SIU professor's reading assignment causes uproar

Belleville News-Democrat ^ | May 4, 2005 | Associated Press

[Land_of_Lincoln_John]

CARBONDALE, Ill. - Questions of academic freedom are simmering at Southern Illinois University after history professors criticized a colleague over his use of an article about black-on-white killings in San Francisco in the 1970s.

History professor Jonathan Bean, a self-proclaimed "libertarian conservative," claims he is the victim of public attacks by a history department filled with professors who hold political views opposite his.

His colleagues say they fault him for distributing to students what they call a "distorted and inaccurate" historical account of the so-called "Zebra" killings, a series of random street slayings of whites that terrorized San Francisco in the early 1970s.

Bean said he assigned the article in early April as optional reading material to 270 students in his 20th century American history class. He said he downloaded the 2001 article from the conservative online publication frontpagemagazine.com.

"It was simply to give them a chance to learn about something they may have never heard about," Bean said Tuesday.

Bean said the article is one of the only short summaries of a 1979 book on the killings and is a "generally credible account" of the slayings.

He canceled the assignment a few days later, though, after history department chairwoman Marjorie Morgan told him the article was inflammatory and insensitive, Bean said.

"I feel, given the constant emphasis on sensitivity and diversity ... I've been stuck in the cross-hairs of the culture wars," Bean said Tuesday.

Morgan declined to comment Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The week after Bean canceled the assignment, eight history professors took out an ad in the school paper, the Daily Egyptian, expressing their "disgust" at Bean's distribution of the article.

The April 11 ad, which did not name Bean, said the article "quotes questionable sources," "uses unsubstantiated statistics" and "repeats inflammatory rumors."

The article said 71 people were killed in the violence, a figure that has been a subject of debate.

The letter said history teachers must "clearly distinguish between documents that illustrate racism in the American past and present-day racist propaganda."

Since then, some professors say they have received nasty e-mails from free-speech advocates and have been the subject of critical newspaper columns. One, written by columnist Cathy Young and published in the Boston Globe Monday, says Bean has been the victim of "a witch hunt that would do the late Joe McCarthy proud."

Rachel Stocking, one of the professors whose name was included on the ad, said she is startled by the backlash.

"What we did was to exercise our free speech by basically criticizing his teaching methods," she said. "It's significant that people who spoke against racism on a college campus have been subjected to this kind of attack."

Bean said he has received a letter from the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Shirley Clay Scott, saying she considers the matter closed and that he faces no disciplinary action.

Scott did not immediately return a phone message Tuesday from the AP.

The university is trying to ease tensions within the community by talking to everyone involved, said John M. Dunn, SIU's provost and vice chancellor.

"We are trying to work with the department, including Professor Bean, making sure all the voices are being heard and there is an opportunity of understanding," Dunn said. "There are people with many different voices, we always try to be respectful of that."

[Adder]

The letter said history teachers must "clearly distinguish between documents that illustrate racism in the American past and present-day racist propaganda."

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"What we did was to exercise our free speech by basically criticizing his teaching methods," she said. "It's significant that people who spoke against racism on a college campus have been subjected to this kind of attack."

Sorry, jerks, the job of historians is NOT to show or highlight rascism...its to report accurately what happened.
Lately you all have done a pi$$ poor job of that.And God forbid anyone doubt your carefully crafted anti-American word by showing anything other than your rigid dogma.

The prof you attacked exercised his right to free speech and you felt justified in speaking oput. But you don't like it very much when you get criticized for it. HA HA!
In other words..."OOOOO...you can't attack US!"
It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

[jordan8]

As I've said before, modern leftism is composed almost exclusively of anti-white racism. What the professors (all women, btw) really object to is the facts about anti-white racial violence coming out at all, not the accuracy of the piece. The entire system in academia, the press, and the government is dedicated to suppressing those facts. And if that suppression doesn't amount to openly supporting that violence then it will do until such support comes along.

[untenured]

History professor Jonathan Bean, a self-proclaimed "libertarian conservative," claims he is the victim of public attacks by a history department filled with professors who hold political views opposite his.

I have gingerly moved into racial issues in my classes more and more in recent years. I talk about the social beneifts of marriage and the costs of out-of-wedlock birth, and marriage's utter decline among black Americans. I also talk about statistical discrimination (the person who rejects a resume in part because it's got a "black-sounding" name on it, e.g.) and whether it's the result of prejudice. I even try to get students to think about whether antidiscrimination laws are immoral, and whether they serve the notion of a color-blind society (and, indeed, whether students, despite their rhetoric, really want a color-blind, post-tribal society). I do it all Socratically, and try not to be dogmatic about it.

So far, I have had no trouble, but that's not to say I won't. I keep expecting to hear from the professional victimology movement any day now.