The Saad Truth

Gad Saad has been on sabbatical from his job as a marketing professor at Concordia University since January 1.

Thank goodness for that.

Students at the Montreal-based school, which has been colloquially referred to as “Gaza University” for the past 20 years, only ramped up their anti-Israel, antisemitic rhetoric following Oct. 7. After Jewish students set up a table on campus to commemorate the kidnapped hostages, people accosted them, threw water bottles, attempted to rip down their posters and yelled, “Go back to Poland!” 

This past March, the group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights Concordia protested bringing IDF reservists to the school, posting on their social media, “Zionist soldiers will not be welcomed on our campus.” 

A class-action lawsuit against the university and its student union accuses both of cultivating a safe space for antisemitism at Concordia since Oct. 7. 

This is the same university where a riot broke out in 2002, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak. Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters blocked people from going to the speech and attacked a Holocaust survivor, Thomas Hecht, as well as Rabbi Howard Joseph and his wife, Norma, a professor at the school. 

In November 2023, Saad, a Lebanese Jew, wrote an essay for The National Post claiming that Concordia University was unsafe for Jews. “Over the past few years, I have had Jewish students privately advise me that they have felt unsafe to advertise their Jewish identity whilst on campus,” he wrote. “It is difficult to feel safe when one hears deeply antisemitic cries such as the ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’ chanted by a large gathering of overzealous individuals who greatly outnumber Jewish students and faculty members.”

Saad, who is also an author (“The Parasitic Mind,” “The Saad Truth About Happiness”), has mostly been away from campus due to his sabbatical; when he is on campus, he is escorted by a security detail. 

“It’s a very hostile environment,” Saad told The Journal. “It doesn’t mean every student is a rabid activist, but there is certainly a demographic reality at my university that doesn’t make it hospitable to folks like me.”

Saad is used to being a target; he’s been dealing with it his entire life. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, he was surrounded by antisemitism growing up. In 1970, when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser died, 5-year-old Saad saw a group of protestors walking by his home, shouting, “Death to Jews!” And later, when a teacher asked students what they wanted to be when they got older, one stood up and yelled, “a Jew killer!” The class exploded in applause. 

When Saad and his family finally escaped Lebanon, his mother pulled out a Jewish necklace for him as soon as the pilot announced they cleared Lebanese air space. She told him he could wear the necklace from that day forward; he didn’t have to worry about concealing his Jewish identity anymore.

A few decades later, Saad’s son went to play soccer in Montreal’s East End and had a vastly different experience. “My son tells me, ‘If you had been wearing a Star of David where I played soccer, you’d be dead,’” Saad said. “He said this in Montreal in 2023.”

None of this is surprising to Saad. He’s been warning us about it for years. “I saw the writing on the wall,” he said. “You don’t need to be a fancy professor to extrapolate patterns and see what’s coming down the pipeline.”  

Saad, an expert in the application of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior, has witnessed the societal decline in the West over the past few decades. He outlined it in his well-known 2020 anti-woke book, “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.” It illustrates how bad ideas, which he calls “idea pathogens,” are eroding Western society and threatening truth, reason and freedom. He highlights the anti-intellectual discourse taking place on college campuses, the tyranny of political correctness, the danger of identity politics and the triumph of feelings over facts. 

The controversial book made him a target of progressives, who have been active participants in the “pro-Palestinian” antisemitic protests on campuses and in city streets. 

One of the defining marks of wokeism, Saad said, is viewing the entire world as either part of the oppressor or the oppressed group – which has made it excusable to attack Jews. “Irrespective of what the truth is, the Jews are inherently the oppressors, and the Palestinians are noble, innocent people,” Saad said. “The Columbia political science department – and other every university in the U.S. and Canada – teach that until 1948, Jews and Muslims lived in peace in the Middle East, holding hands and playing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ on repeat. Out of nowhere, these bloodthirsty, white Zionists who had absolutely no connection to the ancestral land of Judea came in and were brutal. They founded modern-day Israel on the principle of Zionism and have participated in the daily genocide of the Palestinian people ever since. If I’m a 20-year-old kid who’s learning this, it’s not surprising if I don the keffiyeh.” 

Unlike other professors in American and Canadian universities, Saad doesn’t bring his personal opinions into the classroom. “I’m very disciplined and never mix my professorial responsibilities with my outside responsibilities,” he said. “I’m mandated to teach a course on evolutionary or consumer psychology. I never talk about Israel in the classroom.”

Even when faced with hostility, he won’t bring it up. “Usually, I take a selfie with my students, and there’s love everywhere,” he said. “Three students once refused to be in the selfie. They were all of a certain demographic background. One of them said she doesn’t want a selfie with me because she’s seen my tweets and she’s appalled.”

Since Oct. 7, a number of university presidents have been questioned by Congress, and some have been fired or forced to resign over their response to antisemitism on campus. While this is a move in the right direction, according to Saad, it’s only a Band-Aid.

“You’re not going to get rid of the endemic Jew hatred you see everywhere without eradicating the ideas that have been allowed to proliferate on these campuses. We can get rid of a few presidents, but it won’t do much.”

“It’s a highly visible move that’s meant to placate the big donors who might otherwise say, ‘You can forget about my $100 million donation if you don’t do something,’” he said. “We need a much larger solution. While animals and human beings can have actual brain worms, human beings can experience ideological brain worms, too. Many of these were spawned on university campuses over the past 40 to 80 years. You’re not going to get rid of the endemic Jew hatred you see everywhere without eradicating the ideas that have been allowed to proliferate on these campuses. We can get rid of a few presidents, but it won’t do much.”

Another troubling trend that has emerged post-Oct. 7 is the union of progressives with the radical Islamists to team up against Jews and the West. Because of shortsighted immigration policies like open borders, Saad argues, there is now the huge problem of anti-Jewish, anti-West sentiment in swaths of society. “When you let in millions of people who come from societies where the definition of those societies is to hate Jews, it doesn’t take rocket science to see that antisemitism will go up,” he said.

Right now, Saad calls the progressive-Islamist union a “marriage of convenience – until the snake turns and eats its head.”

Right now, Saad calls the progressive-Islamist union a “marriage of convenience – until the snake turns and eats its head. Progressives say, ‘Capitalism is evil,’ ‘Down with the bourgeois’ and ‘We hate the West.’ They say, ‘Here is another group of guys saying the West is diseased. That’s great.’ Once the West has been destroyed, good luck progressives. Watch what is coming for you.”

“I’m pessimistic until people hopefully wake up. If they had woken up 20 years ago, the solution would be a lot less painful today. If we don’t stop it now, in five to 10 years, it’ll keep getting worse.” 

With all this unfolding, Saad sees two ways it can go. “The optimistic lens is that the great silent majority hates this stuff,” he said. “The pessimistic conclusion is that they are the silent majority. If people don’t find their spines and testicular fortitude, then it can’t be resolved. I’m pessimistic until people hopefully wake up. If they had woken up 20 years ago, the solution would be a lot less painful today. If we don’t stop it now, in five to 10 years, it’ll keep getting worse.”

As someone who escaped an extremist society, Saad was still surprised by the post-Oct. 7 antisemitism. “I was somewhat taken aback by the extent of the orgiastic Jew hatred,” he said. “It came from different sources: the Islamic sources, the Neo-Nazi right-wing, ‘The Jews won’t replace us’ Charlottesville types, the academic progressives who called us ‘Zionist baby killers.’ In any direction I turned, Jew hatred was coming at me.” 

The professor, who taught at UC Irvine from 2001-2003, even contemplated leaving Canada and finding refuge elsewhere. 

“I was seeing the protests unfolding in Montreal and wanted to say, ‘Take me back to the Middle East, because it’s safer there,’” he said. “My wife and I were sitting in a café and she said, ‘Where do we go next, Gad?’ I said, ‘Maybe some island in the Bahamas or Argentina. I jokingly say that notwithstanding what happened to Hungarian Jews in World War II, we could live in Hungary. You don’t see protests there. They aren’t very tolerant of open border policies. Jews may have to find refuge in 20 or 100 years in societies that do not succumb to suicidal empathy. We are so empathetic that we are letting in millions of people that say, ‘We will destroy your society.’”

Many people in the silent majority don’t speak up because they are afraid the woke mob will cancel them, or they are worried about their safety. In Saad’s experience, most of the hate has only been on the internet.  “I’ve received many death threats, but typically they’re online,” he said. “I was only threatened in person once, while walking with one of my children, who was 10 years old at the time. You have to be concerned. But I’ve been fortunate because there have been innumerable times when people come up to me, and only one was negative.”

Despite all the doom and gloom, despite all the antisemitism and threats and existential crises he’s facing as a Canadian, Saad is a remarkably cheerful person. He describes himself as playful, and often jokes around in interviews, like in his 10 appearances on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and his own show, “The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad.” 

Despite all the doom and gloom, despite all the antisemitism and threats and existential crises he’s facing as a Canadian, Saad is a remarkably cheerful person. He describes himself as playful, and often jokes around in interviews, like in his 10 appearances on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and his own show, “The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad.” 

His newest book, “The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life,” (the paperback edition was published on May 14) is a lighter turn for the author. In it, he writes about how resilience is the key to happiness, the importance of finding a spouse who is as playful as you, doing things in moderation and why your career must serve a higher purpose than a paycheck. It’s about building a life that is true to you – one that you look forward to living every single day.

“I wrote the book because people said to me, ‘You always seem to be playful,’ and they wanted to know my secrets,” he said. “While 50% of our happiness score stems from our genes, that other 50% is up for grabs. The types of decisions I make or mindset I have can ameliorate or worsen my disposition.” 

What makes Saad happy is being creative: teaching classes, writing books, recording his podcast and fulfilling his higher purpose. He could only reach that level of happiness by doing what he wanted. Even though his colleagues may have preferred that he stayed in the university setting, writing academic papers that only a few people would have seen, he went out into the world, creating valuable content for everyone to see. “I’m not a stay-in-your-lane professor,” he said. “I took advantage of social media. I knew it was a great opportunity to spread good ideas to millions of people.”

Now, Saad is encouraging others to do the same, and showing that even the simplest of actions matter in life. In the past, when returning to Southern California with his wife and kids, he’d use the time there to teach a valuable lesson.

“My family and I would always go to the beach, and we’d do the very small gesture of filling up a bag with any garbage we saw,” he said. “I’d tell my children that literally as a result of us being at the beach that day, we picked up a lot of garbage and made the world a better place. If everyone approached it that same way, it’d be a cleaner beach. That’s a metaphor. Hopefully, I’m doing something good. Hopefully, they will say I did my best, and that I made a positive contribution.”

Kylie Ora Lobell is the Community Editor of the Jewish Journal.