Professor Randa Jarrar commenting on Barbara Bush Death and War Crimes in Iraq by George Bush

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F*** outta here with your nice words.”

A California college professor

Randa Jarrar’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Sun, and others. Her first book, the Arab-American coming of age novel, A Map of Home, is now on many college syllabi. It was published in half a dozen languages & won a Hopwood Award, an Arab-American Book Award, and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes and Noble Review. Her new book, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, won an American Book Award, a PEN Oakland Award, and a Story Prize Spotlight Award, was named a Key Collection for Fall 2016 by Library Journal, and one of Electric Literature‘s 25 best collections of the year. She has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Hedgebrook, and others, and in 2010 was named one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40.

Randa Jarrar (born 1978) is an American professor at Fresno State University in Fresno, California, currently on leave.

Biography

Randa Jarrar was born in 1978 in Chicago to an Egyptian & Greek mother and a Palestinian father. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt. After the Gulf War in 1991, her family moved back to the US, living in the New York area when she was 13.^[2] Jarrar studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, receiving an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. She has taught College Writing, Creative Writing, and Arab-American literature. "Fresno State's a majority minority school," she describes. "Many of my undergraduates are brown: Latinos, Asian Americans, Muslim Americans. They're first generation college students. Or they're children of migrant workers. Or they work full time, and parent.

On April 17, 2018, on the death of former first lady Barbara Bush, Jarrar described her as "an amazing racist" and boasted that she will "never be fired" for her harsh words, because she had tenure at Fresno State University.^[9] Jarrar responded to condemnatory replies by saying "I'm happy the witch is dead".^[10] She was widely criticized for her actions, though these tweets can no longer be viewed as the account is now private.^[11] Fresno State 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".^[1] Fresno State confirmed that she was on leave from the university at the time the controversial comments were made.