Professors Evacuated, Put on Leave in Hectic Pro-Palestine Protest
Ryan Quinn
February 27, 2024
When the director of Jewish studies at one California State University campus visited another to speak on Israel and Palestine, things went awry.
An incident last week at San José State University laid bare just how contentious the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be on American college campuses—and how elusive agreement can be over the meaning of concepts such as genocide, terrorism and free speech.
The drama at the California State University campus unfolded in two scenes at the same protest. In the first, a guest speech by Jeffrey Blutinger, the Jewish studies director at another CSU campus, on “how to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine,” was cut short after police evacuated him from a classroom and navigated him through an intense pro-Palestinian protest in the hallway.
During the same protest, according to a video provided to Inside Higher Ed, an older man appeared to try to photograph or record protesters with his phone, and he briefly grabbed the hand of someone blocking the camera and pulled their arm down. There was an immediate uproar, the video shows, with a male protester running up to him, yelling in his face and taking his phone before police pushed the protester away.
