Tikvah Fund honours doctor who blamed feminism for rape

Published: 30 June 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

A conservative organisation closely aligned with the Netanyahu government will honour Leon Kass, who wrote that women’s refusal “to be ladies” led to “sexual harassment and even rape”.

The Tikvah Fund is awarding its main annual prize to a US scientist who has stirred controversy in the past for suggesting that the rise of feminism is to blame for sexual harassment and rape.

In a newsletter distributed to donors last week, the Conservative Jewish-American group’s CEO Eric Cohen announced that Dr. Leon Kass, a prominent bioethicist who previously served as a senior adviser to president George W. Bush on stem cell research, will receive the Herzl Prize at the Jewish Leadership Conference in October.

He described Kass, who currently serves as dean of faculty at the Jerusalem-based Shalem College, as “one of the most profound and influential thinkers and educators of our era.” Kass will be receiving the prize alongside Jennifer and David Millstone, the founders of a special scholars’ program for middle-school students.

Tikvah is a key funder of the Kohelet Policy Forum, the think tank that prepared the blueprint for the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul efforts.

A professor emeritus from the University of Chicago and scholar emeritus at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Kass served as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics between 2001 and 2005, where he often drew fire for his fierce opposition to federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

In an essay published in Commentary Magazine in 1992, titled “Regarding Daughters and Sisters,” Kass wrote: “Many lonely women, more than can safely admit it, secretly hope to meet a gentleman; but the vast majority steadfastly refuse to be ladies – indeed, no longer know what it means. Small wonder, then, so much sexual harassment and even rape. When power becomes the name of the game, the stronger will get his way.”

Photo: Protest outside Tikvah Fund's offices in Philadelphia (Roy Boshi)