In one University of Arizona classroom a professor has offered extra credit to students who can compare the policies of President Donald Trump to that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
In a report by Campus Reform one student shared their views on what they deemed an uncomfortable assignment.
“This was only an extra credit assignment, but regardless it still feels extremely one-sided and [like] full-on indoctrination,” L’wren Tikva told the outlet.
Tikva also wrote to the professor stating, “As a Jewish American who has ties to those who survived the Holocaust, it’s pretty trivializing comparing Trump’s policies to the Holocaust,” She also condemned the assignment as “offensive,” “insensitive,” and an “insult to the victims of one of the worst mass murders in modern history.”
The currently unnamed professor denies any intention “to compare Trump to Hitler,” and released a response to explain:
“Perhaps I should have stated my discussion more clearly and precisely on the pre-Vichy laws that targeted immigrant populations in general in the late 1930’s in France and did have a great impact on the Jewish community in France before the Second World War even started,” the professor explained, and reiterated that she was “not [at] all comparing what eventually transpired in Vichy, France to what is happening now in the USA.”
“I am certainly not cheapening the Holocaust by looking at the laws emphasized in pre-war France and examining the focus and rhetoric of certain immigration laws in the recent past and current moment in the States,” the professor wrote.
The assignment email itself read:
“Now that you have studied the Vichy Anti-Jewish Laws, the German Ordinances, and pre-Vichy laws imposed on the Jews (French, immigrant, and refugee) and the repercussions that they had for Jews in France, examine and analyze more current anti-immigrant laws in the United States such as Arizona SB 1070, DACA and its repeal, and the Muslim ban requested by the Trump administration using the analytical tools and historical perspective that you gained from assignment 2. What populations are targeted by these laws? In what ways are they being used? Would the term “scapegoating” be applicable here and therefore, what did (does) President Trump hope to achieve by invoking them? If you know of other examples you may of course include them in your discussion.”
