The syllabus for a course taught by Professor Shaista Aziz Patel at UC-San Diego has now seemingly vanished from the university’s website after the Jewish media outlet, Jewish Onliner, began investigating why the hostile anti-Semite who has denied the well documented Hamas rapes of Jewish hostages on October 7th, was allowed to teach a mandatory ethnic studies class and turn it into a forum on Jew hatred.
The UCSD catalogue entry for “ETHN 100A. Ethnic Studies: Theoretical Approaches” makes no mention of Israel at all, stating only that the class will provide “An advanced survey of key issues, themes, and debates in the field of critical ethnic studies focusing on the connection between race and social structures.” It adds that “Students will use diverse theoretical frameworks to identify and interpret contemporary and historical social problems.” Standard leftist gobbledygook, but not overtly anti-Semitic.
But in Patel’s vision, Israel and its ongoing “genocide” and “systematic murder” of Palestinian knowledge carriers occupy center stage.
As Jewish Onliner’s investigation revealed, Patel used her mandatory course in ethnic studies to accuse Israel of committing “sophicide.” She defines that term to mean “the Zionist regime’s deliberate annihilation of Indigenous knowledge traditions inspired by the land itself, as well as the carriers of that knowledge, including elders and women.” And that’s only to get started.
“It involves the crushing of Palestinian life and learning through the systematic murder of Palestinian students, mentors, teachers, researchers, scholars, academics, writers, librarians, archivists, spiritual leaders, historiographers, creatives, poets, interns, lecturers, professors, staff, and lab technicians,” Patel added in her syllabus. “Such attacks on these Indigenous knowledge carriers impacts [sic] entire generations of learners, crushing their aspirations and dreams.”
These statements in the syllabus are attributed to the Palestine Feminist Collective (an unintentionally ironic moniker given that women’s rights are negligible in Palestine) and its statement on “A Feminist Praxis for Academic Freedom in the Context of Genocide in Gaza.”
Israel may be the chief target of Patel’s ire, but it is far from alone. The University of California system itself and the “surveillance system” it operates are also highly suspect.
In a section of the syllabus titled “On Canvas and Surveillance” (Canvas is the university’s online system through which students can submit assignments and receive feedback) Patel writes: “Please note that I am against cop pedagogy where every move of students is tracked and they are penalized for making any errors, and also against the giant surveillance laboratory that the UCSD is.”
She adds that “I will try my best to protect your data and your privacy throughout this course. Of course, because we work and study here, it might not be possible to completely defeat the surveillance machine, but let us collectively try to be more careful.” The professor goes on to suggest that students can email her assignments directly, rather than submitting them through the Canvas system, and should use Slack, a non-university chat platform, for class discussions, so as to avoid “institutional monitoring.”
With all this subterfuge, the natural question is what is Patel trying to hide? If she is not deterred from expressing obvious paranoia and Jew hatred in her course syllabus, just how much worse do things get once students are trapped with her in a classroom?
Patel’s also now-deleted faculty made no secret of her far-left leanings. “Patel, who joined UC San Diego’s Ethnic Studies Department in 2018 as a scholar of Critical Muslim Studies, holds a PhD in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto,” reported Jewish Onliner in their original article about her course. “According to her faculty bio, she identifies as a Pakistani Shi’i Muslim scholar whose research focuses on Dalit/anti-caste studies in diaspora and transnational feminist studies. Her work examines intersections of race, caste, gender, religion, and capitalism through a decolonial lens.”
Even more concerning is Patel’s entirely counter-factual denials that Hamas terrorists violently raped and sexually assaulted female Jewish hostages on October 7th.
In a Facebook post from January, Patel wrote, “Yesterday some really well-meaning, very young students in my Islam class asked me about the lies forged by New York Times and circulated by western media and politicians that Israeli women were raped on Oct 7th 2023. We did a very systematic analysis of this trope of the colonized-man-rapist but quickly sharing some educational videos here from Electronic Intifada. After Palestinian news media and feminists such as Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi among others have tirelessley worked to burst open these lies, the power of the American and western media is such that these lies continue circulating.”
Patel goes on to post links to several videos which allegedly refute these claims of rape, including one featuring notorious Jew-hater Ali Abuminah and hosted by The Electric Intifada in which he calls accusations of rape on October 7th “a genocidal propaganda campaign” that is “not based on any credible evidence.”
In light of these horrific revelations, that a mandatory course in Ethnic Studies is being taught by an unrepentant Jew hater who casts her own employer under suspicion and denies the well-established rapes committed by Hamas on October 7, what is UCSD doing about it? So far, they appear to simply be hiding the evidence. Patel’s syllabus and her faculty bio have disappeared from the UCSD website, and the university refuses to answer whether they are conducting an investigation or altering Patel’s course in any way.
“Thank you for reaching out,” a UCSD spokesman responded to media inquiries. “UC San Diego is aware of the concerns and the appropriate offices have been notified.”
As to why the university felt compelled to hide Patel’s syllabus once it was brought to public attention, Jewish Onliner suggests a possible answer: “Whether the syllabus violates federal anti-discrimination law remains an open legal question that would ultimately be determined through formal complaint processes and federal investigation, should those avenues be pursued. However, the combination of a required foundational course, explicit characterization of Jewish self-determination as oppression, and mandatory acceptance of contested political claims creates what some legal observers might characterize as a strong case under current Title VI enforcement standards.”
Let’s hope that the Office for Civil Rights in Trump’s Department of Education is paying attention.