A Jewish professor at University of California, Santa Barbara is under academic investigation and has been accused of being anti-Semitic for sending students an e-mail comparing Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip with the Holocaust.
Sociology professor William I. Robinson denied the claims on Thursday and portrayed the furor as a threat by Israel’s supporters to academic freedom. Two prominent Jewish groups continued to demand that he apologize. On Jan. 19 Robinson, sent an e-mail to 80 students in his “Sociology of Globalization” class entitled: “Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.”
“Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs,” Robinson wrote. “We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide….”
Robinson’s e-mail included a forwarded e-mail featuring juxtaposed photos from the Nazi era and the Gaza offensive with similar subjects, including grisly photos of children’s corpses.
The e-mail set off a furor on the campus. Two Jewish students dropped Robinson’s class and filed grievance letters with the university, claiming they felt intimidated by his strong and unsolicited opinion and the graphic images.
The university’s Academic Senate, comprised of faculty members, has created an ad hoc committee to review claims that Robinson violated university policy that bars professors from intimidating students and using campus resources for personal, political reasons unrelated to their classes.
“It is antisemitism,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.
