Israeli Professor Disrupted at UNLV

On February 27, Asaf Peer, an Israeli professor of physics from Israel's Bar-Ilan University was speaking at an event at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas when pro-Palestinian protesters entered the room and disrupted the event. The incident was reported not only by Campus Reform, but the Jerusalem Post as well. According to the reports, campus police were called in but refused to remove the protesters, claiming they were exercising their free speech rights. The university officials who were present reportedly decided to end the event early and the professor was escorted out of the room by police.

If the reports are accurate, it is just another outrageous example of how Israeli speakers or pro-Israel speakers are routinely disrupted and harassed by the pro-Hamas mobs. It is absurd that the protesters were exercising their free speech rights. They were stripping those rights from the speaker and his audience.

The proper response to these types of disruptions by campus hooligans is to remove them and subject them to disciplinary action. The infamous UC Irvine incident of 2010 when 11 members of the Muslim Student Union disrupted the speech by the Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, should serve as an example. They were immediately removed from the room by campus police (who were on site), charged,  and successfully prosecuted in court. That should be the standard. Sadly, that is rarely how universities handle these disruptions, including at UC Irvine. Subsequent disruptions of pro-Israel events at UC Irvine have not been handled as was the Oren event.

Based on the above reporting, it seems that the campus police acted as potted plants while university officials exhibited the usual cowardice to which we have become accustomed.