"UC-Santa Barbara Faculty Member Goes Public About ADL Pressure"

Tweet

From the blog of THE COMMITTEE TO DEFEND ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT UCSB http://sb4af.wordpress.com/

History professor attended meeting where Abraham Foxman pushed UCSB to act against sociology professor

Corrected version. Please distribute widely.

Date: May 2, 2009

Contact: Daniel Olmos, (818) 468-8894, olmos@umail.ucsb.edu.

Alba Peña-Leon, (626) 665-9212, alba@umail.ucsb.edu.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Harold Marcuse, associate professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said he attended a March 9 meeting on campus where Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman pressured university officials to investigate charges of “anti-Semitism” against sociology professor William I. Robinson.

Marcuse said Foxman discussed the charges against Robinson for nearly an hour with about a dozen faculty members and university officials, including Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Young and the executive dean of the College of Letters and Science, David B. Marshall.

“When the meeting started, Foxman quickly launched into what I would call a rant about what he said was an anti-Semitic email that professor Robinson sent to his class,” Marcuse said. “We then had an open discussion about Foxman’s comments and the charges against Robinson. In my recollection, that was the only thing we talked about at the meeting. Nothing else was discussed.”