Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat Image by Getty Images

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat canceled a lecture he was to deliver at San Francisco State University a year after his address at the school was drowned out by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

In a statement Wednesday announcing his decision to cancel the lecture for the following day, Barkat noted that in April 2016, “dozens of anti-Israel protesters disrupted my public lecture through intimidation and provocation, vulgarities and incitement that bordered on the anti-Semitic.”

He noted that the university’s president, Leslie Wong, invited him back to the university in order to “provide students the opportunity to learn that they were denied last spring.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Barkat said that by offering a “ticketed, limited event,” the university “did not offer the lecture that would provide the kind of healing needed after the assault on free speech last year.” He also said that “no legitimate effort was made on the part of the University to publicize the lecture.”

I have decided to cancel my lecture tomorrow at San Francisco State University. pic.twitter.com/JNlMPFYGpY

— Mayor Nir Barkat (@NirBarkat) April 5, 2017

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount