Professor seen in video verbally attacking woman in hijab will no longer teach in the state of Arizona

An Arizona State University scholar seen in a viral video confronting a woman in a hijab during a pro-Israel protest near campus has been expelled from the institution, ASU said this week.

Jonathan Yudelman, a postdoctoral researcher in ASU’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership who taught two courses in the spring, has been banned from the school, according to a statement released Thursday by the ASU president , Michael Crow.

“He is no longer allowed on campus and will never teach here again,” the university president said.

Attempts to reach Yudelman for comment through other recent academic affiliations were unsuccessful.

Yudelman participated in a pro-Israel demonstration on May 5, just outside campus. The video shows him facing an unidentified woman wearing a hijab, a head covering for Muslim women, telling her: “I’m literally in your face, it’s true. »

She said, “You don’t respect my religious boundaries,” to which Yudelman responded, “You don’t respect my sense of humanity, bitch.” »

It’s unclear exactly what happened before the clip began capturing the back-and-forth between the scholar, an unidentified man who accompanied him, and the woman.

Yudelman was placed on leave Monday while ASU investigated what happened, and was not allowed to go to campus, teach classes or interact with students or employees, a the university said in a statement Wednesday.

But on Thursday, ASU indicated, through the president’s statement, that it was permanently severing ties.

Yudelman had resigned from his position at ASU before the May 5 incident. The resignation took effect June 30 and he was not expected to teach until his last day, the university said Wednesday.

He also said he took the matter to Tempe City Police, which has jurisdiction in the area off campus where the incident took place.

“Arizona State University protects freedom of speech and expression but does not tolerate threatening or violent behavior,” the institution said Wednesday.

Azza Abuseif, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed gratitude to ASU for severing ties with Yudelman and urged police to arrest him based on harassment allegations, although it is unclear whether any laws were violated during the confrontation.

“Law enforcement must make clear that such intimidation and attacks will not be tolerated,” Abuseif said in a statement Friday.

The confrontation came as pro-Palestinian campus protests heated up from coast to coast. The students overwhelmingly defended the Palestinian people caught between Hamas militants, who attacked Israel on October 7, and Israeli military power, which unleashed a war that uprooted 1.7 million people, most of them civilians, in the neighboring Gaza Strip.

Institutions such as Columbia, home to the most high-profile protest encampment, and UCLA, the scene of violent clashes between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and supporters of Israel, have hosted police in riot gear, who launched mass arrests.

The May 5 rally attracted about 100 people and resulted in only one arrest when officers became aware of a suspect unaffiliated with the school wanted for allegedly spray-painting university property during of a “pro-Palestinian” rally the previous weekend, a campus police spokesperson said. .

Yudelman has other recent academic affiliations on his resume. They include an intellectual foundation assistant professor of political theory at the University of Austin in Texas; and a faculty member of the Tikvah Fund, a New York nonprofit that promotes Jewish ideas and describes itself on its website as “politically Zionist, economically free-market oriented, culturally traditional, and theologically open.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com