Compare UCSB reaction to this story about Nazi professor and recent supreme court opinion on "hostile" academic environments below.......
Prof Who Compared Nazi, Israeli Actions Is Safe
FREE SPEECH -- A faculty committee has notified U.C. Santa Barbara sociology professor William I. Robinson that it has found "no probable cause" to pursue complaints about his invitation to students to compare photos of the Nazi assault on Jews and of the Israeli Defense Force's assault on Gaza.....
The dispute dates to an e-mail message that Robinson sent to the approximately 80 students in January in a course about sociology and globalization. The e-mail contained an article criticizing the Israeli military's actions in Gaza. Part of the e-mail was an assemblage of photos from Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and from Israel's actions in Gaza. Students were invited to look at the "parallel images." A message from Robinson argued that Gaza would be like "Israel's Warsaw."
Following that letter, two students in the course dropped the class and filed complaints against Robinson. One student wrote that she felt "nauseous" upon reading the e-mail, and felt it was inappropriate. A second student complaint accusing Robinson of being unprofessional -- also from a student who dropped the course after receiving the e-mail -- said that Robinson has "clearly stated his anti-Semitic political views in this e-mail."
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=13270
High court turns away professor's free-speech claim
By The Associated Press
Editor's note: The Associated Press reported April 9, 2002, that John Bonnell's lawsuit against Macomb Community College had been dismissed. Bonnell served an unpaid suspension of one semester the fall of 2001 after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in his case.
LANSING, Mich. — The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear the appeal of an English professor who was suspended from a community college for using obscenities in class.
In a March opinion, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that Macomb Community College's right to protect its students against a "hostile learning environment" outweighed John Bonnell's free-speech rights.
Bonnell appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined without comment Oct. 9 to hear his appeal.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/04/nazi
Nazi Loses Teaching Job
April 4, 2005
In an interview, Pluss stressed his academic credentials (a University of Chicago Ph.D. in medieval history) and his commitment to keeping his politics out of his teaching. "I never brought my beliefs into the classroom or shared them with my colleagues," he said. He said it would be "complete nonsense" to say that Nazis shouldn't teach at colleges.
"Many of us have political views. Some are mainstream, some are extreme, some are left and some are right," he said. "I just stick to teaching the material."
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