Leave it to San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi to offend students, both Jewish and otherwise, at UCLA, which has seen its fair share of anti-Israel bias, with her trademark invective against the Jewish state.
In a guest lecture for which students were told attendance was mandatory and the topic would be “Islamophobia,” Abdulhadi, speaking to students in UCLA anthropology professor Kyeyoung Park’s “Constructing Race” class, equated “colonialist” Zionism with white supremacy and expressed her support for Jews, as long as they oppose Israel’s existence.
According to the Daily Bruin, “some students snapped their fingers in support of Abdulhadi’s comments,” but others felt “the lecture veered into anti-Semitism.” One of the latter, a self-described Jewish Zionist, confronted Abdulhadi during her lecture about her spurious white supremacy comparison, while an African-American student issued an email statement afterwards noting that “criticisms against a foreign government should not target individuals or religious groups.”
During the lecture, Abdulhadi asked that dissenting students allow her---"a scholar-activist and a public intellectual"---to continue her talk. In contrast to the pro-Israel speakers who are routinely shouted down on college campuses, she was able to do so.
However, two students later sent reports to the vice chancellor of equity, diversity, and inclusion describing the lecture as “hate speech,” and one plans to file a formal complaint with the Discrimination Prevention Office.
While college students need to better respect free speech, when anti-Israel professors like Abdulhadi dominate academe, blowback is inevitable.
