Dear Lisa,
If I did not contact you in preparing my recent
editorial on the KC Johnson controversy at Brooklyn College
("Refusing to Play the Game"), it is because I seriously doubted
that BC's administration would have anything of value to tell me
that it had not already said to The Chronicle of Higher Education,
The New York Post, The New York Times, and The Wall
Street Journal. Your letter has only confirmed my suspicions.
Since Professor Johnson's story first broke,
Brooklyn College has made numerous efforts to spin the story its
way. What it has not done, to my knowledge, is confront head-on any
of the substantive charges leveled by Johnson against History
Department Chairman Gallagher or the BC administration. Instead,
the preferred strategy seems to have been to deflect external
criticism by delving into procedural detail (difficult to explain)
while darkly hinting at as yet unaired evidence (impossible to
disprove).
Your letter is entirely in keeping with this
strategy. There are, you assert, "very real and substantive
reasons" that "led to the situation in which Professor Johnson now
finds himself." What these are, you don't say. Until you do so,
you must not be surprised -- much less "astounded" -- when others
remain less than convinced.
Your letter also contains a number of substantive
criticisms of my article, which you claim to have found "riddled
with inaccuracies and falsehoods." None of these stands up to
scrutiny. Indeed, in making your case, you succeed in producing
inaccuracies and falsehoods of your own. For instance:
i) "The article," you write, "impugns Brooklyn
College's History Department, its faculty and students without one
single shred of evidence or even an investigation into the facts."
As a matter of fact, I say nothing disparaging about Brooklyn
College students and indeed praise those students who have rallied
behind Professor Johnson. As for evidence, Johnson's extraordinary
legal memorandum supplied more of that than I knew what to do with.
In cases where there might have been some question, I requested that
Johnson supply me with quoted emails, which he did.
ii) You also claim that I have "conveniently left
out the fact that Professor Johnson put himself up for promotion to
full professor after only 2 ½ years at Brooklyn College" and that
the process used for promotion "does not automatically lead
to tenure." I have been informed, however, that, according to
Article 6.2(b) of the CUNY Bylaws, "persons promoted to the rank of
full professor shall be granted tenure after not more than four full
years of continuous full-time service." Since Professor Johnson was
hired as an untenured associate professor and shall shortly be
completing his fourth year of continuous full-time service, your
claim that the process used for promotion "does not automatically
lead to tenure" is simply wrong in this instance. Indeed, you
conveniently leave out the fact that, far from being a caprice on
Professor Johnson's part, it was History Department Chairman
Gallagher himself who first suggested that Johnson put himself
forward as a candidate for tenure. And your claim that "the process
used for promotion [ . . .] and the process for reappointment have
been in place for some 30 years and have proved time and again to
work well" sits (at best) uneasily with CUNY spokesman Jay
Hershenson's admission to the New York Times (12-18-02) that
the chancellor was "reviewing the matter in light of questions
raised about the fairness of the process."
iii) Finally, you charge that I misrepresent
President Christoph Kimmich's decision to renew Johnson's contract
for a year, a decision that you claim was made "not under pressure,
not under duress, but following a thorough review of all files and
papers." Your charge, however, does not square with remarks made by
Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld in the Kingsman (10-14-02) that
"once it became an association of the press, his [Johnson's]
dismissal would have reflected poorly." Are you suggesting that the
publicity surrounding the Johnson case had nothing to do with
President Kimmich's decision to review and then overturn the
committee's negative recommendation? Under the circumstances, that
would indeed be remarkable.
In the end and all technical administrative
questions notwithstanding, the KC Johnson case is really quite
simple: either Professor Johnson was denied tenure as part of an
organized campaign on the part of political enemies at BC to run him
out of the College, as he charges, or he wasn't. In his support,
Johnson has succeeded in mustering an impressive array of
documentary and circumstantial evidence and, in particular, some
very damaging email correspondence. Brooklyn College, by contrast,
has yet to add a single shred of new evidence to the discussion.
More to the point, it has altogether failed to address the
particulars of Johnson's case, whether by denying the existence or
veracity of Johnson's evidence or by producing additional grounds in
support of the charge of "uncollegiality" leveled against him during
the tenure review proceedings.
The Brooklyn College administration does indeed
have a right to be heard. However, to be heard, it must first say
something. Until it does so, I stand by my article.
Sincerely,
David Orland