University of Arizona Suspends Two Profs Over Israel/Hamas Comments
“Your professors are gaslighting Jewish students, endorsing terrorism, and spreading blatantly false information”
These professors are in the early education program. What reason did they have to even discuss this?
Tucson.com reports:
U of A suspends two education professors over Israel-Hamas comments
Two college of education professors at the University of Arizona have been suspended with pay for the rest of the semester after a student released audio recordings of a classroom discussion about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Professors Rebecca Lopez, director of the early childhood education program, and Rebecca Zapien, community liaison, are being investigated by the university while they are suspended. They were teaching a class called cultural pluralism for young children when the audio was recorded.
The audio clips were shared by the X (formerly Twitter) account @IsraelWarRoom, a pro-Israel platform with more than 260,000 followers.
“In an education class at (the UA), these professors chose to discuss the current Israel-Gaza war and the broader Israeli/Palestinian conflict,” the tweet reads. “What was shared was an entirely BIASED, ANTISEMITIC, BLATANTLY FALSE, and TERRORISM-SUPPORTING narrative.”
Posted in the thread were recordings of Lopez and Zapien speaking about the conflict. At one point, they conflated Hamas to the Black Panther party in the United States. In another, they shared ways students could boycott Israel.
The pro-Israel account ended the thread with a message directly for UA President Robert Robbins.
“Your professors are gaslighting Jewish students, endorsing terrorism, and spreading blatantly false information,” the tweet read. “We DEMAND you do something about it.”
In a statement to the Arizona Daily Star, UA spokeswoman Pam Scott wrote that “the college and university will determine how to proceed after they have completed an ongoing investigation.”
She added that “in the meantime, alternative instructors will be taking on responsibilities for the course in question.”
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“in the meantime, alternative instructors will be taking on responsibilities for the course in question.”
“a class called cultural pluralism for young children”
Just cut to the chase and cancel the entire class. It’s clearly brainwashing.
I thought of that, but cultural pluralism really is something it’s appropriate to teach young children. It should be a normal thing in preschool to introduce the children to various cultures, especially those of their classmates or that they’re likely to encounter in the general community, so they know that not everyone is alike, and that that’s OK. There’s no reason for such instruction to veer off into the woods of “social justice” and theories of “oppression”.
At issue is are they actually doing that?
I don’t know the answer but the recorded conversation has me giving grave doubts about that.
I think that should be “compared”, not “conflated”. I don’t think “conflated” goes with “to”.
But they compared Hamas to another murderous criminal gang? Sounds appropriate to me. I mean, sure, the scale is way off. It’s like comparing a Force 5 hurricane to a common gale, but at least they are the same kind of thing. That’s not as bad as denying what kind of thing Hamas is.
Oh, wait, they think being compared to the Black Panthers is a good thing?! In that case there’s a deeper and earlier problem.
Next up: Comparing Josef Mengele to his fellow medicos, Che Guevara, Bashir Assad, and Dr Crippen.
It makes no sense for an instructor to talk about their personal views on a subject totally unrelated to the course at hand.
They are stealing class time that should be used to teach the class material.
I perceive that they were not punished.
They get the rest of the term off, with full pay and benefits.
Sounds like a paid vacation to me.