A liberal US college is being investigated after one of its professors called for the elimination of Israel.
The Department of Education has launched a federal probe into Oberlin College in Ohio, after it has been accused of allowing antisemitism to breed on campus.
The investigation is examining whether the college violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act 1964, which protects people from discrimination based on race, colour of national origin.
The liberal college could lose some of the millions in federal funding it receives because of the probe.
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Last year, Oberlin college received more than $5million in federal grants.
The comments were made by Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who teaches religion as well as Middle East and North Africa studies.
The lecturer has called himself a “professor of peace”.
The probe that was sparked by Mahallati’s comments began in 2019, when a graduate complained to the Education Department.
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Melissa Landa, an Oberlin College alum, sent in a dossier focusing on Mahallati’s alleged antisemitic behaviour between 2014 and 2017.
Landa graduated from Oberlin in 1986 and has since founded the Alliance for Israel to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which aims at eradicating any hostility towards Jewish students at the university.
The dossier accuses the “professor of peace” of supporting Hamas and encouraging students to write anti-Israel blogs for credit.
He allegedly told his students in 2016 that “Israel is a colonialist state” and “Israel is an apartheid state”.
Mahalatti, 71, has also taught at Ivy League universities, including Columbia, Georgetown and Princeton.
He was previously Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.
The investigation is examining whether the college violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act 1964
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Whilst occupying that role, he allegedly supported Iran’s Supreme Leader’s call to assassinate Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie.
“I think all Islamic countries agree with Iran,” he said in 1989.
“All Islamic nations and countries agree with Iran that any blasphemous statement against sacred figures should be condemned.”
His classes at Oberlin were cancelled in spring of this year – he is on “sabbatical” according to an Oberlin spokesperson.
Amnesty International accused Mahalatti of helping the Iranian government cover up the massacre of jailed political opponents in 1988.
The complaint against Oberlin also accuses the college of failing to protect Jewish students.
It details how members of a campus group Students for a Free Palestine placed 2,000 black flags outside a venue where Jewish students were holding Rosh Hashanah services in 2014.
Landa claims that the flags implied that Jewish students were responsible for events in Israel.
