You can spend your entire life researching this question and never come up with a comprehensive answer. I prefer to think of people such as your professor as either ignorant (willfully or not) or as evil. Those who are ignorant are often willingly so. Their ideology makes them refuse to attempt to understand the Jewish people and their history. People who are just ignorant because they are ignorant can sometimes be persuaded, but they are in the minority.
Those who are evil and know that what they are saying is not true are the worst of all, and their motivation is based upon an ideology that is antithetical to Jewish philosophy. So the question arises, what is Jewish philosophy? It is important to ask this, because we need to know what kind of life Jews would create for themselves and their gentile friends if only they followed Jewish principle. It is also important to know what kind of world we would have if noone believed in Jewish principle.
I think that those who choose to be against the Jews, knowing what Judaism stands for, have made a clear philosophical decision. They are admitting that they cannot bear the burden of conscience. They cannot bear morality. They cannot bear the values of obeying the law, of family values, of charity, of education, of knowledge or wisdom.
When somebody chooses to be anti-Semitic, they are tacitly admitting that they prefer cowardice over courage. They will never explicitly state this, of course, but that is what they are for. They are admitting that they prefer barbarism over a difficult set of laws to follow. Most of all, they are admitting that they wish to cast off the yoke of heaven, that a sanctified life is not worth living.
That is why so many college professors are against not only Judaism, but also Christianity, America, Israel, the West, and any type of decency. It is also why you can see so many liberal "intellectuals" extoll the virtues of islam, because islam is the political movement which seeks a reversion to barbarism.
So you should know, very clearly, when someone speaks against the Jews, what exactly they are all about.