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 |