‘YOU CAN’T HIDE’: Mask-wearing activists heckle, threaten Jewish speaker at University of Michigan
‘Dollinger, you can’t hide! Zionism is a crime!’ the activists yelled.
‘They were saying because you consider Zionism part of your Jewish identity, you should not be on the University of Michigan campus. . . . That’s antisemitism,’ the professor said.
Disruptive protesters at the University of Michigan shouted at and threatened a professor during a lecture on Jewish history.
Marc Dollinger, a Jewish Studies professor at San Francisco State University, came to the University of Michigan on Nov. 19 to deliver a lecture titled “Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance In The 1960s.”
As Dollinger was speaking, mask-wearing activists came into the classroom and began yelling at him: “Dollinger, you can’t hide! Zionism is a crime!” and “Anti-Black and settler too, Zionist violence we see you!” J. reported.
Dollinger told J.: “It’s kind of strange for them to yell about Zionism when my talk is about civil rights. . . . It’s one thing if they were coming to debate the thesis of my book. But they weren’t. They were saying because you consider Zionism part of your Jewish identity, you should not be on the University of Michigan campus. . . . That’s antisemitism.”
The University of Michigan also called the incident anti-Semitic in a statement condemning the protestors’ actions, and stated that the lecture was disrupted even though it “did not include a pro-Israel message nor did it involve controversial issues related to the crisis in the Middle East.”
“Shouting down speakers for any reason is unacceptable at the University of Michigan. It violates our academic mission and our commitment to free speech and diversity of thought. Doing so in a way that, in this case, targeted a person because of their Jewish identity is particularly abhorrent and will not be tolerated,” the university’s statement added.
Dollinger also stated that the protesters “were not interested in de-escalation,” though they departed before police could arrive to escort them out, J. wrote.
The “League Of Revolutionary Students” and the university’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace took responsibility for the disruption. The League of Revolutionary Students wrote in an Instagram post: “[Dollinger’s] attempt to co-opt solidarity with the Black liberation struggle is not welcome on our campus. The verdict is clear: the university we want doesn’t welcome proponents of genocidal zionist ideology.”
The University of Michigan referred Campus Reform to the statement mentioned above that was previously drafted by the school.
Campus Reform has reached out to Dr. Dollinger for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
