OCC Teacher on Leave After Clash

Orange Coast College officials placed a veteran teacher on paid leave this week while they investigate complaints from four Muslim students who say he called them “terrorists” and “murderers” during a heated debate in a political science class.

Instructor Ken Hearlson, 57, said in an interview that he was speaking only about Muslim terrorists and those who support their actions, not the students in his class. He said he did, however, regret the timing of the discussion, just one week after the terrorist attacks in the United States.

College officials met with the Muslim students this week and said they will interview Hearlson again and talk with others in the 200-student “Introduction to Government” class before deciding what to do. The Times could not reach others in the class who witnessed the exchange.

Hearlson said he started Tuesday’s lecture with a provocative question: Why do Muslims condemn the terrorist attacks in New York and suburban Washington but never condemn terrorist attacks in Israel?

The instructor said he told students that if American Muslims don’t condemn terrorism in Israel, they must support terrorism. He said he knew he had provoked and irritated some students, but he also gave them time to respond.

The teacher said he held the same discussion this week in three other classes, which included Muslim students, and there were no problems.

Sophomore Mooath Saidi, 18, said the discussion Tuesday quickly heated up, and Hearlson pointed to him and three other Muslim students and said, “It was you who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. You are a terrorist.”

C.C. Abdelmuti, a 20-year-old in the group said, “He accused us of killing 5,000 people.”

Zayneb Saidi, 20, said she was so furious she was “afraid that I would say something I wouldn’t like.”

“He was saying lots of horrible things,” said Zayneb Saidi, Mooath’s sister. “ ‘You’re terrorists, murderers and rapists.’ He turned beet red.”

At one point, Zayneb Saidi--dressed in traditional Muslim clothing--said her professor pointed to her and said, “It was people like you, dressed like you, that are Nazis on campus.”

Hearlson was referring to a controversial flier passed out last year on campus that featured a swastika intertwined in the Star of David. Jameelah Shukri, who heads the college’s Arab Student Assn., said the flier was put out by a few Muslim students who had left her group. The flier was a source of tension on campus last year between Jewish and Muslim students.

Hearlson confirmed the students’ descriptions of his comments but said his statements weren’t aimed at them personally. Hearlson said he apologized twice in class. The Muslim students denied that, reporting that he said only: “I acknowledge what I did.”

One non-Muslim student who defended the other students walked out of class in protest, the Muslim students said.

A video camera in the class was inadvertently turned off during most of the discussion, Hearlson said. But the tape did capture his closing remarks, when he talked about the ongoing civil war in Sudan, in which he said Muslims enslave, beat and rape people--with no condemnation from Islamic groups.

“Of the Muslims, you think they are not racist?” he said emphatically. “You are wrong.”

“When the Muslim world stands up and tells me, ‘That is wrong, and we will stop it,’ I will believe it,” he said. “You see why I don’t believe and I don’t trust ‘em.”

Hearlson said that all views are heard and debated vigorously in his class. He also tells students about his bias as a born-again, conservative Christian.

Earlier this year, a discussion about the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen created enough hostility between Hearlson and Muslim students that a teaching assistant called campus security to protect the teacher, Hearlson said.

The Muslim students said they’re pleased with the way college administrators have handled the incident, but say they have retained attorneys for advice. The incident has heightened fears on campus during a time when many are expressing anti-Arab sentiments, they said.

“I don’t want an apology,” Mooath Saidi said. “He needs to get fired, if not prosecuted for what he did.”

Zayneb Saidi and Abdelmuti said a good start would be an apology to the class and an admission that the professor was wrong.

College officials said that for now substitute teachers will be used in Hearlson’s class. He was hired by the community college in 1980.