Peter N. Kirstein

USA Today linked my article,  “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files.”

08/08/2010 11:59 PM History News Network

Related topics:

• Howard Zinn
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Chicago
• Boston University

The blog, Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit, has been previously praised for its elevation of the technical aspects of my article and the utilisation of links. I have also critiqued it for its reactionary politics and lack of catholicity: small “c.” There have been quite a few comments on my article which, as one would expect on a Jesuit-inspired laity weblog, are noteworthy for their civility. They are responding to the  “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files.” The article mentions the joint humanitarian mission of Dr Howard Zinn and Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan to Hanoi in 1968 that freed three airpersons shot down in this genocidal conflict in which two to three million Vietnamese were ruthlessly slaughtered by American imperialist forces.

St Ignatius of Loyola: a Spaniard and founder of the Jesuits and warrior for Jesus. I prefer a different approach than his but recognise his importance in founding the greatest order in terms of Catholic academic excellence in this country if not throughout the Roman Catholic world.

I went to Saint Louis University for graduate school, a top-tier Roman Catholic university, yes there are some, which is run by the Jesuits. It was my favourite institution. I also taught there and enjoyed my greatest amount of academic freedom. I liked it more than grade school, high school, college. The Jesuits are a class act and the academic leaders in Roman Catholic higher education. They take education very seriously and are amazingly good at fund raising or as the patois of the day refers to it as institutional advancement. Why don’t they just speak truth to power, “begging for bread for buildings.”

17 comments:

Henry said…

August 9, 2010 8:47 AM

TonyD said…

At this point, I’m never surprised when I hear someone dismiss important Biblical values with “that’s just someone religious speaking”. And, on other occasions, when I’ve heard good policy dismissed with “that’s just a conservative Republican speaking”.

I’m not quite sure how God’s values have come to be associated with Communism, Democracy, Republicans, or Democrats. All of those organizations reflect a very non-omniscient perspective.

Why do we keep mistaking God’s values for our judgment?

August 9, 2010 12:46 PM

Marc said…

I suppose peace movements associate with communists because it is closer to the Christian ideal -sharing things in common and eschewing wealth and so on – at least in theory, than free-market capitalism.

Zinn was always one-sided and arrogant in his approach I thought – which lionized him on the left but relegated him to fringe off the mainstream.

Old Dan certainly led Hoover on a merry chase for awhile there didn’t he? On the FBI’s most wanted – like old Bin Laden – funny how they can’t catch that guy with all their technology and $ and all….

I agree TonyD – God does not belong to a political party but…isn’t that where the rubber meets the road with the strength of say the fundamentalists or the catholic workers? What they share in common is a refusal to compartmentalize their religion.

August 9, 2010 4:24 PM

Anonymous said…

I never much liked Zinn’s kind of advocacy history writing but I don’t think the William Bennett/Lynn Cheney celebratory approach is valid either. That’s not real history.

I am grateful for Fr. Berrigan’s faithful service to the Faith and the cause of peace,

August 9, 2010 6:11 PM

TonyD said…

I’ve spent a fair amount of time around Fundamentalists (none around Catholic Workers.) They were very Republican. As a result, their judgment was distorted. Somehow the Republican values became equated to Christian values. Very disappointing.

There was a similar issue a few days back on this blog. Some Jesuits were concerned about changes to the “credit hour” laws. We tend to confuse societal laws with God’s laws – and take a position.

August 9, 2010 8:35 PM

Anonymous said…

There were at least 10,000 other such communist ideal incidents, not counting the tens of thousands they murdered after they broke the Paris Peace Accords and the US vietcongress aided and abetted the rape and murder several hundred thousand in Vietnam, Republic of.

August 10, 2010 5:15 PM

Anonymous said…

August 11, 2010 6:52 AM

Anonymous said…

Jeez.

August 11, 2010 7:57 PM

Peter N. Kirstein said…

August 12, 2010 1:14 PM

Joseph Fromm said…

Dear Peter,
Thank for the illuminating article linking Communism, Liberation Theology and the Pacifist Movement.
JMJ

Joe

August 14, 2010 7:12 AM

Joseph Fromm said…

1.Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit gratuitously and disgracefully refers to the late Dr Zinn in its title as a “Notorious Communist” and deliberately omits that portion of my article in which that affiliation is denied.

Answer: I use the term notorious, because Dr. Zinn fits the definition
1. widely and unfavorably known:
2. publicly or generally known, as for a particular trait:

2.It also altered my article by changing “communist” to “communist.” It is customary to indicate when an emphasis is added to a quoted document. Mr Joseph Fromm changed plain test to italicized text to emphasize his disapproval of communism which he has perhaps never studied or analyzed.

Answer: I always italicize any word in quotes as a way for people to more easy read my posts.
I have studied Communism my whole life. I reject every bit of its disastrous premise and out comes.
It is at its very core is anti-reason, anti-human and most importantly anti-God.

Read Peter’s full post at http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/5554

Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Joe

August 16, 2010 9:52 PM

TonyD said…

1. This is your blog. You can call someone notorious, italicize text, and disapprove of communism if you feel so inclined.

2. Dr. Zinn joked about being called a communist – he was quite clear that he was not a communist. I heard him criticize communism and communist states. Would you be surprised to hear that a person or organization can be attacked and mischaracterized for saying things that go against powerful interests?

As for Communism — a group of Catholics who understood God’s values could create an effective Communist society. Or an effective Socialist society. Or an effective Democratic society. Our souls do not depend on our society’s organization.

August 18, 2010 1:21 PM

Joseph Fromm said…

Tony D.
Thanks for your comment. You are correct a person Salvation is independent of the governmental structure one finds oneself in. However, the Communist reign of terror over the past 100 years at all points around the globe is demonic. Socialism support of abortion and its war against the family is also demonic, both forms of government seek to deny the sacraments to the faithful, in effect erasing the results of Christian charity and the civilization of Christendom.

Tony we may have to agree to disagree.

JMJ
Joe

August 19, 2010 10:35 PM

TonyD said…

I don’t think we particularly disagree.

On the religious issue, which is the important one, we seem to have a similar perspective.

I’m not too worried about perspectives on Communism – except to the extent that they displace real Church teaching.

August 20, 2010 6:53 PM

TonyD said…

Now that the readers have become a very small group, I’d like to add a few observations. These observations are not specific to Communism.

Communism may be called good. Communism may be called evil. Communism may be called both good and evil. Communism may be called neither good nor evil. Communism may be called any blend of those characteristics.

Communism must be categorized in these ways – depending on the observer, the aspects observed, and the will of God. That is, all those seemingly contradictory categorizations are correct for specific people.

So the categorization of the categorization made by a person may be good. Or may be evil. Or may be some blend of those characteristics. This categorization, too, depends on the particular person and God’s judgment.

Thus, the search for “truth” and “facts” is often misguided. This loss of “certain knowledge” is more than offset by an understanding of “higher things”.

August 21, 2010 3:57 PM

TonyD said…

I’d like to add an additional thought. On one hand, my explanation above was deliberately abstruse. But there is one implication worth clarifying.

The “golden rule” can be used to measure ones understanding of God’s laws. To the extent that a person interprets the “golden rule” to be exclusively about their own values (eg. “the truth”) they are misunderstanding God’s law. Conversely, to the extent that they interpret the “golden rule” to be about others’ values, they are understanding God’s law. (And sometimes one must adopt others’ values. Judgment is involved. I hope that no one reading this was hoping for simple rules to follow.)

Further, as one becomes more of a “vessel” one becomes more open to receiving divine revelation.

I should add that this is not a recipe for any short-term happiness. Or any “improvement” in society. In fact, the “loss of self” is a very real cost — and hard to understand until it is experienced.

August 22, 2010 2:31 PM

Peter N. Kirstein said…

Communism is good. In fact it is an ideal system because it opposes capitalism which is the true “demonic” system. I do refer principally to its devolution as theory as opposed to its excesses as state capitalism after 1917. However even “communist” nations had some positive virtues: they contained American military power and its monstrous imperialism for roughly fifty years and defeated German national socialism in the 1940s.

Abortion is a tragedy but very much ingrained as part of women’s search for equal justice. To deny a woman the right to terminate her pregnancy would be offensive to the notion of justice, the right to privacy, and the right to be left alone. Women cannot be forced to give birth against their will. It is unseemly to demand this but I recognise the competing moral visions here. I care more about the post-birth person as opposed to the pre-birth fetus as controlling the fate or actions of an individual. I teach at a Roman Catholic university but will not hestitate to maintain my sense of dignity, morality and academic freedom.

August 30, 2010 5:34 PM

HNN has published my article, “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files,”  that incorporates the recently released F.B.I. Zinn files. The Zinn Files are testimony to the persecution of dissent and free-thinking in this country. This sham of a democracy which Dr Zinn so heroically attempted to improve attempted to destroy him behind his back with accusations of being a communist, a subversive and the like. It is the F.B.I. that is the threat not those who wish to help the helpless and succor to the weak and hungry. The farce of the F.B.I. reaches irrational levels of absurdity whereby Dr Zinn is perceived as a threat to the president. If it were not for the fact we live in the most violent nation on earth, in which the armed police state hounds pacifists, antiwar resisters and civil rights advocates, this would all be a historical lesson of high comedy.

http://boingboing.net/2010/01/27/howard-zinn-rip.html

The following is from the F.B.I. website as linked above:

On July 30, 2010, the FBI released one file with three sections totaling 423 pages on Howard Zinn, a best selling radical historian, teacher, playwright, and political activist.

Zinn was born in Brooklyn, New York and died at the age of 87 on January 27, 2010. As a young man he worked as a shipyard hand and served in the U. S. military as a bombardier during World War II. Returning from the war, he became involved in a number of left-wing political causes, some of them associated with the activities of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

In 1949, the FBI opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn (FBI File # 100-360217). The Bureau noted Zinn’s activities in what were called Communist Front Groups and received informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the CPUSA; Zinn denied ever being a member when he was questioned by agents in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the Bureau took another look at Zinn on account of his criticism of the FBI’s civil rights investigations. Further investigation was made when Zinn traveled to North Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan as an anti-war activist. The investigation ended in 1974, and no further investigation into Zinn or his activities was made by the FBI.

100-HQ-360217, Section 1: March 9, 1949 to April 2, 1968, 284 pages

Seventeen pages withheld as duplicative, for referral to another government agency, or because they are classified in their entirety. Redactions were made to protect personal privacy and the identity of sources of information and because material is still classified.

100-HQ-360217, Section 2: June 20, 1969 to August 22, 1974, 119 pages

Redactions were made to protect personal privacy and the identity of sources of information and because material is still classified.

100-HQ-360217, Section 3: August 22, 1974, 20 pages

One redaction was made to protect personal privacy.

Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, proclaims her annual survey of alleged ad hominem criticisms of Campus Watch’s right-wing agenda: silence those who hear the cries and whispers of the Palestinians and marginalise the growing number of academics who correctly assess our support of Israel as not always congruent with American national interests. In Right Side News, I am included in their  “annual” list of inaccuracte critics:

“In another new twist on the same old, same old, St. Xavier University history professor Peter N. Kirstein, writing at his blog, describes Campus Watch as “one of the New McCarthyism’s most egregious excesses.”

Rice University but I like double entendres.

This was over a year and a half ago! I guess Campus Watch is falling off the radar screen and so they are recycling even mild criticisms of its modus operandi in order to present the appearance of relevancy. Campus Watch, however, always evades the question. Why did they publish an enemies list of progressive Middle Eastern Scholars and then a Solidarity List of supporters only to remove both? The answer: they blew it, succumbed to public outrage of McCarthyism and revealed themselves as militant Zionists using unAmerican tactics to defame and destroy free-thinking academics in this country. So nobody really pays them as much attention anymore even if their hatchetwomen have cool or really hot names such as “Cinnamon.”

I was reluctant to post this because having endured persecution for an e-mail that opposed war and American war crimes in particular, I felt to do so would be rank hypocrisy. However, my e-mail was intended as private communication. A professor’s e-mail to an undergraduate class does not merit that implicit assumption. I would not have posted Adjunct Associate Professor Ken Howell’s e-mail had I not seen it elsewhere online, had it been sent to a single student or unless I knew without doubt that it was authentic. This is also presented in a different context than my own case in which the cadet wing of the Air Force Academcy tried to “get me” by sending my e-mail throughout the world. I have already repeatedly criticised the university, the Religion Department and in particular its chair, Robert McKim, for firing Mr Howell for this e-mail. Note he was a full-time professor at the university and yet due to his non-tenure track status, was fired for a single e-mail to his class on Roman Catholic theology.

Specific Critique of the Howell e-mail:

Preambular Assessment:

The tone is professional and non hectoring. It is not threatening or haranguing or engaging in vile argumentation. There are no hints of sanctions or degrading and abusive language directed toward a student or “class” of students. The professor is clearly on a mission to convert a class to his point of view but that is hardly unusual in academia. His argumentation at times is superficial, careless and anti-intellectual. He is not a deep thinker and is governed by simplistic analysis and narrow-minded bias. Yet this is academia and he has the right to his views even if reactionary and a rejection of modernism:

1) “One is that to judge the best outcome can be very subjective. What may be judged good for the pregnant woman may not be good for the baby.” I think a professor should indicate that a baby is not a fetus or at least that is the opinion of many: That to merely equate pre-birth with post-birth status is not universally shared. The use of the term “baby” is very loaded and frankly intellectually shallow. Yet he has the right to equate without even a hint of another view that a fetus in the uterus is a “baby.” The man is obviously pro-life and does not even intend to demonstrate another viewpoint. His right and certainly well within academic freedom protection.

2) Mr Howell’s equating consensual sex between a 10-year old male and 40-year old male as possibly legal but not moral is madness. No one in his or her right mind would conclude that consent between any two individuals regardless of gender is acceptable. Adult status is almost universally assumed to be a requirement for consent, both morally AND legally. I think Mr Howell is also gratuitously using male-homosexual activity to make his points when heterosexual intimacy would have made the same point. Utilitarianism is not without morality. Mr Howell superficially sees it as anything goes. He is building a fake philosophic foundation in which to attack consensual, adult, private sex between two individuals of the same gender. Mr Howell ignores lesbian sex probably because organic penetration is not as evident.

3) Mr Howell is wrong. Natural Moral Law does not exclude considerations such as consent. Consent is at the heart of morality when two people are engaged in sexual activity. It does not supersede such a concept as far as I know. The issue of what is NATURAL is hardly restricted to heterosexuality. Homosexuality I understand is NATURAL for many homo sapiens and has been probably since the evolution of man and woman from their aquatic ancestors that bellied up on land. Homosexuality is too ingrained in our DNA, if that is scientifically accurate, too common across cultures and civilisations, too ancient in its manifestations not to be considered NATURAL. The so-called anatomical fit between men and women that Howell eulogises does not mean that alternative acts of sex are not natural. His call for only sex for purposes of procreation presumably means he opposes Griswold v. Connecticut or Eisenstadt v Baird that decriminalised contraception in the 1960s and 1970s.

4) While I am not a physician and neither is Mr Howell, I do think he is rather unsophisticated and frankly anti-intellectual in alleging that gay sex between men is unhealthy and that one serves as a woman and the other as a man. Yeah I know what he means but to rely on “a physician” as his source that male homosexuality is unhealthy is just stupid, very anecdotal and without rigour.  His sources are superficial as is his analysis. “I don’t want to be too graphic so I won’t go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men.” Maybe Mr Howell might have opened the floor IN class to a discussion of this. If he wants to talk about HIV, then do so but avoid these prejudicial and unsubstantiated claims. I realise most gay students would not want to come out but at least allow all students the opportunity, regardless of their oreintation, IN class to rebut this e-mail statement that is frankly unsubstantiated by medical or clinical research. Maybe he did but the e-mail seems to have come at or very near the end of the semester and it seems it was more of a closing argument than a vehicle for discourse. Again, his right, his freedom, in this country to do this.

5) Equating sex between a dog and its “master” to homosexual acts on the continuum of utilitarianism v. natural moral law is a bit absurd. I don’t think Mr Howell that a dog can consent as you suggest. Dogs are sentient and have rights and are nice pets but are not at the level of development where their consent to having sexual intercourse is recognisable. It is instinctual not consensual. Goodness!! Yet his tone is not hectoring or sardonic but at a level of discourse that I find rather elementary and unsophisticated.

6) Mr Howell is somewhat dictatorial at the end of his e-mail: “Unless you have done extensive research into homosexuality and are cognizant of the history of moral thought, you are not ready to make judgments about moral truth in this matter. All I encourage (sic) is to make informed decisions.” I don’t think a professor, who himself is hardly an expert on homosexuality or at least I am unaware of any research or scholarship on the topic that emanates from his authorship, should discourage student inquiry at any level of knowledge. We want to empower students to learn through debate, discussion and of course by research. Yet to tell them in an e-mail they are not really informed enough to make moral judgments about gays and lesbians is unfortunate and I think demeaning. An instructor by the end of the semester that feels strongly about an issue should have indeed provided the pedagogical and heuristic materials so that students COULD discuss a topic based on knowledge. To merely say in so many words that “you do not possess the knowledge as I do to make an informed opinion so you might as well agree with me,” is not the way I would induce student discussion of controversial issues. Mr Howell should empower not lord over his students. Yet this e-mail does not rise to the level of hate-speech or unprofessional misconduct that might have triggered a dismissal. It does not even come close to that standard.

Read the e-mail. Draw your own conclusions. Debate the points. Yet according to the seminal 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, an instructor has the right to teach her material in her own name and should not be sanctioned or censored for it. I would defend Mr Howell’s right to send this e-mail despite my reservations about the content and its ending tone of arrogance. I am not hedging. I would do anything in my power to restore this man’s position even though I have significant concerns about his approach to learning and his capacity to engage in sophisticated argumentation.

From: Kenneth J. Howell

Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:45 PM

Subject: Utilitarianism and Sexuality (for those in 447 FYI)

Dear Students:

Since there is a question on the final exam about utilitarianism (see the review sheet), I thought I would help with an example. I realized after my lectures on moral theory that even though I talked about the substance of utilitarianism, I did not identify it as such and so you may not have been able to see it.

It turns out that our discussion of homosexuality brings up the issue of utilitarianism. In class, our discussion of the morality of homosexual acts was very incomplete because any moral issue about which people disagree ALWAYS raises a more fundamental issue about criteria. In other words, by what criteria should we judge whether a given act is right or wrong?

Before looking at the issue of criteria, however, we have to remind ourselves of the ever-present tendency in all of us to judge morality by emotion. The most frequent reason I hear people supporting same-sex marriage is that they know some gay couples or individuals. Empathy is a noble human quality but right or wrong does not depend on who is doing the action or on how I feel about those people, just as judging an action wrong should not depend on disliking someone. This might seem obvious to a right thinking person but I have encountered many well-educated people who do not (or cannot?) make the distinction between persons and acts when engaging moral reasoning. I encourage you to read the final essay editorial I sent earlier to reflect on this. In short, to judge an action wrong is not to condemn a person. A person and his/her acts can be distinguished for the purposes of morality.

So, then, by what criterion should we judge whether sexual acts are right or wrong? This is where utilitarianism comes in. Utilitarianism in the popular sense is fundamentally a moral theory that judges right or wrong by its practical outcomes. It is somewhat akin to a cost/benefit analysis. So, when a woman is deciding whether it’s right to have an abortion, the utilitarian says it’s right or wrong based on what the best outcome is. Similarly, a man who is trying to decide whether he should cheat on his wife, if he is a utilitarian, will weigh the various consequences. If the cheating side of the ledger is better, he will conclude that it’s okay to cheat. If the faithful side is better, he will refrain from cheating.

I think it’s fair to say that many, maybe most Americans employ some type of utilitarianism in their moral decision making. But there are at least two problems. One is that to judge the best outcome can be very subjective. What may be judged good for the pregnant woman may not be good for the baby. What may be judged good for the about-to-cheat-husband may not good for his wife or his children. This problem of subjectivity is inherent in utilitarianism for a second reason. Utilitarianism counsels that moral decisions should NOT be based on the inherent meaning of acts. Acts are only good or bad relative to outcomes. The natural law theory that I expounded in class assumes that human acts have an inherent meaning (remember my fist vs. extended hand of friendship example).

One of the most common applications of utilitarianism to sexual morality is the criterion of mutual consent. It is said that any sexual act is okay if the two or more people involved agree. Now no one can (or should) deny that for a sexual act to be moral there must be consent. Certainly, this is one reason why rape is morally wrong. But the question is whether this is enough.

If two men consent to engage in sexual acts, according to utilitarianism, such an act would be morally okay. But notice too that if a ten year old agrees to a sexual act with a 40 year old, such an act would also be moral if even it is illegal under the current law. Notice too that our concern is with morality, not law. So by the consent criterion, we would have to admit certain cases as moral which we presently would not approve of. The case of the 10 and 40 year olds might be excluded by adding a modification like “informed consent.” Then as long as both parties agree with sufficient knowledge, the act would be morally okay. A little reflection would show, I think, that “informed consent” might be more difficult to apply in practice than in theory. But another problem would be where to draw the line between moral and immoral acts using only informed consent. For example, if a dog consents to engage in a sexual act with its human master, such an act would also be moral according to the consent criterion. If this impresses you as far-fetched, the point is not whether it might occur but by what criterion we could say that it is wrong. I don’t think that it would be wrong according to the consent criterion.

But the more significant problem has to do with the fact that the consent criterion is not related in any way to the NATURE of the act itself. This is where Natural Moral Law (NML) objects. NML says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act. Consent is important but there is more than consent needed.

One example applicable to homosexual acts illustrates the problem. To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the “woman” while the other acts as the “man.” In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don’t want to be too graphic so I won’t go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men. Yet, if the morality of the act is judged only by mutual consent, then there are clearly homosexual acts which are injurious to their health but which are consented to. Why are they injurious? Because they violate the meaning, structure, and (sometimes) health of the human body.

Now recall that I mentioned in class the importance of gaining wisdom from the past. One part of wisdom we gain from such knowledge is how people today came to think of their bodies. I won’t go into details here but a survey of the last few centuries reveals that we have gradually been separating our sexual natures (reality) from our moral decisions. Thus, people tend to think that we can use our bodies sexually in whatever ways we choose without regard to their actual structure and meaning. This is also what lies behind the idea of sex change operations. We can manipulate our bodies to be whatever we want them to be.

If what I just said is true, then this disassociation of morality and sexual reality did not begin with homosexuality. It began long ago. But it took a huge leap forward in the wide spread use of artificial contraceptives. What this use allowed was for people to disassociate procreation and children from sexual activity. So, for people who have grown up only in a time when there is no inherent connection between procreation and sex –- notice not natural but manipulated by humans –- it follows “logically” that sex can mean anything we want it to mean.

Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.

I know this doesn’t answer all the questions in many of your minds. All I ask as your teacher is that you approach these questions as a thinking adult. That implies questioning what you have heard around you. Unless you have done extensive research into homosexuality and are cognizant of the history of moral thought, you are not ready to make judgments about moral truth in this matter. All I encourage is to make informed decisions. As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don’t arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.

–

Kenneth J. Howell Ph.D.

Director, St. John’s Institute of Catholic Thought

Adjunct Associate Professor of Religion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In 2002 I was suspended for an e-mail to an Air Force Academy cadet condemning the military, war and the killing of innocents as described clinically as collateral damage. It was a nationally publicised academic freedom case and I was perhaps the first professor suspended due to an e-mail response to an off-campus student who to this day, aside from a few e-mail at the time, I have never spoke to or personally met. I mention this because Ken Howell of the University of Illinois has been fired as an adjunct because of an anonymous student complaint of an e-mail that he sent to his class, Introduction to Catholicism. No student of mine complained because my e-mail was sent to an Air Force Academy cadet who wanted me and fifty other faculty to recruit an audience for a conference at the academy. He did not complain either but as is well known, the e-mail was sent by cadets to others and it went viral all over the world and I got caught up in the culture wars and the need to silence antiwar, progressive faculty. I guess I am an expert on e-mail and sanctions and as the ranking Illinois AAUP official on Academic Freedom and Tenure cases, have a professional interest in this case as well.

Let’s get the facts out here:

Robert McKim, the chair of the religion dept at the University of Illinois fired Mr Howell. Universities should have a process where ALL faculty have access to a pre-sanction review hearing. No chair should be allowed to fire an adjunct professor unilaterally. There needs to be institutional machinery to provide appropriate due process. Even non-tenure track faculty should have some academic freedom protections. They usually don’t and this case highlights that. The University of Illinois must protect all faculty, even at-will contingent faculty, from such arbitrary and capricious chairperson actions. Professor McKim needs to have his knuckles rapped for such severe treatment of an academician and the evisceration of basic standards of academic freedom.

I am troubled that the student who filed the complaint did so through a friend. This is cowardly. A student who charges a professor with an act of inappropriate conduct or speech should openly and directly initiate the proceeding against a professor, unless there is fear of harm or other penalty. Academic fear of grade discrimination is no excuse in the absence of an instructor engaging in such behaviour. Mr Howell’s e-mail apparently was sent to the entire class, not just an individual or small cohort within the class. When it comes to grade grievance, by the way, it is common and AAUP best practices for the instructor to receive the first complaint. That should have applied here. If the complaint is not resolved, then the student may go to a chair or to a dean. In this case, apparently a student filed a hate-speech complaint through a third party to the chair. At the very minimum, a departmental inquiry should have followed. At the very minimum, the university should have afforded this adjunct some due process protection. At the very minimum, the adjunct professor should have had a hearing and the right to file a grievance. Adjuncts are not proletarians to be treated in this manner.

I have not seen the entire e-mail but only parts of it. However, to fire a professor over an e-mail sent to an entire class which was NOT student specific and apparently did not threaten a student, or attempt to discriminate directly against a student or a group of students but was merely an expression of ideas-however homophobic, ignorant and stupid-does not measure up to cause.  Chair McKim should only have initiated a process of termination if he felt the e-mail revealed an incapacity in performing one’s teaching duties. Did it raise issues of competence or capacity to teach? Rarely does a statement to a class suggest such a grave lack of teaching ability as to merit dismissal. One also has to take into an account a person’s entire career before reaching a conclusion that one’s teaching abilities are so compromised by a single statement. Being homophobic as Mr Howell appears to be is despicable but should not be a career-ending event. Mr Howell has the right to also oppose the military’s discriminatory policy of don’t ask, don’t tell and should be able to articulate that. It is only required that other ideas are tolerated and that a professor not engage in indoctrination. I must admit I am curious whether Mr Howell’s e-mail included a suggestion for dialogue and comment or whether it was just an instructor’s statement ex cathedra. The parts I have seen did ask them to reflect on his statement and I think agree with it but not in a manner that even remotely approaches indoctrination or a tyrannical approach to pedagogy. Yet it is not a requirement but just good teaching to educe disparate views.

I am pleased that the U of I has a Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure which according to the Daily Illini and WBBM in Chicago will review this case. More institutions of higher learning should. Yet they should have been called into this situation PRIOR to not after dismissal. It is apparent that Mr Howell may get his job back; I suspect he will. I would like to believe that such a turnaround does not end the matter. That the university review its process of dealing with sanctions, both major and minor, of all faculty.

I also think Mr Howell needs to do a gut check of what kind of a person he is and why he would take a position so aggressively as opposed to providing a more comforatble learning experience. However, his job must not be sacrificed due to his ignorance or bias. He must be defended and his job restored. He knows AAUP is on his campus and has an Ilinois office as well. If not he can contact me at kirstein@sxu.edu and the president of AAUP, Dr Cary Nelson, is on the faculty at the Urbana campus. If anyone cares, I am straight and would be aggressively out if I were not. I would not want Mr Howell as my professor but I would march, sit-in, and strike for his rights under AAUP guidelines and policies.

I received an e-mail from Ms Kelly. I responded. I deleted her email address. I respect her views but I maintain that Dr Howell is a homophobe. To state that consensual sex between same-sex partners is wrong, sinful and violative of so-called natural law is intolerable in a modern, progressive, diverse society. It is contemptible and utterly without justification. Yet I noted and repeat. Professors should be given academic freedom protection that includes the right to voice opinions to and in class. Some choose to do so rarely; others more frequently. Professors cannot indoctrinate or proselytize but are not mere ciphers of knowledge either. The issue is one of an instructor being afforded the rights of other citizens: free speech.

From: Megan Kelly [mailto:megankelly]
Sent: Sun 7/11/2010 8:14 PM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Regarding Dr. Ken Howell

Professor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs

URBANA, Ill. — The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church’s teaching that homosexual sex is immoral.

The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, has taught at the university for nine years. He says his firing violates his academic freedom.

A professor at the university who is also president of the American Association of University Professors agrees. Cary Nelson says teachers are allowed to express their own beliefs.

University spokeswoman Robin Kaler declined comment because Howell’s firing is a personnel issue.

The student had a friend register his complaint and has remained anonymous.

Comment:

Academic freedom protects the rights of instructors to express their views in class. Student complaints against a professor should rarely be used as a vehicle for dismissal. If a professor were chastising a student or engaging in abusive and demeaning treatment of a student due to their orientation, that would be unacceptable. The expression of an opinion on the topic of homosexuality is legitimate and proper for an instructor. Instructors cannot proselytize or introduce controversial material that is so frequently expressed and  unrelated to the course that the purpose of the class is eviscerated. Yet instructors can express opinions and indeed controversial ones; they should express them when they believe it appropriate. I would not construe the instructor’s comments as hate speech in that Mr Howell was apparently agreeing with a religious denomination’s views. His views by email or in class were part of a religion class and obviously germane to the catalog description of the course. Those views might be intolerant, biased, and cruel, as indeed they are, but one has the right to articulate them.

One cannot fire a professor for homophobia in my opinion. It is within the bounds of academic freedom for one to express those views with the caveats indicated above. Students should be allowed to disagree with an instructor and engage in spirited dialogue; Kenneth Howell has stated he adheres to that requirement. I do not see any evidence that such was denied. I think a student who is upset with a professor’s in-class remarks, if he or she did not do so, should first discuss the issue with the instructor. Then if necessary with a department chair or other unit head. However, I stand by academic freedom because without it higher education in the US is doomed to conformity and the perpetuation, if not monopoly, of intolerant views as expressed by Mr Howell. It is usually the left, the progressive, the critical thinker who are sanctioned for speech and academic freedom must be defended across the ideological spectrum so those who defy convention are protected in their search for the truth.

I believe the University of Illinois has demonstrated once again that off the tenure-track instructors have few academic freedom protections. Contingent faculty are the new majority and have little academic freedom. The cancer of contingency is evident here: at-will employees who are sanctioned for apparently expressing their views. Mr Howell did not have the protection of tenure and therefore is much more vulnerable to ideological persecution. I am pleased that A.A.U.P. President Cary Nelson was critical of this dismissal action.

I teach at a Roman Catholic university and have frequently criticised the church’s position on the issue of homosexuality when the topic is covered in my history classes. I will continue to do so when I wish, how I wish and as I wish. Students may express and do their views on the issue and open dialogue is the order of the day. In fact my classes on the gay liberation movement of the 1950s and 1960s are very conducive to class discussion. I have had students in class declare their homosexuality, inform me in my office they are homosexual, refer to biblical text  to oppose it in the hall and e-mail me generally enlightened views on the topic. I am not involved in that lifestyle and for me I only require three things about sexual intimacy: it emanate from adults, it derive from consensual commingling, and is conducted in a private manner. The rest is immaterial because privacy means privacy.

Mr Howell’s Complete E-mail to U of I class and comments

U of I Demonstrates Lack of Due Process in Howell Case

Illinois Student Critiques My Assessment of Howell case:

This is the announcement of my talk:

         

             

                                                                                                                                               

Monday, May 17, 2010

May 16, 2010, 11:01 PM

Chomsky Barred From West Bank by Israel

By ROBERT MACKEY

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/chomsky-barred-from-west-bank-by-israel/

An Al Jazeera interview with Noam Chomsky, broadcast on Sunday.

Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and political thinker who has been critical of Israel, was denied entry into the West Bank on Sunday by Israeli immigration officials when he tried to cross into the Palestinian territory from Jordan to deliver a lecture.

Amira Hass of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported:

No reason was initially given for the decision, but the Interior Ministry later said immigration officials at the Allenby Bridge border crossing from Jordan had misunderstood Chomsky’s intentions thinking initially he was also due to visit Israel. Chomsky, who is on a speaking tour in the region, was scheduled to speak at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank on Monday.

A spokeswoman for Israel’s interior ministry also told Reuters that there had been a misunderstanding and “officials were trying to get clearance from the Israeli military, which controls access to the West Bank to allow Chomsky to enter.”

In a television interview from Amman, Jordan, after he was rebuffed, Mr. Chomsky told Al Jazeera English, “the facts were completely clear to everyone; there was no basis for a misunderstanding.” He explained that he was interrogated for several hours before being told that he would not be allowed to cross into the occupied Palestinian territory. The 81-year-old scholar added:

I can only say what was conveyed to me in the discussion with the official who was carrying out the interrogation — he was receiving instructions from the [Israeli] ministry of interior and relaying them. There were two basic points. One was that the government of Israel does not like the kinds of things I say — which puts them into the category of I suppose every other government in the world. The second was that they seemed upset about the fact that I was just taking an invitation from Bir Zeit and I had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities, as I have done many times in the past but not this time.

Mr. Chomsky had been invited to speak about American foreign and domestic policy by the philosophy department at the Palestinian university in Ramallah.

The renowned linguist was outspoken in his opposition to the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which ended in January 2009 and has criticized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory many times.

In an interview with Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine in 2003, Mr. Chomsky said, “I objected to the founding of Israel as a Jewish state. I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.” When Ms. Solomon pressed Mr. Chomsky on his opposition to Israel, saying, “Your father was a respected Hebraic scholar, and sometimes you sound like a self-hating Jew,” he replied:

It is a shame that critics of Israeli policies are seen as either anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. It’s grotesque. If an Italian criticized Italian policies, would he be seen as a self-hating Italian?

Subsequent to my interview online with SR Education Group, I communicated with a full professor of education who has won her university’s teaching excellence award. She teaches a course in an online Master’s Degree program. I was struck that the entire degree programme was online. I did not know her university had an entire graduate degree programme online since the professor teaches at a brick-and-mortar institution near Lake Michigan that does not advertise the online experience.

Online Challenges

She told me that she learned how to proffer online instruction at the University of Illinois-Springfield at some workshop or training session funded by her university.  This was skills development after her completion of her graduate training and during her tenure as an education professor. These were the basics of her assessment of the experience:

A) It is very time consuming. Four hours a day is not uncommon. She actually spreads out her two-semester load so she can handle the task. She is not getting paid extra for summer teaching but is a carryover course from spring semester load. Ugh. I feel get it done before summer and take off the summer!

B) Some of her brick-and-mortar courses are less successful than this online course.

C) She never sees her students but they call her once a term. I was struck that this very un-online approach was considered necessary. This suggested to me that the instructor needed more human contact as it were to embellish the cyber relationship that dominates teacher-student online interaction. I don’t know if she requires phone calling but did say she speaks to them during the course via phone.

D) I asked her if she could prevent cheating on examinations since she could not verify the actual student taking the exam. She indicated she gets to know the students’ online style and learns their online personalities. I did not find that particularly persuasive but then again perhaps it would be unusual for a ringer to take an online test but the issue of security cannot be dismissed.

E) She said her students were highly motivated and performed at a high level of achievement. She conceded many types of courses would not be appropriate for online instruction in the field of education. Yet to be fair, she seemed basically satisfied with the online experience.

How does one assess teaching in an online world? There are no lectures per se. There are no dynamic face-to-face encounters with students. I wonder how does a chair,  a dean and department or unit peers assess the quality of online instruction? I am not talking about student evaluations; I am talking about assessment of an instructor for promotion or tenure who teaches exclusively or primarily online. I would be willing to post answers to these questions if someone provides them to kirstein@sxu.edu

Since my interview appeared on the SR Education Group website and my blog, I have received quite a few hits and rather interesting e-mail.

One was from an art historian with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota who is very tech savvy and questioned my dismissive comment on online instruction as an impediment to class discussion:

“As for your question: <I wonder how class discussion can be replicated digitally? >

“I recommend that you try to utilize the Discussion Forum on Blackboard some semester: of course there are cons, but also many pros [one of the cons being that it takes a lot [more] faculty time. the chief pro–you can achieve near 100% student participation.]”

http://www.uis.edu/mtl/students/images/online-education.jpg

I do use Blackboard fairly frequently but have not used the Discussion Forum. I use Blackboard in conjunction with brick-and-mortar courses that I teach which I presume is its primary utilisation. Yet I will explore this medium with our tech people this summer to get a better understanding of its use. It may indeed facilitate student interaction and add to the dynamic nature of instruction.

I still question the comparative worth of a strictly online course with a brick-and-mortar course in lending itself to student discussion within a class. Perhaps this aspect of online exclusivity maybe effective. I don’t know. Yet I think education is enhanced with face-to-face contact. Can faceless education conducted on a computer screen be effective and useful in the advancement of knowledge. I have avoided sweeping denunciations of a mode of education I have not engaged in. Yet I believe a student who matriculates only in online education, while perhaps benefiting in various ways, does not have the quality of education overall that is generated by dynamic contact with both professors and students.

I am sure SR Education Group does its job very well and I am aware of the growing interest in online education. Its decision, however arrived at, to publish my interview is an indication of its tolerance of academic freedom and willingness to explore disparate views of its raison d’etre.

I received several email from Program Managers at SR Education Group asking me for an interview. I was somewhat surprised since they are an online education company that brokers for online universities or mortar-and-brick universities that have online programmes. I was somewhat surprised since I am no devotee of online learning or distance learning but I am not utterly doctrinaire in my opposition to such educational venues. I tried actually to dissuade them from pursing this due to my not being perhaps “a company player.” Yet to their credit and contrary to my initial assumptions, they showed courage and intellectual breadth in publishing it. Kudos to the SR Education Group for soliciting and publishing an interview that does not advance their bottom line: unless it impresses those who are attracted to a corporate intermediary that accepts criticism of its business model:

http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/images/scholarship_books_dollar.jpg

Not my favourite logo. I recoil at such a crass monetary emphasis while recognising that education is appropriately construed as a means toward both knowledge and financial viability within the cash nexus of monstrous Goldman Sachs capitalism.

Peter N. Kirstein is a professor of history at St. Xavier University in Chicago. He received his B.A. in Government from Boston University and both his M.A. in Political Science and Ph.D. in History from Saint Louis University. He has been published by The Historian, Situation Analysis, Journal of Mexican American History, and many others.

In this interview, along with other scholars, Professor Kirstein discusses why he became an educator, some of his biggest challenges and greatest rewards, his views on online education, and more.

When and why did you decide to become an educator?

I had a love of teaching that emerged during my fellowship in the Political Science Department and continued after receiving my master’s. I was in graduate school pursuing a Ph.D. in history when that desire became more formalized. I also felt that academia would be a place where critical thinking, progressive change, and intellectual creativity would afford me the opportunity to continue my work as a change agent after graduate school.

I should add that Howard Zinn, my advisor and frequent professor of Government at Boston University set me on my intellectual journey. Patrick Dougherty at Saint Louis University continued the inspiration of critical thinking in graduate school. Only two professors really started me on my journey, but that’s all it takes.

What has been the most surprising challenge you have faced as a professor? How have you handled it?

I never thought I would be suspended for opposing the Bush administration war policies and American imperialism in general. I did not believe I would become embroiled in a national controversy due to an e-mail response to an Air Force Academy cadet and—to put it mildly—it was a “surprising challenge.” I have written extensively and lectured widely on it because “to be silent is to lie.” I am also a fighter and can handle unusual situations of great stress and fervor with a cool, calculated, determination. I am a tough person to silence and marginalize because of my passion for values and ethics that supersede all else.

It was a triumph of the will. I handled it in such a manner that it launched my career as both a public intellectual and scholar. It enabled me to rise within the organization of the American Association of University Professors as an academic freedom advocate and to have a heightened sense of self-esteem: predicated on toughness, persistence and courage. I am stronger, wiser and more confident in my capacity to work for social change having been suspended by those who so fiercely resisted it. I have imperfections that I recognize, but it is not for David Horowitz or the Wall Street Journal right to define me. I define myself.

Can you talk about a recent rewarding experience you’ve had as an educator?

I received the Teaching Excellence Award in 1997 at St. Xavier University and was nominated again this year for it. Also a graduating senior, who won the History/Social Science Education prize, dedicated his gift to the university to me. These two events are so rewarding and so nice. They mean so much to me. I love the students and love teaching and have since I first taught at Saint Louis University. I love it just as much now as when I was a graduate student.

Do you use any tools or technologies that have enhanced your teaching experiences?

I use Blackboard, PowerPoint images prepared by others for me, document cameras, CD players for music, and occasional video. I have a blog and a website, but I don’t know if folks consult those. I am going to learn how to actually make PowerPoint slides, text, and clickers this summer. I am not the worst in terms of applying technology in my classes, but can improve in this area. One cannot become too resistant to technology or one may lose the advantages that come with it. On the other hand, a healthy skepticism about the latest gadget is prudent.

Do you use any online resources that you would recommend to other professors or teachers, like social communities or textbook review sites?

How about my website and blog, to be a little facetious. I don’t use textbooks generally because I feel teachers should use books they would read: not books they don’t read. Professors don’t read textbooks so why should their students? It is a personal decision not an overall statement of what others should do. I do use links such as the New York Times and show some classes how to use databases such as JSTOR or Academic Search Complete.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing higher education today?

Tenure is under assault as the new proletariat emerges with contingent faculty who are at-will employees. Stopping the contingent off the tenure-track flood would address a primary threat to our educational system. Higher education is in some ways a scam as Barbara Ehrenreich notes in This Land is Their Land. Tuition increases regardless of the external economic order and students are nickel and dimed to death for stupid fees on top of $100,000 in debt.

The humanities and social sciences are being corrupted by assessment, student outcome mania testing, and a liberal-conservative Schlesingerian “vital center” of stultifying proportions. Teaching to the test as administered by state-accrediting agencies is epidemic. Professors are silenced or intimidated by other professors, administrators, governing boards or external groups. Critical thinking is under assault. Financial exigency is growing. I believe that a new conformity, not seen since McCarthyism, has descended upon post-secondary education and that it is casting a “pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Quotation from Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York case (1967).

What advice would you give a new professor before his/her first day of class?

Remember your humanity and forget the rest.

What reservations do you have about online education?

I wonder how a science lab is conducted? I wonder how class discussion can be replicated digitally? I wonder if all professors engaged in this work are appropriately compensated and rewarded due to the burdens of management that I hear about. I wonder if their workloads are adjusted particularly if they have real classes as well in a traditional setting. I question how a student can meet with a professor in her office in an online environment, unless it is part of a real university. I question how modern languages can be taught online. I question whether the interaction between professors and students, and between students and students in a quad, in a hall discussion, in the cafeteria, etc. can be replicated merely through online contact.

I also am struck that the technology that creates online learning is really anti-technology. How does one use the technologies in a classroom such as audio-visual materials on a dumb computer screen? I would not rule out online teaching in all circumstances. I understand it may suit the convenience of the student learner: but it is something that I believe is not as beneficial to the student as direct personal contact with an instructor. I also wonder how a professor can grow and develop as a teacher in this environment. I suspect less than one who is engaged in teaching in a real classroom or lab: I recognize there maybe hybrids of folks who do both online and real teaching in a university setting, but I would not be the teacher I am today if confined to a desk and a computer. Maybe some forms of distance learning with visual means of communication might work. I don’t know.

Could you imagine an online teaching environment that you would enjoy using and that you think would be successful?

No. I want to teach, not preach. I want to talk, not only write. I want to see people, not just words. I want to be human and enjoy the potential humanity of teaching.

Can you talk a little about the type of relationship you have with your students and also, if/how you think that relationship would be different in an online setting?

I encourage debates. I encourage a lot of student participation in class. I encourage group discussion. While I realize through e-mail one can have meaningful conversations, I think technology can be a very destructive educational tool as well as a liberating one. I don’t see how a teacher whose use of technology avoids visual contact with a student augments the teaching experience. I wonder if a professor online is as likely to inspire as one in person.

I have not taught online and do not want to be disrespectful or question the professionalism or capacities of those who do. I do have, however, grave and serious concerns about the advancement of academic freedom online for both teacher and student, and whether a faceless educational experience inevitably leads to an environment of impersonal learning.

Do you have any other thoughts on online education?

Maybe some students who are incapacitated can benefit. Maybe some who are in an area without adequate postsecondary education could benefit. Yet universities, who can teach Goldman Sachs a lesson or two about scams, do this for the money and not for the educational benefit of professors and students. It’s all about cash flow, not idea flow.

Full Disclosure: The interviewee received compensation in the form of an online (what else?) $50 gift “card” for purchase at Amazon.com.

DATE: April 16, 2010PLACE: St James Cathedral, 65 Huron Street,

Chicago Illinois 60611 TIME: 7:00pm

SPONSORS: Students for Justice in

Palestine at DePaul, UIC, Benedictine, Northwestern, IIT, Loyola

CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER: shiriendamra@gmail.com, (312) 231-8464

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY FROM OR BOOKS. NOT FOR SALE AT OTHER ONLINE RETAILERS OR IN STORES.

Hardback: $20/£12

Ebook: $10/£6
All formats.

Hardback and Ebook: $25/£16

FAQ about ordering “This Time…”

Ordering from abroad? Click here.

Looking for Going Rouge? Click here.

Looking for Gordon Lish: Collected Fictions? Click here.

Norman Finkelstein had been scheduled to speak in Chicago on April 16 at the St. George Greek Orthodox Church, 2701 N. Sheffield Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60614.  I include the address for informational purposes only in case one wishes to communicate respectfully their concerns and not for any other purpose.

Supposedly it were the Greeks who invented a quasi-democracy and now they fall into goose-stepping conformity in suppressing a man from speaking on the suffering agonies of the Palestinians. Shame!! Despite the fact that Dr Finkelstein is Jewish, family members were interred in camps built by Nazi Germany during World War II and he is an internationally known advocate of human rights and diversity, he has been banned by the virus of the Palestine-suffering taboo.

The scourge of repression and censorship, while hardly surprising when ecclesiastically imposed, after all look at many components of American religion today, is nevertheless to be reviled and condemned. I had been aware that Students for Justice in Palestine at DePaul University and other campuses were attempting to bring the Princeton-trained humanitarian back to Chicago. Now apparently that visit may be in considerable doubt due to the lack of a venue.

This sad journey into night is quite propitious. A former colleague of Dr Finkelstein, Dr Matthew Abraham, will be speaking on the topic of academic freedom and the Palestine Question at St Xavier University on April 5.

Hat tip to John Wilson e-mail.

We are not afraid: The issue of free speech, the question of Palestine and ending the code of fear and persecution for being human and demanding justice for the victims of the occupation and the expulsions emanating from the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel.

http://9gag.com/photo/5752_540.jpg

April 5, 2010 from 12:00 to 1:00 Professor Matthew Abraham to speak:

Matthew Abraham will speak on “The Courage to Refuse: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine” on April 5 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Fourth Floor Board Room. It will combine lecture and audience participation. Abraham is an associate professor of writing, rhetoric and discourse at DePaul University and a member of the Illinois State Council of the American Association of University Professors. He has published widely and is completing a book manuscript titled Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine for Pluto Press (London and Ann Arbor).

Professor Abraham during tenure travesty of Dr Norman Finkelstein

In his talk, Abraham will focus on several important academic freedom cases that have arisen in the last five years concerning scholars studying the Israel-Palestine conflict. While his remarks will emphasize the circumstances surrounding his former colleague, Norman G. Finkelstein, who was denied tenure at DePaul University in June 2007, he will address additional controversies that involved Joseph Massad (Columbia University), Joel Kovel (Bard College), Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard), Juan Cole (University of Michigan), John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard Kennedy School of Government). Abraham will suggest how academics can work together to protect the academic freedom rights of academicians who wish to write critically about the history of Zionism, Israel’s treatment of the residents of occupied Palestine and the nature of the United States-State of Israel relationship.

The event is co-sponsored by the American Association of University Professors (SXU chapter), the Middle East Studies Program and Students for Justice in Palestine.

The event is free and open to the public.

Permanent link to this story: http://my.sxu.edu/Administrative/Today/story.asp?prevArc=archive&date=3/18/2010&id=11151

ILL-AAUP State Meeting and Conference
Saturday, April 17, 2010

St. Augustine College, Chicago, Il.

9:00 a.m. Coffee and doughnuts

9:30 IL-AAUP State Council Meeting

11:45 a.m. Adjourn for lunch

1:00 p.m. Dr. Kevin Mattson, Ohio University, Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History, “The Corporatization of Higher Education”

1:45 Rima Kapitan, attorney at CAIR-Chicago “Academic Freedom and Contingent Labor: A Case Analysis”

2:30 AAUP National President Cary Nelson discusses his new book No University is an Island. Introduction by Peter Kirstein, St. Xavier University, Vice President, ILL-AAUP

3:30 IL-AAUP Business Meeting-elections, delegates to annual conference, acknowledgements

3:45 Adjournment

The conference is free and open to the public.

St. Augustine College is located at 1345 W. Argyle, Chicago, Il. 60640, north of downtown Chicago. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

The Red Line El stops 3 blocks east of the College at Argyle St. The College is also accessible by CTA buses on Clark, Broadway, Lawrence, and Foster.

If you are driving there is free parking at the College. From downtown exit Lake Shore Drive at either Lawrence or Foster Avenue.

The conference will take place in the historic Charlie Chaplin Auditorium. For more information email Lee Maltby at lmaltby@staugustine.edu, or phone, 773-878-3728.

This message was sent by the national AAUP on behalf of the Illinois State Conference.

Many press accounts report that allegedly Professor Amy Bishop of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, murdered three biology professor colleagues and critically wounded several others in a tenure-denial rage.

Professor Amy Bishop image from Huntsville Times

What stuns me is I never envisioned a situation where such murderous violence would allegedly result as retribution for a tenure-denial incident. I have worked with professors all over the country who have been denied tenure and empathise with the fact that it is devastating. Loss of prestige, loss of job, loss of career path, loss of retirement, loss of health care. So many faculty who are denied tenure feel abused, marginalised and the victim of a witch-hunt or as a casualty of the politics of academia.

Allegedly, Dr Bishop, a Harvard Ph.D., committed these multiple murders during a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama on Friday, February 12, 2010. The New York Times in their coverage of the story wrote:

I received several e-mail from an individual who claimed to be a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran and whose support group discussed my 2002 antiwar e-mail to a cadet that had been sent to dozens of professors to recruit students to attend an event at the unruly Air Force Academy. Their e-mail contained the subject “Your Legacy.”

I still receive e-mail from individuals concerning this transformative event. Recently, I heard from Emily, who is in California and married to a marine, who described herself as a “cover girl for Runners World.” She used the recent USS Comfort mission in Haiti to hail the humanitarian mission of the military and to disprove my utter distaste for war and the nation that uses war to advance the interests of its elite ruling classes.

War crimes against children with napalm attacks during Vietnam genocide.

———————————————————————————————
From: Chris Gussman – CEG Services Inc. [mailto:cgussman@hughes.net]
Sent: Tue 2/2/2010 4:10 PM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Your legacy

Mr. Kirstein,

I belong to a 60 member Viet-Nam veterans group that meets once a month for friendship and mutual support. During last night’s meeting, the conversation turned to how we were treated by the American public when we came home in the late 60′s and early 70′s. I commented that fortunately today’s vets were treated much better than vets of my era and several people in the group disagreed. While treated somewhat better, they felt that there were still vicious public people out there who had no respect for the sacrifices the American soldiers make every day. Then your name was mentioned as an example of hurtful people in positions of importance. I was not aware of the Air Force Academy incident but it seemed that I was the only one in our group who didn’t know about it. We talked about it for 1 1/2 hours. In the end we took a vote and I was elected to see if I could contact you and deliver the following message:

While every member of our group served in the military to protect your right to hold any opinion, those rights do not protect you from the scorn of others. To criticize the young man who guards your house is unforgivable. The disrespect and arrogance displayed by your words to that Air Force Cadet help explain why academics are considered to be out of touch with reality. We collectively feel that you should be ashamed of yourself.

Chris Gussman
10439 Reynolds Road
Orrick, MO. 64077-8046
Office: (816) 770-5590
Fax (816) 770-5582
Cell (816) 591-8580
cgussman@hughes.net

One can debate how much control the US had over the South Vietnamese government but NO debate it was as autocratic as its neighbor to the north above the 17th Parallel.

———————————————————————————————-
From: Kirstein, Peter N.
To: Chris Gussman – CEG Services Inc.
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: Your legacy

Hi Chris:

Thank you for contacting me and the respectful if not critical tone. I will return it likewise.

While probably not all that relevant, I did serve in a St Louis unit of the US Army Reserves and trained at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

I am sorry if my actions upset your Vietnam Vet group but I believe I stayed the course in appropriately rejecting war. If you read about the incident that you mention, I did engage in mutual apologies with the Air Force Academy and did have subsequent e-mail with then Cadet Kurpiel. With regard to Vietnam, I was very opposed to that war and believe to this day it was a war crime and act of genocide, knowing that the warrior is not always to be blamed for the war. Vietnam was the single most important event of my life, as it probably was yours, and we will obviously have different perspectives.

I am a native St Louisan but live in Chicago now. I see you are near Kansas City in good ol’ Mizzou country,

Best wishes,

Peter

Two to three million Vietnamese killed during the genocide.

———————————————————————————————
Mr. Kirstein,

Thank you for your reply. I admit that I am surprised.

I think you may also be surprised by my small group’s attitude. First, a little more information about the group. We met at the VA hospital in Kansas City between 1968 and 1972. We were all were being treated for injuries sustained in Viet-Nam. Our group of 60 have been awarded 131 Purple Hearts among other medals. I served 3 tours with the USAF between 1964 and 1969. I was injured 3 times (shot twice, hit by missile debris once) and never completely completed any tour (I made it 12 months, 9 months and 11 months). I was awarded 12 medals in addition to 3 Purple Hearts including a Distinguished Flying Cross (which was rarely awarded to an enlisted man).

The part that may surprise you is that, to the man, we agree with your assessment of the war……sort of. We agree that the war was a political exercise and that the war was not fought to win. But war crime and act of genocide? Obviously I don’t agree. To do so would be to brand myself a criminal. I do not believe that I am. I also wonder where your strong opinions were founded. Based on press reports? Were you there? Did you meet the people of South Viet-Nam? Did you see what was going on with your own eyes or did you watch the war on TV. In the almost 3 years that I was there, I met hundreds of South Vietnamese people. Almost all of them went out of their way to thank us or hug us. The people I met wanted us there.

My group’s objection to what you did had to do with an elitist attacking a kid who asked a question having nothing to do with the war. We’re not angry with you because of your anti-war feelings. Hell, we had anti-war feelings as well. We’re angry with you because you were a bully. You apologized because the world figured you out and you were in trouble. I don’t believe your apology was sincere for a moment. You were called out and, when the going got rough, you didn’t have the balls to stand by your convictions. So you apologized. My assessment is that, like most bullies, you are a coward as well.

But, as almost all men who have faced combat, we agree that war is never a good thing. But sometimes it’s what must be done.

And all of us believe that you are a lucky man to have people like Robert Kurpiel protecting you so that you can continue be a talker and a bully without ever having to dirty your hands.

Thank you for your reply,

Chris

Epic leader of the Vietminh and North Vietnam: Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa) that resisted Japanese, French and American colonialism and in the latter case, incontestable genocide.

———————————————————————————————–
Dear Chris:

I do not think I was a bully or a coward but a person of principle who demonstrated great courage given the threats and national attacks on me. I do not think it cowardly to protest war in an email that was a response to spam: he sent it to about 60-70 faculty and I was certainly not obligated to recruit folks for an event there. I was too personal in areas but most of the e-mail was antiwar and I don’t think I have to step back from that. Actually I have written about, spoken about and published articles about the Kurpiel incident. This might be of interest:

http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/553

Whether you were a criminal or not in Vietnam is not for me to decide. I do think Senator John McCain was certainly and deserved his POW status as long as he was treated in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Convention which he apparently was not. Generally, a criminal war does not lead to prosecution of field officers or enlisted personnel unless individual acts such as {Lieutenant William} Calley {My Lai act of genocide} are detected.

I do think the war was genocide and if there were justice in the world, there would have been war crime trials with the following defendants prosecuted for war crimes and violation of international humanitarian law: Westy {General William Westmoreland}, Abrams {General Creighton Abrams who replaced Westy}, McNamara {Secretary of Defence Robert  Strange McNamara}, L.B.J. {President Lyndon Baines Johnson}, R.M.N. {President Richard Milhaus Nixon}, Rusk {Secretary of State Dean Rusk under John Kennedy and L.B.J.}, Kissinger {Secretary of State Henry Kissinger under Nixon and President Gerald Ford}.

I don’t think Vietnam Vets deserved parades when they returned, although many got them. I don’t think they were heroes but I do think many were pawns in the game and drafted and should not be blamed for the war. I think it is not easy to condemn a war and celebrate the warrior and maybe that is too bad: but reality.

I suspect your anger toward me is less how I treated a “kid.” It’s not like I ever met him, or spoke to him or that he would cry and break down because of few sentences in an e-mail. He had a much stronger support group that anyone could imagine. No I suspect your anger was the way I assessed the military and this country which is so violent and desirous of war. I have great passions as do you about war and will continue to express them, however, perhaps more artfully.

So good luck and remember it was the government who sent you to war, not the antiwar protesters who wanted the war to end.

Best,

Peter

Here is an update letter from Margo: Received via e-mail February 4, 2010

Dear Supporters and Friends,

I am writing to update you on my Ithaca College tenure case.

For the first time in 11 years, I did not start the Fall semester as a professor in the Sociology Department at Ithaca College. I am deeply saddened by this and I have truly missed the campus and my opportunity to engage students and interact with my peers.

http: //www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/

ewen/images/fellowship_image.jpg

Despite this dramatic absence in my life, I have been busy telling my story, interacting with cherished supporters and collaborating with other professors in similar situations. I am also very happy to announce that I have just accepted a position to teach in the Sociology Department at Hunter College in New York City.

Below, I would like to highlight some of the truly inspirational interactions I have had over the past few months:

*After speaking on the “Defending Academic Freedom Today“ panel at the summer Socialism ’09 Conference in Chicago, a group of concerned faculty, students and citizens formed a group called Free the Academy. This group is working on organizing material for my case. The hope is to create a presence in academia that addresses academic freedom of progressive and left leaning faculty who are under attack. I invite you to join and contribute your ideas and abilities. http://freetheacademy.wordpress.com/

*This past fall I was invited to speak on a panel called “Israel and US Academic Censorship,” at the Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference “Exploring the Power of Nonviolence,” at Marquette University. Other panelists included Professor Joel Kovel, who as many of you know, was fired from his position at Bard College last year for his critical scholarly work on Zionism. Professor Chris Toffolo was a respondent on this panel. Chris was removed from her position as director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at St. Thomas University in Minnesota after she protested the administration’s banning of Bishop Tutu from speaking at St. Thomas in 2007. Tutu was labeled anti-semitic for his criticism of Israeli politics in Palestine. As vice-president of academic affairs at St. Thomas in 2007, the current president of Ithaca College, Thomas Rochon was responsible for removing Chris Toffolo from her position.

*I have received endorsements from well-established advocacy groups including Academics for Justice and California Scholars for Academic Freedom.

*I have also started working with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and hope to find other groups that will look closely at the sexual harassment elements in my case. Please share any contacts you may have with academic women’s groups, feminist organizations or employment law groups specializing in job discrimination.

*Also, look for online articles about my case in two recent publications:

- My story was recently published in the newsletter of ‘We Advocate Gender Equality’ (WAGE) and should be posted on their online site soon at http://wage.org/

- I was recently interviewed by Nora Barrows-Friedman for Electronic Intifada. Here is the article:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10998.shtml

*I have been invited on two panels this summer:

The first will be on “Scholar Activism” at the US Social Forum in Detroit, and the second on “Academic Freedom” will be at the Labor Section of the annual American Sociological Association in Atlanta.

Here is the current status of my case. I am waiting for the results of the New York State Division of Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Employment Commission’s investigations of my discrimination charges against Ithaca College. My hope is that if found in violation, Ithaca College will prefer to settle my case outside of court. Otherwise, we will have to proceed to the next level, which is court.

I will continue my struggle against Ithaca College and I demand and ask my supporters to demand that:

1. Ithaca College grant me tenure and restore me rightfully back to my teaching position which I have held for 12 years.

2. Ithaca College take responsibility for all damages I suffered through my tenure ordeal which started in 2005 and has continued until today. These include, racist and sexist attacks, sexual harassment, academic freedom violations, jeopardizing my legal status in the US by denying my work visa while under contract, as a result, forcing me out of the country and preventing me to teach my final semester of classes.

On that note, I am looking for ways to help to defray my legal costs. If you know of any grants for legal funding for such cases, please send this information along. My email address is margo.nankoe@gmail.com

Thank you for all your support.

Warmly,

Margo Ramlal-Nankoe

Previous Post on Her Academic Freedom Case: http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/2308

A Radical Treasure

This e-mail was from a student who graduated in 1988. She was one of my all time best students and sent me this. I removed explicit identifying materials. I have had several communication from students and other colleagues and am touched that Dr Zinn’s death triggered an association with him. It also attests to his significance in shaping the worldview of so many people.

From: @cinci.rr.com
Sent: Fri 1/29/2010 9:33 AM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Howard Zinn

Dr. Kirstein,

With all of the students you have taught over the years, I am sure that you couldn’t possibly remember me, however, how could I ever forget you. 

I am writing to you today to honor the life and work of Dr. Howard Zinn. I remember well the class you taught on American History using his book. It transformed the way I look at information and taught me skepticism of the status quo. When I read history, political science, or the national print media, my thoughts wander to the parts of the story that are not being told. Thank you for teaching me that.

I now work at Borders book store, everyone there knows I would rather be in the History section “working” than any other part of the store. Dr. Zinn’s book is there and whenever I recommend it or re-shelve it, I think of you.

I have recently discovered your blog and have been reading your postings. I enjoy your perspective and reading about your fight to keep freedom of speech in university classrooms.

I admire your commitment to pacifism.

I hope you are well.

Sincerely,

Linda

Graduated 1988

I attended Boston University and majored in Government as an undergraduate. Dr Howard Zinn was my advisor and professor in three courses. While he was a trained historian with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, his university appointment was actually in the Government Department prior to its being renamed the more common Department of Political Science. The New York Times, which had not prepared an obituary, was wrong as usual in identifying him as a member of the history department.

I matriculated in three courses with Dr Zinn:  two were sequences in Political Theory and the other  Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. He generally wore a green suit, blue button-down shirt and rep tie. He always called me “Mr Kirstein” and was quite receptive to student participation in class. One day he brought his iconic work on the Vietnam War, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal and students began hawking the book to the class. I bought a copy. The book’s major moment is when he “wrote” for President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a speech announcing withdrawal and ending the American perpetrated genocide in Vietnam.

I was not a political activist or “radical” in college: that journey begins in graduate school and has not ended. Yet I know now it was his courses that began my intellectual journey from liberal to a more critical ideological perspective. From accepting mere evolution to a more transformational insistence on social change was impacted by his life and teaching. I have used for most of my career his books in my history and politial science courses.  Students who have taken me know Zinn. They have read his books and understood his revisionist approach on issues of war, race, class, and gender.

His People’s History of the United States that was subdivided into a twentieth-century version was a breakthrough work in its comprehensive revisionism of  the standard history text and emphasis upon the history of the underclass, downtrodden, radical dissenter, the homeless, the immigrant, the woman, the African-American, the socialist and the labor-union organizer. The book sold millions of copies and was even carried in such mainstream outlets as Borders and Barnes and Noble. It achieved middle-class respectability despite its progressive advocacy of social justice and socialist challenge of unbridled capitalism.

Vignettes:

In 2006 I was giving a paper at the Historians Against the War conference at the University of Texas in Austin. Dr Zinn was the keynote speaker and there was a reception for him prior to his talk. I was able for about twenty minutes to talk to him fairly directly despite the presence of other participants. I told him how his courses changed my life. I remarked how his many books had graced my course syllabi. He asked me what courses I teach and his smile expanded as I rattled them off: Vietnam and America, African-American History, Hiroshima and the Nuclear Age, Capitalism, Socialism and Social Justice, American Protest Music etc. His smile of approval meant: “Yes Peter, I understand who you are and what you are doing as a professor.”

At this time David Horowitz had just released his pejorative Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America and I showed him my copy which included not only Dr Zinn but also myself. He said, “Oh, you are in there? You too? One of my students also in that book!” Again he smiled appreciatively and I glowed with pride to be included with him on the “dangerous” list.

We also discussed my suspension for an emotional, angry anti-war email to Cadet Robert Kurpiel of the Air Force Academy four years earlier that was spaciously covered by Mr Horowitz. Professor Zinn had a wry smile and said something to the effect, I don’t remember his exact words: “Stay in the fight. Good, you are still there and stronger.” I was very affected by this exchange. I felt I had the approval of a man who had inspired my teaching and my resistance against American excesses and crimes.

I asked him: “Dr Zinn, what is your secret on why you have lived so long and so actively.” He noted everyone was calling him “Howard” so why not me; no, he was still my professor. He was still Dr Zinn. He said, “Peter, eat bananas. I eat lots of bananas.” Now I eat lots of bananas and always think about him when I do.

Once I was in his office at B.U. and the phone rang. He got an invitation to speak at some school; I think it was in the south and in one of the Carolinas that wanted him to address the issues of the Vietnam War. I said to him, “Dr Zinn, should I leave?” He waved his hand as if to say “stay.” He said after the call, “Imagine that, a conservative school inviting me!”

On my website I have had for years his name as one of the two most inspirational professors in my training with a link to a Zinn website. His greatness inspired me as it has countless of others. His courage as an educator, labour organiser, antiwar protestor, civil rights activist with S.N.C.C., revisionist historian, advocate for social justice and for democratic socialism will endure. His scholarly oeuvre will endure. His reputation as one of the most significant historians of the twentieth century will endure. As long as I teach and as long as I have students and as long as I have a voice, I will endeavor to perpetuate despite my modest capacities, his foundational emphasis on scholarly activism and progressive change. There is no turning back, not now, not ever.

Two former students e-mailed me this morning informing me about the death of Professor Howard Zinn. That alone sustains my belief in his greatness and in his positive and enduring impact on many of my students.

Under the Bush administration, there had been a series of frankly racist, McCarthyite efforts to exclude progressive Muslim or other academics of colour who dissented from American imperialism and egregious war crimes against Islamic peoples. The State Department has used wisely and judiciously its exemption authority to allow these two Muslim scholars to reapply for travel and work in the United States. “The ACLU of Massachusetts sued in 2007, challenging Habib’s exclusion on behalf of the American Sociological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights.” This is clearly a positive development in allowing academic freedom, free speech and the exchange of robust ideas to flow more freely on college campuses and at academic conferences. I wrote about the  egregious exclusion of these two major intellectual figures prior to  their recently cleared status in Matthew Morgan, ed., The Impact Of 9/11 and The New Legal Landscape: The Day That Changed Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 67-9:

Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar born in Egypt, was offered in 2004 a tenured position in Islamic Studies as Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace-Building at the University of Notre Dame. Ramadan had enrolled his children in school, rented a house in South Bend, Indiana, and even shipped his furniture before he was notified that his visa had been revoked because he endorsed “terrorism” and was subject to the “ideological exclusion” provision of the PATRIOT Act. The government later recanted those arbitrary charges when faced with a lawsuit, but concocted a different allegation that his donations, totaling $940 to charitable organizations, actually supported Hamas in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Hamas is designated as a “terrorist” organization by the Department of State despite its victory in the January 2006 Palestinian Authority general legislative elections. Ramadan asserted he was the victim of political persecution when denied his prestigious appointment at Notre Dame: “I am increasingly convinced that the George W. Bush administration has barred me for a much simpler reason: It doesn’t care for my political views. In recent years, I have publicly criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East, the war in Iraq, the use of torture, secret C.I.A. prisons and other government actions that undermine fundamental civil liberties…”

The Customs and Border Protection on October 25, 2006 also denied entry to Adam Habib of South Africa when he arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to attend several meetings. A political scientist and a Muslim, he earned his Ph.D. from the City University of New York and was deputy vice-chancellor of research, innovation and advancement at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He was also prohibited from attending the 2007 American Sociological Association annual meeting in New York. It is indisputable that scholars from various nations, who are neither dissidents nor opponents of their regimes, are being denied entry for ideological reasons or bilateral diplomatic disputes unrelated to a foreign scholar’s legitimate credentials.

This is a link to a podcast in which Terri Ginsberg and her Chicago-based attorney Rima Kapitan discuss the academic freedom violations attendant to the former’s dismissal as a film professor at North Carolina State. I have previously posted her complaint as filed in the state-court system in North Carolina. This link contains three interviews and Dr Ginsberg and Rima Kapitan’s begin around the forty minute mark. One cannot fast forward unfortunately but Law and Disorder is a progressive legal website which merits a wider audience.

They are rather responsive to comments. I noted an error in their institutional affiliation of Terri and it was corrected very quickly with an acknowledgment. The following are the production notes  and image from the website:

Dr Ginsberg at Law and Disorder studio interview:

Film Professor Sues University for Violating Right to Academic Free Speech

In the fall of 2007, Dr. Terri Ginsberg was hired to teach a film class at the North Carolina State University focusing on the media treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2008. She was also hired to help program a Middle Eastern film series.  As Terri details in a grievance the director of the film studies program and the director of the Middle East studies program made a series of decisions that violated her academic freedom. Among the decisions was the limiting of Terri’s invovlement in the series that she had initially been hired to curate. Another was the criticism of an introduction she gave at the screening of the Palestinian film “Ticket to Jerusalem” as biased and overly political.

The grievance filed alleged violations of her First Amendment and equal opportunity rights under the University Code. Her grievance was dismissed on the grounds that it was filed too late and that she was no longer a university employee. Terri has now filed a lawsuit, one mention in the complaint states that in the views of several faculty,  Jews who question and challenge the zionist colonial project are non-conforming Jews and therefore are outsiders and dangerous.

Terri Ginsburg / Attorney Rima Kapitan

• I was given strong indication the teaching professorship would convert into a permanent tenure track position.
• That I should apply for it and that I was a shoe in for that position. So I moved down from New York City, where I lived for many years to Raleigh, NC. Not long after I got there, a number of incidents occured that led me to believe the conversion was not going to take place.
• Key people in the faculty were very unhappy with my perspectives on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and on Zionism. I am a Jewish Anti-Zionist, and I wanted to supply a genuinely balanced perspective on the issue of Zionism and the history as it has been depicted in cinema
• I showed Israeli films, I showed Palestinian films, I showed the array of cinema on this topic.
• This is a large campus upwards to 40 thousand students.
• I was asked to resign from a middle eastern series after I gave an introduction to a film that was pro-Palestinian.
• Attorney Rima Kapitan: Right now we’re alleging they violated her North Carolina Constitutional Rights. They breached her right to academic freedom and equal protection under the law.
• Terri covered every path in North Carolina, the only thing left is a constitutional claim in North Carolina.
• Under the equal protection claim, we’re saying Terri was treated differently because of her religion.
• Terri: The atmosphere is increasingly worse not only for Jews but anyone who speaks out on this issue, especially for non-tenured and temporary labor.
• I had minimal support from the AAUP, they failed until we put out a petition that received over 500 signatures.
• Most faculty on campus were afraid to communicate with me, over email, over telephone.
• I think the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the core issues facing the United States.
• Film is a small field and gossip travels fast. I’m unemployed. When I did my research on the holocaust, I couldn’t ignore the structural relationship between the holocaust and the Nakba.

Guest- Dr. Terri Ginsberg joins us in the studio today she has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and previously taught in the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College and the Cinema Studies Program at Rutgers University. 

Guest – Attorney Rima Kapitan - staff Attorney at CAIR-Chicago. She is a graduate of DePaul University College of Law and Indiana University and a partner with Amal Law Group, LLC, a general practice law firm. Her main areas of interest and specialization are plaintiff-side employment discrimination, civil rights law, workers compensation and estate planning. She is active in the National Lawyers Guild Middle East Committee.

I think it is obvious that Northwestern Memorial Hospital has suspended Nalini Marie Rajamannan, MD, associate professor, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, or if one prefers a more charitable term, “reassigned to other duties.” Let us be clear and factual. In 2007 Dr  Rajamannan charged that Dr Patrick McCarthy was conducting unauthorised clinical trials with a mitral-valve device (myxo) without patient consent.  It is not debatable that the myxo device alteration was not F.D.A. approved, although Dr McCarthy and Northwestern and of course the manufacturer, Edwards Lifesciences, claim it did not require F.D.A. approval because the Myxo ETlogix annuloplasty ring 5100 was merely a “minor modification.” Can’t they come up with a less impersonal name for a contraption that is supposed to save someone’s heart from  mitral-valve regurgitation? Anyway, I wonder if patients consider it “minor” to reshape a device going into their heart for possibly decades. Count me as a dissenter here.

Dr Rajamannan was removed from clinical practice in 2008 and reassigned to research duties. This is a fact.  She did not ask for this reassignment but was forced to give up her clinical practice in treating and managing cardiovascular disease. That is what cardiologists do: treat, diagnose, test and ultimately when indicated refer for intervention to a cardiothoracic surgeon. Cardiologists do not slice and dice. They are not surgeons. Surgeons are not cardiologists and are “fixers” of surgically-needed repair, replacements, transplantation and a host of other procedures to keep our hearts pumping our blood throughout our bodies!!

I think it is appropriate to reproduce a passage from a recently published book chapter I contributed to  “Challenges to Academic Freedom Since 9/11,” in Matthew Morgan, ed., The Impact of 9/11 and the New Legal Landscape: The Day That Changed Everything (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 65. It summarises the literature on the conditionality for suspensions and reassignment to other duties established by the American Association of University Professors, A.A.U.P. Redbook: Policy Documents and Reports:

“[Academicians] are being capriciously and arbitrarily suspended or reassigned to other duties for an assortment of reasons. A.A.U.P. policies on sanctions are precise. The suspension of a professor must be restricted to cases in which “immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened.” The ninth “1970 Interpretive Comment” of the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” the “1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings,” and the revised 1999 “Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure” clearly articulate this policy.”

It is essential that the public understands that academicians cannot be suspended or reassigned to other duties unless the above provision applies. The documents cited above clearly couple suspension and reassignment to other duties as limited to only those cases that satisfy the “immediate harm” standard. What is rather ironic in this case is that a physician, in an attempt to protect patients whom she feels were being subjected to “immediate harm”  through experimental mitral-valve  repair rings, is transferred from patient care to “research.”

Dr Rajamannan was lead investigator for an article that I think means pop those statins and your heart valves won’t narrow and inhibit blood flow! Whoopee!!: “Atorvastatin Inhibits Hypercholesterolemia-Induced Calcification in the Aortic Valves via the Lrp5 Receptor Pathway.”

It defies comprehension that Dr Rajamannan’s relative exile was in the best interest of the treatment of her former patients, not to mention future ones, that is the raison d’etre of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. It contravenes best practices that a brilliant cardiologist who trained at the Mayo Clinic and is in engaging in presumably cutting edge research on managing the progression of valvular heart disease is barred from examining, treating or consulting with patients! So the question remains was this a public relations move  to remove an assertive advocate for patient care from the orbit of patient care or simply an effort to intimidate a female minority physician who professionally and ethically challenged the surgical practices of a prominent cardiovascular surgeon?

Yet our society should not suppress non-tenured faculty who challenge those who are tenured and have endowed chairs. Academia is required to provide the same amount of academic freedom to BOTH tenured and tenure-track faculty. Northwestern should reexamine its treatment of this physician, carefully study the extant American Association of University Professors literature and simply ask themselves whether patient care is being served and advanced by removing this cardiologist from clinical practice.

Her current reassignment and denial in all likelihood of her academic freedom is in a sense unrelated to the facts or final resolution of the controversy concerning human experimentation v. minor modification of a mitral-valve ring. Her behaviour has been by all accounts that I have read collegial and based on medical practices and not personality or ad hominem character assassination. Northwestern does not benefit from nor should it seek a medical staff that speaks with one voice. It should as the Mayo Clinic and Barnes and Johns Hopkins and Cleveland Clinic presumably do encourage dissent and the robust challenging of others work. This is what we want from our physicians and surgeons: not silence if they reveal medical care that is injurious to patients and in contravention of medical best practices. We want robust and persistent advocacy for patient safety and rights.

As a patient at Northwestern and an advocate for academic freedom for all academicians, I have a stake in this outcome and believe Northwestern can ill afford to ignore and marginalise a physician who is exercising her constitutionally protected free-speech rights with courage and determination. Such actions should induce both public and in particular institutional encouragement and approbation. I know from personal experience , as many who read this are aware, that controversy for an institution might be unpleasant for its administration, but in the long run how it manages controversy has a greater and longer-lasting impact on a university or medical center: Namely its capacity to tolerate intellectual assertiveness and promote academic freedom in the pursuit of truth.

Other Kirstein posts:

January 1, 2010 Did the McCarthy Myxo Ring Require F.D.A. Approval? Dr McCarthy’s Article Described it as “Initial” and “New.” http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/4151

December 28, 2009 Did Northwestern Retaliate Against Dr Nalini Rajamannan? Was her Academic Freedom Violated?

http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/4002

December 26, 2009 Part II: Mitral Valve Ring War Between Dr McCarthy and Dr Rajamannan: Race, Class, Gender and Patient Rights. http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/3964

December 24, 2009 Myxo Mitral Valve Ring War: Dr Patrick McCarthy v. Dr Nalini Rajamannan: I side with Rajamannan

http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/3911

Comments welcome to kirstein@sxu.edu

The crisis is clear. Tenure and academic freedom are dying by a thousand cuts with the onslaught of non-tenure, non-tenure track contingent faculty. There is unfortunately in academia a tendency to overload simple concepts with a plethora of terms and phrases probably meant to exclude the general public from comprehension. The inclination to create a patois exclusivity to denote learning and impress colleagues with one’s intellectuality even infects activist faculty in their search for social justice for the roughly 1,000,000 contingent teachers in higher education in the United States of America.

Contingent Faculty: This refers to college or university level teachers that are off the tenure track and are tenure ineligible. What that means is they are unable to secure a position leading to tenure. They may be full-time or less than full-time but are basically at-will employees.

At-will Employees This means that a teacher can be fired without cause. His or her position is generally no more secure than an office manager, a secretary, a custodian, a staff person or a director without tenure. They have absolutely no job security and this was the dominant kind of employment in academia before tenure was established beginning in 1915 with the formation of the American Association of University Professors. Contingent faculty have no academic freedom and are marginalised with a total absence of job security due to their being excluded from tenure-track positions. We are back to the future in which 70% of the professoriate (may be spelled professorate as well which refers to the higher-education teaching profession) are contingent. Only about 30% or so of the professorate are tenured or tenure-track.

Tenure-Track Positions: This refers to a teaching position that leads to a tenure decision generally in one’s sixth year of service and beginning, if successful, with one’s eighth year of service. Tenure is an obligation on the part of the university to issue annual contracts until retirement. Tenured faculty have academic freedom, although few exercise it with daring, courageous pedagogy or research, and can be dismissed only for cause. It is not a guarantee of life-time career employment but it usually results in that since the probationary period has ended and the burden for termination rests solely with the administration.

Probationary Faculty: This simply means one is on probation. One is evaluated in a summative manner (leading to decisions on fitness) throughout this period. The term is somewhat harsh but bascially is confined to the period from an initial hire to the decision to grant or not grant tenure. It is usually six years in duration although it may be shorter and longer but the accepted norm is six years. A tenure decision is made during that year. If granted the seventh year is no longer probationary as one, if successful, is subject to dismissal only for cause before the actual tenure kicks in the eighth year. There has to be a year’s notice if tenure is denied so that is why the decision is made in the sixth year.

Adjunct Faculty: This term which I think is demeaning but we are stuck with it is the most common form of contingency and job description in higher education. It usually refers to part-time labour in the academy (the term refers to higher education not to a military or other specific institution). They are usually paid per course and the most exploited in higher education. Generally, they have no offices, no office hours, no online university access, no campus mailbox, no rights that other faculty have and are frequently without health care, pension and other benefits. About 50% of teachers in higher education are in this group–NOTE almost half based on recent Department of Education data at 48%. It is certainly not less now.

Academic Freedom: This basically refers to the rights of the professoriate to teach, publish and engage in extramural utterances without fear of retribution or sanctions. Extramural utterances are frequently used to describe some type of public advocacy: an op-ed, a letter to an editor, a speech, an interview, civil disobedience, a blog posting, a website that engages in advocacy. Academic freedom was formalized in the A.A.U.P. 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure that has been endorsed by 100s of academic and other learned societies. Contingent labour don’t have this. They can’t since their jobs are at-will and there is no prospect of job security. While some probably do express themselves with candor, the degree of self-censorship is rampant out of fear that if they get bad course evaluations or upset a department chair or dean, then they will be fired. This is utterly at variance with the notion of quality education in this country in which students cannot be free if their professors are not.

Conversion from Contingency to Tenure: This refers to the beneficial and essential process in which a contingent position is converted to tenure-track. It could be a full-time contingent position or less than that.  It does elevate the position and require greater scrutiny for excellence and achievement which is what we want from those who walk into a classroom. It also removes the at-will nature of a slot and places it on the tenure-stream which could lead to tenure and the embellishment of academic freedom. Education is enhanced when the professorate is able to pursue the truth, engage in critical thinking, challenge student views, exercise rigour in the classroom, without fear of negative evaluation and termination leading to unemployment and catastrophic economic crisis.

As we witness the meteoric rise of contingent faculty in this country we need to ponder what the implications of this are on the quality of instruction and student outcomes. As a basic principle, if professors are not free, their students cannot be. Self-censorship, fear of job reprisals and the absence of job security are counterintuitive in seeking and expecting innovative and creative instruction.

Let us be clear and let us be direct. Contingent faculty are at-will employees as are support staff and custodial personnel. Their job security is basically non-existent in which they can be terminated for reasons other than cause: administratrive decisions to fund a position can be altered arbitrarily. Contingent faculty are not free to engage in courageous or robust critical thinking either in the classroom or outside of it. Contingent faculty must eat and support themselves and possibly others. Without job security, they must hedge and go along to get along.

They are indeed academia’s potential industrial reserve army. This term was used by Marx as capitalism was disintegrating to describe the majority of jobless, homeless, alienated labour that eventually acquires class consciousness and replaces the bourgeoisie during a proletarian rebellion. Many contingent faculties are moving toward unionization and organising to afford them some protection from the corporate university that mimicks business firms. There is a growing percentage of employees who are temps, without labour contracts and frequently benefits such as health care and pension plans. Contingent faculty are striking such as graduate assistants at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. At some institutions, yet all too few, they do have contracts and are organised in unions at such institutions as Illinois State University and Columbia College.

As the tenure/tenure-track pie continues to shrink, one sees academic freedom slowly becoming eviscerated as the power of administrators and tenured faculty to lord over contingency increases. Students need professors whose jobs are secure with a tenure system to buttress it. Only 30% or so of the professoriate in this country are tenure-line faculty. So tenure is becoming a rarity as the new majority is hired to provide “flexibility” for the corporate, all for profit, university.

Critical thinking cannot perdure if its thinkers and educators are timid and marginalised. Critical thinking and the pursuit of the truth are mere commencement and mission-statement propaganda when the institution’s “faculty” really includes only the tenure-stream component. It is immoral to expand contingency for financial purposes when the quality of education is inevitably and ineluctably damaged. Contingency must be contracted not expanded and used only in those circumstances when a full-time position would NEVER be suitable for a tenure-track person or when unexpected enrollment fluctuation requires short-term part-time adjuncts. The burden is on the administration and certain faculty to demonstrate that a full-time faculty appointment should be off the tenure track.

Revised: May 18, 2010

When Provost Wiseman came for her interview, I was struck by the following. Her commitment to social justice and emphasising her ethical positions. She spoke about her efforts to represent pro bono death row inmates and how it felt to lose a client to the barbarity of state-sponsored executions. I was moved as she described the surreal experience of visiting a client on death row at the weekend and then returning to her constitutional law class on a Monday. Chris Wiseman was emotional and addressed her “failure” to save her clients’ lives.

I spoke to that point and said, “It’s society that executes and makes the decision to kill people in this manner. You are part of the solution to stop capital punishment and should construe yourself not as a failure but as an advocate for change and social justice.” I was stupefied, frankly, at this candor on the part of Wiseman and her decision to display her values and ethics as the gateway into her character and capacity to lead.

I had never witnessed a presidential candidate eschew so emphatically the patois of administrationese and address issues of social concern so directly and forthrightly in an open forum with faculty. I felt then and I believe now that Chris brings a value system and an ethical commitment that augurs well for the future growth of the university as both an “institution” and a university that matters as it affects progressive change and critical thinking. For too long some Catholic institutions of higher learning have not been catholic enough: perhaps “our time has come.”

She became president on May 1, 2010. Doctor Angela Durante, provost, served as interim president from December 1, 2009–my birthday! She follows Doctor Judith A. Dwyer, a strong advocate for academic freedom and shared governance. I am confident and hopeful that President Wiseman will continue that tradition as we search for the truth within a broader societal context that is not always receptive to such inquiry.