Two Pennsylvania lawmakers have written to the president of a private university in the state about a professor who made anti-Israel statements at a rally.
Kaukab Siddique, 67, an associate professor of English and literature at Lincoln University in Oxford, said at a Labor Day rally in Washington, D.C., that “We must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel—if possible by peaceful means.” He added, “Dear brothers and sisters, unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism.”
Following last week’s release of a videotape of the rally, state Sens. Daylin Leach and Anthony Hardy Williams, both Philadelphia-area Democrats, wrote to Lincoln President Ivory Nelson to find out if his “anti-Semitic diatribes” were being heard as well inside the university classrooms at the historically black university.
“We support academic freedom, and certainly a professor has the right to criticize Israel, or any other entity or policy he wishes,” they wrote. But, the lawmakers said, ‘the Holocaust is not a theory or opinion. It is historically documented fact, denied only by those with a hateful or anti-Semitic agenda.”
Siddique, a Muslim originally from Pakistan, had questioned the validity of the Holocaust at the rally, according to reports, as he has done in published articles.
A tenured professor who has taught at the university since 1985, Siddique told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “I got a little fired up and said a few things that were pretty strong. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t say them again.” He also said that he is “against Israel, not against Jews.”
Lincoln, while a private university, receives public funding and offers reduced tuition for Pennsylvania residents. Notable graduates include Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes and Cab Calloway.
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