Oct 28, 2011
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A Kent State University professor shouted “Death to Israel” at a public lecture delivered on campus by a former Israeli diplomat.
The outburst came during a presentation Tuesday by Ismael Khaldi, a former deputy counsel general at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. During the question and answer period, KSU history professor Julio Pino launched a series of provocative questions at Khaldi.
At some point, the professor shouted, “Death to Israel” and then stormed out of the building. The event was first reported by the KSU student news site KentWired.
KSU president Lester Lefton, who is Jewish, denounced Pino’s outburst, calling it “reprehensible, and an embarrassment to our university.”
At the same time, he defended Pino’s free speech rights.
“It may have been Professor Pino’s right to do so, but it is my obligation, as the president of this university, to say that I find his words deplorable, and his behavior deeply troubling,” his statement read.
Pino, who is originally from Cuba and a convert to Islam, did not return calls for comment.
A Kent State spokesman confirmed the professor was once investigated by federal authorities. The university said they were also aware of allegations that Pino wrote stories for a now-defunct jihadist website.
And according to the Akron Beacon Journal, the professor eulogized an 18-year-old Palestinian homicide bomber in the Daily Kent Stater, the student-run newspaper.
And yet, the tentured history professor still remains employed by the university.
University spokesman Tom Neumann told Fox News that Pino remains employed and has not been removed from the classroom. He declined to say whether an investigation had been launched into his latest outburst, citing privacy issues.
The professor’s outburst has generated criticism and debate across the campus.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for a professor, an employee of the university to engage in such hate speech,” student Evan Gildenblatt told the Cleveland Jewish News.
Ken Jacobson, the deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the university should consider taking disciplinary action.
“This kind of language is inappropriate,” Jacobson told Fox News. “It’s vitriolic, it’s violent – it undermines the sense of safety for Jewish students on campus to have a professor use such outrageous language.”
Jacobson said he was especially concerned about Jewish students who might be students of Pino.
It’s a real problem,” Jacobson said. “If he’s doing that in his classroom, he shouldn’t be teaching there.”
Newmann said the university has received a number of calls and emails and the president had been in touch with many of the local Jewish organizations near the university.
“Whether you are a Jewish student or not, we find it very troubling,” he said. “That’s the point we want to get across. Dr. Pino doesn’t speak on behalf of the university and that’s not the type of behavior we expect.”
But Pino does have some supporters – among faculty members at the public university.
Donald Hassler, a member of Kent State’s Faculty Senate, told Fox News that Pino is a “colleague whom I respect.”
“We believe in freedom of expression and civil discourse,” Hassler said. “And those sometimes come in conflict – as they did in this case.”
Hassler said Pino must have lost control at the lecture.
“It lacked civility,” he said. ‘It was an example of hate speech. He knows better than to use hate speech. He has definitely strong opinions. He needs to state them in a civil way.”
Ken Bindas, the chair of the KSU history department, told the Cleveland Jewish News that Pino was not attending the program as a professor, but “as a human being.”
“I don’t agree with his comments, but at the same time, I can’t not defend his right to free speech,” he told the newspaper.
FOX News Talk
In the Higher Educational environment, his action is probably just a calculated career advancement move.
Professor Pino, thanks for all the taxes you pay as a University Professor to a government that LOVES Israel and will ALWAYS be their friend! Isn't it nice to know people like this indirectly support Israel.
WOW, If he was spoting KKK beliefs or anything in that realm he wouldve been fired. I don't see the difference in the HATE he speaks or a Clan member.. FIRE HIM IMMEDIATELY!
I hope and pray that things change for the better. people like that professor should be sanctioned by the Courts and forced out of his position. it's not about free speech or freedom of expression. the school needs to remember that some speech leads to the lack of safety for the student body around the school. The safety of the student body in any school is above the intentions of professors or faculty in a government funded university. shame on Professor Pino and all the American haters in the world.
And he's not fired why?
http://www.planetcommonsense.wordpress.com
Then if you admit he was using hate speech, then why are you not disciplining him? This was pure and simple anti semitic rhetoric by an islamic terrorist and cannot be tolerated.
Just Duck tape him up and send him to Israel and lets save a buck.
Send him back to the middle east. we don't want him here. He is evil!
I have a friend getting fired from his job for denouncing radical Muslims….ON HIS OWN TIME. WTF?
Shows clearly that tenure in universities leads to incompetence and acceptance of anarchy, treason and wimpish administrators. Fire 'em all and get instructors with the guts to support this nation that has made it possible for them to be fools.
James, I don't like it any better than you my friend, in fact it pisses me to no end to hear a ignorant person who doesn't know love but only hate. I'm not Jewish, but I was born in 1960 with Dwarfism and all of my life I had to put up with people yelling out rude and insulting vile crap. Lets say when I became older and stronger I would correct things the way we were tought to back home in Chicago. I had many great friends of varying ethnic and religious back grounds etc. of whom I still keep up with to this day. That professor should have lost his position and been bared form ever teaching again! I sure wouldn't want him teaching in a class where my son or any other child was attending because as pissed as that truly made me just in reading that article his a– belonged in a dumpster with the rest of the trash. Maybe one day we will be able to get people to understand freedom of speach does not give anyone free license to slander. Thank you, Greg.
I'm sorry. I am just a middle class white person here. Not Jewish so don't get me wrong. But if I were to say that to a Jew or a Moose Limbs or a black, I would not only be fired, but the rave facebook page and campaign against me would be so VIRAL that I wouldn't ever get ANOTHER job in the USA again..were I to say any of this to any of the above people of race, were, I lucky enough to not be thrown out of the country on me arse! So if no one else can speak to anyone else this way without the loss of their job as well as sanctions, why is he still here? Simply because he is a Moose Limb? Because he secretly aids and abets illegal Moose Limbs into this country via our southern border and onto terror training camps that they have set up all over our country? Or perhaps to one of the many terror recruiting Mosques that they have that are for worship and therefore unaccessible to any others but Moose limbs (But all us stupid. white Westerners have no ides that they have terror training camps and recruitment mosques all over our country rofl)
Ahhh Come on Hassler! This is NOT a C O N F L I C T of expression and or discourse. It is a simple case of the attack of a WHOLE PEOPLE for G-d's sake, this is racism, and an outright racial example of H A T R E D for a WHOLE RACE of people! And there no doubt in the mind of anyone who reads this article or see's the taped copy! And as for you Mr.Neumann, The University DOES speak through this hideous little man simply by NOT FIRING HIM PERIOD! You admit the that you know he has previously been under an FBI investigation, (which you cannot be sure of the fact that he is still not to this day sir) and even worse still, he eulogized an 18-year-old Palestinian homicide bomber in the Daily Kent Stater! A suicide bomber who KILLED Native countrymen, women, fathers, mothers, cousins…whatever, of some of the students there at the college! And that idiotic, small little, Napoleanic brained sufferer of Crainialrectumitius is not only still there but still there as a TRAINED AND WORTHY REPRESENTITIVE of that institution? And oh yes hi IS! He is you employee, through all of the things listed above and then some, and yet, you have not only continued to employ him, you have continued to keep him as a high ranking TENURED PROFESSIONAL WORTHY of his position? I think back Sir, to 4 students. They gave their lives, though not all knowingly, but for a cause similar to this. A cause wherein those that had been given power, like yourself and the politicians of this country ABUSED the powers given to them. And so the people rose up and spoke. And quite frankly Sir, if I were a student there on your campus, I would be calling all of those who find your attitude towards this whole matter, as well as that professors RACIALLY OFFENSIVE and on similar grounds as racism shown to Blacks and Mexicans in this country, to do a calm and peaceful sit out on your campus, boycotting all classes until the professor in question here is unequivocally discharged and a formal apology given to those Jews college has been doing to civer their arse, I've not really seen a true apology to those who were truly offended here nor truly deserving. And for all of those teachers who are so sympathetic to this professors racist babbling, remember, hate that one carries around has no other outlet but the mouth to spew out from over time. And so, the poison you carry will do so also. Or, it will eat you alive. And gentlemen and Ladies when it does, I wish you well for that which you cherish so much will be lost to you, anh you will never realize what I have said because your egos have placed you above mortals. However, G-d has judged you most appropriately.
This gentlemen is probally one of the political prisoners reliesed from Castros prisons to come america during the 80's. If he were to make this statment while a public school teacher even on his own time he would be fired without a second thought.
Who would hire a person like this to teach our young?
Might want to keep an eye on this dbag….remember the Fort Hood murderer and his mental meltdown? Imagine what would happen if a Tea Party supporter stood up and recited the Pledge of Allegiance….they would have stoned her!