Chillier and chillier. That's the troubling forecast for academic freedom at Brooklyn College-City University of New York (CUNY) since faculty member Timothy Shortell was criticized in The New York Sun for his writing about religious people—and no one from the college came forward to defend him. Instead of championing Shortell's right to express his views, BC president Christoph Kimmich responded by calling Shortell's opinion "offensive" and announcing an investigation of the situation. Shortell subsequently stepped down from the sociology department chairmanship to which he had recently been elected.

Shortell had written an essay, posted on a personal Web site, that described religiosity as "annoying—like bad taste" and characterized religious people as immature "moral retards" who "discriminate, exclude and belittle."

Shortly after this incident, a second faculty member, Prya Parmar, was criticized by The Sun for an exploration of Ebonics in a literacy education course intended to teach new teachers how to address social inequities in the classroom; students accused her of anti-white racism and also objected to her showing the film Fahrenheit 9/11 in class.

Professional Staff Congress/AFT members are outraged and, at a meeting prompted by the incidents, some 70 members voted unanimously to support Shortell and Parmar. In an open letter to CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein, PSC president Barbara Bowen insists Shortell should remain as department chair and that the college issue a public statement supporting academic freedom in Parmar's case. "Silence on this issue sends the message that . . . CUNY will tolerate an atmosphere in which the real work of teaching and learning is impossible," she writes. "The Professional Staff Congress finds this message unacceptable."

"There is a feeling [among faculty] that . . . the president should have been more forceful from the beginning in defending academic freedom," says Steve London, PSC vice president and a faculty member at Brooklyn. "Instead he capitulated to the fear mongering that was going on."

"If you are an untenured faculty member trying to be open with your students, and lies are published about what you teach, [you might] think twice about what you teach in your classroom," says Bowen.

Also troubling, says Bowen, is the issue of academic freedom for the less privileged students typically found in the city college population. "To be silent in this context is to risk sending the message that academic freedom is not important at a university that serves working class students, people of color and the poor," says Bowen. "[Goldstein] is risking the implication that academic freedom is only for the elite. It's unforgivable and it's devastating."  [Virginia Kelly]

July 13, 2005