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The time is now! Write and call Ithaca College protesting this injustice!
Ithaca College Professor Says Political Views Influenced Her Tenure Denial
09.24.2008 | The Chronicle of Higher Education
By ROBIN WILSON
Finkelstein comments:
I have met and spoken at length with this professor and her
husband. They are the most decent of human beings: doing the right thing at great personal and professional expense. I have carefully scrutinized the facts in her tenure case. It simply cannot be disputed that she is the victim of a political witch-hunt. I strongly urge you to write and call the Dean of Ithaca College protesting this gross injustice. The case can be won if we take the initiative.
Leslie Lewis
Dean
School of Humanities and Sciences
Phone: (607) 274-3102
E-mail: llewis@ithaca.edu
Office:
201 Muller Center
Ithaca, NY 14850
A sociology professor at Ithaca College who has been denied tenure there twice says colleagues and administrators let their political views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict get in the way of their judgments on her tenure bid.
The assistant professor, Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, has hired the same law firm that
represented Norman G. Finkelstein, who was denied tenure at DePaul University last year after a highly public battle that focused on his critical writings about Israel. DePaul reached a settlement with Mr. Finkelstein last September (The Chronicle, September 6, 2007).
Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe, who is from India and grew up in the Caribbean, teaches courses on
women in the third world and on global race and ethnic relations, and has been a
faculty adviser for a group called Students for a Just Peace, which opposes the Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories.
She does not consider herself either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, her lawyer, Lynne
Bernabei, said, “but many of the countries and societies she writes about are
supportive of something other than Israeli policy, so she is tagged with that.”
Ms. Bernabei’s Washington, D.C., law firm, Bernabei & Wachtel, sent a letter this month
to Ithaca’s president and the chairman of its Board of Trustees, saying that both of
Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe’s tenure reviews were influenced by “blatant political lobbying
against her based on her teachings on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
Specifically, the letter says that Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe was not deemed friendly to Israel
by Howard Erlich, who retired in May after 20 years as dean of Ithaca’s School of
Humanities and Sciences. Mr. Erlich and Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe clashed, the letter says,
because he considered the student group she advised and some speakers she invited to
campus to be “anti-Israel.”
The letter asks the college to grant Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe tenure or face a legal battle.
A spokesman for Ithaca College said he could not talk specifically about the
professor’s tenure case, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters. But he said
tenure decisions were based solely on a professor’s teaching, service, and scholarship.
Mr. Erlich did not return telephone calls.
The letter sent on behalf of Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe says it is clear the negative decisions
on her tenure bid were politically motivated because the university flip-flopped on the
formal reason it gave for why she didn’t deserve tenure.
After her first evaluation in 2006, the letter from Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe's lawyer said,
the college said the professor had met the criteria for teaching but was deficient in
her scholarship. After the assistant professor complained about “irregularities” in her
tenure review—including what she called political influence by the then dean—the
university agreed to evaluate her again in two years.
During that period, the letter says, Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe worked on her scholarship,
completing two books (including one that was co-written with another scholar), and one
peer-reviewed article.
But when her tenure bid was reconsidered this year, a review panel in the sociology
department said it had found “patterns of unevenness” in her teaching.
The letter says Ithaca's decision to deny her tenure violated Ms. Ramlal-Nankoe's
academic freedom. “This is the kind of McCarthyism that is going around on campuses
right now,” said Ms. Bernabei.
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What we can do:
On Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem & the Occupation:
On the Lobby & "the New anti-Semitism"
On Hezbollah & Hamas:
- The Guardian: Hamas acted on a very real fear of a US-sponsored coup. (06.22.2007)
- Haaretz: Haniyeh: Hamas willing to accept Palestinian state with 1967 borders. (11.09.2008)
- Henry Siegman, International Herald Tribune: Bring in Hamas. (03.04.2008)
- The Washington Post: No Peace Without Hamas. (04.17.2008)
- Al Jazeera English: Talk to Jazeera - Khaled Meshaal. (03.05.2008)
- International Herald Tribune: Bring in Hamas. (03.04.2008)
- "the Hezbollah model"
and
"There is this claim that the obstacle [to peace] is that Hamas won't recognize Israel..." (09.30.2006)
"Israel always depended on the fact that its adversaries were stupid, incompetent... and, in fact, they were right... That when they were dealing with a Nasser, he was a blowhard; a Saddam Hussein,
he was a windbag; when they were dealing with Yasser Arafat, he was a hot air ballon.
They were nothing of any substance... [inaudible]... That was Israel's ace in the hole. Now comes along an Arab leader who says we have to use "reason."
It's a very remarkable thing to read. We have to use "reason."
We have to think, plan, organize."
- Hamas: A reasonable statement. (Los Angeles Times, 07.10.2007)
- The Guardian: Hamas condemns the Holocaust. (05.12.2008)
- Salon.com: The "hiding among civilians" myth. (07.28.2006)
- AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza. (06.29.2006)
- Foreign Policy: Habitat for Hezbollah. (08.2006)
- The Irish Times: Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings. (07.31.2006)
Finkelstein on Israel:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Video: On the place of civility
in academic life (10.18.2007)
Finkelstein's talk at the academic freedom conference
Tenure Denial Letters
(June - November, 2007)
On How Actual Survivors Were Cheated by
Jewish Organizations:
- Haaretz: "The Claims Conference intentionally defrauded Holocaust survivors." (09.25.2008)
- Ynet: Where did the Shoah money go? (12.11.2006)
'First Class flights around the world, accommodation at deluxe hotels, dining at fancy restaurants and a series of credit cards, this is how the Claims Conference, which deals with restitution of stolen Jewish property from the Holocaust, operates.'
- Haaretz: Survivors' protest makes foreign journalists gasp, security vanish (08.06.2007)
"I want the Germans to know where the money they gave Israel went," he said angrily. "I want the Germans to know that Israel took the money we should have received. I want them to answer one question: Where did our money go?"
- AP: Holocaust survivors blast $20 stipend (07.31.2007)
'Survivors have long claimed that European countries treat them far better than Israel, where many elderly survivors live in poverty.'
- Jewish Week: Holocaust Cash Went To Shadowy Pal Of Ousted WJC Leader (05.04.2007)
'Israeli finance minister, now being probed for corruption, urged death camp tour group to hire little-known N.Y. consultant; Singer friend Curtis Hoxter can't explain what he did for $709,000.'
- Jewish Week: "Survivors Balking At Lawyer's Fee" (03.02.2006)
- Shocking revelation in the London Jewish Chronicle. ("The man on the left earns $437,811 a year handling Shoah claims. So why are so many survivors pleading poverty?"; 05.30.2006)
- Survivors Protest Holocaust Industry Shakedown (08.29.2000)
- Finkelstein: Will The Holocaust Industry Incite Anti-Semitism? (08.11.2000)
- Finkelstein: Lessons of Holocaust Compensation (2001)
Finkelstein on Jimmy Carter:
Israeli civil libertarian's introduction to German edition of Beyond Chutzpah. (03.27.2006)
Communication for Middle East Journal. (02.19.2006)
Alleged Errors in Beyond Chutzpah. (2005)
MEMRI NAZIS (again) (10.23.2006)
New evidence of old lies (2005)
Under the heading DIABOLICAL PLOTS, I stated in Beyond Chutzpah...
Articles and Reviews Related to The Holocaust Industry
Preface to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine
Postscript to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine
The Dershowitz File:
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