A prominent professor at a public university in California coached her students on opposing a state antisemitism bill and taught them that Israeli interests had subverted the US government, a video that surfaced this week showed.

The university said it was aware and investigating.

The class, by Prof. Melina Abdullah at California State University, Los Angeles, provided a glimpse into a prominent academic’s teaching of Israel-related issues on campus, amid an aggressive Trump administration crackdown on antisemitism and anti-Israel activism at universities.

Abdullah is a professor at the university’s Department of Pan-African Studies and the former chair of the department. She is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, the lead of the movement’s Los Angeles chapter, and involved in the organization’s national leadership, according to the university website.

Cornel West, a prominent academic and social activist, selected Abdullah as his running mate for his 2024 presidential campaign.

Abdullah livestreamed the video of her class on her personal YouTube page in September. The footage identified the lecture as part of a course called “Race, Activism and Emotions.” The video went unnoticed until it was picked up by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that opposes antisemitism at US universities, and shared with The Times of Israel.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the director of the AMCHA Initiative, has been tracking Abdullah’s activism and said she was a “pillar of the ethnic studies establishment in California.”

“She’s a really powerful actor,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “She has a huge movement behind her.”

In the video, Abdullah denounces a California state legislative bill, AB 715, meant to combat antisemitism in public schools. The law, passed in October, established an Office of Civil Rights and an antisemitism prevention coordinator for K-12 schools, and required school districts to investigate and take action against discriminatory content in schools, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.

Jewish groups backed the bill, but progressive organizations opposed the measure, saying it stifled academic freedom.

Abdullah told her students about her own activism against the “terrible bill,” saying it was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “student protesters.” The bill was a California state initiative, not federal.

“The kinds of people who........

© The Times of Israel