From the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Joe Cohn):
Earlier this week, Stanford University suspended an instructor while the institution investigates allegations Jewish and Israeli students were targeted for discriminatory treatment in a required, first-year "Civic, Liberal and Global Education" course. Discriminating against students based on a protected characteristic such as race, gender, or national origin, violates federal law.
Academic freedom protects an exceptionally wide range of pedagogically relevant classroom speech by faculty. But the alleged conduct in this case, taken together, appears to cross the line. According to several news reports, in impromptu discussions of the Israeli war with Hamas during two classes, the instructor allegedly:
- asked Jewish and Israeli students to raise their hands;
- separated the Jewish and Israeli students from their peers, who he said represented the "colonized," by ordering the Jewish and Israeli students to stand in the corner;
- labeled the Jewish and Israeli students "colonizers;" and
- argued that Israel is a colonizer that has killed more people than were killed during the Holocaust.
- There are also conflicting reports about how the instructor may have taken, or otherwise separated, one or more students from their belongings before they were sent to the corner.
