A Stanford University lecturer has been suspended for allegedly making Jewish students stand in a corner while branding them “occupiers” — while also downplaying the Holocaust and defending murderous Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
The students said the lecturer, who was not identified, opened two freshman classes on Tuesday by saying the lesson was about colonization, the co-president of Stanford’s Israel Student Association told the San Francisco Chronicle.
He then blamed the raging war between Israel and Hamas on “Zionists” – supporters of the movement to protect an independent Jewish state.
The lecturer also reportedly justified the slaughter of more than 1,300 Israelis by Hamas terrorists over the weekend, saying it was part of the Palestinian resistance.
The teacher then asked the Jewish students to raise their hands, separated them from their belongings and ordered them to stand in the corner, saying that’s what Jews do to Palestinians, according to Nourya Cohen, one of the presidents of the Israeli association.
Stanford University has launched an investigation into a lecturer who targeted Jewish students and called them “colonists.” AP
“He asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” Cohen said. When someone said 6 million, “he said, ‘Yeah. Only 6 million.'”
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, director of Stanford’s Chabad Jewish Center, who said he spoke to three students in one of the classes, told the Jewish news outlet Forward that the lecturer said: “The colonists killed more than 6 million. Israel is the occupier.”
Lecturers asked students to state where their ancestors came from, and labeled each as “colonizer” or “colonized” based on their heritage, said Cohen and co-president Andrei Mandelshtam.
Stanford addressed the matter in a statement.
When a student identified themselves as being from Israel, the instructor reportedly exclaimed, “Oh, that must be a colonist.”
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest news on Hamas attacks on Israel
Greenberg said the students she spoke with told her they were afraid to speak up in class and left feeling traumatized. They said the lecturer made no mention of Hamas’ atrocities against Israel and offered a full defense of the terrorist act.
“He said, ‘Hamas is the legitimate representation of the Palestinian people,'” Greenberg said. “‘They are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. Their actions are legal.’”
Cohen, the student leader, said the episode left him feeling “dehumanized.”
Want to help? Donate here to the UJA-Federation of New York’s emergency fund to provide critical aid to the people of Israel, working with a network of non-profit organizations helping Jewish communities around the world.
“It’s like I’m reliving the Nazi justifications 80 years ago on a college campus today,” he told the newspaper.
Stanford President Richard Saller and provost Jenny Martinez issued a statement Wednesday confirming the lecturer’s suspension after he “handled the Middle East conflict in a way that called out individual students in class based on their background and identity.”
The statement went on to say that Stanford had opened an internal investigation into the lecturer, who was described as a teaching assistant and not a faculty member.
“Without judging the matter, this report raises serious concerns. Academic freedom does not permit targeting based on student identity,” Stanford officials wrote. “The instructor in this course is not teaching at this time while the university works to ascertain the facts of the situation.”
Saller and Martinez also condemned “all violence and mass atrocities,” including Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, which they described as “moral matters.”
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
