‘Marching against this dangerous authoritarian administration is of utmost importance!’ Yali Amit says
A University of Chicago professor canceled a midterm Thursday and called on his students to use the time to join an anti-Trump protest, an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
Yali Amit, a statistics professor who has long opposed Israel, told his machine learning and large-scale data analysis class he was canceling the exam as “a small contribution” to the nationwide demonstrations being held that day to oppose President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. In an email to his students, Amit said he would post the exam as a homework assignment and included a link to a sign-up site for the Chicago-area protest, which called to “STOP THE BILLIONAIRE TAKEOVER .”
“The country is in an emergency. The Trump administration is kidnapping people off the street, deporting them to foreign prisons, jailing and threatening to deport students who demonstrated in support of Palestinians,” Amit wrote in his email. “So, today, thousands across the country are demonstrating in a national day of action. As a small contribution to this day of action I am cancelling the midterm and calling you, if you are able, to join the Chicago demonstration announced here” (emphasis in the original).
“Marching against this dangerous authoritarian administration is of utmost importance!” he added in the email.
Amit’s email comes as the Trump administration pushes for reforms at universities that have failed to rein in anti-Semitism, taught politicized course materials, and maintained legally questionable DEI policies. The administration has not spared the University of Chicago from that push—last month, the Department of Health and Human Services cut nearly $6 million in federal grants to the University of Chicago.
Amit isn’t the first professor at a prestigious higher education institution to cancel classes to protest the Trump administration this semester. Several Columbia University professors in March canceled classes in solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil, the student activist and foreign national in ICE custody. One even gave students an automatic “A” for a canceled midterm.
A student in Amit’s class told the Free Beacon that the professor’s behavior was “inappropriate.”
“It is inappropriate for a professor to cancel an exam to encourage students to attend a political protest,” the student said. “Furthermore the message indicates that this professor, like many others in academia, assumes that all students share his left-wing political beliefs. The professor does not recognize that students might not only prefer to attend class than protest, but may oppose the left-wing views that he is protesting for.”
Amit, who did not return a request for comment, is also a longtime anti-Israel activist. He signed a letter last spring condemning the University of Chicago for calling in police to clear an anti-Israel encampment on campus.
“As instructors at the University of Chicago, we object—in the strongest possible terms—to your decision to deploy armed police against a peaceful encampment of our students,” the open letter to president Paul Alivisatos read. “We believe that the University’s actions this week are in flagrant contradiction with the principles it claims to cherish, and would hold this belief for any topic that aroused a collective student action of this kind.”
Amit’s anti-Israel views date back at least to 2001, when he signed a letter espousing violence by Palestinians. “While we totally condemn acts of terror against innocent civilians, we regard Palestinian violence as being, on the whole, a legitimate revolt against colonial occupation,” the letter read.
He signed another the next year accusing Israel of committing “crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing.” Both letters were published at a time when Palestinian militants were targeting and killing Israeli civilians.
In 2013, Amit moderated a panel discussion organized by the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, titled “From South Africa to Israel: The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.”
UChicago United for Palestine, a coalition of student groups “committed to Palestinian liberation and racial justice,” hosted a separate protest on Thursday calling on the school administration to reinstate two students who were evicted after they assaulted police at an Oct. 11 Chicago protest. One agitator at Thursday’s protest waved a Hezbollah flag.
Earlier in the week, the group celebrated the anniversary of last year’s encampment. Student radicals displayed a banner that read, “Free Palestine, Bring The Intifada Home”—punctuated by an upside-down triangle, a symbol Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets. They also erected a tent adorned with portrayals of several University of Chicago board of trustees members, including Jewish board chair David Rubenstein, with blood dripping from their mouths.
The University of Chicago did not respond to a request for comment.
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