Kennedy's Arab Claim Collides With His Own Speech on Who Made Books

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Republican campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday that Arabs "don't produce science," "don't win the Nobel Prize," "don't win the Fields Prize," "don't win the Wolf Prize," and "don't produce literature." He was speaking in support of Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who faces Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official born to Egyptian immigrant parents.

The claim is contradicted by the record. Fact-checks note that three Arabs have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and that four Arab people and one Arab organization have won Nobel Prizes. Kennedy's remarks were widely condemned as factually incorrect and racially biased, and he faced calls to be fired and accusations of "blatant bigotry."

Kennedy's own speech undercut the claim. He said Arabs "were the first to make books" and that in the 13th century typical Muslim princes had more books in their libraries than in all of Europe. He then said that tradition was "destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood," which he called a "death cult" that created "stagnant societies."

The sequence matters. Kennedy asserted a 500-million-person population produces nothing, then described that same population as the world's book-making pioneers, then attributed its decline to a single organization. The first claim is false on its face. The second is a concession that the first cannot stand.

The remarks came during a campaign event against an Arab American candidate, from a sitting cabinet secretary. That combination — the office, the venue, and the target — is what drew the dismissal calls and the bigotry accusations, and it raises questions about the rhetoric tolerated at the highest levels of the Trump administration and its effect on Arab and Muslim Americans.

The factual record on Arab scientific and literary achievement is not.