‘Barbaric regimes’: The public pays for university’s anti-Semitic professors
Topline: A professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received nearly $1.1 million from the college since 2017 while making antisemitic comments online and encouraging hatred against Jews.
Key facts: Sut Jhally, former chairman of the UMass College of Social & Behavioral Sciences’ communications department, is also the director of the film “The Occupation of the American Mind.” It criticizes Israel’s “repeated invasions” of the Gaza strip in 2014, which happened after Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
The film also has an X account. So far this year, the account has claimed that “Zionism and white hetero masculinity drink from the same poison well” and that “Israel is a murderous, barbaric regime aided and abetted by the (past and present) murderous, barbaric regimes in Washington.” Another post called Israel a “nation of sadists.”
A December 2024 post from the film’s account mocks a podcast called “Two Nice Jewish Boys” by asking, “Wow, if these are the nice boys, just imagine what the Two Genocidal A**hole Jewish Boys podcast sounds like?”
Jhally also directed “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land,” which the New York Times described as a “one-sided” film that ignores the role Palestinians played in creating violence in Gaza.
Jhally retired from full-time work in 2020 when his salary was $262,586. He still receives a salary as a professor emeritus and made $57,000 in 2024.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
Another lecturer at UMass, Rachel Weber, gained notoriety in October 2023 when a student asked her “Will you condemn terrorism,” and Weber answered, “It’s not a yes or no question.”
Weber was also the lawyer for Efe Ercelik, a UMass student on a visa from Turkey who pleaded guilty in 2023 to misdemeanors involving an assault during a peaceful pro-Israel rally. Ercelik reportedly punched a Jewish student in the face and kicked him in the stomach during a Hillel event calling for Hamas to release its hostages. Witnesses said Ercelik called the Jewish student a “little b***h boy,” took his Israeli flag, spat on it and stabbed it with a knife.
Weber made $15,190 from UMass last year.
Since 2021, UMass has received over $833 million in grants and contracts from the federal government. The school has almost 3,000 Jewish students.
Summary: Professors have the right to free speech, but most Americans would likely object to their tax dollars being used to finance those spreading hateful rhetoric against any group.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com