Academic Freedom or Academic License at Brooklyn College

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Friday, January 28. 2011

Academic Freedom or Academic License at Brooklyn College

Those of you spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for your children’s college education, and paying taxes to support colleges, may be interested in a current brouhaha at my alma mater, Brooklyn College.

A doctoral student, 1 ½ years into his studies, was hired by the Political Science department to teach a graduate level course on the Politics of the Middle East. I wrote about his clear and one-sided pro-Palestinian writings and radical associations, and of his slanted syllabus of readings. Subsequently, others wrote to the college administration questioning this hire, including the New York State Assemblyman for the adjoining district. The hire was rescinded, the formal reason given that the hire was insufficiently credentialed.

Predictably, the hire complains that academic freedom has been trampled. Some on campus and the hire’s ideological friends in the blogosphere agree. The NYC press has covered the incident, repeating their charges. The hire himself appears in a TV report saying, “I have very vocal views in favor of the Palestinian cause for self-determination.” At his personal website, the hire says, “Unfortunately, due to external pressure, the Brooklyn College provost has chosen to suppress academic freedom and intervened to cancel my appointment. This is a profoundly unsettling outcome and I am currently challenging it.”

Au contraire writes a retired professor at the college to the Chancellor of the City University of New York:

By now serious academics realize that the propagandists work deliberately to confuse "academic freedom" with freedom of speech per se. Academic freedom is the freedom to teach and write within the constraints and standards of one's discipline, which means paying methodic attention to the relevant sources and domains under a course heading. This is the freedom that needs defending, and has been commendably defended in this instance.

Further, it does not appear this hire has any legal grounds to demand he be hired.

So, what is at stake: academic freedom or academic license, especially when abused, completely inviolate from legitimate concerns of students, parents, or knowledgeable critics?

The hire at Brooklyn College was, most charitably, a mistake, now corrected.

If you agree, you might email the Chancellor of the City University of New York ( chancellor@cuny.edu ) and the Brooklyn College President ( klgould@brooklyn.cuny.edu ).

Posted by Bruce Kesler in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects, Our Essays at 14:28 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (3)

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Brooklyn College Capitulates To Left-Palestinian Narrative
Brooklyn College President Karen Gould today announced the re-hire of Kristofer Petersen. His appointment to teach a graduate course on the Politics of the Middle East had been rescinded last week, after a furor over his avid pro-Gaza writings, activ

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Tracked: Feb 01, 01:01

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Mr. Kesler:

Academic freedom includes the right of academic departments to evaluate the credentials of faculty based on the standards appropriate to that discipline, and it also encompasses the right of faculty hired to use their best professional judgment in designing syllabi and course materials. One consequence of academic freedom (this is certainly true in my own fields of legal philosophy and German philosophy) is that many instructors design courses and syllabi that seem to me misguided, and that I myself would never use. But academic freedom protects the right of instructors to do that. The opinions of parents, students, and politicans are as irrelevant as my opinion about the syllabus in question; this core principle of academic freedom (distorted by your correspondent in the passage quoted above) does not change when the subject is political science rather than physics or linguistics. By no stretch of the imagination is the syllabus in question incompetent or inappropriate to the subject, even if it is not the syllabus that you or your correspondent would use.

Of course, in this case, we are not even having an academic disagreement; instead, we have a politican who objects to the political views of the instructor pressuring the College to fire him, despite his having been hired as an adjunct through the regular procedures. And the issue raised is not simply one of academic freedom, which has obviously been violated, but the First Amendment rights of the professor, who has been punished by a state actor for his speech.

My father is an alumnus of Brooklyn College, and, like me, recognizes this as the embarrassment for a distinguished academic institution that it is.

Sincerely yours,
Brian Leiter
University of Chicago

#1 Brian Leiter (Link) on 2011-01-28 16:42 (Reply)

Prof. Leiter: Pleased to have your views. -- Where we disagree, most centrally, is that "academic freedom" is not an unrestricted right, and that it is a privilege granted when performing within proper bounds.
It is not clear whether or to what extent this hire's cancellation was affected by inside or outside academia. Regardless, both have responsibilities and the right to weigh in, though you opine "The opinions of parents, students, and politicans are as irrelevant as my opinion about the syllabus in question." Further, in this specific case, without tenure, and being a temporary adjunct, the college administration has every right -- including legal -- to deem the choice inappropriate. -- I have also raised that it would be an advantage to "academic freedom" for the specifics of how and why such a choice is made to be transparent. In this case, it was made by one faculty member. As we know, greater transparency cleanses, and that's what I contributed.

#1.1 Bruce Kesler on 2011-01-28 17:43 (Reply)

If a Nazi pops up teaching German philosophy,the powers that run the institution should intervene.Professors are still employees or contractors. Obama and America are going to get a real life lesson in Middle East politics.There is major rioting the streets of Egypt.

#2 RickTN on 2011-01-28 17:35 (Reply)

Can you say, "Heidegger"?

#2.1 bob sykes on 2011-01-29 08:31 (Reply)

Bravo to Bruce Kessler (and others) who acted on this.

Remarkable. Great citizenship (and a fine alumnus)

NS

#3 Nathan on 2011-01-28 23:02 (Reply)

Bruce,

I've enjoyed your Maggies Farm blog in the past. However, you are entirely wrong on this one. There are no "bounds" on academic inquiry--a society/culture or government agency cannot determine what is acceptable literature and academic opinion in regard to any subject. The Reich prevented the stories of Jews suffering in the ghettoes and camps from being taught at the various universities--while the Reich was smashing Jews throughout Europe. For the sons and grandsons of victims to adopt the very same tactics--and by this I mean that you have joined in--is atrocious.

As West Point grad and Air Force officer, my great uncle was made to bomb the people of Dresden to finish off the Third Reich. His mother, a member of the Eisenhower Administration reconnected Jews with money stolen by the Reich and Swiss and Austrian and American banks from Jews while Chair of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

Destroying the ability of the academy to teach the current history of a population that is being decimated is immoral and extremely sinister. Would that you would step beyond your blinders.

#4 Keen on 2011-01-30 09:10 (Reply)

Keen: Your comment is simply wrong to accuse the school, and me, of being Nazis. This is a gross canard and misleading as an effort to say there should be no limits to hire fully qualified staff to present materials and lectures that are fair, balanced and complete as to factual views of matters. You've insulted the college and me, bujt moreso yourself.

#4.1 Bruce Kesler on 2011-01-30 10:35 (Reply)

Bruce,

New York congressman Hikind--whose action prompted Brooklyn College to prevent the teaching of political history that did not suit his worldview--was a follower of the extreme reactionary racist Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League, which has been identified as "a right wing terrorist group" by the FBI.

Preventing the story of the domination and subjugation of Palestinians from being heard IS a return to the crimes perpetrated against Jews prior to the founding of Israel.

Palestinian claims to the Holy land are no less valid than those asserted by European Jews--particularly those who tended that land uninterrupted for thousands of years, who have now been driven into refugee camps and made to suffer these past sixty years. In fact, among Palestinian Arabs are the genetic inheritors of the tribes of David. Until the arrival of the Europeans and their colonial settler project, it was Palestinian Arabs, Maronite Christians and Jewish families that did keep and maintain that land and those religious sites which were are now being usurped on the basis of racial, ethnic, and religious exclusion by an increasingly fascist state.

The enterprise you defend is rotten to the core. And thus you must question your own embarrassment.

But then, rather than arguing facts, you resort to insults and personal invectives. How common.

#4.1.1 Keen on 2011-01-31 04:47 (Reply)

The suppression of Mr. Petersen-Overton's freedom of speech at Brooklyn College isn't exactly the first time Zionist power has assaulted academic freedom in this country. There's a long list - Finkelstein, Ramlal-Nankoe, Ginsberg at NC State, etc. - with occasional victories over the freedom-hating racists of the Anti-Defamation League, eg. William Robinson at UC Santa Barbara. It's funny that the authors of this blog call themselves "anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankees". Surely that tradition is pro- rather than anti-freedom of speech? Does freedom include saying this article is more Judeophile neo-conservative than Anglophile traditionalist?

#5 Jay Knott on 2011-01-30 13:29 (Reply)

I guess that puts you in the unrestricted license category, free to spew hate in defending radical haters.

#5.1 Bruce Kesler on 2011-01-30 20:55 (Reply)

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Friday, January 28. 2011

Academic Freedom or Academic License at Brooklyn College