On Wednesday, Nicholas G. Hahn III, the assistant editorial page editor of The Detroit News and a graduate of DePaul University, published a piece in which he decried his alma mater’s ban of Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro speaking on campus, and suggested that the ban of Shapiro may have been more than banning a conservative from speaking – it might have been supplemented by the university’s anti-Semitism.
Noting that DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the country, and the fact that Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew, Hahn quoted the statement acknowledging the Shapiro ban from Bob Janis, the university’s vice president for facility operations waging a war on campus conservatives. Then Hahn delineated the events prior to the ban, notably the near-riot at CSULA when Shapiro spoke.
Then Hahn got to the meat of his argument; the university’s history of anti-Semitism. Some examples he pointed out included:
2004: “DePaul effectively fired a veteran adjunct professor, the late Thomas Klocek, for debating Muslim students about Israel and Palestine. The students complained to the professor’s dean that they were ‘hurt’ by what Klocek had to say. DePaul sided with the students, and was sued.”
2007: After infamous Israel-hater Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure, his student supporters protested; Finkelstein’s faculty allies “leaked confidential documents from his tenure proceedings and frequently berated other Jewish and pro-Israel professors.”
2009: Hahn himself invited former Soviet refusnik and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel Natan Sharansky to speak at the university; students attempted to get the speech canceled; administrators tried to censor it.
2009: A deactivated Qassam rocket, the same weapon used by Hamas, was to be displayed on campus; Students for Justice in Palestine protested; DePaul administrators agreed; the rocket was never displayed.
2010: Pro-Palestinian students attempted to ban Sabra hummus from campus cafeterias.
“Shapiro is the security concern? If DePaul would do something to end the pattern of anti-Semitism on campus, it would be a blessing for Jews and Catholics alike.”
Nicholas G. Hahn III
Meanwhile, a 2014 campus referendum urging administrators to divest from companies that do business with Israel is still before a university committee.
Pro-Palestinian students have adorned Vincent de Paul, for whom the university is named, in a Yasser Arafat-styled keffiyeh headscarf.
The most offensive example of anti-Semitism? February 2015: a fundraiser for convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Yousef Odeh was held by students. Odeh bombed a Jerusalem market in 1969 and murdered two Hebrew University students.
Hahn concludes: “And Shapiro is the security concern? If DePaul would do something to end the pattern of anti-Semitism on campus, it would be a blessing for Jews and Catholics alike.”