Arafat-affiliated former US gov't official to teach in Yale on Israel-Palestine

Former Biden administration special envoy for Iran Rob Malley, who had either been suspended or had resigned from two separate political roles due to inappropriate conduct surrounding the Middle East conflict, is teaching a new course at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs titled, "Contending with Israel-Palestine."

The course is described as taking an "in-depth look at important questions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," such as "the parties’ competing perspectives and historical narratives" and "the question of media coverage."

Malley has admitted to being biased on the subject, telling the Yale Daily News following his appointment, "I’m well aware of how polarized and even toxic debates around Israel-Palestine can be. I’m also well aware of the fact that we all have biases and prejudices, myself included. I’m trying to take steps as best I can to address that. [Students] don’t need to conceal or change their own – just to listen and try to understand their peers."

Malley has had a difficult history in his long political career. He served in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, ending up with the title of special assistant to the president for Arab-Israeli affairs. He was a negotiator at the Camp David talks in 2000 and, afterward, was a leading voice saying that Yasser Arafat was not to blame for the breakdown of the talks but rather that he was merely avoiding falling into a trap.

Former US president Bill Clinton, as well as the head of Clinton’s Mideast peace team Dennis Ross, placed the blame for the failure to conclude a deal at Camp David heavily on Arafat’s shoulders. Malley, however, co-wrote an op-ed for the New York Review of Books with a former Palestinian negotiator, Hussein Agha, claiming that this narrative should be reconsidered.

Later, in an article written for Jewish Currents, he said that Arafat and his father, Simon Malley, a Syrian-Jewish journalist from Egypt, were close to one another. 

He even went so far as to say that "Arafat never missed an opportunity to bring [Simon Malley's] name up when meeting President Clinton... on one occasion making him out to be the founder of the Egyptian Communist Party, on another a prisoner held captive in Nasser’s jails, and on what surely was the most bizarre of all, a world-renowned Torah expert who could vouch for the fact that the Jewish Temple had never been built in Jerusalem after all."

He said the two men "appeared cut from the same cloth."

He was additionally the CEO and president of the Brussels-headquartered International Crisis Group, a more nuanced and balanced NGO providing commentary on a number of facets of the Middle East conflict.

Malley resigned as an adviser to former US president Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, following revelations that he had met with members of the Islamic Resistance Movement of Hamas. He later worked in the Obama administration as the senior director of the National Security Council and one of the negotiators for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. 

"I speak to them, my colleagues speak to them; none of them are crazy; they have their own rationality," the New York Post quoted him as saying at the time regarding Hamas officials. "Within their own system ... they’re very logical."

Rob Malley's role in the Biden administration, investigation

In the Biden administration, he was made US Special Envoy for Iran, during which he worked towards a return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) without any additional elements. 

He did not mince his words criticizing Iran during his time in the role, saying Iran was "trying to build leverage by expanding their nuclear program and hoping to use that leverage to get a better deal," which "won't work."

He walked back his apparent interest in a return to the JCPOA in December 2021, telling CNN at the time, "At some point in the not-so-distant future, we will have to conclude that the JCPOA is no more, and we’d have to negotiate a wholly new, different deal, and of course we’d go through a period of escalating crisis."

It was announced in July of last year that Malley's security clearance was under review, he was put on unpaid leave and ultimately investigated by the FBI amid concerns about mishandled classified documents.

With the launch of this school year, Malley was announced as one of the new senior fellows at Yale's Jackson School. He himself had attended Yale, as well as Harvard in the US and Oxford in the UK. 

According to Yale Daily News, "Students were required to arrange a meeting with Malley in order to interview for admission to the course. According to Malley, he stressed to students that his 'only requirement was that they be tolerant and respectful of opposing views.'"

Yale University did not respond to the Post's requests for comment.