KC JOHNSON TENURE CASE:
SELECTED QUOTES

"Professors like KC Johnson are the last thing between [BC] being a good academic college and being a mockery."
    --student Mike Duchaine, Kingsman, 11-17-02

“This is more than just a tenure case. This is a test case to decide whether any young professor, no matter how outstanding, can be purged by politically intolerant colleagues. If Johnson can be fired, anybody can be fired.  Academic freedom will be gone, and only faculty who need apply are those with the ‘right’ politics.”
   --Jerry Martin, Herblondon.org, 1-9-03

"I've never seen someone so eminently qualified being turned away on issues that relate so little to the core of what we do, which is teaching and scholarship."
    --Williams College professor Charles Dew, New York Times, 12-18-02

"Why, the [students'] letter asked, should they be prevented from studying with an outstanding professor? Those who asked were apparently under the impression that the prime purpose of the college was the education of its students."
    --Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal, 12-20-02

"By denying Johnson tenure, Brooklyn College has said ‘no’ to reasoned dissent. At a university, there can be no greater corruption."
    --David Orland, Boundless, 12-19-02

"Moreover, it is ironic that tenure conceived as a way to insure independent thought free from censure is now employed to force conformity.  What else can the 'lack of collegiality' possibly mean?"
    --Herb London, Herblondon.org, 1-9-03

"Apparently, rigging tenure cases to punish independent thought and principled debate is completely consistent with [Provost Roberta S.] Matthews' idea of academic excellence."
    --Erin O'Connor, Critical Mass, 1-9-03

"If Mr. Goldstein is serious about raising standards, as we believe he is, he’ll take a close look at how Mr. Johnson was treated by some faculty members whose standards are less than CUNY deserves."
    --New York Sun, editorial, 11-19-02

"It is one thing to be concerned about social, cultural and economic matters; and that a school's faculty be representative of the broadest range of views. It is quite another when toleration and encouragement of differing views comes to be more important than hiring people who have demonstrated knowledge of a useful subject and the ability to teach it. Prof. Johnson is evidently a good and knowledgeable instructor, and as such was resented by some less capable peers."
    --Albert Hall, Wall Street Journal, 12-31-02

The case "makes it clear how far unscrupulous academics can and will go when they want to oust a colleague they find threatening (Johnson's productivity and popularity put that of many of his senior colleagues to shame) or repellant (in some academic circles, Johnson's principled objections to biased hiring and teaching practices are ideologically heretical) or both."
    --Erin O'Connor, Critical Mass, 12-20-02

“Certain professors may treat you based on your ethnicity. KC does not. That’s the kind of person Brooklyn College needs.”
    --student Martine Jean, New York Sun, 11-15-02

"Johnson wasn’t the only historian who fell afoul of the department’s 'academic terrorists'--a term initially employed by the chairman himself to describe the radicals opposed to Johnson before the chairman bowed to their wishes--for ideological reasons."
   --Jerry Sternstein, History News Network, 1-6-03

“Collegiality is an appropriate criterion if I wanted to join a prestigious country club and play well with the other children, but it is not that which is necessary to determine whether someone is a good professor.”
    --Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, The Harvard Crimson, 11-19-02

"This isn’t just a case of individual injustice as it stands: it is another example of academia’s seemingly boundless capacity for self-diminishment."
   --Timothy Burke, Easily Distracted, 12-19-02

"He's [Johnson] one of the best teachers I've ever had. We're here to send a message to President Kimmich. I hope the message is heard loud and clear that KC Johnson is probably the best teacher in CUNY and we're going to make sure he works in this school for the rest of his career."
    --student Brad Appell, Kingsman, 12-09-02

"Resistance to gender-driven hiring didn't endear him to the department's small but vociferous faction of political ideologues--a group that the chairman, Phillip Gallagher, had himself once described, in an e-mail to Mr. Johnson, as 'academic terrorists.'"
    --Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal, 12-20-02

"All in all, it is clear to me that Prof. Johnson is a victim of the most corrupted tenure review process I have ever come across -- and in my years as a union grievance officer handling such issues, I have seen my full share of corrupted processes. But nothing on this scale and with this level of duplicity."
    --Jerry Sternstein, History News Network, 11-25-02

"I know not to expect the same education that I would have received had I been able to attend an Ivy League school. But I trusted that by taking classes with Professors who come from the Ivy League, that really know how to teach, and that impact their students lives in uncountable ways would, at the least, put me in the running when it came to graduate school . . . By doing what you are doing to one of the most knowledgeable Professors I have ever encountered, you are letting and adding to the idea that Brooklyn College is just another city school for poor kids . . . And while you may continue to call Brooklyn College a place of higher education, I don’t know how high that education can reach when the standards it sets for those who educate us are laid so low."
    --student Jenna Schlanger, History News Network, 11-30-02

Denial "reflects a 'culture of mediocrity' hostile to high academic standards-to use a term from The City University of New York task force," since "introducing a redundant category of collegiality rewards young professors who ‘go along to get along’ rather than expressing independent scholarly judgment.”
    --24 national scholars, to Chancellor Goldstein, 11-12-02

"In the wake of the Johnson disaster, anyone who cares about academic excellence in this city should be talking about how to raise the standards, not lower them. The students who rely on these institutions for their education deserve nothing less."
    --New York Sun, editorial, 11-14-02

“Johnson is trouble and those who associate with him will find themselves in trouble as well.”
    --History Department chairman P. Gallagher to student Dan Weininger, The Harvard Crimson, 11-19-02

"Collegiality[--]this highly unusual and subjective term evidently superceded excellence in teaching and highly regarded scholarship as the main criteria for a promotion to full professor. What really was at stake was the desire of department feminists and radicals to hire a woman, no matter her credentials."
    --Ron Radosh, New York Sun, 11-20-02

"The CLAS Student Government believes that the flawed process followed in this tenure case violates Section 1 and Section 9 of the Bill of Rights outlined in the CLAS Student Government Constitution."
    --from Presidential Joint Resolution, numbered P.J. 46-6, Brooklyn College CLAS student government

"I hope Prof. Johnson vindicates himself, gets the promotion and tenure he deserves, and then announces his departure to greener pastures (where he won't have to remove knives from his back), resulting in a department put in receivership with a strong hand chosen and empowered to clean house."
    --Richard Henry Morgan, History News Network, 11-25-02

"Despite his superb scholarship, his extraordinary teaching ability, and his tireless committee work, some people, especially those with an ideological agenda, regard him with distaste, feeling he’s 'uncollegial.' And why? Because he obviously disagreed with them on appointments and other things, such as a post 9/11 Israel and America-bashing teach in, and not being a simpering wallflower, he openly stated his positions and refused to be intimidated out of them."
    -Jerry Sternstein, History News Network, 11-27-02

"The Johnson case can only do the college great harm by further diminishing [the college's] already mediocre reputation in the academic world. And how particularly bizarre that a highly accomplished young scholar should have brought his status superiors to punitive rage by opposing the mounting of a 'hate Israel' session disguised as a symposium!"
    --Milton Rosenberg, History News Network, 12-02-02