Stanford suspends lecturer accused of making his Jewish students stand in a corner and calling Israelis ‘colonizers’

Stanford University has suspended a lecturer following accusations that he directed Jewish students in his class to stand in the corner and described Israelis as ‘colonizers.’

Nourya Cohen and Andrei Mandelshtam, Israeli student leaders on the campus, told the San Francisco Chronicle they had spoken to 18 of the lecturer’s students this week.

All had asked to remain anonymous due to tensions on campus after Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel at the weekend from Gaza, where the militant group killed hundreds of people and abducted an estimated 150 in attacks on Israeli towns, a music festival, and military bases.

In response, Israel launched days of air strikes on Gaza, which health authorities say have killed hundreds more people.

As of Friday, the UN estimated 1,000 Israelis were dead and 2,806 wounded. Gazan authorities estimated that 1,537 Palestinians were dead and 6,612 wounded.

Cohen and Mandelshtam told the Chronicle the lecturer delivered impromptu lessons in two classes, which he said would be focused on the topic of colonialism.

They also said students in one of the classes recounted the lecturer blaming the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas on Zionists and saying Hamas’ actions were part of a resistance.

“He then asked Jewish students to raise their hands” and separated them from their belongings, explaining that he was simulating what Jews were doing to Palestinians, Cohen told the Chronicle.

Cohen said the lecturer asked students how many people had died in the Holocaust. When one student answered six million, she said, the lecturer replied: “Yes. Only six million.”

Students said the lecturer told them more people died as a result of colonialism than in the Holocaust and that colonization was what happened to Palestinians, Cohen and Mandelshtam added.

They also said students recalled the lecturer separating people in both classes into different groups based on their identities and backgrounds and calling them “colonizers” and “colonized.”

Rabbi Dov Greenberg, the director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center, told Forward the students he’d spoken to recounted the teacher telling Jewish students to take their belongings and stand in a corner and saying, “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians.”

Greenberg said that he’d spoken to three students who attended the class and, citing their accounts, that the lecturer had said: “Colonizers killed more than six million. Israel is a colonizer.”

In a statement, Stanford University said: “Without prejudging the matter, this report is a cause for serious concern. Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students. The instructor in this course is not currently teaching while the university works to ascertain the facts of the situation.”

Cohen and Mandelshtam did not immediately respond to a request by Insider for comment. Stanford University declined to comment on the investigation and directed Insider to a statement on its website.

The new outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel has led to a spike in tensions on US college campuses, with a truck this week driving around Harvard identifying students it said had signed a document blaming Israel for the war.

Insider this week reported that at least five Harvard University student associations were back-pedaling on their support for a joint letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack.

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