A professor at the University of Kentucky on Thursday sued the university leadership and the head of the US Department of Education after he was investigated and removed from teaching for eliminationist rhetoric against Israel.

Ramsi Woodcock’s calls to destroy the Jewish state ran afoul of state antisemitism law, but he contends that his anti-Zionist diatribes are protected speech, in a case that touches on First Amendment protections and serves as a counterpoint to lawsuits filed by Jewish groups against universities across the US that argue anti-Zionism is discriminatory toward Jews.

Woodcock is a tenured law professor at the university’s J. David Rosenberg College of Law and has worked at the university since 2018. He sued the university president, other university leaders, and US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a federal court in Kentucky.

Woodcock’s anti-Israel positions, published online, amount to a broadside of common far-left attacks against Israel, combining genocide and apartheid accusations, international law, colonialist academic theories, and characterizing Israel as an impediment to the world order.

“Zionism is not only racism, but colonialism, and the remedy is not equality but decolonization,” he said, characterizing Israel as an “American colony” and arguing against “any right of self-determination for Jewish people” between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

He has taken the argument a step further than many anti-Israel academics, though, by explicitly arguing for the violent destruction of Israel and laying out a plan for a global war against the Jewish state.

In public statements last year, he called to “end Israel” and demanded “war — by the international community against Israel.”

“We demand that every country in the world make war on Israel immediately and until such time as Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine,” he wrote in a petition.

He suggested that the United Nations could use a resolution known as “uniting for peace” to destroy the Jewish state and that the countries that have accused Israel of genocide could forge a military alliance.

The lawsuit said the university first took action against Woodcock in July because of a Kentucky........

© The Times of Israel