Jerusalem Mayor Scraps Do-Over Lecture At San Francisco State

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.”

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