BUZZ
‘[T]he Zionist regime’s deliberate annihilation of Indigenous knowledge traditions …’
The University of California San Diego has deleted a professor’s faculty page and anti-Israel course syllabus after a Jewish-interest news site’s inquiries.
About two weeks ago, Jewish Onliner had asked the university about the fall 2025 mandatory course “ETHN 100A: Theoretical Approaches” taught by Shaista Patel (pictured).
According to the then-online course syllabus, Israel is committing “sophicide” which Patel (and the Palestinian Feminist Collective) define as “the Zionist regime’s deliberate annihilation of Indigenous knowledge traditions inspired by the land itself, as well as the carriers of that knowledge, including elders and women.”
The syllabus also claims the U.S. continues to suffer from a “pandemic” of “anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, Zionism, settler colonialism, casteism, capitalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, heteropatriarchy, and other structures of violence that keep white supremacy intact.”
In addition, Patel refers to her employer as a “giant surveillance laboratory,” and gives her students the option of emailing assignments directly to her instead of using UCSD’s “official Canvas learning management system.”
“Please note that I am against cop pedagogy where every move of students is tracked and they are penalized for making any errors,” Patel says in the syllabus.
As of Wednesday, the course syllabus (pictured) and Patel’s UCSD page were scrubbed.
According to the archived version of her faculty page, Patel joined UCSD in 2018 as “a scholar of Critical Muslim Studies” and earned a PhD in Social Justice Education (and graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies) from the University of Toronto.
Her “primary research interests” include Critical Muslim, Dalit feminist and critical Caste studies, and transnational feminist studies.
(Interestingly, Patel’s faculty page features a UCSD Ethnic Studies logo — below — which implies the department isn’t so much about education as it is “a movement for the people.”)
In addition, Patel’s publications (such as “Talking complicity, breathing coloniality: Interrogating settler-centric pedagogy of teaching about white settler colonialism”) “traverse discrepant spatialities and temporalities in order to re-examine what we know and have yet to learn about entanglements of bodies, colonialism, race, caste, gender, religion, capitalism, and relations of labor.”
In response to Jewish Onliner’s query about whether Patel’s course would be “reviewed or canceled,” a UCSD spokesperson said “Thank you for reaching out. UC San Diego is aware of the concerns and the appropriate offices have been notified.”
Following the deletion of Patel’s UCSD page and syllabus, J.O. inquired about the professor’s “current relationship” with the university. The spokesperson did not respond.
