A Cornell history professor — with a history of radical left-wing views — called the Hamas terror attacks in Israel at a pro-Palestine rally earlier this week “exhilarating” and “stimulating,” and the latest example of anti-Semitic rhetoric in academia.
Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history and, according to his Twitter bio, a “historian of the black radical tradition.”
He spoke about the attacks in terms of geopolitics, saying they “shifted the political balance and shattered the illusion of Israel’s invincibility” and gave Palestinians hope as he made his most inflammatory statements.
“It was exciting. It was exciting, it was stimulating. And if they weren’t excited about this challenge to the monopoly of violence, to shifting the power of power, then they wouldn’t be human. “I was thrilled,” he told the crowd.
He was speaking at a protest rally in support of Palestine following the attacks that killed over 1,400 people in Israel.
A Cornell history professor with a history of radical left-wing views called the Hamas terror attacks in Israel “exhilarating” and “exciting” at a pro-Palestine rally earlier this week.
There was some agreement and applause from the crowd as Rickford made his comments.
“That’s what they did.” “You don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to see that,” he added.
The people who shot the video declined to say whether the rally took place on the New York campus.
In response to the speech, the crowd began chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Many Jewish groups believe the chant is anti-Semitic and aims to get rid of Israel entirely.
Rickford has not tweeted since June and neither he nor Cornell have responded to requests for comment.
He previously was part of an effort to reshape police forces on Ivy League campuses following the George Floyd protests in 2020.
Rickford opposed Ithaca’s attempt to consider an ambitious – and controversial – plan to renew its armed forces “from the ground up,” believing it did not go far enough.
Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history and, according to his Twitter bio, a “historian of the black radical tradition.”
The proposal would have replaced the 63-officer Ithaca Police Department with a new Community Solutions and Public Safety Division that included both armed officers and unarmed “community solutions officers” to handle nonviolent calls such as petty thefts.
Some social justice activists reject it as a watered-down version of what they call “defunding the police.”
Rickford, who focuses on the Black radical tradition, said he and members of the Tompkins County Antiracist Coalition were “deeply skeptical” of the plan.
“We fear it is an attempt to rebrand policing while suppressing or erasing the fundamental call for massive cuts to police funding that arose in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor uprisings,” he wrote in an email -Mail.
Science was an important part of the pro-Palestinian movement after the attacks.
Palestine supporters gather at Harvard University on October 14th. When the terrorist attacks were launched by Hamas on October 7, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a letter co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations that stated: “We, the undersigned student organizations.”, the Israeli regime for the hold solely responsible for all the violence that unfolds.”
Harvard students at the Oct. 14 rally on campus
The letter sparked a massive backlash after 33 student associations supported the PSC’s statement, which “blames the Israeli regime solely responsible for all the violence that is unfolding.”
Harvard’s Arab Alumni Association has appealed for donations to support students’ mental health after they faced “relentless harassment and intimidation” for blaming Israel for the October 7 Hamas attacks.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee released a letter on Oct. 7 co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations that said, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime solely responsible for all of the violence that is unfolding.”
The students leading the 33 organizations and the Solidarity Committee have been named and faced calls to be blacklisted from future employment.
A letter was sent by more than 30 Harvard student groups on the day of the attacks, with Hamas terrorists conducting a dawn raid from Gaza on a music festival near the border and in surrounding villages. Women and children were murdered in their beds and an estimated 200 people were taken hostage.
Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, said days later that the letter did not speak for the educational institution as a whole or its leadership. Her comments came after some criticized the Harvard administration for taking too long to denounce the student letter.