The Nation Goes to Columbia -- and Forecasts the "Whitewash" Report
K.C. Johnson, Brooklyn College—CUNY

For the most part, the press coverage of the controversy regarding biased instruction in Columbia's Middle East Studies (MEALAC) department has been quite responsible. So, I suppose we were due for a hatchet job that reflected the pro-MEALAC viewpoint. Nation reporter Robert Sherman, however, might have tried a little harder to convey, at least, the appearance of impartiality.

According to Sherman, events at Columbia are the tale of a coalition joining a handful of Jewish students who appeared in a "propaganda" film, the "shadowy" David Project, and former CU Rabbi Charles Sheer. These figures were spurred on by Martin Kramer, "an indefatigable polemicist," and Daniel Pipes, who has sought to "harass liberal and progressive scholars of the Arab world." All of this was further inflamed by "the New York Sun , a small but influential conservative daily." Fortunately for defenders of academic freedom, the MEALAC professors accused of misconduct "did not cower before the allegations," while the affair has been "a source of anguish and embarrassment to some prominent members of the university's Jewish community" (actually, the article only quotes one person on this point, Robert Pollack).

In preparing an article whose length exceeded 4500 words, one would have thought that Sherman could have found the time to interview even one student or professor at Columbia who is concerned about the conduct of the MEALAC Department. Yet of the six people interviewed by him quoted in the article, all were sympathetic to MEALAC. It almost seems as if Sherman made up his mind what he wanted to write before he researched the story.

It's also curious that Sherman couldn't find space to mention -- again, in a 4500-word article -- many of the most damaging pieces of evidence regarding MEALAC's conduct, such as that:

• MEALAC Professor Joseph Massad's syllabus affirmed an intent to teach a biased and incomplete course;
• Contrary to the impression of the article, Ariel Beery, the leader of Columbians for Academic Freedom, is quite open in his left-of-center political views;
• MEALAC sympathizer Rashid Khalidi defended biased instruction about the Middle East on the grounds that Arab-American and only Arab-American students know the "truth" about the Middle East;
• Massad's website wildly asserted that he should be allowed to teach a biased course on post-1945 Middle Eastern affairs because every other course on the topic at Columbia was "pro-Israel";
• The essence of the 2002 dispute between Rabbi Charles Sheer and MEALAC's Hamid Dabashi involved not the content of Dabashi's classes but Dabashi's violating a Columbia rule by canceling his class without warning so he could attend an anti-Israel protest;
• The most powerful conflict of interest on the five-person committee investigating MEALAC is the fact that Massad's dissertation advisor sits on the committee.

Obviously, these facts do not support Sherman's thesis, but he might have at least given the appearance of balance.

Finally, in one argument, Sherman is flat-out wrong: on several occasions and in a high-profile fashion, Columbia president Lee Bollinger has defended both academic freedom and the need to provide quality instruction for all Columbia students. Sherman might have disagreed with Bollinger's remarks, but to contend that the president has "not spoken in a clear and decisive voice to the general public" is sloppy reporting at best and deliberately misleading at worst. But, then, this description could apply to the whole article.

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The Nation article appeared a few days before the ad hoc faculty committee released its report -- remarkably, in an orchestrated leak to the New York Times conditioned on the Times' refusal to solicit student reaction for its article.

From what has filtered through the media, the report echoes the Nation piece to such an extent that the document might very well have been initially leaked to Sherman. The report exonerates the MEALAC faculty and criticizes both students and outside groups for, in effect, provoking the crisis.

In one respect, these conclusions shouldn't be surprising. This five-person committee included the dissertation advisor of Joseph Massad and two signatories of the petition demanding that Columbia divest of companies doing business in Israel, and so its impartiality was hopelessly compromised from the start.

In another respect, however, the committee's producing a whitewash report is deeply disappointing. At Columbia, the college administration did and said all the right things about promoting quality instruction and intellectual diversity. The bias in the MEALAC classrooms was clear-cut. And a well-organized, articulate group of students (Columbians for Academic Freedom) pressed the issue at the grassroots level. If, under these conditions, a faculty committee says that MEALAC is a model for the type of instruction colleges and universities should provide, what chance exists at institutions where the issues are not as clear-cut, or where the students are not as engaged, or where the administration isn't on the right side of the issue?

NAS3:11 PM

The Churchill Affair on the FIRE-ing Line
K.C. Johnson, Brooklyn College—CUNY

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has issued an analysis of the University of Colorado's Report on Conclusion of Preliminary Review in the Matter of Professor Ward Churchill. As always, FIRE is right on target.

The analysis makes four conclusions:

1. The inquiry was "flawed from the outset," since it considered the question of whether Churchill's public statements on U.S. foreign policy constituted grounds for dismissal.
2. The Regents' Committee acted properly in referring allegations of research misconduct to a special faculty committee, which now must afford Churchill all due process rights and, if it finds that he committed misconduct, cannot punish him more severely than professors who have been found guilty of similar actions.
   
3. Simply because the Regents' initial decision to investigate this matter -- based, as it was, on a reaction to Churchill's public remarks -- was improper does not mean that the recommended inquiry of Churchill's research misconduct should not proceed. As the FIRE analysis concludes, "Ward Churchill has a right to speak, but -- once he injects himself into the public square through his teachings, writings, and speeches -- he cannot insulate himself from public scrutiny. If that scrutiny results in the release of information that harms his credibility or legitimately places his job in jeopardy, then that is simply the hazard of voluntarily participating in the marketplace of ideas."
4. Now that the University of Colorado has affirmed Churchill's free speech rights, it should do so for Colorado students who protested affirmative action as well. (I'm not exactly holding my breath.)

There are a few broader points worth offering:

1. Criticizing the inquiry on First Amendment grounds represents good policy as well as principle. As Eugene Volokh recognized shortly after the story broke, any action against Churchill for his remarks "would be a perfect precedent for left-wing faculties and administrations to fire right-wing professors for much less offensive statements. And given the political complexion of universities these days (and the fact that most of the decisions will be made by university administrations and not by elected officials), this will end up happening to conservatives much more often than to liberals."
2. As has occurred in the Columbia MEALAC controversy, there are serious questions about the impartiality of the internal faculty committee. Unlike the Columbia case, where the majority of the internal committee suffers from obvious conflicts of interest, in the Colorado case it is "only" three of twelve members who have signed statements in support of Churchill. (No committee members, based on press accounts, have signed statements critical of Churchill.) As of now, the three pro-Churchill representatives have refused to recuse themselves.
3. Churchill himself has stated that he will not cooperate with the academic misconduct inquiry. This seems like his only approach, since several of the allegations -- especially one involving the work of a professor from Nova Scotia, Fay G. Cohen -- seem air-tight.
4. The Regents conducted the wrong investigation. Rather than look into whether Churchill could be fired for protected speech, they should have been asking what went wrong with the CU personnel system. How could someone like Churchill with virtually no academic credentials (an M.A. from a third-rate school and no Ph.D., publications with the intellectual sophistication of a typical Cold War editorial from Pravda) be hired, tenured, promoted to full professor, and named a department chair at a Tier-1 research university? Were the standards demonstrated in the Churchill case applied regularly in CU personnel actions? If so, is Colorado bringing the best possible candidates to its faculty? No inquiry, however, seems likely on this score. Indeed, outgoing CU president Betsy Hoffman recently told the state legislature, "I know our faculty are very interested in looking at the issue of tenure, and I think you are going to be hearing more about the issue from our faculty." That's not exactly reassuring.

All told, however, the Regents' Report upheld basic principles of academic freedom. The cause suffered a setback last week, however, in Florida, where the state legislature is considering an Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR). Critics of ABOR, whose language borrows from the AAUP's statement on academic freedom, have contended that the concept represents an attempt to displace one alleged campus orthodoxy (that of the extreme left) with another (that of the far right).

This view was bolstered thanks to the actions of the chief backer of the Florida measure, a state representative named Dennis Baxley. The GOP representative has argued that the bill would, in effect, compel biology professors to consider intelligent design theory in their classes. Baxley doesn't hide his evangelical beliefs: in a 2001 interview, he remarked that he entered the state legislature to serve God: "What I do must glorify and please Him. I see this job as a calling and believe my opportunity to serve here was providentially arranged."

Baxley contends that, as evolution cannot absolutely be proven as a fact, the legislature needs to enact a law to allow creationist students the right to express their viewpoints in class. Of course, by this theory, MEALAC's Joseph Massad could say that his bizarre theories -- such as the claim that Israelis introduced the tactic of airplane hijacking to the Middle East -- are appropriate for the classroom as well.

NAS5:59 PM

"Off with Churchill's Head"? - Some Principles & Precedents
Kenneth Wagner, Radford University

A great deal of good has come out of the Ward Churchill affair. The attention surrounding the controversial University of Colorado ethnic studies professor who called the victims of the 9/11 attacks "little Eichmanns" and cast the attack itself as the justifiable "blowback" of American imperialism has helped further the goals of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and like minded groups in several ways. It has illuminated the kind of knee-jerk anti-Americanism that all too often dominates many sections of higher education today. It has demonstrated the kind of ideologically driven work that passes for scholarship in many departments around the country. It has also focused a deserved spotlight of skepticism on the state of "ethnic studies" programs that engage in ideological identity politics rather than objective study and pedagogy on ethnic issues.

However, there has also been a disturbing phenomenon coming from many sympathetic to NAS and its positions. I am speaking of the tendency of people who usually call for, to quote a bullet point from the NAS website, "preserve(ing) academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas" suddenly doing their best impression of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and chanting "off with his head!" The chorus of voices calling for the firing of Ward Churchill for his admittedly sloppy, insensitive, and stupid speech is chilling indeed.

This call for Churchill's firing is understandable. After all, NAS calls not simply for academic freedom, but also for "maintain(ing) rigorous standards in research (and) teaching" that Churchill's offending article understandably can be seen as falling far below. One can certainly make an argument that Churchill, who has no PhD, should never have been hired, and that his ethnic studies program does not belong in higher education. However, we are talking about firing an individual who is a tenured professor, at least in large part because of the unpopularity of his ideas. This creates problems of principle and practice that should bother any NAS member.

Many have echoed talk show pundit Bill O'Reilly in calling for the termination of Churchill on grounds his speech is seditious or treasonable. There are many problems with this. Churchill has not been charged with any criminal offense of sedition or treason, and even if he were, I doubt anyone familiar with constitutional law would predict a conviction on these grounds. There is a simple reason for that: he has not engaged in sedition or treason. A charitable reading of his article (and anyone who has not read this article in full should probably not comment on this issue) finds simply advocacy of the idea that 9/11 was an understandable blowback of immoral American policies in the Middle East.

Whatever else academic freedom means, it must mean the right to criticize the policies of the United States by academics, especially when such criticism may be seen as unpopular. As said by the Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957): "[m]ere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society." If this sentiment sounds familiar, it should: it is the same principle NAS often invokes to defend unpopular professors who are being forced out, reprimanded, denied tenure, or the like for violating some shibboleth of political correctness.

Others have charged that Churchill's ideas are so far below the standards that should exist in academe that they are equivalent, in the words of Thomas C. Reeves here in the NAS forum, to saying "the moon is made of green cheese." Certainly, argues Reeves, we have no duty to protect such speech that represents "insanity or fraud." However, just as certainly, Churchill's article is not that crazy. The idea that the intentional targeting of civilians is morally acceptable as a form of collateral damage ignores a great deal of established ethical theory, but it is not insane. The idea that American foreign policy actually caused such "blowback" may be in the end incorrect and insensitive, but it is at least a reasonable idea. Sloppy reasoning with selective use of facts and theory? Yes. Insane and fraudulent? Certainly not.

Predictably, supporters of Churchill have raised the charge of "McCarthyism." Just as predictably, opponents have dismissed such charge as absurd. They claim that McCarthyism had to do with intentionally false claims about people. This is a good point, but it misses another aspect of McCarthyism that is troubling: the hounding of a person for their unpopular or "un-American" ideas. This is an aspect that certainly applies to the present case: Churchill's scholarship, which presumably has undergone the usual reviews in promotion and tenure review, is now being subjected to an extraordinary scrutiny. Even his ethnicity and genealogy are being critiqued. Can anyone claim that this treatment is not due to the unpopularity of his views and the pressure of politicians?

Consider the precedent of firing Churchill. Given the politically correct nature of academe, is there any doubt about the kind of professors who will feel the sting of this precedent after Churchill is gone? Certainly, those who violate academe's new illiberal norms will be the ones to suffer much more than folk like Churchill.

However, practical concerns should take a back seat to principle. Supporters of Ward Churchill have repeatedly made a familiar claim: that organizations like NAS are simply "right-wing" organizations, and that therefore their concerns in this, and other matters, can simply be dismissed as ideological posturing. These claims are absurd, a red herring to ignore the fact NAS usually takes principled stands on what are actually traditionally liberal grounds of academic freedom, equal treatment, and reasoned scholarship. In this crisis, we must do the same.

Let us not give support for these erroneous charges, let us stick to the principles that make NAS, in its own words, the "only academic organization dedicated to the restoration of intellectual substance, individual merit, and academic freedom in the university." Churchill needs to be criticized, refuted, and used as an example of what is wrong with academic discourse today. But his job deserves to be protected.

NAS8:39 PM