Rotten
Academia: Professor Who Praises Jihadis Still Teaches, Jihad Critic Doesn't
by Noah Beck
Special to IPT News
January 27, 2016
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 To understand just
how depraved today's college campuses are, compare the treatment of two
professors – one defending a Western, pro-American democracy (Israel) and
the other suspected of supporting this century's most gruesome Islamist
terror organization, the Islamic State ("ISIS").
Julio Pino, an associate history professor at Kent State University, is under investigation by the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security for potential ties to ISIS.
Pino's jihadist leanings and virulently anti-Israel rants on social
media include possible threats against the U.S. government. In 2002, he praised a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber who had
killed two people in Jerusalem, saying that the teen had "died a
martyr's death in occupied Jerusalem, Palestine."
In a 2014 open letter to "academic friends of
Israel," Pino published an unhinged and anti-Semitic invective:
"I hold you directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400
Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians over the past
month...[w]hile The Chosen drain the blood of innocents without apologies
you hide behind the mask of academic objectivity, nobility of research and
the reward of teaching to foreign youth – in a segregated university, of
course." Pino closed the letter with: "Jihad until victory!"
Despite decades of hateful and extremist rants, Kent State reportedly gave Pino multiple awards, including the
Faculty Excellence Award in 2010, 2003, 2000 and 1996, along with the
Professional Excellence Award in 1999 and 1997.
Kent State remains comfortable with him in the classroom despite the
over-the-top rhetoric and news of a federal investigation. The Kent
Stater, the university's student newspaper, provided him with a video platform to defend himself, and the editorial board wrote that "it is too soon to make
a judgment on the investigation..."
Contrast Pino's case with Connecticut College's treatment of professor
Andrew Pessin for defending Israel in its 2014 war with Hamas (a State
Department-designated terrorist organization).
Over half a year after Pessin's Facebook post critiquing Hamas, the
student newspaper at Connecticut College launched a surprise character
assassination by publishing three editorials condemning Pessin (including on the
front page), without giving him a chance to defend himself against
libelous accusations of racism.
In a reportedly packed auditorium Connecticut College
President Katherine Bergeron said that she was "disappointed by the
language" of Pessin's post, which "seemed to show poor
judgment," and she praised "the valor of the students who
responded to these incidents by exercising their own right of free speech
with confidence and intellectual acuity." These statements by Bergeron
(as of this writing) continue to appear on the college's web site, long
after a Washington Post column
cited available evidence to make a compelling case that the allegations against Pessin
were politically motivated lies.
More absurdly, Bergeron promised to "review our social media
policies to ensure they include appropriate advisory language about
respectful expression," even as her administration continues to allow the school's student newspaper to
host libels against Pessin alongside anti-Semitic rants. As if public
condemnation of Pessin weren't enough, the administration continues to
display statements from scores of academic departments, school officials,
student associations, and other college affiliates, denouncing Pessin on the official Connecticut College
website. As of this writing, no other issue or speech is similarly
scrutinized or condemned on the school's official web site.
At the same public forum last March, Bergeron also promised to update
the school's "protocol for bias incidents so that those who come
forward under these circumstances are well served by the process."
Too bad her lofty commitments proved empty after the bias incidents
against Jewish students at the school last December, when Conn Students in
Solidarity with Palestine ("CSSP") placed posters around campus
bashing Birthright, a program that helps young people travel to Israel. The
CSSP posters call the program a form of "settler
colonialism" and demonize Israel.
As Phyllis Chesler reported, the administration's spinelessly neutral
response was to "recognize CSSP's right to share its perspective [and]
the right of members of the community to express their disagreement with
the posters' characterization of the Birthright program."
Anti-Israel sentiment is therefore welcome on bulletin boards throughout
Connecticut College's campus, regardless of whether it is true. But the
"poor judgment" Andrew Pessin showed in a Facebook post merits
his removal from campus for at least a year, especially in comparison with
"the valor of the students" who refused to accept his apology and his immediate
clarification that he was speaking only about the Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
It gets much worse. In her article attacking Pessin last March,
Lamiya Khandaker admits that she was Pessin's student but "never
felt victimized in class," even as she claims in the same op-ed to
"feel unsafe" because of a barely noticed Facebook post published
eight months earlier. This led to protests, petitions and, finally, to
Pessin's leave of absence, which continues today.
If Bergeron wants to review school policies to be sure people behave
appropriately, she should start by reviewing Connecticut College's honor code. Khandaker's actions seem to violate several
provisions.
She failed to "respect...the dignity of" Professor Pessin by
publicly attributing repugnant views to him that he doesn't actually hold;
and her actions, which viciously libeled Pessin, were neither
"thoughtful" nor "ethical."
Nevertheless, Khandaker was apparently never sanctioned for defaming a
faculty member or violating the school's honor system, and was allowed to
keep her position as the student government chair of "equity and
diversity" at Connecticut College.
Khandaker kept that position even though she reportedly scoffed at anti-Semitism and called for Israel's
destruction on her Facebook page.
It's an elected position, school spokeswoman Pamela Serfes said last
fall, and the administration "does not select or pre-qualify
candidates, nor would it seek to remove duly elected office holders with
whom it may disagree."
Would the same be true if a white student publicly dismissed concerns
about racism and called for the destruction of a black-majority state?
Connecticut College did not respond.
Why not? Probably because the Connecticut College administration had doubled down on its support for anti-Semites and
anti-Israel haters, by granting Khandaker the "Scholar Activist
Award" last spring. They must understand how insane that looks because
they also refused to comment about or even confirm giving her that award.
To recap, not only did the Connecticut College administration
participate in the character assassination of a professor who did nothing
more than criticize Hamas, it rewarded those behind the campaign to silence
their school's only openly pro-Israel professor. Then, when CSSP spread its
vitriol in anti-Israel posters with no effective voice on campus to counter
their hateful propaganda, the administration issued a spinelessly neutral
statement while students were on break.
Meanwhile, the school refuses to apologize to Pessin, who is still not
on campus.
At worst, Pessin made one statement that was subject to interpretation.
He insists he never meant what Khandaker thinks, and neither she nor the
faculty who piled on Pessin have come up with anything else on his record
to merit the hysterical response.
Pino, on the other hand, is still teaching at Kent State and receives
far more support from his school's newspaper. Taxpayer-funded Kent State
has given Pino many teaching awards over the years, unlike Pessin, who has
never received any award in his decade of teaching at Connecticut College (student ratings of Pessin's teaching average 4.2 out of
5; Pino's rating is 2.7). There was no campus-wide talk where Pino was
condemned in front of the community and the media. A statement by President
Beverly Warren seems primarily intended to reassure the community that
there is no related terrorism or security threat.
In a 2014 video experiment, Ami Horowitz captured the
bafflingly different campus attitudes towards Israel versus ISIS. Things
have clearly gotten worse since then. If George Orwell were observing
academia, he would remark that "All speech is equal, but anti-Israel
speech is more equal than others."
As Hamilton Foundation president Christian Whiton notes, "Diversity to college
administrators means a Benetton ad – an obsession with race and ethnicity –
not true diversity of thought." Indeed, the worldview promoted by the
tyranny of political correctness breeds a new generation of radicals
friendly to Islamist regimes, values, and trends, and hostile to the U.S.,
Israel, and Western values in general.
This is the morally bankrupt climate in which America's future is being
educated. We're in trouble.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about
Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
Related Topics: Campus
| Noah
Beck, Andrew
Pessin, Connecticut
College, Julio
Pino, Kent
State University, Hamas,
ISIS,
Katherine
Bergeron, Conn
Students in Solidarity with Palestine, Birthright,
political
correctness, Lamiya
Khandaker, Ami
Horowitz, Campus
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