Serendipity



Attempting to convince Thomas to write a paper about Jerome Davis, i ran a google search and found this.

If the levity is lacking in my voice today, it is because I am

angry. I am angry because things are happening to graduate teachers at Yale

University that I never thought would happen here. Graduate teachers who have

made the difficult decision to withhold grades this semester are being

threatened, intimidated and bullied by members of the Yale faculty, with threats

ranging from academic probation, job lockout, expulsion, to the most threatening

of all: the threat to withhold letters of recommendation. As a result, academic

freedom, perhaps the most important freedom unique to universities, and crucial

to the growth and health of democracies around the world, is under siege. Here at

Yale. Yes, here.

Meanwhile, one of the perpetrators of this shameful and ongoing chapter in the history of the academic unionization

Professor Schrecker spoke last week at a press conference to expose

the fact that the Dean of Yale College, Richard Brodhead, wrote a letter for one

of his graduate students that described her union activity in a hostile way. To

put this incident in context, Schrecker explained that Yale has "an old and

dishonorable tradition of expelling dissenters from the academy."

is under fire now from David Horowitz's phalangists for "green-lighting" a Palestinian Solidarity Movement conference, some of whose participants may have been held some decidedly anti-semitic views. Sorry Dick, guess you can fool some people some of the time, but when you try to claim to represent something you went to great lengths to stifle, you ironically wind up on some fascist's website's shit list.



(And of course, not being in any way affiliated with Duke, and being way too lazy right now to do the proper background research, i can't make any claims about the veracity of the pseudonymous author's claims, though i can reaffirm my opposition to holocaust denial, the racist conflation of jews with israel, and of jews/israel with global capitalism, and support for the traditions of anti-zionist jewish radicalism, palestinain self-determination, anticolonialism, and social justice. Maybe Brodhead really fucked up here, though given that this is FrontPage we're talking about, i kind of doubt it. Or maybe he deserves our sympathy in the midst of a right wing assault. But if Dick Brodhead wanted my sympathy for his attempts to preserve academic freedom, well, he should have practiced what he preached nine years ago.)