The Jewish watchdog group StandWithUs called on the University of North Carolina to take action regarding a recurring class on Israel to be taught in the fall by an anti-Israel activist.
Kylie Broderick, a Ph.D. student, is scheduled to teach a class titled “The Conflict Over Israel/Palestine.” Broderick has a history of making anti-Israel remarks, including a May 2021 tweet that said “Palestinians are being murdered for just being alive & bc [because] they’re inconvenient to Israel & its patron, the US imperialist death cult.”
UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in an email on Friday that he is “confident” that students enrolled in the class with “benefit from a thoughtful presentation of information relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
StandWithUs is urging UNC to monitor Broderick’s teachings in the course this fall and make recordings of the class available for the public, so they can do so as well.
The Jewish group said the course’s name and description should be changed “to reflect the instructor’s self-proclaimed biases in teaching the subject matter,” and that UNC should consider adding another section to the class that is taught by someone “who does not support the eradication of Israel.”
It also suggested that the course’s credits should also be lowered “to reflect that it is an opinion-based elective, not a fact-based, academic survey course.” To further combat anti-Semitism at the university, StandWithUs urged UNC to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.
In 2019, UNC signed a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education and agreed to address anti-Semitism on campus.
