US Health Secretary Kennedy Faces Global Backlash Over Claim That Arabs ‘Don’t Produce Science
WASHINGTON: US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sparked widespread condemnation after claiming, at a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that the world’s 500 million Arabs “don’t produce science,” do not win Nobel, Fields or Wolf prizes, and do not create literature.Kennedy made the remarks while campaigning for Republican…
WASHINGTON: US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sparked widespread condemnation after claiming, at a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that the world’s 500 million Arabs “don’t produce science,” do not win Nobel, Fields or Wolf prizes, and do not create literature.
Kennedy made the remarks while campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who has accused his Democratic rival, Abdul El-Sayed, of alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Kennedy linked his claim about Arab societies to what he described as the influence of the Brotherhood.�
Fact-Checkers Reject Claim
The claim was swiftly contradicted by the historical record. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, while Egyptian-American scientist Ahmed Zewail received the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in femtochemistry.�
Jordanian-born chemist Omar M. Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and previously received the 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry. Lebanese-descended mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah won the Fields Medal in 1966, one of the highest honours in mathematics.�
Other Arab Nobel laureates include peace prize winners Mohamed ElBaradei in 2005 and Tawakkol Karman in 2011, as well as Anwar Sadat in 1978 and Yasser Arafat in 1994.�
Condemnation Grows
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Kennedy’s remarks “a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry” and demanded his removal. The group said the comments sought to demean half a billion people.�
Brad Woodhouse, president of the healthcare advocacy group Protect Our Care, described the remarks as possibly the ugliest episode yet in Kennedy’s record of what he called racist rhetoric. Vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez also criticised the statement, noting that medieval Arab scholars preserved the works of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen for later European Renaissance scholarship.�
Historical Contributions
Educators and scholars pointed to foundational Arab and Muslim contributions during the Islamic Golden Age in algebra, trigonometry, optics and astronomy. Global scientific terms including “algebra” and “algorithm” themselves derive from Arabic.�
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while clips of Kennedy’s remarks circulated widely online, intensifying the backlash days before the US midterm elections.
