By Aiden Pink December 10, 2017

A tenured professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey has been removed from teaching and leadership positions after he was found to have written or shared several anti-Semitic remarks on his Facebook page.

An internal investigation found that Michael Chikindas, a professor in the Department of Food Sciences, “posted extensive bigoted, discriminatory, and anti-Semitic material on social media,” university president Robert Barchi and chancellor Deba Dutta wrote Friday in a letter to faculty.

Chikindas had blamed Jews for the Armenian genocide, posted anti-Semitic memes depicting Jews as hook-nosed merchants, and called Judaism “the most racist religion in the world.” The material was first uncovered by the blog Israelycool.

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)

“This material perpetuated toxic stereotypes and was deeply upsetting to Jewish students, faculty, and staff across our community. The fears and concerns they have expressed to us and many university leaders are both justified and understandable,” the letter said.

As a result, Barchi and Dutta wrote, Chikindas will no longer teach required courses, has been demoted from his position as the director of Rutgers’s Center for Digestive Health and will be required to undergo sensitivity training and be subjected to “ongoing monitoring.”

Barchi and Dutta also wrote that the university would be “seeking further disciplinary action” through procedures agreed to by the faculty union.

Rutgers has one of the largest Jewish student populations in the country, with approximately 6,400 Jewish undergraduates, according to the Forward College Guide.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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