Arizona State University Expels Academic for Confronting Woman in Hijab at Anti-Israel Protest

Arizona State University has expelled an academic seen on video confronting a veiled woman at an anti-Israel protest near the institution’s campus, the network said.NBC News“.

Arizona State University said this week that Jonathan Yudelman, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, has been dismissed, according to a statement released Thursday by the State University President Arizona, Michael Crow.

“He is no longer allowed on campus and will not study here again,” the statement said.

Yudelman attended an anti-Israel protest on May 5 outside the university’s campus. The video shows him confronting a woman wearing a hijab and telling her: “I’m literally in your face – that’s right.”

The woman replied, “You don’t respect my religious boundaries,” Yudelman told him, “You don’t respect my sense of humanity,” and called her rudely.

It is not clear what happened before the clip started recording.

Yudelman was placed on leave Monday while ASU investigated the incident, and was not allowed on campus, to teach classes or interact with students or staff, the university said in a statement Wednesday. .

Before the university announced, through the president’s statement, that they had broken relations with him.

The university referred the case to Tempe police because the incident happened off campus, stressing in its statement that it “protects freedom of expression but does not condone threatening or violent behavior.” .”

The incident comes at a time when pro-Palestinian protests are spreading on American universities to stop the war in Gaza.

The May 5 rally in Arizona drew about 100 people and saw only one arrest because he was not affiliated with the university and wanted to spray university property during a “pro-Palestinian” rally at the end -week before, according to a campus police spokesperson.

The network reports that Yudelman has other academic ties to his startup. Among them is that he is an assistant professor of political theory in the intellectual base at the University of Austin in Texas.

She is on the faculty of the Tikvah Fund, a New York City nonprofit that promotes Jewish ideas and describes itself on its website as “politically Zionist, economically focused on the market, which is culturally traditional and theologically open.”