I have an oped in The Forward about the situation at Fresno State. The first part of the article is about stuff I covered in earlier blog posts (most recently here, with links to the earlier pieces) concerning unfounded charges by Prof. Vida Samiian that unnamed "Israel advocacy groups" had scuttled the search for the Edward Said Professorship. The second half of the essay, however, is new information, including the following:
According to Prof. Joe Parks, who served as the Equal Opportunity representative on the search committee, “The search was canceled because when the finalists came to campus, the Jewish faculty complained.”
In many ways, Parks’ statement is the most troubling of all. We do not know who, if anyone, actually lodged such complaints — which, in any case, would not constitute “outside” pressure — but it is highly disconcerting to see the committee’s Equal Opportunity representative single out fellow faculty members for their ethnicity or religion.
Parks, as it happens, has a history of making objectionable statements. In 2008, the university reprimanded him for his “offensive comments in class related to gender, race, national origin, ancestry and religion,” as well as for retaliating against a student. In subsequent litigation, the reprimand was upheld by chief federal district judge Anthony Ishii, who found that there had been substantiated complaints about Parks’ “derogatory comments, racial comments, religious/marital status comments, retaliatory comments and comments that were intended to prevent the students from complaining.”
Given that background, I wondered how Parks had come to serve as the search committee’s Equal Opportunity representative in the first place. Fresno State provost Lynnette Zelezny informed me that, pursuant to university procedures, he had been chosen by the committee members. I asked Parks to explain his comments about “Jewish faculty,” but he did not reply to my email.
Perhaps the most salient words in the contretemps came from Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, the dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, in a letter to the Fresno Bee. “Dr. Samiian and Dr. Parks speculate that the search was canceled due to influence by Israel advocacy groups,” he wrote. “These conjectures are presented without evidence, and are unfounded. As such, they further undermine the integrity of our policies and hiring process.”
You can read the entire essay here.
Our friends will howl with outrage at this question, but is it perfectly clear that "Israel advocacy group" or "Israel advocacy groups" conflated to "Jewish faculty" in the view of some including an "Equal Opportunity representative"? Wonder how those "Zionists" were ever hired in the first place ...
How Orwellian can this get? We have McCarthy-like innuendo spewing from those who cite only "circumstantial evidence" to foment another Red scare, open and blatant anti Semitism, the shutting down of speakers and speech that is deemed "subversive", and all the rest, all in academia, and originating with the views of the right wing professoriate.
Oh, wait ... I think that label doesn't fit. Which ideology is at work here?
Posted by: anon | June 20, 2017 at 06:39 PM