UC Merced’s preliminary inquiry into teaching professor Abbas Ghassemi, who owned a Twitter account rife with antisemitic content, has become a formal investigation into whether he violated the faculty’s code of conduct.
Ghassemi’s Twitter account was deleted shortly after J. uncovered the antisemitic content in December.
Among his roughly 2,200 tweets was a picture of a “Zionist brain” with the labels “frontal money lobe,” “Holocaust memory centre” and “world domination lobe.” In other tweets, he stated that Zionists and Israel controlled American banking, media, government policy and commerce.
The account included his academic title, his name and a photo of him. His bio stated he was a professor at UC Merced.
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“The opinions presented in this Twitter account do not represent UC Merced or the University of California,” wrote Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz in a letter posted to the university’s website Tuesday evening. “They were abhorrent and repugnant to us and to many of our colleagues and neighbors; they were harmful to our university, our students, and our years of work to build an inclusive and welcoming community.
“We have called upon the dean and department chair to work with the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel to conduct an inquiry into potential violations of our standards, the UC Faculty Code of Conduct or other policies of the university, to determine what consequences are appropriate,” the letter stated. It was also signed by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Gregg A. Camfield.