The real source of power in American universities is not the administrators, who too often give into the demands of anti-Israel student protesters, in order to persuade those students to end their shrill and disruptive presence, and to have them take down the tent encampments they have set up right in the middle of so many campuses. Nor is the main power to be found in the student protesters themselves, who receive so much media coverage. that they are fooled into believing in their own o’erweening importance. Real power on campuses today is held by the faculty, whose members are overwhelmingly leftist and anti-Israel “activists.” As they are protected by tenure, they do not fear being disciplined, much less dismissed, by the administration; it is, rather, the university administrators, including the presidents of such institutions, who fear a faculty that might demand their replacement if they prove politically at odds with most of the professors.
The malign power of an increasingly left-wing and activist faculty at the California State University System, its members, standing up for “Palestine,” praising Hamas, and calling for the replacement of Israel by a 23rd Arab state, has now elicited a response from faculty members who are alarmed at the antisemitic behavior of many of their colleagues and want the administration to address their concerns. More on their collective letter can be found here: “Faculty Call on California State University System to Address Antisemitic Hatred Fueled by Professors,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, May 31, 2024:
Over 150 faculty of the California State University (CSU) System, which serves over 450,000 students, have signed an open letter calling on chancellor Mildred García and the board of trustees to address antisemitic behavior that anti-Zionist faculty have defended as free speech and academic freedom….
As defined by the American Association of University Professors, academic freedom ‘is a professional right extended to members of the profession and is subject to certain limitations. Academic freedom means that faculty are free to engage in the professionally competent forms of inquiry and teaching that are necessary for the purposes of the university. It does not mean that individual faculty members are free to teach or publish whatever they want without repercussions,’” the letter continued. “Under the guise of academic freedom, some faculty have pushed a partisan, antisemitic, and anti-Israel political agenda in and out of the classroom and have encouraged their students to do the same.”…
Neither “free speech” nor “academic freedom” is absolute. “Academic freedom” does not protect hate speech — in this case, the antisemitic speech of many far-left faculty. It does not protect harassment and intimidation that limits the free speech of others, including Jews and Israelis who attempt to speak publicly in defense of the Jewish state. It does not protect praise lavished on those who commit atrocities on Jews, as Hamas operatives did on October 7. It does not protect the teaching of, or writing favorably about, Holocaust denial.
The faculty letter came two weeks after Mike Lee — the president of Sonoma State University, which is part of the CSU system — was placed on leave by García for issuing a statement which announced his agreement to adopt the BDS movement in exchange for students ending a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” they had erected on campus. Lee was reportedly not authorized to make such a concession….
Mike Lee was acting ultra vires — beyond the scope of his authority — when as President of Sonoma State he capitulated to student protesters by pledging to adopt the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) aims by his campus; the students, in turn, would remove their tent encampment in the middle of the campus.
“That message was sent without the appropriate approvals,” García said of Lee’s campus-wide email concerning the agreement with anti-Israel protesters. “The board’s leadership and I are actively reviewing the matter and will provide additional details in the near future. For now, because of this insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative leave.”…
Those “consequences” to which Chancellor Garcia alludes include attacks on Lee’s pusillanimity by politicians who have the power of the purse over the CSU system, including Sonoma State, which could potentially lead to less money being allocated both to Lee’s school, and to CSU as a whole. That is what García is now trying to avoid by distancing herself so completely from Mike Lee’s “insubordination.”
What must have been most worrisome and wounding to Jews and Israelis on the campus of Sonoma State was Mike Lee’s agreement to end all academic ties with Israeli institutions and to create a “Palestinian curriculum” within the ethnic studies department which would inexorably become the center of anti-Israel initiatives on campus.
The power of faculty — an overwhelming majority of whom identify as leftist — to govern the university and set the tone of its culture has been a key source of radicalism and anti-American ideas that have wielded significant influence in the academy, according to campus antisemitism expert Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who founded the AMCHA Initiative watchdog group.
“Faculty run the university, and they are out of control. They have tenure, and university presidents do not. So, it’s not that administrators are capitulating to students. They are capitulating to the faculty, because they know that if they run afoul of the faculty, they are history,” she told The Algemeiner earlier this month during an interview.
“This situation is not sustainable, and we have to focus specifically on the faculty,” Rossman-Benjamin continued. “Take away their shared governance. Take away their tenure. You have to get rid of tenure because it has protected faculty whose goal is to upend and undermine the university itself. It’s not just about social justice — their aim for decades has been to destroy the university as we know it and to use the university as a tool for revolutionizing society. If you can’t recognize how illegitimate that is, then the universities are lost. We will lose if we do not have the will to take them on.”
According to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the leftist faculty are now “out of control.” The only way to rein them in is to do away with tenure, so that faculty determined to take control of universities and bend them to their far-left political ends can be dismissed. It is those faculty who are undermining the proper function of the university — disinterested teaching and research — and instead using their positions to brainwash impressionable students, and to encourage violent protests against the perceived enemies of the Left, which always means both the United States and Israel.
Ray Jarman says
An honest professor is one who will let a student challenge his or her opinion. In a 300 level political/history class concerning the aftermath of WWI, I chose to defend Gustav Stresemann. The professor possessed a negative opinion about Stresemann but permitted me to argue in a term paper that the chancellor was an excellent leader under terrible handicaps. After submitting the paper, the professor said that my arguments were valid even though I had not changed his opinion but he gave me an “A” for the paper which I still posses. It appears that either the students that are in the classrooms of these left wing and often Islamic leaning poor excuses for professors are either completely ignorant or so malleable that the result are being displayed on the streets today. One might also lay the blame at parents who never took the time to oversee their children’s education and never took their children to church.
Jedothek says
I think that those who respond to every anti-Israel statement — or even every pro-Palestinian statement — by crying antisemitism are hurting their own cause. Of course some people back the Palestinian cause because they hate Jews, but this is not the only and probably not the major root of such sentiments. Those who constantly cry antisemitism make their position ( in the eyes of many) look irrelevant or deluded, and make serious discussion less likely.
crown says
Sorry. No.
Long experience with the savage “anti-Zionists” of this world will lead most of us to conclude that anti-Zionism is essentially a species of anti-semitism. Though not exactly congruent, as mathematicians might put it, the two phenomena overlap in 95% or more of cases.
brenrod says
The taxpayer has a right to determine what money , who teaches and what they teach in schools funded by gov, it’s no only about pro and con, I don’t want the folks who created Oct 7 there creating it here, and they are well on their way. We don’t fund schools to be activist centers but to be learning centers for all. I want everyone disrupting the quiet enjoyment of learning by all to be fired, expelled and lose gov and foreign funding. Also, they all need to pay their share of the destruction and extra costs they created.
James Lincoln says
According to the feature article:
“Real power on campuses today is held by the faculty, whose members are overwhelmingly leftist and anti-Israel “activists.” As they are protected by tenure, they do not fear being disciplined, much less dismissed, by the administration…”
Analogous to a judge with a lifetime appointment.
And therein lies the problem…
PRCS says
IMO, it’s an unchecked faculty,
Walter Sieruk says
With this article, its fitting to reiterate that Iran’s Muslim cleric leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,is ,without doubt , very happy and glad that the bribed and infiltrated Faculty do manipulate those poor naive and misinformed college young people to be his useful idiots to attempt to fulfill that Islamic goal of destroying the State of Israel and then replacing her with an Islamic “state”
Another terrible harsh and tragic reality is that Khamenei,couldn’t care less about those American college people who he only uses as his stooges. that Ayatollah ,because of his religion shiite Islam even dislikes those non-Muslim youth who are his tools and he even hate those Sunni Muslims who are also they his tools
Those college young people who have been lead astray deceived and are now being used should not be scorned but instead they should be pitied.
OLD GUY says
The Faculty Senate as they call themselves has great control over the Administration and can force a President of a College or University out if they disagree with the Facility. Lots of liberal professors who promote freedom of speech until it’s against what they support.