USC Professor Put on Administrative Leave After Denouncing Hamas

He expressed disapproval of torturers, rapists and sadistic mass murderers

John Strauss is a tenured professor of economics at the University of Southern California. Crossing the campus in late November, he came across a pro-Hamas demonstration. Being pro-Israel, he proclaimed aloud his hatred for Hamas, the group whose operatives on October 7 beheaded babies, burned children alive, tortured and raped young girls, gouged out eyes, sliced off breasts, and cut off the genitalia of Israelis, both before and after death, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on what happened to Professor Strauss after he made his remarks, can be found here: “Jewish USC professor barred from campus after criticizing Hamas,” Israel National News, November 22, 2023:

The University of Southern California has banned a Jewish professor with tenure from teaching on campus for the rest of the semester for criticizing the Hamas terrorist organization.

Economics Professor John Strauss confronted anti-Israel demonstrators during a “Shut it Down for Palestine” protest on the USC campus on November 9.

The demonstrators accused Strauss of stepping on a list of people killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and yelled “shame on you, Professor Strauss, shame on you.”

The professor responded: “No, shame on you. You people are ignorant. Really ignorant. Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are.”

The pro-Hamas students, determined to get Professor Strauss in trouble, posted a misleading clip that left out Strauss’ denunciation of Hamas, making it appear that he was calling for the death of all the Palestinians. So he was made to say “Everyone [of you] should be killed, and I hope they all are.”

About a dozen students complained to the university administration and claimed that Strauss threatened them. The next day, the associate dean called Strauss and told him he was being placed on administrative leave would only be allowed to teach his courses remotely for the rest of the semester.

Do you think a lone professor would have “threatened” dozens of angry pro-Palestinian students physically? How likely is that? What was the nature of that supposed threat made by Professor Strauss? And after a dozen of those students made their claim to the administration, why was it that the very next day, without even talking to Professor Strauss to hear his version of events — whatever happened to due process? — he was placed on administrative leave for the rest of the semester? Shouldn’t there have been an investigation into what Strauss said, rather than immediate acceptance of what those students claimed?

Strauss said in an interview with USC Annenberg Media that his comments were misrepresented to portray him as calling for the murder of Palestinian Arabs. “I’m Jewish, I’m very pro-Israel,” he said. “And so I yelled out ‘Israel forever. Hamas are murderers.’”

A petition calling on the university to fire Strauss has garnered over 6,700 signatures. A competing petition demanding the university allow Strauss to teach on campus has garnered over 9,200 signatures.

Well, so far, so outrageous. The administration has placed Strauss on administrative leave, requiring him to teach his courses remotely for the rest of the semester (fortunately, the semester has only a few more weeks to run). This decision was taken without allowing him to present his version of events. And the pro-Hamas students have done still worse: they have deliberately misrepresented what he said, so that it appears that he was denouncing, and wishing death upon, all Palestinians and not Hamas alone. But he was quite clear in his condemnation: “No, shame on you. You people are ignorant. Really ignorant. Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one [of them] should be killed, and I hope they all are.”

As one more example of the madness of anti-Israel crowds, some have called for this tenured professor to be fired, all because he expressed his hatred for torturers, rapists, sadistic mass murderers. We live in a world where the pathological condition known as antisemitism is twisting everything. Mass murderers are praised, while those who try to defend their people against those mass murderers are denounced. A fine world, my masters!

The Top Ten Campus Hate Groups in America
Fall 2023 Campus Report 
By Sara Dogan

#1: Georgetown University, Black Law Student Association
#2: University of Buffalo, Young Democratic Socialists of America
#3: Boston University, Students for Justice in Palestine
#4: Florida State University, Students for a Democratic Society
#5: Louisiana State University, Cooperation Rouge and the Black Student Union
#6: University of New Mexico, Southwest Solidarity Network
#7: San Francisco State University, General Union of Palestinian Students
#8: University of Michigan, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality,
#9: University of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
#10: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Young Democratic Socialists of America

The Public Funding of Campus Hate

The stated purpose of higher education is the search for truth and wisdom, but in recent years, the American college campus has become little more than an echo chamber where radical, far-left, ideology can be refined and then disseminated into the wider national culture. Today’s college campuses are ruled by idealogues who view the world through the Marxist categories of the oppressor and the oppressed and seek to destabilize and dismantle America in the hopes of fomenting a revolution. Backed by millions of dollars in federal and state monies, University administrators and faculty teach impressionable students that America was founded on “systemic racism,” a stain that allegedly lingers to this day. They fund Middle East Studies departments and institutes which openly propagate Jew-hatred and advocate for the destruction of Israel. They promote the racist ideology of Critical Race Theory and the sexist and unscientific doctrine of transgenderism, all while using the iron fist of bureaucracy and speech codes to eliminate all dissent.

It should therefore not be surprising that student organizations and clubs on campus have become little more than vehicles of resentment and hatred directed at our nation, at Jewish students and supporters of Israel, and at the founding principles that are supposed to buttress the universities themselves—open discourse and academic freedom.

The following report names the Top Ten Campus Hate Groups in America. These groups have openly and proudly aimed anti-Semitic libels at Jewish students and organizations. They have praised terrorists and cop-killers as heroes because the ideology of these criminals matches their own. They have endorsed racist policies and principles as a path toward achieving a more just society. They have taken it upon themselves to decide what views are allowable on publicly funded university campuses and which must be shouted down as “hate speech.”

Our aim in publishing this report is twofold. First, we hope to expose and reveal the radical hatred that the Left has woven into the fabric of our universities for all the world to see. Second, we demand that the universities named in this report launch investigations into the student organizations and groups named here, to see if their conduct violates federal and university policies. If the universities named herein refuse to take up that burden, we urge state and federal legislators to do it for them.

Our universities have become the cesspit of American society, where bad ideas and rhetoric stew, unhindered by reason, truth, or common sense, while the stench seeps out into our broader culture. Student organizations on campus play a key role in repackaging and rehabilitating failed philosophies like Marxism, Jew hatred, and racism as the shining path to a better future. We must expose and confront the radical ideologies and hatreds simmering within these collegiate organizations to impede their spread beyond the ivory tower.

Read the full report HERE.