USC Professor John Strauss has been reinstated to campus after his remarks that every Hamas terrorist “should be killed” went viral.
As previously reported by the Journal, Strauss had said to pro-Palestinian protesters on Nov. 9: “Hamas are murderers, that’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are.” A selectively edited clip of him just saying, “Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are” went viral on social media to claim that he wanted all Palestinians killed. Strauss has maintained that the “every one should be killed” line was referencing Hamas, not all Palestinians. After the video went viral, the university relegated him to teaching virtually the rest of the semester, which the university has claimed was a “precautionary” move to “minimize classroom disruption.”
On Dec. 2, the university released a statement on the provost’s website: “All of the restrictions previously placed on Professor Strauss have now been lifted.” Strauss’s attorney, Samantha Harris, told The Los Angeles Times that Strauss’s reinstatement to campus “is a step in the right direction.”
“But,” she added, “he is still under investigation and facing potential discipline for his speech, which is both a violation of USC’s own promises of free speech and an outrageous, viewpoint-discriminatory double standard in terms of how USC enforces its policies.”.
StandWithStrauss, the group who posted petition supporting Strauss, wrote in its update: “While we are grateful to the University for removing the sanctions placed on Professor Strauss, we remain disappointed that it took this long to correct this egregious wrong. Today’s actions by the university represent a step in the right direction, but they are still not enough. We remain committed to our calls for the institution to drop its baseless investigation into Professor Strauss.”
