Professor Gets Into It With Palestinian Protesters In Very Tense Stand-off At UT-Austin
10 years ago

A video of an intense altercation between a liberal arts professor at UT-Austin and pro-Palestinian student protestors is going viral this week, after the protestors released it online.

According to the description, 12 members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee disrupted a public event hosted by UT’s Institute for Israeli Studies, titled “The Origin of a Species: The Birth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Culture.” Their disruption was met with physical intimidation from one UT professor who will probably face disciplinary action for his intimidation tactics.

The University’s College of Liberal Arts responded with this statement, via KHOU:

The University of Texas at Austin strives to be a campus where people with different viewpoints can debate issues —including the Israeli – Palestinian conflict — openly and respectfully.

Our Institute for Israel Studies has always strived to do that and, on Friday, invited an esteemed scholar to deliver remarks and engage in critical debate.

The university has existing protocols for protesters to voice their points of view and be heard effectively. We are trying to determine if they were followed in this case.

Responding to a call from the event, University Police spoke with all the parties involved on Friday. My office will do the same. We are gathering more information and looking for ways to improve the constructive dialogue on campus.

If you’re asking me, I would say every party is in the wrong here. There was no need to interrupt this event in an attempt to rile up people who obviously disagree with you. And if you’re the professor, you have to be smart enough to not give in to the protesters by getting all heated and confrontational — something these protesters absolutely wanted to see so they could release this video and have it garner national attention.

I think we, as good citizens and stewards of different universities across this great nation, should raise money for a tab where everyone is invited to drink beer and talk about their political issues in the comfort of a nice bar. No need for hostility. Just grab a few drinks and discuss the pros and cons of whatever issue is concerning them the most at this moment. To be honest, I think this solution would work universally with most issues across college campuses — but that is just one man’s opinion.

We will update this story if UT-Austin takes any further action.

[via KHOU]

Image via YouTube

  4. Yasser_Arafrat

    Prime example of the phenomena of liberals infecting a social movement and then criticisizing the real members of that movement for not using their liberal methodologies. when they pull this shit they make us look bad. I fucking hate liberals, they aren’t pro-Palestine, they’re attention whores that want to be the center of every problem that doesn’t have anything to do with them. Fuck Abbas, Netanyahu, ISIL, and the Saudis

    10 years ago at 12:31 pm
  5. Jaber

    Palestinians are led by a terrorist organization Hamas, in what world does it make sense to open the border or even negotiate giving autonomy to people led by terrorists who want to wipe Jews from Israel.

    10 years ago at 1:08 pm
  6. Bastiat

    It’s such a shame that students like this represent the Palestinian movement. I would wager that many of these disruptive, disrespectful types are more on a SJW bent as opposed to genuinely caring about the Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories. There is a time, place, and manner in which these issues should be addressed and this was not it. For Orthodox Catholics like myself, the persecution of the Arabs – especially the Arab Christians – by the Israelis is an important issue, but the manner in which this demonstration was carried out was wrong and the students ought to be ashamed and learn from it.

    10 years ago at 1:35 pm
  7. Panchovillez420

    I fucking despise ignorance like this they can go rant about that Palestine bullshit back in their sand country and get the fuck out of here

    10 years ago at 2:13 pm
  8. all sham no wow

    So let me get this right, them screaming that there should be a Palestinian state once hethe professor starts to show how dumb the kid is and screaming about how Isreal is terrible is not supposed to upset a man who is from isreal. Yeah i love the amount of sense that makes

    10 years ago at 2:22 pm
  9. born rich die richer

    I’ve never seen a Palestinian group attempt to have a conversation about the matter. All they do is interrupt pro-Israel and pro-Judaism events with their gibberish.

    10 years ago at 4:34 pm