US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced widespread condemnation on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, after falsely claiming during a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that the world’s 500 million Arabs do not produce science or literature and fail to win major international awards.
Campaign Trail Rhetoric in Michigan
During the Monday event alongside Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, Kennedy asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood had destroyed the historic contributions of Islamic scholarship. The health secretary stated that Arabs have created stagnant societies centered on hatred, war, and victimization.
US Secretary of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr. has said that Arabs don’t produce science or literature, or win Nobel prizes. RFK Jr.’s remarks, which were made during a Republican rally, have been widely condemned as factually incorrect and racially biased. pic.twitter.com/8ebMl3iBhA
Kennedy specifically claimed that Arabs do not win the Nobel Prize, the Fields Prize, or the Wolf Prize. These remarks arrived amid a heated midterm election cycle in Michigan, where Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is running for the US Senate. El-Sayed has faced repeated anti-Muslim attacks during the campaign, including false accusations tying him to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Civil Rights Backlash and Demands for Dismissal
The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Kennedy’s remarks as a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry, calling for his immediate firing from the cabinet. According to CAIR, an official overseeing national public health cannot be permitted to platform racist tropes against Arab and Muslim communities.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vile anti-Arab rant is a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry,” CAIR stated in its press release.
Democratic lawmakers also voiced sharp disapproval. Democratic US Chris Murphy criticized the rhetoric on social media, while civil rights advocates pointed out that the claims directly contradict verifiable historical and contemporary achievements.
The Nobel Reality Check and Historical Record
Public health experts and civil rights organizations immediately highlighted numerous Arab recipients of major international honors to dispute Kennedy’s claims. Peter Hotez, a vaccine development specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine, noted that his late colleague Ahmed Zewail, an Arab scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999, would strongly disagree with the health chief’s assertions.
Additional honoraes cited by advocacy groups include Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, and Dr. Omar M. Yaghi, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2025.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the backlash.
