Student complains WPU prof said moon landing was fake

Hannan Adely | NorthJersey

William Paterson University is reviewing reports alleging that a sociology professor made biased comments and shared conspiracy theories in class, including telling students that the moon landing was faked.

Benny Koval, a student from Fair Lawn, said she raised concerns after the professor, Clyde Magarelli, said things in class that she described as questionable and made her uncomfortable as a Jew. She recorded and shared some of his comments on Twitter.

"It was very unfortunate, but most of all it was a waste of my time and money," said Koval, 18, who just completed her freshman year at the university, which is in Wayne. "It was incredibly frustrating going to a public university for a taxpayer-funded education and I'm learning about how the moon landing was faked."

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Magarelli, who has taught at William Paterson since 1967, did not respond to requests for comment. University officials said they were looking into the complaint.

"A review of this matter is underway to determine what action may be warranted," a university spokeswoman, Mary Beth Zeman, said in an emailed statement.

Koval took a course called Social Problems with Magarelli in the spring semester. Some of his comments, she said, were biased against Jews. In one instance, which she filmed on her phone and shared on Twitter, he said the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, engaged in torture only during the "last part of the war."

More holocaust denialism from Professor Magarelli @wpunj_edu!



He claims the Gestapo was not a terrorist force for the majority of its existence... as if it's possible to be literal Nazi Germany and not a terrorist. pic.twitter.com/YLzphAjIA6 — benny ‌☭ ✡️ (@bennykoval) June 2, 2018

Historians say the Gestapo inflicted terror on Jews and dissidents from the outset, arresting dissidents and Jews and forcing thousands of Jews into concentration camps.

In another statement that Koval recorded and shared on Twitter, Magarelli said that 175,000 Jews served in the German Army, which he said was the "safest place" for Jews to be during the war.

As many as 150,000 Jews served in the German military during World War II, according to the book "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" by Bryan Mark Rigg, but most were "Mischlinge," the term the Nazis used for people of mixed Jewish and Aryan heritage.

Magarelli also claimed the Irish were the first American slaves, in an exchange that Koval recorded, but experts say it's not true. Irish people arrived as indentured servants, but unlike black slaves their servitude was not hereditary or lifelong, and they were not considered property.

Another recording shows Magarelli teaching that landing someone on the moon was impossible, and that the waving flag, in a place without atmosphere, offered proof that the televised landing was faked.

Never in my life did I imagine myself tweeting "my Sociology professor thinks the moon landing was faked", but here we are.



Clyde Magarelli presents unfounded conspiracy theories as facts at our public university, @wpunj_edu. pic.twitter.com/UpkmOc3Pxu — benny ‌☭ ✡️ (@bennykoval) June 2, 2018

Koval raised concerns about Magarelli's comments on social media and in a letter to the head of the Sociology Department. She said she was told that another student had filed a complaint last year. The university did not respond to a request for information about prior complaints against Magarelli.

The university investigated the professor in 1994 after he allegedly made claims in class that minimized the death toll from Nazi concentration camps, the university newspaper, The Beacon, reported at the time. In a handout, he wrote that the more "realistic" number was 700,000 to 800,000, the newspaper's report said. The actual number is around 6 million.

Instead, he taught that far more Jews died in the factories that fed Nazi Germany's war machine than in death camps, The Record reported at the time.

Koval has not submitted a formal complaint. Other students have referred to Magarelli as a conspiracy theorist on a website for rating professors.

This is not the first time Koval has raised concerns about comments or actions by school professionals. In January 2016, she secretly recorded a meeting with school officials at Fair Lawn High School who questioned her after another student complained about comments she posted on Twitter that were critical of Israel.

School officials said they were bound by the state's strict anti-bullying law to look into the matter, but experts countered that schools have discretion on what matters should be investigated.

Koval wrote about the incident on Twitter, and the school was inundated with phone calls from people protesting her treatment as a violation of her right to free speech. Koval said she was shunned by many students and called names like "Hitler" and had eggs thrown at her door. She left school for about eight weeks and got one-on-one tutoring to complete her classes.

Koval remains active and vocal on political issues, and is still prolific on Twitter.

"Honestly, it doesn’t matter if I’m Jewish," she said. "It matters if I fight for all oppressed people."

Email: adely@northjersey.com