(Jewish Group) How do we curb racism and anti-Semitism and protect free speech?

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!)

To all appearances, Michael Chikindas was a reasonably successful professor in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University, but that was before the website Israellycool.com discovered that his Facebook page was plastered with anti-Semitic cartoons.

The caricatures — with hook noses, leering grins and ultra-Orthodox religious clothing — were sometimes accompanied by “anti-Zionist” messages, but Chikindas also promoted conspiracy theories ranging from sickeningly familiar to sickeningly inventive. Along with the usual Holocaust denial, Chikindas asserted that Israelis were behind the 9/11 attacks and, more creatively, that Jews had perpetrated the Armenian Genocide.


University President Robert Barchi initially took a hands-off approach. When questioned about Chikindas at a campus town hall meeting, Barchi said, “You may not like what the guy says, but you have to like the fact that he can say it.”

As protests mounted at the New Jersey university, Barchi issued a far stronger statement, condemning Chikindas’ imagery as “bigoted, discriminatory and anti-Semitic material” that “perpetuated toxic stereotypes.” Barchi announced that Chikindas would be barred from teaching required courses and removed from his position as director of the Center for Digestive Health. "No Rutgers student will be required to take a course that he teaches,” Barchi explained, and "No Rutgers employee will be required to work in an administrative unit that he heads."

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According to Wilson (and other absolutists), academic freedom means that a professor cannot be sanctioned, or even reassigned, for claiming that "gay men have a propensity to molest children," or "Muslims are a terrorist threat," or "blacks are less intelligent than whites on average." If we allow “personal opinions to be the basis of penalties, almost any controversial professor could be punished."

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