Sydney University in Australia is opening an investigation into an incident where a professor waved a five dollar bill at an elderly Jewish woman who had come in support of a lecture that was heavily attended by anti-Semitic protesters.
After confronting the 75-year-old woman, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, who is the Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University, pulled a $5 bill out of his pocket and began to wave it in the woman’s face.
The professor is reportedly threatening to sue the woman after she responded by kicking him “in the meat and two veg,” the Daily Telegraph reports.
Lynch claims he pulled the $5 bill out of his pocket as a threat to sue the woman and not as a deliberately anti-Semitic act. “Any suggestion that I am in any way anti-Semitic is incorrect and unfounded,” exclaimed Lynch.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British officer who was presenting the lecture at the university, said that Dr. Lynch’s actions certainly displayed a clear anti-Jewish intent.
Colonel Kemp wrote a letter to the University following the incident. He spoke of the professor’s actions during the anti-Israel demonstrations:
Associate Professor Jake Lynch, the Director of your Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Dr Nicholas Riemer, one of your senior lecturers, who were both apparently leading and encouraging the protesters, screamed at the security officers to desist. This seemed to be a clear attempt to impose their own authority as faculty members, thereby hoping to intimidate the security officers into allowing the abusive demonstration to continue. At one point I observed Associate Professor Lynch waving money in the face of a Jewish student, a clearly aggressive and insulting act that seemed to invoke the stereotype of the ‘greedy Jew’. Although not Jewish myself, I found Associate Professor Lynch’s behaviour deeply shocking and offensive.
The retired British military officer added that the University was neglectful in their duty to stand up to the bullying tactics of the anti-Semitic rabble-rousers.
“The University is deeply concerned about events surrounding a protest on campus and has commenced an investigation into the incidents,” a statement from Sydney University read.