San José State University puts professor on leave over altercation with pro-Palestine student
San José State University placed a professor on administrative leave after he got into a physical altercation with a student during a pro-Palestine protest, according to an email from the school’s president and video of the incident.
History professor Jonathan Roth was put on leave Tuesday, a day after he grabbed and twisted the arm of a student when she attempted to block him from recording protesters on his phone, according to video of the incident reviewed by The Times.
“Fortunately, no serious physical injuries were reported,” San José State President Cynthia Teniente-Matson wrote in a memo to the school community. “At this time, no police charges have been filed. The circumstances of Monday’s incident, which led to the guest speaker and students being removed from a classroom, are still under investigation.”
Roth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The incident is the latest involving protests and violence on college campuses over the war in Gaza, sparked by the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
Members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine were protesting Feb. 19 outside a classroom in Sweeney Hall where a guest lecturer, Jeffrey Blutinger, was speaking to a class about the war. The students had decided to protest due to Blutinger’s “problematic” views, according to Sang Hea Kil, a San José State professor who is the faculty advisor for Students for Justice in Palestine.
Blutinger, a Jewish studies professor at Long Beach State University, has argued that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza and has said that pro-Palestine protests on campuses have seemed supportive of Hamas.
While Blutinger was speaking in the classroom, Roth tried to take video of the protesters in the hallway.
Video footage shows Roth taking out his phone and holding it as if recording. A student wearing a kaffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headdress, puts her hand up to block the recording, and Roth grabs her hand and twists it out of the way, video shows.
Students in the hallway become incensed, getting in Roth’s face and yelling. “You don’t touch a woman,” one can be heard repeatedly yelling at Roth.
“Get him out,” another screams.
Ojai is half a world away from the Gaza Strip. But the eclectic tourist town has been rocked in recent weeks by increasingly brazen protests over the brutal war between Israel and Hamas.
Officers with the San José Police Department got between Roth and the students, then escorted the professor out of the hallway, video shows.
“They treated Jonathan Roth with kid gloves,” said Kil about the police. “The look on Jonathan Roth’s face about what he did was very smug. He looked very proud of himself for what he did.”
Kil said Roth should have been arrested for assault.
The university, which put Roth on leave the following day, declined to comment beyond the president’s memo.
Roth’s attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, said it was Roth who was “assaulted” on Feb. 19.
Roth had his phone grabbed by a student and “instinctively put up his hand to protect himself,” Miltenberg said. It is not clear in the video if the student grabs Roth’s phone or just puts her hand up to block his video.
“We are undertaking our preliminary investigation and may be filing claims on behalf of Prof. Roth,” Miltenberg said.
Roth served six years in the Army National Guard. On his university profile, he bemoans the “quasi-Marxist attitude” in research that he believes celebrates “revolutionary” violence.
“Tied to this is the idea of cultural relativism and Third Worldism, which I think has been very harmful not only to academia, but hurts the very people it purports to support,” Roth wrote on his profile.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations celebrated the university’s swift move to place Roth on leave.
“Such an action is not only inexcusable but also a violation of the rights and safety of students,” said the group’s San Francisco Bay Area office.
Kil, meanwhile, called on the university to fire Roth over the incident.
The Israel-Hamas war has created battle lines on California college campuses.
The hallway scuffle led the school to cut off the talk that had been underway in the classroom. Blutinger called it a violation of academic freedom that his talk was canceled.
“Everyone is focused on Roth, but I was the one who wasn’t allowed to speak,” he said in an interview with The Times. “I had the administration and police stop me from speaking to a classroom. That’s not permissible. They did it for issues of public safety, but it’s still a violation of my rights and the students to hear me.”
Blutinger said he saw the incident with Roth on video and had no comment on it.
“If we can allow people to shut down classes at the university because we don’t like who’s teaching it, then the public university will cease to exist,” he said.
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