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 commentsTwo 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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