Teachers in University of Maryland Charged with Anti-jewish Bias

State Senator Paul Dorf called on Dr. Wilson H. Elkins, president of the University of Maryland, to investigate charges that some members of the institution’s faculty engage in practices that “many consider outright anti-Semitic.” At the same time, the Baltimore Jewish Times, local weekly, demanded that “professors, instructors or teachers guilty of such prejudice be summarily dismissed.”

The charges of anti-Semitism were voiced first by Diamondback, the student newspaper at the university. According to Diamondback, a German-language teacher at the university had scheduled an examination on the first day of Rosh Hashanah this year, threatening students who would absent themselves from that test with the equivalent of a failing mark.

Later, the instructor canceled the quiz, telling those students who came to the examination: “I hope those of you who showed up will not go to hell.” One professor was quoted by the student newspaper as saying: “Rabbis have enough to do this time of year without having to issue excuses for absences by Jewish students.”

In his letter to Dr. Elkins, Sen. Dorf wrote that he would like to have additional information about “conditions on the campus of any minority group being discriminated against.” He told the university president: “I, along with other proper authorities, can take steps to see that this condition is immediately changed.”