Anti-Semetic Professors in New Jersey and Free Speech

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ASPartOfMe
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21 Nov 2017, 11:20 am

Rutgers prof called ‘motherf***ing Jews’ the ‘most racist religion in the world

Quote:
A professor who has worked at Rutgers for almost two decades is now under investigation by the school for a litany of anti-Semitic social media posts under his name.

Attention was first cast on the social media posts of Michael Chikindas — who, according to his resume, is a professor in the Department of Food Science, and director of the Center for Digestive Health — after they were shared by the blog Israellycool. The site, which describes itself as “one of Israel’s largest English-blogs” published screenshots of Chikindas’ Facebook page, does not currently appear to be publicly available.

The Algemeiner, which describes itself as “the fastest growing Jewish newspaper in America,” also quoted Chikindas calling Judaism “the most racist religion in the world,” and calling Israel a “terrorist country.” It linked to Facebook posts that no longer appear available.

n one of the screenshots of a post Chikindas says the “jewish mother****** do not control me.”

“They can go f*** each other in their fat arses — you see, I do not have anything to loose, hence nothing to be controlled,” he wrote.

That post was sharing another page’s link to an article titled “The Globalists: Who controlls us.”

Another included crude caricatures of Jews:

All of the screen shots shared by the blog appear to be from May of this year.

statement from Rutgers University, reached by New Jersey 101.5 Wednesday, called Chikindas’ comments and posts “antithetical to our university’s principles and values of respect for people of all backgrounds, including, among other groups, our large and vibrant Jewish Community.

The statement adds that his comments “do not represent the position of the University.”

“Rutgers’ position on free speech is clear: All of the members of our community, including faculty and staff, are free to express their viewpoints in public forums as private citizens,” the school said. “Yet at Rutgers University we must also foster an environment free from discrimination, as articulated in our policy prohibiting discrimination.”

The statement from Rutgers said the school is “reviewing this matter to determine if actions taken in the context of his role as a faculty member at Rutgers may have violated that policy.”

Chikindas is not the first area professor to find himself in trouble for making apparent anti-Semitic comments. Last month, New Jersey Institute of Technology lecturer Jason Reza Jorjani was seen in a video predicting the return of concentration camps, and saying that Adolf Hitler would be remembered as a “great European leader” in the future.

The video was shot by a student in Sweden who went undercover with the alt-right as part of a project for a group Hope not Hate.

“We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great,” he is heard saying in the video. “And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own history — no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader.”

While Chikandis has not been linked to any particular group, Jorjani is described as one of the founders of the AltRight Corporation, describidng itself as “an organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among alt-right groups in Europe and North America.”

On his blog Jorjani called the video “trash,” and “was obtained surreptitiously under false pretenses.”

“It has been deceptively edited to make it appear as if I am advocating genocidal extreme right-wing policies,” he said. “My nightmarish prediction of a future tat would follow from Western policymakers’ failure to address the Muslim migrant crisis in the present has been taken out of context and made to appear as if it is advocacy for concentration camps and expulsions of war … at the cost of a few hundred million people.”

Calling the statements in the video “antitheticial to our institution’s core values,” the school reviewed the matter and announced that Jorjani would be placed on administrative leave pending a full review.


http://www.israellycool.com/2017/11/21/rutgers-president-defends-free-speech-of-antisemitic-professor-michael-chikindas-other-haters/
Quote:
The president of Rutgers University in New Jersey defended the free speech rights of three faculty members who have recently come under intense criticism for their comments on Israel and Jews.

Speaking in a town hall sponsored by the Rutgers student government on Thursday, President Robert Barchi noted ongoing media attention focused on Michael Chikindas, a microbiology professor who published multiple antisemitic, homophobic and misogynistic social media posts; Jasbir Puar, a women’s studies professor whose latest book accuses Israel of injuring Palestinians “in order to control them”; and Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor of international law who accused Israeli officials of trafficking children’s organs while serving as a spokesperson for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Barchi began his address by illustrating the difference between free speech and harassment, noting that placing “a swastika on the side of a building on campus” would not be a violation of the First Amendment, even if it might breach university policies against vandalism.

His argument drew an objection from a woman in the crowd, who said to applause, “it is not free speech.”

“If you take that swastika and put it on the door of a dormitory, that’s not protected,” Barchi argued in return, “but if it is a general building on the university, by first amendment rights, it’s protected.”



Barchi acknowledged that Chikindas — who described Judaism as “the most racist religion in the world” — made “crude jokes about Israel, Judaism, women, homosexuality, a whole lot of things which most of us would find repugnant.”

“On the other hand, they are also things that are covered by his First Amendment right to free speech,” the president argued. “You may not like what the guy says, but you have to like the fact that he can say it.”

Barchi said that his administration confirmed “with the state’s attorney and with our legal scholars” that Chikindas’ postings are constitutionally protected, “so there’s nothing there that is actionable.”

He added that the university was investigating whether Chikindas’ postings “create an environment in his work that would compromise his ability to teach or do research.”

“That investigation is done independently, it will conclude shortly and we’ll decide what if anything we need to do from there,” Barchi explained. “But I can tell you that up until this point, his teaching record is actually very strong

Barchi also defended Puar’s academic freedom, calling her “a well-respected scholar.”

At a 2016 talk, Puar expressed support for “armed resistance in Palestine” and repeated allegations that the bodies of “young Palestinian men … were mined for organs for scientific research,” according to a transcript provided by the alumni group Fairness To Israel.

In a 2015 essay, she also wrote that “Palestinian trauma is overshadowed” because “Israel in particular and Jewish populations in general have thoroughly hijacked the discourse of trauma through exceptionalizing Holocaust victimization.”

Puar’s latest work — The Right to Maim — contends that the Israeli military rejects a shoot-to-kill policy not out of humanitarian concern, but out of a desire to keep “Palestinian populations as perpetually debilitated, and yet alive, in order to control them.”

The book, Barchi said, “was reviewed independently by scholars around the country. It was then accepted for publication by the Duke University Press, which is a very prominent scholarly press, and published. It’s a piece of scholarly work.”

“Once again, you may not like it, but it’s protected by academic freedom, absolutely, 100 percent,” he emphasized.


I do not know anything about the President of Rutgers but I wonder if Professor Chikindas would still be employed if he posted things in a similar vain about blacks, transgenders, etc. I doubt it.

Rutgers (as is Berkeley )is a public university so "free speech" is an issue not just in the colloquial sense as it is used today but also in the constitutional sense.


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JohnPowell
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22 Nov 2017, 1:09 pm

The guy is being anti-Jewish, and he's just being downright nasty and insulting. Either we have free speech or we don't. Only threats should be taken seriously.

Jasbir Puar makes some true points there about Israel. I mean Israel is a racist state and it does awful things to the Palestinians to control them. Having things like a "Jewish newpaper" is racist itself.


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