“An Evening with Mosab Abu Toha,” an event that was set to feature the internationally acclaimed Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and librarian Mosab Abu Toha at Stanford on April 3 was canceled due to his concern for his own personal safety.

Abu Toha’s immigration attorney advised him to cancel the event due to “escalating threats against him,” according to the cancellation note on the event website. “We respect and understand his decision,” the note wrote.

Abu Toha, who is from Gaza, is the winner of the Palestine Book Award and American Book Award for his poetry collection “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” which was published in 2022. He was also a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. He founded the Edward Said Library, the first English language library in Gaza. In 2024, he published a poetry collection titled “Forest of Noise” about life in Gaza.

Alexander Key, associate professor of comparative literature and an organizer of the event, was notified by Penguin Random House, Abu Toha’s literary agent, about the poet’s immigration attorney’s advice to cancel the event on the week of March 24. 

“It’s incredibly sad,” Key said. “It’s an indictment of where we are, no question about it, as a country … canceling a poet is a sad reflection [of national politics].”

The event, which was part of the speaker series “Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+,” was co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) along with several departments and centers, including the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the Office of the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. 

The Markaz Resource Center, CCSRE, the Office of the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Office of the VPUE, the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages and the Creative Writing Program did not respond to requests for comment.

“It was quite a big event, in the sense that he’s quite a high-profile author,” Key said. “We made all the plans, and it was … going to be a good event.”

Abu Toha posted on X on March 28 to announce that he was canceling all upcoming events in the U.S., including several events at universities.

“I felt unsafe traveling, especially after watching students and university professors abducted on the street just in front of other people,” he wrote. “I even don’t feel safe going out to pick up my kids from school. These threats made online against me and my family are vile. And the serious threats and actions against free speech are even more vile.”

The event was scheduled to be held in Tresidder Student Union Oak Lounge and would have included a poetry reading, discussion and Q&A session. Additionally, Abu Toha was going to lead an Arabic language-only session, where he was to discuss his Arabic poetry collection. 

“We were very sad, and Stanford was keen to do everything it could to make the event work,” Key said. 

The event was not moved to an online platform due to being planned as an in-person and interactive event. 

“One of the greatest values of the event was to bring people together to listen to poetry and be in conversation,” Key said. “And you just can’t do that over a webinar.”

Two other scholars of Palestine, Perla Issa and Nadim Bawalsa, were also scheduled to speak about Palestine at Stanford in April. The events will now be held on Zoom, though Key hopes to bring them in person eventually.

Key told The Daily that a lack of in-person events makes it harder for the intellectual community to do its work, and that no one at the University should change their approach to their work and for hosting academic events. 

“I think it’s important that we as a university don’t change our intellectual or scholarly approaches to anything, and that we continue with the academic, scholarly and intellectual work that we’re doing on a whole variety of issues, including Palestine,” he said. 

The Daily reached out to the University for comment. 

Key hopes that one day Stanford will be able to host Abu Toha in person. According to the event’s cancellation note, Abu Toha wishes to speak at Stanford as soon as possible.

“We’re just waiting on the world to get better [for events like this to resume],” Key said.