BRUCE KESLER: ACADEMIC FREEDOM OR ACADEMIC LICENSE AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE?
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Academic Freedom or Academic License at Brooklyn College
Those of you spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for your children’s college education, and paying taxes to support colleges, may be interested in a current brouhaha at my alma mater, Brooklyn College.
A doctoral student, 1 ½ years into his studies, was hired by the Political Science department to teach a graduate level course on the Politics of the Middle East. I wrote about his clear and one-sided pro-Palestinian writings and radical associations, and of his slanted syllabus of readings. Subsequently, others wrote to the college administration questioning this hire, including the New York State Assemblyman for the adjoining district. The hire was rescinded, the formal reason given that the hire was insufficiently credentialed.
Predictably, the hire complains that academic freedom has been trampled. Some on campus and the hire’s ideological friends in the blogosphere agree. The NYC press has covered the incident, repeating their charges. The hire himself appears in a TV report saying, “I have very vocal views in favor of the Palestinian cause for self-determination.” At his personal website, the hire says, “Unfortunately, due to external pressure, the Brooklyn College provost has chosen to suppress academic freedom and intervened to cancel my appointment. This is a profoundly unsettling outcome and I am currently challenging it.”
Au contraire writes a retired professor at the college to the Chancellor of the City University of New York:
By now serious academics realize that the propagandists work deliberately to confuse “academic freedom” with freedom of speech per se. Academic freedom is the freedom to teach and write within the constraints and standards of one’s discipline, which means paying methodic attention to the relevant sources and domains under a course heading. This is the freedom that needs defending, and has been commendably defended in this instance.
Further, it does not appear this hire has any legal grounds to demand he be hired.
So, what is at stake: academic freedom or academic license, especially when abused, completely inviolate from legitimate concerns of students, parents, or knowledgeable critics?
The hire at Brooklyn College was, most charitably, a mistake, now corrected.
If you agree, you might email the Chancellor of the City University of New York ( chancellor@cuny.edu ) and the Brooklyn College President ( klgould@brooklyn.cuny.edu ).
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