At DePaul University, Biology 101 Now Includes ‘Genocide In Gaza’

The haters of Israel just can’t help themselves. Everything puts them in mind of the “apartheid, colonial-settler, genocidal state” of Israel. And they want everyone else to be thinking the same things about the state they love to hate, whatever the putative subject at hand.

A biology instructor at DePaul University recently provided a startling example of the phenomenon. She was supposed to be teaching about the role of microorganisms in causing disease. But the subject of her optional essay assignment to students had nothing to do with microorganisms, and everything to do with the “genocide in Gaza.”

More on this latest example of campus Hamas distemper can be found here: “DePaul University fires biology professor over assignment about Israel-Hamas war,” by Greg Norman, Fox News, June 10, 2024:

DePaul University says it has fired a part-time biology professor after she gave an optional assignment to students last month asking them to write about the impact of “genocide in Gaza on human health and biology.”

An investigation into the assignment offered by Anne d’Aquino “found it had negatively affected the learning environment by introducing extraneous political material that was outside the scope of the academic subject as outlined in the curriculum,” according to the school.

“The class was provided a new instructor, and the faculty member has been released from their appointment as a part-time faculty member,” DePaul University said in a statement to The Associated Press, adding that some students “expressed significant concern” about politics in a science class on how microorganisms cause disease.

The Chicago-based school also said an email with the assignment showed support for people “resisting the normalization of ethnic cleansing.”

Around the same time, DePaul administrators were grappling with an anti-Israel encampment on campus.

D’Aquino is appealing the decision, saying during a student demonstration on campus in support of her last Thursday, “My termination was a breach of my academic freedom and another example of this administration’s efforts to twist any discussions of Palestine and Palestinian liberation language into false claims of antisemitism.”

D’Aquino was teaching Health 194, Human Pathogens and Defense in early May, according to CBS Chicago.

In its online academic catalog, DePaul describes the course as introducing students “to the diverse microorganisms that cause significant disease within the human population.”…

No doubt many of the students will rally round their part-time instructor; on many campuses the anti-Israel mental fog makes it hard to think straight. And it is always more fun to stand up for a teacher who claims she’s being persecuted for her beliefs, a veritable Giordano Bruno or Galileo Galilei. But she is not. D’Aquino is, instead, being let go for being a bad teacher in the classroom, by injecting extraneous matters into her biology course. She has also semaphored to the students that those who submit the paper on “genocide in Gaza” would do well to agree with her. Do you think that any student who claimed that Israel was not guilty of “genocide” and furthermore, that Hamas alone, by embedding its operative and weapons in civilian areas, has been responsible for the civilian deaths in Gaza, would get a grade above F on that paper? And apparently there were students in the course, not necessarily supporters of Israel, who were disconcerted, even alarmed, that a biology course should include an assignment, albeit optional, to produce a paper on “genocide” in Gaza.

Now D’Aquino is suing to regain her job. But on what grounds? She does not have tenure. She is an employee at will, and part-time at that. Perhaps an enterprising, sympathetic, and pro bono lawyer can help some of her students — the ones who were discombobulated by her assignment on “genocide,” to sue her for a failure to stick to the syllabus, and for instead using her position to subject the students to political brainwashing. Or perhaps De Paul University can countersue Ms. D’Aquino for bringing the university, it could be claimed, into disrepute (“De Paul? Oh that’s the school where they teach about Israel’s so-called ‘genocide’ in a biology class.”). If she wants to battle it out in the courts to get her job back, then DePaul should let loose with both barrels.

Meanwhile, I’ve been looking into similar courses offered at universities around the world. There is an advanced biology course at the University of Tehran on “Deoxyribonucleic Acid and the Jewish Question.” There’s another at the Hafez Assad Business School in Damascus on “Volatility, Risk, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And there’s a course given at the King Abdul Aziz Medical School in Riyadh on “Early-Onset Dementia and the Talmud.” They all sound promising to me.