Trustees and alumni of a liberal arts college in Ohio are calling on the school administration to conduct a review and report back to them after a professor posted a series of “anti-Semitic and abhorrent” commentary on social media. The Board of Trustees at ultra-liberal Oberlin College demanded answers in a statement posted on the school’s own website, blasting Professor Joy Karega’s bizarre posts and demanding that immediate action be taken.
“These postings are anti-Semitic and abhorrent,” Chairman Clyde McGregor said in the statement. “We deplore anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry. They have no place at Oberlin. These grave issues must be considered expeditiously,” he continued, adding that the school and faculty must “challenge the assertion that there is any justification for these repugnant postings and to report back to the Board.”
Marvin Krislov, the president of Oberlin, has stood by Karega and defended her freedom of speech since the controversy erupted late last month. The professor, who teaches rhetoric and composition, has been publishing offensive commentary since January 2015, when she posted “an image of an ISIS terrorist pulling off and Mask with the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the caption, ‘FRANCE WANTS TO FREE PALESTINE? TIME FOR A FALSE FLAG…’”
On Monday, Oberlin officials released a joint statement with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, AJC Cleveland, the Anti-Defamation League Cleveland Region and the Cleveland Hillel Foundation, which met with Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov and his senior staff.
“In a welcoming atmosphere, we discussed, openly and candidly, the potential implications of a professor’s personal views on classroom activity and student intimidation,” the statement reads. “We also discussed our shared respect for academic freedom.”
The groups also announced that college is following procedures already in place to deal with the matter.
A school spokesman told FoxNews.com that no action has been taken as of yet.
Karega has written numerous Facebook posts asserting that Israel was the mastermind behind various terrorist attacks around the world, including 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. “This ain’t even hard,” she wrote in her January 2015 post about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. “They unleashed Mossad on France and it’s clear why.” She has also propagated incoherent conspiracy theories such as “ISIS was created by the CIA and Mossad so that ‘Israeli and Zionist Jews’ could carry out the 9/11 terror attacks.”
Karega has locked down most of her social media, but she shared a public post last week promoting an event scheduled for Wednesday night that features Robin Kelley, a history professor from the University of California at Los Angeles.
“Trust, when I come up out of my Unbothered state of being, I’ll have a lot to say (analysis, no doubt) about the kinds of intimidation and silencing tactics that are rhetorically enacted in digital spaces […] and how common it is for Black women, who are early in their career on the tenure track as part of the professoriate, to be prime targets for these kinds of activities and practices,” she wrote last Friday.
Last year, Karega was included in a rundown of professors who deserved tenure as part of a laundry list of demands by the Black Student Union following a period of racial tension on campus.
Hopefully, Oberlin will at least rule out giving this nutty professor tenure.
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