[R-G] Panel Defends UC Sociologist

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=19097

Panel Defends UC Sociologist

By Maane Khatchatourian / Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Issue 133 / Volume 89

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Four professors discuss the issue of academic freedom in a conferance  
on Thursday in Embarcadero Hall.

Rowan Byers / Daily Nexus

Four professors discuss the issue of academic freedom in a conferance  
on Thursday in Embarcadero Hall.

Panelists defended a professor’s controversial e-mail comparing  
Israeli soldiers to Nazis at Thursday’s forum on academic freedom.

The meeting, held in Embarcadero Hall, drew an overflowing crowd to  
discuss the case of sociology and global studies professor William  
Robinson. Robinson is currently under review by the UCSB Academic  
Senate for sending an e-mail to 80 of his students in mid-January that  
made parallels between Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the Nazi siege of  
Warsaw, Poland. The e-mail - which also included side-by-side photos  
of Israeli and Nazi troops - has spurred debate over whether  
Robinson’s actions were anti-Semitic or an expression of academic  
freedom.

Hosted by the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom, a campus  
organization formed to support Robinson, the panel consisted of an  
hour-and-a-half discussion and an hour of questions. Following the  
event, protestors assembled outside holding signs that read “We have  
the right to question inappropriate professor behavior” and “What  
about our student rights?”

During the forum, the panelists - law & society professor Lisa Hajjar,  
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine and visiting global  
studies professor Richard Falk, sociology professor Geoff Raymond and  
history professor Harold Marcuse - spoke out against what they alleged  
is an improper investigation of Robinson.

According to Raymond, the charges brought against Robinson violate  
campus policy because Academic Senate members contacted outside  
organizations to discuss the case instead of approaching the  
department chair to resolve the issue informally.

“When we hear someone say ‘trust in the process,’” Raymond said, “we  
must respond with our own mantra - ‘give us a process we can trust.’”

However, Dr. Walter Kohn - a UCSB theoretical physics and chemistry  
emeritus professor and Nobel Prize winner - said he was disappointed  
in the panel’s lack of diversity.

“It’s unfortunate that the constitution of the panel was one-sided,”  
Kohn said. “I was wondering how four highly intelligent people who  
knew that they all had very similar viewpoints didn’t feel embarrassed  
to be up there without anyone from the other side of the argument.”

Hajjar said even though she found the e-mail’s content questionable,  
Robinson still had the right to introduce controversial material in an  
academic class.

“My personal motto is only invoke Nazis when you’re talking about  
Nazis,” Hajjar said.

During the discussion, some audience members became disruptive when  
they weren’t allowed to exceed the one-minute time-limit for  
questions. A UCLA alumnus whose parents are Holocaust survivors grew  
upset when her time was up, yelling “Because I’m Jewish, you’re  
stifling me?”

Another audience member, a UCSB student whose grandparents died in the  
Holocaust, broke down in tears while addressing the panel.

“My grandparents wanted me live in a peaceful place where we would  
have respectful dialogue,” she said. “Just because something is legal  
or allowed, that doesn’t make it right.”

Meanwhile, Sal Ramirez, a third-year sociology and black studies major  
who took Robinson’s course, said the issue has been unnecessarily  
carried beyond a simple classroom debate.

“It’s unfortunate that this issue has gotten so twisted and  
politicized,” Ramirez said. “[The e-mail] was an FYI [for your  
information] thing - if you want to read this, read this. After each  
week’s e-mail, he opened it up to discussion. I don’t understand why  
two students just dropped the class and went around [to the]  
administration. It’s really shady.”