Ami Pedahzur is a professor at UT in the Government department. Pedahzur is a Zionist. In 2016, he hosted a public talk on campus about the Israeli Defense Forces. The Palestine Solidarity Committee disrupted the event with chants & speech, protesting the normalization of Zionism and the erasure of the IDF’s role in genocide & occupation. During this event, Pedahzur acted extremely aggressively, getting right up to the faces of some of the students and screaming at them. He eventually had to be restrained by other members of the audience who worried he would escalate the situation further.
Afterwards, Pedahzur released a statement from the College of Liberal Arts site—an official UT website—in which he described Arab & Muslim PSC members as “red flags,” for “terrorism,” and compared them to the Paris attackers. As a professor who is proclaimed as a specialist in terrorism studies, this islamophobic attack marked PSC for harassment and retaliation and lent his academic credibility as well as the institutional legitimacy of UT to the racist remarks.
Administration response: The administration made no amends towards PSC or retraction of the statement. While PSC faced harassment, UT offered no support and instead attempted to discipline the organization for their protest. Randy Diehl, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, issued a statement affirming his “deep admiration” of Ami and condemning PSC’s protest.
Information:
E-mail: pedahzur@austin.utexas.edu
Phone: 512-232-1452
Office: Mezes 3.140
Campus Mail Code: A-1800
Classes taught (Fall 2018): Government 365N, Suicide Terrorism, T/TH 8-9AM, MEZ 1.122
