Teacher on Leave After Conflict

Orange Coast College officials placed a veteran teacher on paid leave this week while they investigate complaints by 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 about Muslim terrorists and those who support their actions, not the students in his class. He said he regretted the timing of the discussion, just a week after the terrorist attacks on the East Coast.

College officials met with the students this week. They said they will interview Hearlson again and talk with other students in the 200-student Introduction to Government class before making a decision.

Hearlson said he started Tuesday’s lecture with an intentionally provocative question that he feels most people are afraid to ask: Why do Muslims condemn the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon but never denounce terrorist attacks in Israel?

The instructor said he told students that if American Muslims don’t condemn terrorism in Israel, that means they must support terrorism.

He acknowledged provoking and irritating some students but said he gave them plenty of opportunity to respond.

Other Classes Did Not Object, Teacher Says

The teacher said he held the same discussion in his three other classes, which also included Muslim students, this week with no problems.

Mooath Saidi, an 18-year-old sophomore, said that the discussion Tuesday quickly grew heated, and that Hearlson pointed to him and three other Muslim students near the back of the class, saying: “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 that 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--who was dressed in traditional Muslim clothing--said her professor pointed at her and said: “It was people like you, dressed like you, that are Nazis on campus.”

The professor was referring to a controversial flier passed out last year on campus that featured a swastika intertwined with 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 the statements weren’t targeted at the students personally. He said he apologized twice to students in class when told that his remarks had gotten too personal. The Muslim students denied that, reporting that he said only: “I acknowledge what I did.”

One non-Muslim student who stood up to defend her classmates eventually walked out in protest, the Muslim students said.

Upfront About His Christian Beliefs

A tape of the class was inadvertently turned off during most of the contested discussion, Hearlson said. But the tape did capture his closing remarks, when he talked about the 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 all views are allowed and debated vigorously in his class. He also tells students upfront that he is a born-again, conservative Christian.

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

So far the Muslim students in the most recent incident said that they are pleased at college administrators’ handling of the incident but that they have retained attorneys for advice. The dispute has heightened fears they already had 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 the time being substitute teachers will be used for the class taught by Hearlson, who was hired in 1980.