A Stanford professor “is not currently teaching” at the prestigious university after berating and mocking Jewish students in his class. In a statement on Wednesday, Stanford’s President, Richard Saller, said that a “non-faculty instructor” had been suspended while “the university works to ascertain the facts of the situation.”  

The professor, Ameer Hasan Loggins, a lecturer in Introductory Studies, forced Jewish students in his class, Citizenship in the 21st Century, to “stand in a corner with their belongings” because “Israel does that to the Palestinians,”  Stanford’s Chabad rabbi, Dov Greenberg, tells the Sun.

According to Rabbi Greenberg, Mr. Loggins proceeded to berate the students, asking them, “How many people died in the Holocaust?” When a student answered, “Six million,” Mr. Loggins replied, “Colonizers killed more than 6 million. Israel is a colonizer.”  

Mr. Loggins, also, according to Rabbi Greenberg, told the Jewish students that  “Hamas is a legitimate representation of the Palestinian people. … They are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. Their actions are legitimate.” 

The Jewish students in the class could not be reached for comment. In his statement on Wednesday, Mr. Saller, the university’s president, called the incident “a cause for concern,” noting that “the instructor in this course is not currently teaching” as the school attempts to determine “the facts of the situation.”

Mr. Saller distanced himself from Mr. Loggins by referring to him as a “non-faculty instructor.” Large universities such as Stanford often rely on doctoral students and PhDs to teach undergraduates.

Mr. Loggins, who did not reply to a request by the Sun for comment, received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in Africana studies at the University of California at Berkeley. His research there focused on how reality television affects “the perception of African Americans outside the televisual space.” 

The chairwoman of Berkeley’s African-American studies department, Nikki Jones, did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment. 

Mr. Loggins has been credited with exposing a notable activist and football player, Colin Kaepernick, to Africana texts as Mr. Kaepernick became more involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, according to a 2017 New York Times account of Mr. Kaepernick’s “awakening.”

According to the Athletic, now owned by the New York Times, Mr. Loggins is “a Bay Area native” and “part of Kaepernick’s tight inner circle and even helped him start the Know Your Rights camps they’ve held in Oakland, Chicago and New York.” 

Mr. Loggins’s suspension comes amid waves of pro-Hamas activism on Stanford’s campus. Shortly after the terrorist attacks last weekend in Israel, signs supporting Hamas appeared throughout the campus on bed sheets hung from various buildings. “The Israeli occupation is NOTHING but an ILLUSION OF DUST,” one sheet read. Another claimed: “The illusion of Israel is BURNING.”

Echoing the statements displayed on the bed sheets, messages written with chalk on sidewalks read, “Resistance to Occupation is legal. Collective punishment is not,” presumably referring to Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s response.