A UK professor will not get to return to teaching while the university continues investigating him.
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A federal judge is, for now, declining to return to the classroom a professor whom the University of Kentucky removed from teaching amid his calls for a global war to end Israel’s existence as a country.
On his website, antizionist.net, law professor Ramsi Woodcock asks fellow legal scholars to sign a “Petition for Military Action Against Israel.” He says Israel is a colony and war is needed to decolonize, and he calls for the war to continue until “Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine.”
The university removed him from teaching in July. In a message to campus that month, UK president Eli Capilouto wrote, “We have been made aware of allegations of disturbing conduct, including an online petition calling for the destruction of a people based on national origin.” (Woodcock says he’s calling for the end of the state of Israel, not the destruction of Jews.)
In November, Woodcock sued UK in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, asking for restoration of his normal teaching duties and other relief. On Thursday, Judge Danny C. Reeves paused the case while the university’s investigation proceeds.
“As is customary for the University investigating claims that potentially impact the educational environment, Woodcock was removed from teaching and the law building as an interim measure during the investigation,” Reeves said. “Abstention is appropriate because those removals cannot be separated from the investigation and interference clearly would result if the Court were to enjoin any aspect of the investigation.”
Reeves added that “once the investigation is completed or any subsequent disciplinary procedures have concluded and claims have been exhausted, the stay will be lifted.”
In a statement, a UK spokesperson said the university “appreciates the Court’s thoughtful and clear ruling.” Woodcock, in his own statement, suggested he may appeal, saying UK officials were “torching the First Amendment and the university’s own regulations in an effort to protect a colonization project that practices apartheid and commits genocide.”
“There is very strong precedent stretching back to the Civil War that federal courts must intervene when rogue state actors, like university officials in my case, abuse their authority to try to silence speech that they happen to dislike,“ he wrote.
