 He found that the Jewish and Romanian students were racially segregated during teaching hours, which contributed to the tensions, but could not identify students directly responsible for the incident.With time, Popa became a noted public speaker in support of modernization, and a popularizer of Western science.In 1931, he gave a public lecture on "The Former and Current Situation of Iași", which recognized that the city had greatly decayed, materially and culturally, since 1866.