StandWithUs Calls Out Jew-hating UC Merced Professor

Other items in today’s column include:
*Scott Wiener says he and Todd Gloria subjected to anti-LGBTQ attacks by Q-Anon
*News media should report religious groups’ positive accomplishments
*ADL: Anti-Semites Foster Anti Vaccination Cause
*Marc Chagall Subject of Guri Stark Lecture Jan. 20 at Congregation Beth Israel 

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Should faculty at the state-funded University of California at Merced be teaching the following?

“The Zionist Brain” is divided into such sections as “Frontal Money Lobe,” “World Domination Lobe,” “Control,” “Land Usurpation,” and “Elitism.”

Or how about this?

“The Zionists and IsraHell interest have embedded themselves in every component of the American system, media, banking, policy, commerce … just a veneer of serving US interest and population – everyone pretends that is the case.”

Both examples of classic anti-Semitic tropes above are Tweets that were sent out this year by Abbas Ghassemi, who identifies himself on those Tweets as a UC Merced professor.

StandWithUs, through its Chief Executive Officer Roz Rothstein,  its Saidhoff Legal Department Director Yael Lerman, and its Center for Combating Antisemitism Director Carly F. Gammill,  says the Tweets from Ghassemi, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, “display an alarming hatred for Jews, Israelis and Zionists.

“We are dismayed that a professor with an apparently aggressive and pervasive animus toward Jews and Israelis – a protected minority on your campus – is responsible for grading the very students he appears to loathe,”  the nonprofit organization’s leaders wrote to UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz.

Previously James Chiavelli, UC Merced’s assistant vice chancellor of external relations, had commented that Ghassemi’s Tweets were  “the opinions of a private individual, not the positions of the institution.”  Furthermore, Chiavelli said, as an individual Ghassemi has the right to freedom of expression.

To this, the StandWithUs leaders responded: “We believe that free speech and academic freedom are paramount constitutional values; so too is the responsibility of university leaders to use their own First Amendment rights to condemn hate and ensure a non-discriminatory academic environment for its students. The issue here is not whether Ghassemi has a constitutional right to make antisemitic comments, which of course he does. The issue is that Ghassemi has been making these comments publicly on Twitter where he identifies himself as a UC Merced professor, and he is responsible for educating the very people he appears to loathe and about whom he attributes racist conspiracy theories. Ghassemi’s discriminatory statements are egregious for a professor presumably responsible for teaching and grading a protected minority on campus—Jewish and Israeli students.”

The StandWithUs leaders then went on to urge Chancellor Sánchez Muñoz to take disciplinary action against Ghassemi.

They wrote:

There is ample precedent for disciplining both tenured and non-tenured professors for professional misconduct in similar situations. Recently, Babson College fired a professor for making a political comment on his personal Facebook page suggesting that Iran choose sites in the United States to bomb. Their investigation determined that the professor’s statements did not represent the values and culture of the college—and those statements did not even involve expressions of hate and prejudice toward a protected group as in the situation at UC Merced.

At Rutgers University, tenured professor Michael Chikindas was disciplined by the administration after he posted antisemitic rants on his Facebook page. Among other disciplinary measures, Chikindas was barred from teaching required classes, was removed from his role as director of a university institute and was required to take remedial courses. At Oberlin College, the administration removed Professor Joy Karega from her professorship after she spread antisemitic conspiracy theories online.

Like these professors, Ghassemi should face an investigation and repercussions for his antisemitic rhetoric, just as we presume you would investigate similar allegations of statements from faculty that targeted students based on race, gender, or sexual identity. Instead of the message already conveyed by your administration protecting an allegedly antisemitic professor and downplaying his expressions of hate, we urge you to send a clear message to your community that there is no place for discrimination or bigotry at UC Merced, and that all members of your community are protected equally.

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Scott Wiener says he and Todd Gloria subjected to anti-LGBTQ attacks by Q-Anon

In a post-election news release, State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) says that he and newly elected San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria were subjected to attacks by QAnon after Wiener introduced and Gloria supported a bill to end “discrimination against LGBTQ youth on California’s sex offender registry.”

He said after the bill was introduced, “I started receiving an onslaught of hate mail from faceless internet trolls” while Gloria “was viciously attacked online and in right-wing news sources hellbent on ending his campaign.  I was sent death and lynching threats.  Trolls mentioned my family members.  They rolled out anti-LGBTQ taunts that are better left in the dark ages.”

“The onslaught was overwhelming,” he continued in a fundraising letter for the LGBTQ Victory Fund, “and it looked like the hatred might pay off.  But while Todd and I won our races, the whole point was to intimidate us into silence, to stop us from running.  LGBTQ Victory Fund has already heard from some amazing leaders who saw what happened and now are rethinking a run for office, fearing for their safety, and loved ones.   We can’t let these trolls win and threaten LGBTQ candidates into submission…”

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News media should report religious groups’ positive accomplishments

Lallia Allali, chair of the San Diego Unified School District English Advisory Committee, wrote an OpEd in today’s San Diego Union-Tribune that I believe is instructive, not only to news publications to which it was partially addressed, but also to all of us. In short, she said that the positive accomplishments of Muslims, and by extension other groups that are negatively stereotyped, should be recognized and publicized whenever they occur, so as to combat those stereotypes.  I agree.

In her opinion piece, she told of Ugar Sahin and Ozelm Tureci, two Muslims who founded the BioNTech Company in Germany and later teamed up with Pfizer to develop the Covid-19 vaccine now being distributed around the world.  She also told of Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan immigrant to the United States, who is a chief science advisor to Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government program to get coronavirus vaccines into the arms of Americans as soon as possible.

Allali pointedly commented, “Ironically, Trump’s presidency started with a Muslim ban, was plagued by the Covid-19 pandemic and ended with Muslims developing the vaccine that could save the future of our nation and our world.  The very Muslims that Trump didn’t want in his country changed its future for the better.”

She also said that when media report about a terrorist attack, mention is always made of the perpetrators’ religion.  “But when Muslims are positively impacting our world, their religion and identity are not associated with their actions.”

Bravo for her!

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ADL: Anti-Semites Foster Anti Vaccination Cause

The Anti-Defamation League reports that neo-Nazi and other anti-Semitic groups are fanning distrust of the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna and now being distributed throughout the world.  The ADL reports:

Much of the antisemitic messaging around the vaccine highlights Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s Jewish heritage. This fact provides antisemites with “evidence” that the widespread vaccine effort is part of a calculated, long-term Jewish plot to institute a “Global Jew Government,” a new iteration of the age-old canard of international Jewish control.

Some believe Jews will achieve this power by using the vaccine ingredients to sterilize the “white race.” Still others assert that the “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government) plans to “enslave of all humanity” by preventing the unvaccinated from working, travelling or going to school.

These antisemitic theories of the “Jew Vaccine” proliferate across white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, as well as in antisemitic and coronavirus conspiracy social media channels. One conspiracy, posted to the white supremacist website Stormfront, alleges: “The Jews vaccine changes DNA so that the DNA itself will produce any proteins that the Jews program it to produce via 5G. This gives the Jews the ability to kill you by using 5G to tell the DNA to produce poisons.”

Others evoke the Holocaust when discussing the vaccine. A Greek newspaper compared Pfizer CEO Bourla, who was born in Greece, to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, known for his gruesome medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. A UK newspaper printed an image of the entrance to Auschwitz, changing the iconic “Arbeit Macht Frei” to “Vaccines are Safe Path to Freedom,” and vaccination cards have been compared to the yellow star Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

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Marc Chagall Subject of Guri Stark Lecture Jan. 20 at Congregation Beth Israel 

Guri Stark, an artist, lecturer and author, will deliver a Zoom  lecture entitled “Marc Chagall--A Master of Dreams and Storytelling” at  6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 20, sponsored by the Men’s Club of Congregation Beth Israel.

“With his passion for art and music, Guri has been offering lectures for more than 15 years,” according to a news release from the Reform congregation.  “His multi-media lectures provide a unique perspective by combining the artists’ personal biographies, world historical events that influenced the artists and their position in the different art movements of the time.  Guri’s new book, Third Wind and Three Oceans Away, has just been released.  The book includes two stories that deal with Israeli, American and Jewish identities.  They are about intriguing, and at times impossible relationships.  It shows us how these relationships develop and evolve, and ultimately get resolved.  The stories move between generations and between continents.  From Israel to Poland, to Australia, to Buenos Aires.  They bring an interesting perspective on life from a second-generation son to Holocaust survivors.”

To register for Stark’s free Zoom lecture, RSVP via this website.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com