HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (WJC)– Two state lawmakers have sent a letter of complaint to the head of Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, about a literature professor who made strong anti-Israel statements at a rally in Washington, DC in September.
Professor Kaukab Siddique, 67, had said: “We must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel, if possible by peaceful means. Dear brothers and sisters: unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism.”
State Senators Daylin Leach and Anthony Williams sent a letter to Lincoln President Ivory V. Nelson asking if the university was aware of the professor’s philosophy when he was hired and later awarded tenure, if the “anti-Semitic diatribes” were part of college instruction or repeated elsewhere on campus, and what steps were the university would take to ensure Siddique was not passing his denial of the Holocaust on to his students.
“While he has a right to free speech on his own time, he does not have the right to teach this trash to students in a classroom,” Leach told a local newspaper, adding: ““I want to know why he isn’t being condemned by the university.”
Siddique told the ‘Philadelphia Inquirer’: “I got a little fired up and said a few things that were pretty strong. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t say them again.” He also said that he was “against Israel, not against Jews.” A statement by Lincoln University said officials had been unaware of Siddique’s “offensive views” and them being expressed on campus.
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress