On March 24, 2025, Wheaton College hosted controversial leftist Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac who spoke to a standing room only crowd of over five hundred at Barrows Auditorium. According to the campus newspaper, the event was sponsored by “departments of HNGR, biblical and theological Studies, peace and conflict studies and the Jean Kvamme distinguished chair of public Christianity.” The director of Wheaton’s Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) program is lefty Laura S. Meitzner Yoder. The coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies program is lefty Michael McKoy.
Wheaton College lefty Alexander Massad introduced Isaac. The event was recorded, but unfortunately, Wheaton has not released or will not release the video.
Here’s an excerpt from Isaac’s sermon preached on October 8, 2023, the day after the infamous assault on Israelis:
We were all shocked by what happened yesterday… We were glued to our phones and televisions, following the events firsthand… It is important to understand the events in their context. … What is happening is an embodiment of the injustice that has befallen us as Palestinians since the Nakba until now. The majority of the people of Gaza are displaced refugees, and many of them were displaced two, three, or four times in their lives. Its youth, whom we saw yesterday, have only known the siege since 2007, that is, 16 years ago, and they are living in the harshest conditions of life. It is “hell” on earth. The pressure generates the explosion. Frankly, anyone following the events was not surprised by what happened yesterday. …
One of the scenes that left an impression on my mind yesterday, and there are many scenes, is the scene of the Israeli youth who were celebrating a concert in the open air just outside the borders of Gaza, and how they escaped. What a great contradiction, between the besieged poor on the one hand, and the wealthy people celebrating as if there was nothing behind the wall.
What impressed Isaac is that before the massacre, Israeli young people were dancing. No mention of the rapes, butchery, and incineration of Israeli women and children. No word about Hamas stealing aid intended for their own people to use to build tunnels, stockpile weapons, and plan the barbarous attack on civilians. No word about Israel being open to Gazans.
According to Isaac, the understandable relief valve for the suffering of Gazans is an assault on innocent Israelis that all civilized people view as incomprehensible. Maybe Gazans should direct all their pent-up rage about their conditions at Hamas leaders who have for decades refused to make Gaza livable, and who promised they will repeat Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel is wiped off the map.
Isaac posted on Instagram that during his visit to the United States, he spoke at Wheaton College and other places of leftist indoctrination: Notre Dame University, Lutheran School of Theology Chicago, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, and Georgetown University.
In that same post, he gave a shout out to the leftist “leaders and scholars” with whom he was “particularly honored” to interact, including Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Preston Sprinkle, Ben Norquist, Willie James Jennings, and Wheaton College leftist Alexander Massad. Oh, and Rafael Malpica-Padilla, who said this: “when I engage to advocate for women’s reproductive rights … I am following the way of Jesus.”
Isaac, never one to shy away from controversy, created a nativity scene with baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh.
Aaron David Fruh, Research Fellow at The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, shares more information about one of the people with whom Isaac feels honored to interact—Noura Erakat:
Noura is an associate professor of Africana studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. On October 7th, 2023, the day of the Hamas massacre, Erakat posted on X to her 175,000 followers: “Any condemnation of violence is vapid if it does not begin and end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation.”
In other words, before anyone can condemn Hamas for burning Jewish babies and taking 250 hostages captive, they must first declare that Israel is responsible for the murder of its citizens. On October 16, a few days later, Erakat falsely stated that no Jewish babies were beheaded on October 7: “President Biden repeated the lie about beheaded [Israeli] babies [by Hamas], and directed US diplomatic corps to avoid calls for a ceasefire [between Israel and Hamas], and backs Israel’s genocidal warfare [in Gaza]…” In 2020, Erakat led an online workshop with senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad, which the Masarat Center, a Palestinian nonprofit, organized.
Here’s an idea: Maybe Wheaton College could sponsor a showing of the movie October 8, ya know, for the cause of diversity.
This event reminds me of the Wheaton event held just two weeks before last November’s General Election when Wheaton lefty Vince Bacote, a member of the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies—a rumored hotbed of leftism—invited two anti-Trump speakers to pontificate about the election: Curtis Chang and Atlantic writer Tim Alberta. Bacote didn’t invite two pro-Trump Christians to debate Change and Alberta. That kind of diversity is a bridge too far.
Similarly, Yoder, McKoy et al. didn’t invite someone to debate Isaac. Instead, they gave him a platform to promulgate his arguable ideas and shill his book.
This event should provide yet more evidence that Wheaton has been infected with leftism, something the new website For Wheaton is trying valiantly to expose. As of April 7, 2025, the number of alumni who have signed the online letter urging Wheaton to get its house in order has grown to 1,458. The number of parents, grandparents, faculty, staff, and other friends who have signed it now stands at 727 (soon to be 728 because as the parent of two Wheaton alumni and mother-in-law of two, I just signed it).
For Wheaton was started by Wheaton alumni who have been tracking the problems at Wheaton for years. They have tried communicating with the administration and board members to no avail. As I have written, the problems at Wheaton are broader and deeper than many alumni, prospective parents, and donors realize.
But Wheaton College president Phil Ryken, trustees, and faculty members know full well what’s been happening and for how long. Ryken has done nothing discernible to course correct in the fifteen years he’s been at the helm. In fact, the problems have gotten worse. Maybe someday someone will do a deep dive into the views of Wheaton trustees and expose them by name. Rumor has it that the board is wildly imbalanced ideologically.
One of the worst faculty offenders against truth and wisdom is Nathan Cartagena, about whom I’ve written multiple times, and For Wheaton does an outstanding job of providing evidence of his unfitness for Wheaton College.
Cartagena made his decision to come to Wheaton conditional on his ability to teach Critical Race Theory, and he has posted about his admiration for Marxists and CRT grifters like the discredited Ibram X. Kendi.
Today, I emailed both a Wheaton College trustee and Wheaton spokesman Joe Moore to ask if Cartagena has received tenure. As of this writing, neither has responded. Giving tenure to Cartagena, who has made his leftist bona fides clear since before Wheaton hired him, would be a signal that Wheaton has no intention of correcting course.