UC Santa Barbara professor cleared of improper conduct

In a case that triggered national debate about academic freedom, a UC Santa Barbara investigation has cleared a sociology professor of improper conduct for e-mailing students images that compared Palestinian casualties of Israel’s Gaza offensive this year to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

However, professor William Robinson said Thursday he was not satisfied with faculty and administrative findings that he should not be disciplined. Robinson wants a campus apology and an investigation of what he said were improper efforts to silence him.

In January, Robinson sent his class the images, along with a statement in which he described Israel’s policies in Gaza as a slow-motion genocide. Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying that they felt intimidated by the e-mail. They also said that Robinson had violated campus policies.

Some Jewish activists alleged that Robinson’s e-mail was anti-Semitic. Many academics and civil libertarians defended the professor, who is Jewish, and called the accusations and investigation an attack on academic freedom.

Cyndi Silverman, the Anti-Defamation League’s Santa Barbara regional director, said the campus decision "creates a disturbing message that only the rights of faculty are to be respected, not the rights of individual students."

Larry Gordon

Comments

[Matt]

Unforunately, it has become anti-Semetic to say anything critical of Israel. I support the professor's right to make that argument, and agree that he should be given an apology.

[John]

What anti-Semetic are these people talking about. Is it ok for Israel to kill kids while not so ok for Hitler to do so???? We should stop all our blind freaking support to this country called Israel.

[Sethers]

For Ms. Silverman to suggest that the rights of the students weren't protected is asinine! They dropped the class (right protected) and they filed a complaint that was obviously taken seriously (right protected).

I wholeheartedly agree with the decision and think that the school does owe the professor an apology. Criticism of Israel's policies and practices does not equate to anti-Semitism in any way.

[Lou Bricano]

The only "right" of students that wasn't protected is one that exists only in the imagination of Ms. Silverman: a "right" of Jewish students not to be offended by criticism of Israel. That, of course, is not a legitimate right.

[Gaucho Grad]

To associate Operation Cast Lead with the Warsaw Ghetto simply by juxtaposing photographs from 2009 Gaza with 1938 Poland is asinine. Do photos of dead Vietnamese from 1972 not count? Did the Prof discuss the 8 years of missiles shot into 1948 Israel that lead to Operation Cast Lead in his email? That's why he's not a history professor, I guess. As a Gaucho, I'm mad that this shmo has tenure. Simply because this shmo isn't too intelligent. To discuss and criticize Israel properly is TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORY OF THE REGION. But, sadly, the Prof, and most posters, can't seem to think beyond 3 months, let alone 3 years, 3 decades, and, heck, 3 generations. Wake up.

[Bob]

Of course a leftist, anti-Semitic professor will be cleared by other leftist, anti-Semitic academics. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[Andrew]

Gaucho Grad,

Photographic evidence of western imperialist brutality against the indigenous populations of Southeast Asia is certainly not lacking. But are there photographs of US forces forcing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people off their land, confiscating their property, driving the refugees into a giant ghetto, building miles of walls and razor-wire fencing around them, replete with watchtowers and checkpoints? Is their photographic evidence of US forces massacring Vietnamese refugees trapped behind these ghetto walls. Was the Vietnam war an ethnonationalist project by the US to colonize Vietnam and establish it as a white nation? I am a student of the Vietnam war, and, as I interpret the situation, it was the work of western imperialists attempting to suppress a peasant revolution. Given, therefore, that the political situation in Vietnam was very different from what is happening in Palestine, why would Robinson have drawn a comparison between Vietnam and Gaza? If he was going to use another historical analog, the situation of the indigenous peoples of North America would be appropriate, except for the obvious fact that photographic evidence documenting the genocide of the Native Americans is lacking (there are some photographs, but they are not nearly as plentiful in number as photographs documenting Nazi behavior in Poland). Nonetheless, Indians were herded onto reservations, starved and periodically massacred in the thousands in pursuit of an ethnonationalist goal to create and maintain a white republic. South Africa serves as a useful example, but it is more appropriate to other features of Israeli policy, culture, and behavior. When all the cases are considered, the Warsaw ghetto is the closest historical analog, and it seems an especially apt case for asking why the descendants of the victims of ethnonationalist oppression and terror would support visiting such oppression and terror on another virtually defenseless population. All the frenzy over this being a completely inadequate analogy is designed to obscure the fact that there are very definite points of comparison to be made and pondered. I am pleased Robinson's freedom to teach his subject was upheld.