By Grace Gilson January 28, 2026(JTA) — Yeshiva University has announced that prominent British conservative author and pro-Israel commentator Douglas Murray will teach a class at the school this spring. At Y.U., Murray is set to teach an honors poetry course titled “The Values of Verse: Sacred and Secular Perspectives.”“Great poetry is not an ornament of civilization,” Murray said in a statement distributed by Y.U. I’m honored to join Yeshiva University in a setting where those questions are taken seriously and explored with intellectual rigor.”Murray, who has an undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of Oxford, is not the first non-Jewish public figure to be honored by the university. The conservative commentator has not been immune from controversy in pro-Israel circles. In May 2023, Murray drew criticism from British Jewish leaders after he appeared to downplay German nationalism during World War II at a conference for right-wing conservatives.