MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-05-17 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] And while we are talking about Brooklyn College...
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Academic Terrorism: Prof. K.C. Johnson On Discrimination Against
Non-Leftists At Brooklyn College (CUNY)
David Storobin, Esq. - 5/19/2005
Prof. K.C. Johnson was involved in a nationally-known tenure fight.
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he's
teaching, denied him tenure in the Fall of 2002 on the grounds that they
disagreed with his politics. After being denied tenure by Brooklyn
College, CUNY heads intervened and granted it to Prof. Johnson whose
teaching and scholarship was described as "excellent". Personally, I am
very familiar with bias at Brooklyn College. A while ago, then-Chairman
of the Political Science Deparment let me know that, not being a
liberal, I wouldn't be able teach there, but he can tell me where else I
can apply. Another Professor there told me, "Come on, David, everyone
knows the politics of Brooklyn College Professors." Hearing this, a
graduate student told me that her Professor declared in class, "I should
fail you for being a Bush-loving right-winger, but I'll be nice and will
not." Today, K.C. Johnson describes from a Professor's point of view
what is happening at Brooklyn College, including his tenure fight and
students' response to what has been described by the media as "Academic
Terrorism".
Q: Can you tell us what happened in your fight to receive tenure?
A: My case was a highly publicized one and was unusual one in that the
college's claim was an explicitly ideologically one. Brooklyn College
tried to deny tenure on the basis of collegiality, which the senior
members defined as disagreeing on political issues and topics that
should be part of the curriculum.
I was accused of criticizing a teach-in on the Middle East that lacked
any speakers that supported the policies of either the United States or
Israel. I was also accused of opposing gender quotas in personnel hiring
matters.
My specialty is Twentieth Century History and so I was also attacked for
teaching courses on people in power, claiming that only white males
would be interested in them.
CUNY Board of trustees quickly decided in my favor. The Vice Chancellor
of the CUNY General Council made a statement that CUNY reached a
settlement because it could not win in court. The Chancellor of CUNY
issued a videotaped statement to the Board of Trustees criticizing the
decision to deny my tenure as incorrect.
Q: How quickly was your tenure question decided?
A: I was denied tenure in November 2002. A week later, it went public,
and was resolved within 2 months, by early February 2003.
Q: Why did national media pick up your case?
A: My case was an unusually clear cut one. Often times, a college will
make a claim that a person's scholarship or teaching wasn't good.
Usually, they'll come up with some superficial reason to fire the
person. In this case, the college admitted that my scholarship and
teaching were "excellent" - "excellent" is the word they themselves
used.
As for the people who went after me, I had private emails from them
making clear that their ideological bias drove their fight against me.
They wrote secret letters to the college's President where they were
very clear on their ideological agenda, thinking that the letters
wouldn't be public. The college was caught red-handed. Obviously, it is
very unusual for a college to be caught red-handed like this.
Q: How common is it for Professor to be punished for his views at
Brooklyn College and CUNY?
At Brooklyn College this is quite common. Our provost wrote that
teaching is a political act and has argued that college's general
education ["The Cores"] should teach students to be global citizens, not
Americans, and otherwise promote explicitly far-left agenda.
Within CUNY, the university administration is very good, but the union
wants an ideologically one-sided faculty.
Within academia as a whole, there have been a lot of surveys suggesting
that the academia is ideologically one-sided. This past February a new
survey showed that roughly 3/4 of professors are self-identified
liberals or leftists. In 1984, the number was only 39%. In the general
population, on the other hand, the percentage of the population that
describes itself as liberal declined.
And if you take out the natural sciences [biology, chemistry, etc],
probably 80-95% of professors are liberals. There is a clear imbalance
ideologically.
This leads to real problems in the educational experience that the
students achieve. If you look at staffing at departments of social
sciences and humanities, there has been a decline or even elimination of
traditional subjects, like U.S. Foreign Policy and U.S. History, which
were replaced with subjects on race and gender, which have a role, but
shouldn't be only ones taught to students.
Q: How do people in your department treat you now that you've received
tenure?
Within the department, there were several people who strongly supported
me. In the aftermath of my tenure, the chairman of the department who
orchestrated my denial has been removed and the department just hired a
new chair to take his place.
For the most part, within the department, I am treated very well. The
people who went after me are going to remain the same, but the
department is now more interested in fairness and scholarship. Replacing
the chair resolved much of the situation.
Within the college as a whole, the ideological direction is very
troubling. There is a growing number of faculty members on campus who
are very concerned. My tenure case is becoming part of a broader pattern
in the college and several Professors have come to consult with me.
Q: What departments are most hostile?
A: Usually African, Hispanic and other similar type of studies are most
ideological, since they were explicitly founded with the agenda to
promote claims of grievances by these groups.
Other than that, at Brooklyn College, the most biased departments are
Political Science and Education. There is really only one point of view
there.
Q: As far students are concerned, do you see students getting
brainwashed or rebelling against leftist propaganda?
A: I see the latter. One of the things I see is that students are
increasingly recognizing inappropriate behavior in college. Student
government passed an Academic Bill of Rights saying professors shouldn't
bring biases into the classroom.
There is a dichotomy of how students perceive this between the better
students and the weaker ones. The better students are quite clearly
aware and unhappy. The concern that I have is with weaker students who
do not have a strong background in history and politics. They naturally
assume that Professors are at least in some manner are going to be fair,
or if not fair, at least will communicate all sides. For these students,
it's a problem. They often don't understand that what the professor says
is biased and accept it as truth. This is understandable since there is
a presumption that a Professor is there to teach, not to promote his
ideological bias.
Q: Did Brooklyn College know about your ideological points of view?
A: No. I am trained in US Political and Diplomatic History of the
Twentieth Century. I published two books before I was hired, which were
perceived as being written by a very left-wing person, so there was an
assumption that I too was way, way on the left.
But I am centrist. The positions that I took were centrist. For example,
if you are going to have a teach-in, you have to have speakers that are
favorable to Israel, not just ones that oppose it. I never consider it
to be conservative or liberal.
But at Brooklyn College, such statements are very conservative. If my
positions would've been know, I never would've been hired. There was an
assumption that I agreed with the majority of the college.
Q : Is that true for all of Brooklyn College, CUNY or academia as a
whole?
Certainly, not all colleges discriminate against Professors and
students, but in most departments do. Some colleges within CUNY, like
Baruch, hire based on scholarship and teaching ability, but that's not
true at Brooklyn College and many other schools.
Q: You've been involved in the Brooklyn College Chapter of Students for
Academic Freedom. Can you tell us more about it.
The group was founded a year and a half ago by an undergraduate student
[Eldad Yaron] whom I haven't met before this. He had become concerned
about issues of bias in his classes and asked if I would be willing to
work with him, and I obviously agreed. He has done an incredible job
building support that students should not get propaganda in the
classroom. The organization has 80 members and the newly elected student
President is supporter. It's much stronger than in any other CUNY school
because of Brooklyn College's very strong leftist bias, and students
have begun to fight back.
David Storobin is a New York lawyer who received Juris Doctor (J.D.)
degree from Rutgers University School of Law. His Master's Thesis (M.A.
- Comparative Politics) deals with Extremist Movements in the Middle
East and the historical causes for the rise of fundamentalism. Mr.
Storobin's book "The Root Cause: The Rise of Fundamentalist Islam and
its Threat to the World" will be published in 2005.
editor-at-globalpolitician.com
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