New Jersey Professor accused of anti semitism demoted

Post Reply New Topic

On Friday, two months after a blog called IsraeliCool first reported the anti-Semitic social media habits of Rutgers professor Dr. Michael Chikindas, the university’s leaders announced that they were taking action[

He will no longer teach required courses, so students can avoid him.

He has been removed as director of Rutgers’ Center for Digestive Health at the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health. “No Rutgers employee will be required to work in an administrative unit that he heads,” the Rutgers leaders wrote.

Dr. Chikindas also “will be required to participate in a cultural sensitivity training program, and will be subject to ongoing monitoring if and when he returns to the classroom.”

Finally, the university is seeking further disciplinary actions, which could include a semester’s leave without pay and possibly dismissal. Under the school’s policy for tenured faculty members, if the university president wants to fire Dr. Chikindas, he would have to convince a five-member faculty panel that the professor is guilty of “failure to maintain standards of sound scholarship and competent teaching,” “gross neglect of established University obligations appropriate to the appointment,” or “incompetence.”

Earlier this fall, Michael Chikindas, a Rutgers–New Brunswick tenured professor, was found to have posted extensive bigoted, discriminatory, and anti-Semitic material on social media. This material perpetuated toxic stereotypes and was deeply upsetting to Jewish students, faculty, and staff across our community. The fears and concerns they have expressed to us and many university leaders are both justified and understandable.”

“This is a good first step,” Rutgers freshman Miriam Waghalter said.

In October, Ms. Waghalter launched an online petition calling on Rutgers to “to take swift and necessary action to suspend Professor Chikindas, pending further investigation.”

Rutgers University is reviewing the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel social media posts of a professor who called Judaism “the most racist religion in the world.”

As of Wednesday morning the Facebook page of Michael Chikindas, a microbiology professor in the food science department and director of the Rutgers Center for Digestive Health, had been taken down

The posts include caricatures of hook-nosed Jews; canards that the Jews control Hollywood, the Federal Reserve and the government; and that Israel is committing genocide and is a “terrorist country.”

Chikindas blamed the Armenian genocide on Jewish Turks and republished claims that American Jews and Israel were responsible for the 9/11 attacks

In an interview with the Algemeiner, Chikindas rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, saying he was previously married to a Jewish woman and is one-quarter Jewish.