Good thing these guys aren’t in positions of responsibility at universities.
I
… Michael Gross [is] a prominent member of Britain’s Jewish community, a long-time donor to Ben-Gurion University (BGU) and a member of its international board of governors.
After seeing [a television program shaply critical of Israel] last month, Gross emailed Professor David Newman – a British-born lecturer who has emigrated to Israel – and wrote: “I saw your disgusting contribution to the Dispatches programme. I will use whatever influence I have at BGU to have you thrown out… I hope you perish.” In a second message, he said: “The sooner you are removed from BGU and the face of the earth, the better.”
[After his email produced a furor among Israeli academics, Gross said] : “I am not going to apologise to him, because he deserves what he gets.”
… In his appearance on the programme, Newman, a political geographer who is editor of the international Journal of Geopolitics, did not directly criticise Israeli policy. In fact, after seeing the programme, he said he regretted having taken part. In a column for the Jerusalem Post several days after its broadcast, he said that the programme had been very one-sided…
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II
After getting into a public squabble with a CUNY trustee at a groundbreaking event on Tuesday, City Councilman Charles Barron wants him out. According to the Daily News, the controversial Council member told an audience at Medgar Evers College (a CUNY school), “The Board of Trustees has to change… This is a racist, rednecked right-winger who’s sitting on the Board of Trustees. Make sure you write a letter and say he must be removed.”
Barron was referring to trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who called Barron a “disgrace” at the Tuesday ceremony because Barron was complaining that he wasn’t allowed to speak earlier and that he was given a seat in the audience, instead at the front with other officials. Their exchange devolved into a shouting match with Barron yelling, “You just be quiet. Ain’t nobody talking to you. Whether you like it or not, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. You sit there. You shut up!” and Wiesenfeld later calling Barron a “thug” and a “hater.” (The News points out, “Wiesenfeld was appointed to the CUNY board by Gov. George Pataki in 1999, despite allegations he referred to blacks as ‘savages’ and Hasidic Jews as ‘thieves.'”) It got so bad, “young children were escorted away” from the event.