Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor’s decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel’s recent Gaza offensive, a report said.
The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him. The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message – titled “parallel images of Nazis and Israelis” – to the 80 students in his sociology of globalisation class.
The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip. It also included an article critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson. “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians,” the professor wrote. “We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide.”
Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor’s message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university. In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus’ faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.
“I was shocked,” said Joseph, 22. “He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn’t have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong.”
Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Centre and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. “That’s like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I’m anti-American,” he said. “It’s the most absurd, baseless argument.” Robinson said he regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and that no one raised questions when he subsequently discussed his e-mail. “The whole nature of academic freedom is to introduce students to controversial material, to provoke students to think and make students uncomfortable,” said Robinson, a UC Santa Barbara professor for nine years.
As the dispute over his e-mail plays out, UC Santa Barbara has become the most recent U.S. university to confront campus unrest over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In recent years, Jewish and Muslim groups have quarrelled repeatedly at UC Irvine about the Holocaust and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Professors and students at Columbia University have also argued over issues of intimidation and academic freedom amid debates on the Mid-East. In Robinson’s case, reaction has been strong – on both sides.
Shortly after hearing from the two students in January, the Wiesenthal Centre produced a YouTube video titled “Jewish Students Under Siege from Professor at UC Santa Barbara.” The clip shows one of Robinson’s former students, her face obscured to protect her identity, reading from his e-mail. The head of the ADL’s Santa Barbara region sent Robinson a letter in February calling on him to repudiate his statements about Israel. Last month, the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, in a meeting with faculty members at the campus, urged the university to conduct an investigation into Robinson. He was told that an inquiry was already underway.
Robinson’s supporters say the professor is being maligned for exercising his right to challenge his students to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Students on campus have formed a group, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which is chronicling the saga on its website. Letters of support also have arrived from academics across the country, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to “silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices.”