Huda Fakhreddine

Huda J. Fakhreddine is a Lebanese-American literary scholar, translator, writer and political activist, known for her work on modern Arabic literature, particularly Arabic poetry. She is currently an Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her academic work, she is known for her political activism, especially in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Early life and education

Fakhreddine was born and raised in Lebanon. She earned her Bachelor's degree in English Literature in 2002 and her Master’s degree in English Literature in 2004, both from the American University of Beirut, and later completed a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University Bloomington in 2011. Her doctoral work focused on metapoesis in the Arabic literary tradition.

Academic and literary career

Fakhreddine is the Associate Professor of Arabic Literature, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania. She has authored and co-edited 3 books, and has translated and written several dozen poems and articles. Her first book, Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015), explores how Arab poets historically reflect on poetry itself. Her second major work, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), analyzes the development and significance of the Arabic prose poem as a modernist form

She is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (2023) and an editor with the Library of Arabic Literature. Her translations have appeared in publications such as Banipal, World Literature Today, and ArabLit Quarterly, and include works such as Lighthouse for the Drowning by her father, poet and professor of Arabic literature , Jawdat Fakhreddine . In 2021, together with her daughter Samaa and husband Ahmad Allmallah, an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, she translated and published Thrity Poems for Children, a collection of poems by her father.

Activism

Fakhreddine is a vocal activist, particularly in support of Palestinian rights. She was one of the co-organizers and speakers of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival in Philadelphia , which attracted significant controversy due to its association with several speakers and themes perceived by critics as hostile to Israel.

Her writings often include strong criticisms of Israeli policies, especially in the context of Gaza and the West Bank, and she has expressed solidarity with Palestinian resistance movements. In an article she wrote titled “Intifada: On Being an Arabic Literature Professor in a Time of Genocide”, Fakhreddine frames her academic role as inherently political, accusing academic institutions of complicity in what she terms “colonial violence”.

Following the October 7, 2003 Hamas attack on Israel, Fakhreddine, along with other Penn faculty members, made antisemetic remarks and showed support for Hamas. On October 7, she tweeted in Arabic that "while we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life". At an October 16, 2023 anti-Israel protest on Penn's campus, she said "Israel is the epitome of antisemitism... it desecrates the memory of the Holocaust victims. It humiliates every Jewish person". Fakhreddine also applauded a speaker’s statement that Jews should “go back to Moscow, Brooklyn, Gstaad, or fucking Berlin where you came from” . Her husband Ahmad Almallah led a crowd of protestors in chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “when people are occupied, resistance is justified” at an October 16, 2023, anti-Israel protest.

In May 2024, Fakhreddine was the center of controversy surrounding the selection procedure for the Bessel Research Award in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in research, awarded by the Humboldt Foundation. The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) accused the Humboldt Foundation of rejecting Fakhreddine's nomination due to her publicly expressed opinions on the war in Gaza. The foundations denied theses allegations in a public letter

In January 2025, a federal judge dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit filed by Fakhreddine and History and Africana Studies professor Eve Troutt Powell in conjunction with Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine. The plaintiffs had accused the University of engaging in "McCarthyism" by allegedly suppressing speech critical of Israel. They sought to prevent the university from complying with the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s request for documents related to alleged antisemitism on campus. The court's decision to dismiss the case with prejudice effectively ended the legal challenge, barring the plaintiffs from refiling the same claims.

Selected works

• Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015)
• The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
• Zaman saghir taht shams thaniya (A Small Time Under a Different Sun, 2019)
• Lighthouse for the Drowning (translator)
• The Sky That Denied Me (translator)
• Numerous articles and translations in leading literary journals