Students said they think a guest lecturer for an anthropology class promoted anti-Semitic ideas Tuesday.
Rabab Abdulhadi, an Arab and Muslim ethnicities studies professor at San Francisco State University, delivered a guest lecture to roughly 100 students in Anthropology M144P: “Constructing Race,” which focuses on race and racism and is taught by Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at UCLA.
Prior to the lecture, students said they were told attendance was mandatory and that the lecture would cover topics of Islamophobia.
Abdulhadi said during the lecture she supports Jewish people who oppose the state of Israel. She also said she thinks the state of Israel has committed colonialist actions that are related to white supremacy.
During the lecture, some students snapped their fingers in support of Abdulhadi’s comments. Other students said they think the lecture veered into anti-Semitism.
Abdulhadi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shayna Lavi, a third-year anthropology student, told Abdulhadi during the lecture that she found Abdulhadi’s equating of Zionism with white supremacy offensive as a Jewish and Zionist student. Zionism is a movement advocating for the establishment of the Jewish state Israel in Palestine.
Abdulhadi said during the lecture she respected Lavi’s feelings and continued delivering the lecture. She added she did not claim to speak for all sides on the subject.
“I am coming here to speak about a particular topic, the way I see it as a scholar and a scholar-activist and a public intellectual engaged in things every single day,” Abdulhadi said.
Abdulhadi said while she respected the students’ views, she was invited as a guest lecturer to the class to give her perspective and her comments. She said she would continue lecturing because students should respect all perspectives and her comments should challenge their ideas.
“You cannot interrupt me now, I will tell you why,” Abdulhadi said. “Because today is my lecture. I am respecting you. … It’s alright if you are uncomfortable.”
Viktorya Saroyan, a third-year sociology student, said she did not think Abdulhadi responded well to criticism from students.
Ashari Whitt, a third-year African American studies and gender studies student, said in an email statement she attended the lecture and spoke to Abdulhadi during the Q&A portion. Whitt said she thinks criticisms against a foreign government should not target individuals or religious groups.
Whitt said she thinks Park failed to adequately mediate the discussion between the students and the guest lecturer.
Lavi said Park did not intervene when she saw her crying and has not addressed the lecture with the class after the event.
“(Park) hasn’t contacted me, it’s been over 24 hours, there’s been no apology sent out, nothing reprimanding the speaker,” Lavi said.
Park declined to comment.
After the lecture, Saroyan and Lavi both sent reports of the lecture to Jerry Kang, the vice chancellor of equity, diversity and inclusion. In the letters, both Saroyan and Lavi refer to the lecture discourse as hate speech.
Lavi said she would like Park to bring in a Jewish educator to speak about anti-Semitism. Saroyan said she plans to file a formal complaint with the Discrimination Prevention Office.
This is SUCH an imbalanced article. While recognizing that ” some students snapped their fingers in support of Abdulhadi’s comments”, how is it that NONE of those students were sought out for interviews? Why do the only students quoted all have the same position? Of course a visiting lecturer is likely to be on the road after her lecture. And although I do not know and have not spoken to Dr. Park, I would be very surprised if she had been instructed not to comment, and that the silence is not her choice.
who “snaps” during a lecture? and i would love it if jew haters ceased their appropriation of jewish beatnik culture
This comment is bonkers.
Since when were professor’s personal and political opinions supposed to be used to teach a class? This seems more like indoctrination than scholarship. “I am coming here to speak about a particular topic, the way I see it as a scholar and a scholar-activist and a public intellectual engaged in things every single day,” Abdulhadi said.
Since this was a mandatory class at UCLA it would only be fair to bring in a Zionist or pro-Israel professor or scholar-activist to share their opinions. Perhaps UCLA’s own Yehuda Pearl could speak or help find someone else qualified to balance out the damage done by Professor Abdulhadi’s lecture.
As voiced in the DB article, one wonders if Professor Park will balance her class by inviting someone to speak about anti-Semitism or about Israel in a positive manner. I suppose not. When teachers bring in guest speakers to spew their personal opinions to a class without a counter-balancing voice (either at the same event or later on) then what we have here is not education-rather indoctrination. I taught 18 years part-time at UC Irvine (English as a Second Language), and while I was an activist outside the classroom, I never brought my opinions into the classroom. I consider it to be unprofessional.
Not surprised. UCLA has gone seriously downhill when it comes to tolerating Jew-hatred on campus.
the UC system is fkd. Berkeley, Davis, UCLA… :'(
As someone who was in the class the whole situation was just handled very poorly, you could tell from the start of the lecture that Professor Abdulhadi was preemptively defensive, looking her up online you’ll see that calling her a controversial figure is a bit of an understatement.
While the lecture itself wasn’t too controversial, at least in my opinion, one student, Shayna, was quite emotional in what she had perceived as saying Zionists and White supremacists were the same (which was not what was said), Abdulhadi spoke defensively and aggressively when the student tried to continue speaking after getting choked up (stemming in part from a misunderstanding that the student had finished her question) and another student, Ashari, asked Abdulhadi to be more respectful. This resulted in Abdulhadi continuing to answer the questions, while ignoring Ashari who was talking at the same time.
The argument only stopped after another student spoke up and essentially said that everyone needs to respect each other, the students who were snapping were doing so in response to Abdulhadi explaining that she is presenting her opinion and if it seemed biased it was because she is a person who has biases as everyone does (in the Ethnic study/academic sense).
so what did she say and what did her lecture have to do with anthropology
As the article mentions the class is on constructing race, her lecture was on Islamophobia, it was pretty typical lecture on the subject mostly focusing on Palestine since she is Palestinian, what made the room turn hostile was the student getting upset and crying from misunderstanding her point about Zionism’s affiliation with U.S. white supremacy which the student felt conflated them
I would hesitate to personally call it the same thing since I am neither Jewish or Palestinian but I do understand why anti-Zionist Palestinians and Jewish people do and I also understand that it is a strong statement to make to a group of students who might not understand the nuances of anti-Semitism but I would place the burden of research on the students not the lecturer, her time with us was limited while our time to look into that history is not
Regardless of an individual’s opinion on Israel, pro or against, it is not out there to say that the Israeli government has aligned itself with U.S. Republicans, many of which are adjacent or outright white supremacists who spread Islamophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments, and I just wish the lecturer had made that point clearer so the student hadn’t misunderstood and it would have been nice for more questions to be asked to better clarify the issue but the upset derailed that from being able to take place
and i can show how her words mimic statements that have come from white supremacists like david duke
this should not have been a required lecture.
she is a fraud
I don’t agree with people conflating Zionists with supremacists and I also won’t agree with conflating a Palestinian woman and a KKK leader
That is disgusting Islamophobia at a time where Muslim people are targets of hate crimes and I would feel the same if a person were to say that about a Jewish individual
It is not Islamophobia to call her out based on her words and actions. Hating her or dismissing her because of her race or because of her religion would be wrong.
From what I have read about this guest lecturer, she presents the typical anti-Israel propaganda line as if it were established fact. She ignores the well-documented fact that Jews are indigenous to Israel, and that Jews were oppressed for many centuries under Muslim rule there, including being subjected to periodic massacres, whenever the current leaders needed to distract the masses from focusing on their own shortcomings. She ignores the fact that there was never an Arab nation of “Palestine”, and that the notion it was somehow “stolen” is made up out of thin air. The Arabs of the region wanted to be given full control of the entire Middle East, as part of a nascent Arab nationalism, but rather than getting everything, they were given 99.5% of the Middle East, and one of the native peoples was given back the lands that the Arabs conquered long ago, in the name of Islam. Those natives still living there were joined by their brethren who had been living in diaspora.
At that point, the Arabs declared a genocidal war against those native peoples. They allied themselves with the Nazis, and attempted to bring the Holocaust to the Middle East.
When the Arabs failed to wipe out the Jews, despite an overwhelming superiority in both numbers and armaments, they started claiming to be victims, to earn the world’s sympathy, and to get through deceit what they failed to steal by military might.
For her to then accuse the native people of being “colonialists” and “white supremacists” is beyond offensive, and is a blatant attempt to invert the truth. The truth is that Arabs were the colonizers, while every shred of archaeological and historical evidence shows that Jews are indigenous to Israel. And indigenous status does not expire, just because the conquerors held their conquered lands for a long time.
I think there is a big difference in acknowledging the privileged positions of white European Jews (mostly in the U.S.) over their MENA counterparts and claiming that they are not genetically from that land. Culturally many white Israeli’s in power have applied oppressive western standards of class and status onto various racial groups, I mean look at the Israeli government how many Ethiopian Jews hold cabinet positions?
I don’t disagree that there is hostility in the Middle East against the Jewish diaspora, but one must consider the perception that is created when a colonialist warmongering power that has decimated and disrupted democratic MENA governments supports the current militaristic Israeli state. Or the fact that Israeli land was portioned as a separate state through the power of colonialist British imperialism which occupied and politically controlled the land.
Dismissing Palestine’s existence only serves to ignore Palestinian Jews and their experiences and ignores how Palestine existed as a multi-religious place. The various Arab nations that oppose Israel and “support” the Palestinian often do so because of their own interest in possessing the “Holy Land” and not because they actually support the Palestinian people, just as evangelical Christian leaders in the U.S. do not actually support justice for the Jewish people but instead want a ally/pawn to cement power in the Middle East.
If those in the U.S. really cared about the Jewish people in Israel why do they continue to support Saudi Arabia?
I understand Zionists don’t like to be called similar to White supremacists and would get emotional about it. However, it’s simply a fact, Zionists have all kinds of rules that are like white supremacists, such as putting covenants on land owned by them only allowing Jews to work in or on, rent or buy such land. Zionists have a lot of discriminatory practices such as not allowing most of Israel’s indigenous people (Palestinians) to live or be citizens of the place they’re native to, this after using mass murder and terror against them in order to establish a Jewish majority in what’s now considered Israel, with policies of “shoot to kill” non-Jews who attempted to access their homes or property. A number of black South Africans have called Israeli practices worse than apartheid.
Me Professsor too. Thanked you for support fellow Progressives student!. We share the common values with you in our progressive support of the Gay, Trans, Woman, Christian, and Atheist in our free democrat 25 Islamic Apartheid nations. Reminder for the visiting Gay Trans to pack the parachute if visiting.
just google her and you will see her history of intimidating jewish and pro-israel students.
she is a fraud and a terror supporter and should not be invited onto any campus to guest lecture about anything and shouldve been terminated from sfsu long ago and it disgusts me that my tax dollars help to pay her to spread hate….
here are some examples
https://amchainitiative.org/sfsu-professor-promoting-terrorism/
“This is the same professor who was the faculty advisor to the SFSU knife-wielding student investigated by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, which begs the question – is Abdulhadi trying to recruit new soldiers from the SFSU student body? Unequivocally, a professor promoting terrorism to impressionable students is highly dangerous.”
Good for her…we need more people out there to scream and shout!
…not to be confused with an academic lecture, or professional behavior.
Abdulhadi is a disgrace even by SFSU standards. She has mentored the General Union of Palestinian students (GUPS), who, a few years back, were making murderious expressions of wanting to kill Israeli soldiers. She is nothing but a partisan activist against Israel, and in doing so, has publicly embarrassed SFSU-no easy feat.
were they embarrassed?
Here is what happened in 2015 when Abdulhadi was scheduled to speak at UC Irvine.
https://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2015/05/where-was-rabab-abdulhadi.html
ADL global index of antisemitism: https://global100.adl.org/
Zionism is…Jewish sate of Israel ‘in Palestine!’ come on Daily Bruin thought you were better then that.
“Palestine” was the name change imposed upon the Jewish nation, by Roman conquerers. There never was an Arab “state of Palestine.” The Romans didn’t conquer Arabs, they conquered Jews. The stories of the Bible feature Jews, not Arabs. Jews were slaves in Egypt who relocated to Israel, not Arabs. When Jews arrived in Israel, the population wasn’t Arabic, it was Canaanite. Zionism is the Jewish yearning for their ancestral homeland. “Palestinian” is a nationalist brand of Arab, created by Arafat, with help from the KGB, around 1964. Truth, not brainwashing.
The foundation of Zionism is global dominion with non-Jews as their workers, Jerusalem as eternal capital. This is said time and time again, in writing and in speeches, but also in their scriptures, and it has been played out in Western countries, esp the US. A new global order–this is what has been going on for centuries, esp the last 100 years. For a non-jew to say this is, of course, a Jew hater. There will be several more MidEast countires crushed to accomplish regional control.
For anyone to say this is paranoid Zionophobia. No charge for the diagnosis, Pal.
Read your own history and newspapers Mr. Katz
Stop reading The Stormtrooper magazine.
What is that?
One of the numerous Jew-hating publications that spread lies about Jews and Israel. I must comment that the anti-Israel forces have a massive propaganda industry, unmatched by anything since Pravda and Goebbels. It has leached into (and leeched onto) mainstream media, the UN, the Labour Party, and hundreds of universities around the world. I have personally caught dozens of social media posters using mislabeled photos, such as a picture of destruction blamed on Israel, but really from, say, Syria. Iran’s PressTV blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on Israel (!). Thus we get allegations of organ stealing, apartheid, genocide and terrorism against Israel, none of which being factual. At the same time, Palestinian terror is whitewashed or misnamed as “resistance.” If you buy into the propaganda, you just become a sucker. Nobody likes being a sucker, right?
Yes, there is a lot of false garbage on the Jews. But Jews are the masters of deception, lies and propaganda. Theyve been at it for centuries. They developed the art. I read history, some written by jews. I am anti-criminal. I am afraid you are a victim of it, by the powerful ones who use your flock as cover. I understand your blindness; it takes spirit to see and understand it.
Thank you for showing your true colors, for all the students and faculty at UCLA. Now anything you post will be taken in context with your ignorance.
Israel doesn’t get a fair shake in most newspapers: https://www.camera.org/article/the-washington-post-all-the-news-thats-not-fit-to-print/?fbclid=IwAR0QflNc7JxwT_km8lzZHZ-PEb94GkmqDWsR1ADlNOhT12TvQnSVTkQ8Nxo
False, Herodotus called the place Palestine long before Rome conquered it. I’m sorry you subscribe to and spread the mishmash of bogus myth-history.
Before the Roman conquest, it was Judea and Samaria. Anyone who thinks there was an Arab country called “Palestine” is subscribing to bogus history. Because there is no Arab history in that land, they have to make up new lies every year: they’re descended from Canaanites, they’re Philistines, Jesus was Palestinian, Moses was Palestinian, ad nauseam. Btw, the Romans commemorated their conquest in A.D. 82 with the Arch of Titus, which features a menorah. I’ve never seen an Arab menorah, except for those used by Jews who lived in Arab lands, after said Jews were expelled by various invaders, including the Romans.
@ “Jews were slaves in Egypt who relocated to Israel, not Arabs.”
Ah, the Passover Myth. See e.g., https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/were-jews-ever-really-slaves-in-egypt-1.5208519
As time passes, more and more Biblical stories are confirmed, archeologically. Do I have do my own cherrypicking and cite articles claiming the exodus from Egypt did occur? Should I question whether Jesus was real? Mohammad? Why is the Al Aqsa mosque built over the site of the Holy Temple(s), not visa versa? Why aren’t “Palestinian” artifacts ever discovered in Judea/Samaria, but you can’t sink a shovel into the ground, without uncovering pottery and coins, with ancient Hebrew inscriptions? Questions, questions… Why they concern you is yet another question. Were you invited to a Seder, and you couldn’t decide whether to accept?
No. I’m just a fan of “Truth, not brainwashing.”
So where can I find your posts trashing “Palestinian” leaders’ claims of being in the land for 5000 years? Better yet, your eviscerations of Holocaust deniers? I’d love to read them, Diogenes!
SF State has been lost for decades. I wish someone had mentioned that the majority of Israelis are Mizrahi, not Ashkenazi. Black hair, brown eyes.
An important correction: Zionism is the indigenous rights movement of the Jewish people, who trace our ancestry, our culture, our language, and our religion to our native land, Israel.
Zionism is an inherent part of Judaism, which commands the Jewish people to live in their ancestral homeland. There is no such place as Palestine in history – it was a name given by the Romans, as an intentional slap in the face to the Jewish people, as punishment for a Jewish rebellion. Before that, the land was called Israel and Judea.
There was literally never an Arab or any other Muslim nation on that soil; the only surviving people who ever ruled the land independently are the Jewish people. The Arabs and the Ottoman Muslims ruled over it as part of their colonial empires. WHy should we reward colonialism, when the land has finally been returned to the native people?
Most Jews, however, are not indigenous to Palestine (or present-day Israel). The vast majority of the Jewish peoples who inhabited the place 2000 years adopted Christianity or Islam. Judaism, like Christianity, may have originated there, DNA evidence puts most Jewish ancestral origins 1000s of miles away. Its false to call it the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Palestinians are its native people.
Hmm, it seems very important to you to deny thousands of years of Jewish connection to Israel. Yet Arabs, who swarmed out of the Arabian Peninsula, slaughtering, forcibly converting and conquering their way across 3 continents, centuries after the Jews established Jerusalem and built their Holy Temples, are apparently indigenous, in your book. I wonder why that is?
Of course it was anti-Semitic. Anti-Zionism is massively anti-Semitic, because anti-Zionists believe all religions and ethnic groups are entitled to their ancestral lands and holy places, except the Jews. If you’re anti-settlement, you’re saying, “No Jews allowed,” whether you realize it or not. When you chant the trendy chic “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” you’re calling for genocide and ethnic cleansing of 6 million Jews from Israel. When you chant “intifada, intifada, we support the intifada,” you are proclaiming that you support terrorism and murder of Jews, just because they’re Jews.
So look in the mirror and decide which side of history and civilization you wish to be on. I choose free, modern Israel, not medieval Hamas (whose Charter vows to murder every Jew in the world) Fatah (which sings “Kumbaya in English, but is Hamas, in Arabic).
The foundation of Zionism is global dominion with non-Jews as their workers, Jerusalem as eternal capital. This is said time and time again, in writing and in speeches, but also in their scriptures, and it has been played out in Western countries, esp the US. A new global order–this is what has been going on for centuries, esp the last 100 years. For a non-jew to say this is, of course, a Jew hater. There will be a few more MidEast countires crushed to accomplish regional control.
MrAugie, regurgitating tired, anemic, shopworn anti-Semitic nonsense such as this, and then immediately trying to shield your weak, intellectually bankrupt effort behind the old, transparent, and laughingly ineffective “For a non-jew to say this is, of course a Jew hater (sic)” is as uninspiring, boring, and frankly disappointing as were your ignorant compatriots marching with Tiki torches in Charlottesville. Surely someone of your obvious mental majesty should be able to concoct at least modestly more creative or interesting propaganda. So it’s back to the drawing board for you, and until you get a bit more creative and convincing, you had better leave political and social discourse to the adults.
Isn’t it a shame? People with some obvious “intelligence” buying into this crap.
This dumb-ass construction worker has practically made a hobby of personally challenging these “professors” “reporters” and assorted “experts” on Islam and “Islamophobia” and other issues. Especially “racism” for which I could literally teach a class or write a book. (I used to be a “rabid racist” as a kid)
I just posted on Jihad Watch’s Comments that it’s all about “common sense”, an attribute which they seem to entirely lack. Especially when it comes to all things “Israel” and “Islam”.
“Islamic Antisemitism” is the Be All and End All, the beginning and the end, at the heart of, this “Palestinian” issue. Period.
I happened to read (finally) The Haj by Leon Uris about ten years ago.
For some reason a light bulb went on in my head and I decided to study this “Israel thing” and “Islam thing”.
“The State of Israel” simply made sense. “Islam” in all its varieties….didn’t. The Haj, for some reason, tossed this “right of return” farce into the trash where it belonged even before I fully understood the issue. (After finding an article on “Jihad” submitted almost as an Introduction in a Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari my understanding became much more defined and focused)
I mention that it’s also about “comparing”. There is simply no comparison between Jews and Muslims or Christianity and Islam, etc. unless you want to apply “Good vs. Evil”.
By some stroke of luck I had just finished Emmet Fox’s book The Sermon on the Mount when this Bukhari with the “Jihad” article arrived in the mail. It was like God himself had presented me with a perfect example of “Good”; Sermon on the Mount, with “Evil”; “Jihad” article.
It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
I would highly recommend The Haj by Leon Uris as a “Primer” for those just getting started on “Israel” issues.
Also The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz and The Israeli Solution by Caroline Glick.
For those in advanced classes (heh-heh) The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew Bostom is a priceless resource in my library. (All his “Legacy” books are great)
Also I can’t recommend more highly a great little reference book Slavery, Terrorism and Islam by Peter Hammond.
I’m simply looking at the bookshelf above my desk. I’ve got books that go from floor to ceiling on these issues since I read The Haj about ten years ago. (Again; Useful Idiots aren’t “readers”)
Perhaps Mr. Augie is referring to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, when he famously said that goyim (non-jews) were put on earth by G-d to serve and enrich their Jewish masters. I mean to be completely fair and honest, aren’t these ideas straight out of the Talmud? You’re just some random anonymous internet commenter. I doubt you know more about Judaism than the chief rabbi of Israel.
This is the foundation of Zionism even from the 1800s. I’m talking hard-core Zionist supremism. Have you heard of the BitCohen?
Your are spouting what you have been trained to do, with poor English to boot. Like I said it is in their own writing and doctrines and history. AntiZionism and AntiGlobalism has nothing to do with AntiSemitism, although a hude number of Jews are Zionists. You offer no facts, just same old character defamation. Join the ADL or SPLC, you could make the big bucks.
“She also said she thinks the state of Israel has committed colonialist actions that are related to white supremacy.” – Quite the “scholar.” Jews returning to live off their indigenous lands are not “colonialist,” even if some or all of the Arabs living in nearby states, or who followed the Jews into their indigenous lands didn’t want them there. Jews were persecuted all over Europe for not being “white.” Now, Israel haters pushing the propaganda of intersectionality insist we ARE white so they can accuse us of being “colonial white oppressors. This is not scholarship. This is a propagandist pretending to be a scholar. Hopefully, the students forced to attend this lecture understand the value of thinking for themselves and the necessity of courageously rejecting such pseudo-scholarship.
Glad that this was covered… I’d like to say that the definition “Zionism is a movement advocating for the establishment of the Jewish state Israel in Palestine” is a little unclear. One could read that as describing the imposition of Jewish space onto a land called Palestine.
I think it’s more clear to say something like “Zionism is an ideology supporting a Jewish homeland in what Jews see as historical Israel, a movement at odds with the effort to establish a Palestinian nation in the same land, referred to as Palestine by its supporters.”
It is “the imposition of Jewish space onto a land called Palestine.” This specific geographical location in the Levant has been called Palestine for thousands of years. And the forcible ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands was definitely “an imposition.”
A place called Israel has also existed for those same years. That’s the problem. Two nations, one land.
Um, no. Israel is only 70 years old. And the Palestinians don’t have their own nation, in fact the millions living in the occupied territories don’t even have civil rights. They live under a brutal, illegal Israeli military occupation, financed with American taxpayer $.
* sigh *
I’m aware of how old the modern state of Israel is. You’re talking historical claims. There were Jewish states in that land for centuries — hence the Arch of Titus depicting the victory over the Jews and the sacking of Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
But I suspect you already know this.