RFK Jr. rebuked for derogatory claim about ‘Arabs in the world’

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing backlash for comments he made about Arabs while at a campaign stop in Michigan.

“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize,” Kennedy said.

The secretary is wrong — Arabs have won those prizes and produced scientific breakthroughs.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor University’s National School of Tropical Medicine, noted his colleague Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian American chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1999, would disagree with Kennedy’s remarks.

“God rest his soul he didn’t have to endure this,” Hotez wrote on the social platform X.

Michael Atiyah, who was born in England to a Lebanese father and Scottish mother, won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, in 1966.

Zewail won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry in 1993, six years before winning the Nobel.

Al Jazeera compiled a lengthy list of major Arab contributions to math, science and the humanities.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

The comments, delivered in a state with a large Arab American population, were broadly condemned by Arab groups and Democratic politicians.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vile anti-Arab rant is a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry,” the U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote in a post on X .

“To stand on a public stage as a sitting U.S. cabinet official and dehumanize half a billion people – and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans – with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office,” CAIR wrote.

A spokesperson for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D), who is of Arab descent and is a medical doctor, also called out the remarks.

“It’s rich to have an anti-scientist come to Michigan to lecture a doctor with two doctoral degrees who has spent his entire career working on public health,” El-Sayed spokesperson Cole Wozniak said in a statement.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), along with his allies in the White House, has sought to tap into anti-Muslim sentiment in the final weeks of his race against El-Sayed.

Republicans accuse El-Sayed of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamic political movement, some chapters of which the U.S. has designated as foreign terrorist organizations. El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any ties to the organization and disavowed it.

President Trump has called the Democratic nominee a jihadist, even making comparisons to 9/11 attackers during a rally over the weekend.

Other Michigan Democrats condemned the secretary’s remarks, including Reps. Hillary Scholten and Rashida Tlaib, who is Arab American.

“The last I checked, Secretary Kennedy has neither a medical degree nor a Nobel Peace Prize, and his rhetoric has undermined public confidence in health science,” Scholten said in a statement on X. “Maybe he should sit this one out.”

“RFK Jr.’s a disgusting racist. We all know that,” Tlaib wrote on X. “We must all speak out louder than the hate. We will not let these fascists win.”