STANFORD, CALIFORNIA: Stanford University lecturer, Ameer Hasan Loggins has been suspended following an incident in which he asked Jewish students to raise their hands and sit in the corner during a classroom discussion about the oppression of Palestinians.
The instructor, a 46-year-old, was teaching a required undergraduate course titled 'Civil, Liberal, and Global Education' when the controversial incident took place.
Ameer Hasan Loggins rounded up Jewish students
According to reports, during the class, Loggins asked Jewish and Israeli students to "identify themselves" and instructed them to move to a corner of the room.
He allegedly stated, "This is what Israel does to the Palestinians," while also making provocative comments, such as comparing the number of Holocaust victims to the casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"How many people died in the Holocaust?" the professor then asked the Jewish students, to which they replied, "Six million."
Loggins responded, "Colonizers killed more than 6 million. Israel is a colonizer."
Multiple students found the incident deeply troubling and shared their concerns with Rabbi Dov Greenberg, the director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center.
Some students described the event as reminiscent of the 1930s, a period marked by rising anti-Semitism and discrimination.
Stanford suspends Ameer Hasan Loggins
Stanford University President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez have since addressed the university community through a letter.
"We have received a report of a class in which a non-faculty instructor is reported to have addressed the Middle East conflict in a manner that called out individual students in class based on their backgrounds and identities," the letter read.
"Without prejudging the matter, this report is a cause for serious concern. Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students," reported Daily Mail.
The university has suspended Loggins while they investigate the matter further.
"It is important to remember that controversial and even offensive speech is allowed except when it crosses the line into certain illegal categories such as threats or harassment for which the threshold is quite high," the letter stated.
"Moreover, it is worth remembering that while a climate of free expression requires breathing room, our aspiration as a community is for respectful and substantive discourse," it further stated.
