David Butow/Corbis via Getty Images)
- Stanford has suspended a lecturer pending investigation.
- The lecturer is alleged to have singled out Jewish students based on their "backgrounds and identities."
- The war between Israel and Hamas has led to a spike in tensions on US college campuses.
Stanford University has suspended a lecturer following reports that he directed Jewish students in his class to stand in the corner and described Israelis as 'colonizers.'
Nourya Cohen and Andrei Mandelshtam, Israeli student leaders on the campus, told the San Francisco Chronicle that they had spoken to 18 of the lecturer's students this week.
All had asked to remain anonymous due to tensions on campus after Hamas' terror attacks on Israel over the weekend, where the militant group killed more than 1,300 people and abducted 150 in attacks on Israeli towns, a music festival, and military bases.
In response, Israel launched days of air strikes on Gaza which health authorities say have killed more than 1,500 people.
As of Friday, the UN estimates 1,000 Israelis are dead and 2,806 wounded. Gazan authorities estimate 1,537 Palestinians are dead and 6,612 wounded.
Cohen and Mandelshtam told the Chronicle that the lecturer delivered impromptu lessons in two classes, which he said would be focused on the topic of colonialism.
In one of the classes, the report said, the lecturer blamed the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas on Zionists, and said that Hamas' actions were part of a resistance.
"'He then asked Jewish students to raise their hands,' separated those students from their belongings, and said he was simulating what Jews were doing to Palestinians,", Cohen told the Chronicle.
Cohen claimed that the lecturer asked students how many people had died in the Holocaust. When one student answered six million, the lecturer is alleged to have replied: '"Yes. Only six million.'"
The lecturer said that more people died as a result of colonialism than in the Holocaust, and that colonization was what happened to Palestinians, the report said.
The lecturer also separated students in both classes into different groups, based on their identities and backgrounds, which he called "colonizers" and "colonized," according to the report.
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center, citing the account of students in the class he'd spoken to, told Forward that the teacher told Jewish students to take their belongings and stand in a corner, and said, "This is what Israel does to the Palestinians."
Greenberg said he'd spoken to three students who attended the class and that the lecturer had said: "Colonizers killed more than six million. Israel is a colonizer."
In a statement, Stanford University said: "Without prejudging the matter, this report is a cause for serious concern. Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students. The instructor in this course is not currently teaching while the university works to ascertain the facts of the situation."
Cohen, Mandelshtam, and Stanford University did not immediately respond to a request by Insider for comment.
The new outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel has led to a spike in tensions on US college campuses, with a truck this week driving around Harvard with images of students alleged to have signed a document blaming Israel for the war.
Insider this week reported that at least five Harvard University student associations are back-pedaling on their support for a joint letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack.