Though her attitudes moved slowly toward support of Israel and against Arab extremism, it was not until after the attacks of 9/11, she says, that she felt obligated as a journalist and as an Arab-American to speak out. She is founder of Arabs for Israel, a group dedicated to helping Muslims and Arabs across the globe “reject hate” and “embrace love” and make the holy land “truly holy” by giving “the Jewish people the respect they deserve.”

As an author who makes a living giving speeches on college campuses, Darwish, 58, has become in some ways a provocative figure, angering some with her feminist critiques of the treatment of women and religious minorities under Islam. Locally, the controversy hit home when Jewish students at Brown Hillel extended what turned out to be a tentative invitation to Darwish to speak on campus last fall. The invitation was dropped after the students spoke with the school’s Muslim chaplain and concluded — without talking to any members of the Muslim Students Association — that her lecture might be offensive to Brown’s Muslims.

Applauded by some as a courageous feminist who is willing to speak about things many Muslims dare not speak about and derided by others as a “lapdog of the American Zionist establishment,” Darwish took the podium at Brown’s Salomon Center backed up by a new invitation extended by Brown University’s Office for Campus Life and Services, by Prof. John Tomasi and his Political Theory Project, and by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy group that arranges talks on college campuses.

. . . . Three students, none of them Muslim, made their dissatisfaction with Darwish’s visit known early on, setting up a table outside the building where she spoke protesting the decision to give her a podium at Brown. One of the students said he felt that by ignoring the decision of student groups to not have her speak, the school was in effect imposing its own decisions on the campus population.