A Stanford University lecturer singled out students based on their backgrounds while discussing the Israel-Hamas war, according to students.
The prestigious California school announced on Wednesday that it had received reports that a “non-faculty instructor” allegedly “addressed the Middle East conflict in a manner that called out individual students in class based on their backgrounds and identities.” The university said the instructor is no longer teaching while the incident is being investigated.
A school spokesperson did not provide comment on the incident beyond Wednesday’s announcement.
Nourya Cohen and Andrei Mandelshtam, co-presidents of Stanford’s Israeli Student Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle that a lecturer “called out individual students in class based on their backgrounds and identities.”
The pair reportedly interviewed some students enrolled in a course called College 101, and those students wanted to remain anonymous, given the tension surrounding the conflict on college campuses and the world over.
Apparently, the lecturer taught two unplanned lessons on Tuesday with a total of 18 students. According to one anonymous student who spoke to the duo, one lesson the instructor led focused on colonialism.
The instructor allegedly blamed the ongoing war on “Zionists”, the outlet reported, and said that Hamas’ attack was an act of resistance. “He then asked Jewish students to raise their hands,” before separating those students from their belongings in an effort to reenact “what Jews were doing to Palestinians,” the outlet said, based on Ms Cohen’s account.
“He asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” Ms Cohen added. When students replied that six million had died in the Holocaust, “he said, ‘Yes. Only six million,’” she said.
In addition, students told the co-presidents that the instructor asked whether students knew who former King Leopold of Belgium was. No one reacted. That’s when the lecturer said the former ruler — who colonised Congo in the late 1800s — had killed 12 million Africans.
Then, according to the pair of student leaders, the instructor informed College 101 students that more people died from colonisation than from the Holocaust. The lecturer then added that colonisation was what has happened to Palestinians.
The instructor reportedly then asked students to say where their ancestors were from and then marked each one as either “coloniser” or “colonised,” depending on their answers.
One student said they had ancestors from Israel, prompting the lecturer to say: “Oh, definitely a coloniser.”
Ms Cohen reflected on hearing fellow students’ stories: “I feel absolutely dehumanised that someone in charge of students and developing minds could possibly try and justify the massacre of my people,” she said. “It’s like I’m reliving the justification of Nazis 80 years ago on today’s college campus.”
In a statement, the college wrote: “We have heard many expressions of concern regarding student safety. We have heard from Jewish students, faculty, and staff concerned about rising antisemitism. We have heard from Palestinian students who have received threatening emails and phone calls. We want to make clear that Stanford stands unequivocally against hatred on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, and other categories.”
