Pieter Willem van der Horst

[4][5] In 2006, van der Horst became embroiled in a controversy over his retirement lecture, "The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism," which traced the development of this antisemitic theme from the Hellenistic period through the Middle Ages to Nazism.

He planned to conclude by examining the resurgence of the cannibalism myth in contemporary Islamic media, including cartoons, television programs, and sermons, particularly in Iran, Syria, and Palestine.

Van der Horst was then asked to appear before a committee composed of the rector, two deans of faculty, and Bas de Gaay Fortman, who holds Utrecht's unique chair of Political Economy of Human Rights.

In a guest column for The Wall Street Journal, he wrote that he had decided, with no independent means to verify any potential risk to himself or others, to proceed with an expurgated version.

These included passages that van der Horst himself identified as "polemic" involving the connection between German fascism and "Islamic vilification of Jews" in the contemporary Middle East, with statements such as "the Islamisation of European antisemitism is one of the most frightening developments of the past decades.

In it, he asserted that despite the publication of the unexpurgated version of his lecture in multiple media outlets, he "did not receive a single negative, let alone threatening, Muslim reaction," though some had criticized him for overgeneralization.

"[13] Van der Horst went on to publish "The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism: A Chapter in the History of Antisemitism" in Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (English Series), vol.

Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 2008), as part of the series Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity.