the death of former first lady Barbara Bush, Jarrar described the former first lady as "a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. Fuck outta here with your nice words",[12] referring to Bush's son, former President George W. Bush.

She said she felt compelled to speak “because I want people to remember history. I want people to know that our country’s actions don’t just disappear; they have real, negative consequences,” she said in an email. “If we want a better future, we have to confront our past.” Jarrar elaborated on her criticism of the former First Lady, citing the Bush family legacy in Iraq and Barbara's comments about Anita Hill (whose claims she doubted) and Katrina victims (she once said evacuees were “underprivileged anyway” and better off in the Astrodome). “The Bush family — including Barbara Bush — supported policies that harmed and destroyed the lives of millions,” she said.[13]

Jarrar was sharply criticized for her remarks, and demands were made that she be terminated from her job. In response to this, she tweeted that she will "never be fired" for her words, because he has tenure at California State University at Fresno.[14] CSU Fresno president Joseph Castro responded to widespread public outrage, saying "Professor Jarrar’s expressed personal views and commentary are obviously contrary to the core values of our University, which include respect and empathy for individuals with divergent points of view".[2] Fresno State confirmed that he was on leave from the university at the time the controversial comments were made.[2] At a news conference, university provost Lynnette Zelezny confirmed that Jarrar's tenure would not protect her from termination, but did not specify whether termination was appropriate at the time.[15] On April 25, 2018, News Metropolis reported that a Change.org petition to remove Jarrar from her position at Fresno State University had received over 90,000 signatures.[16][17][18] The ACLU of Northern California, PEN America, The Thomas Jefferson Center for Freedom of Expression, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others sent letters in support of Jarrar.[19]

During the controversy, Jarrar provided a telephone number on her Twitter account as if it was her own contact number, stating "If you really wanna reach me, here's my number ok?"[20] The phone number that he provided was that of an emergency suicide/crisis hotline at Arizona State University. ASU said that they did not believe anyone who needed to get through was unable to.[21]

Jarrar wrote an opinion piece called "Why I Can't Stand White Belly-Dancers", published in Salon in 2014. In this piece, Jarrar said she felt that white women who take part in the art of bellydance are engaging in cultural appropriation and "brown face."[22]

Her commentary was widely criticized; UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh stated, "Maybe telling people that they can’t work in some field because they have the wrong color or ancestry would be ... rats, I don’t know what to call it. If only there were an adjective that could be used to mean 'telling people that they mustn’t do something, because of their race or ethnic origin'".[23] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf offered: "[W]ith regional variations, something like Raqs Sharqi seems to have been known throughout the Mediterranean and certainly flourished in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean before the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century".[24]

Novelist and comics writer G. Willow Wilson wrote in defense of Jarrar, "When you shimmy around a stage in a hip band and call yourself Aliya Selim and receive praise and encouragement, while the real Aliya Selims are shortening their names to Ally and wondering if their accent is too strong to land that job interview, if the boss will look askance at their headscarf, if the kids at school are going to make fun of their children, guess what: you are exercising considerable privilege."[25] In response to these criticisms, Jarrar wrote a follow-up to her piece, titled "I Still Can't Stand White Bellydancers".[26]

On July 27, 2018, Jarrar tweeted, "At some point, all of us in the literary community must DEMAND that white editors resign. It’s time to STEP DOWN and hand over the positions of power. We don’t have to wait for them to fuck up. The fact that they hold these positions is fuck up [sic] enough."[27][28] This was in response to the publication in The Nation of a poem that made what some commentators perceived as racist attempts at black vernacular, which sparked a backlash, and which the editors later apologized for publishing.[29]