Corey Robin

More news on the Brooklyn/BDS controversy: 1.Yet another signatory to the Lewis Fidler letter, which threatened to punish CUNY by withholding funds, has rescinded his signature. Today on Twitter, City Councilman Stephen Levin announced: I have withdrawn my name frm City Council ltr on funding 4 BK College. I maintain my criticism of BDS & impression of BK College endorsement — Stephen Levin (@StephenLevin33) February 5, 2013 With Letitia James, two out of the 10 signatories have now removed themselves from the Fidler letter. 2.  I have it on a very good source that yet another member of the New York City Council who signed the letter is going to make a public statement tomorrow, distancing him/herself from its contents. […]

City Council Speaker—and leading mayoral candidate—Christine Quinn is one of the signatories to that “other” letter about the Brooklyn College BDS panel from the “progressive” government officials and politicians. In that letter, Quinn and four members of Congress, Bill de Blasio, and many more, call upon my department to rescind our co-sponsorship of the BDS panel at Brooklyn College because, well, read it for yourself: We are, however, concerned that  an academic department has decided to formally endorse an event that advocates strongly for one side of a highly-charged issue,  and has rejected legitimate offers from prominent individuals willing to simultaneously present an alternative view.  By excluding alternative positions from an event they are sponsoring, the Political Science Department has […]

So much has happened today it’s hard to keep up.  So a quick round-up of the news (and some items from yesterday). 1. The major development of the day is that City Councilwoman Letitia James has publicly retracted her signature to that Fidler letter, which threatens to cut off funding to Brooklyn College and CUNY, a point Fidler doubled down on in an interview tonight. 2. This morning, Brooklyn College President Karen Gould delivered a powerful defense of our department and of academic freedom. 3. That defense has now been endorsed by the New York Times. In a strong editorial, the Times writes: We do, however, strongly defend the decision by Brooklyn College President Karen Gould to proceed with the […]

New York City Councilwoman Letitia James officially announced today that she has withdrawn her signature from that letter sent from Assistant Majority Leader Lewis Fidler threatening Brooklyn College and CUNY with a lost of funding if the BDS event goes forward with the political science department’s co-sponsorship. On Twitter today, she said the following: View as slideshow Letitia James@TishJames @peterrothberg I hear your concern. While I have serious concerns about this event, I don’t think it would be appropriate for the Council… Mon, Feb 04 2013 12:33:09 · Original link ReplyRetweetFavorite Letitia James@TishJames @peterrothberg to use CUNY budget to influence what issues are discussed on campus & what groups are invited. I will remove myself from ltr. Mon, Feb 04 […]

This morning, Karen Gould, the president of Brooklyn College, issued an extraordinarily powerful statement in defense of academic freedom and the right of the political science department to co-sponsor the BDS event. I don’t have a link yet (will post when I do) but this is the critical part of her statement: First, however, let me be clear: Our commitment to the principles of academic freedom remains steadfast.  Students and faculty, including academic departments, programs, and centers, have the right to invite speakers, engage in discussion, and present ideas to further educational discussion and debate.   The mere invitation to speak does not indicate an endorsement of any particular point of view, and there is no obligation, as some have […]

We have the document. Lewis Fidler, Assistant Majority Leader of the NYC Council, and several other members of the City Council, write in a letter to Brooklyn College President Karen Gould that if the BDS event is not canceled—or the political science department’s co-sponsorship of it is not withdrawn—the City Council will withdraw its financial support from the College and/or CUNY. The letter is here. An excerpt: A significant portion of the funding for CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the State and City of New York. Every year, we legislators are asked for additional funding to support programs and initiatives at these schools and we fight hard to secure those funds. Every one […]

I and my fellow bloggers at Crooked Timber have written this statement below in support of Erik Loomis, who is being targeted by a vicious right-wing campaign of intimidation. Please go to the Crooked Timber site and voice your support for the statement. Also, and perhaps more important, please send an email of support for Loomis to the following top three administrators where he teaches: Dean Winnie Brownell: winnie@mail.uri.edu Provost Donald DeHays: ddehayes@uri.edu President David Dooley: davedooley@mail.uri.edu Thanks! ● ● ● ● ● Erik Loomis is no stranger to this blog. A gifted young scholar of US labor and environmental history, Loomis is also a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Many of us have tussled and tangled with him, […]

As some of you know, I have a day job as a professor. At Brooklyn College, where I teach political science. One of our cherished little secrets at Brooklyn College is that we have the most awesome undergraduates in the world. Listening to my students in class, I often feel like I’m teaching the 21st century’s New York Intellectuals: only instead of hailing from Odessa and Poland, they come from Nigeria, Grenada, Palestine, and Tajikistan. My students have gone onto Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford, graduate degrees at top universities in the US and elsewhere, transformative activism with labor unions, community groups, antiwar coalitions, Occupy, and more. I’m not the sentimental sort, but the simple truth is: I love these guys. […]

It’s going to be a busy fall with lots of talks and presentations. Here’s the schedule. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello! Tuesday, September 25 5 pm: “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump” University of Edinburgh (Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History; School of History, Classics, and Archaeology; School of Social and Political Science) Meadows Lecture Theatre, Doorway 4, Medical School, Teviot Place Tuesday, October 2 4 pm: “Invisible Man: The Black Nationalism of Clarence Thomas’s Jurisprudence” Rutgers University (Department of History and Raritan) Alexander Library, 4th Floor Auditorium 169 College Avenue, New Brunswick Friday, October 5 6 pm:“On Fear and Governance”: A conversation about Euripides’s The Bacchae with director […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the NFL may adopt a policy to force football players to stand for the national anthem as a condition of employment. It’s worth recalling that as a matter of constitutional right, a six-year-old student in this country cannot be required to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or the national anthem. But a grown man or woman can be forced by their employer to do so. That should tell you something about the state of rights in the workplace. A state-run institution like the public school cannot stop you from sitting down during the pledge, but a private employer can. The one factor that may stop the NFL from forcing the players to stand up during […]

The New York Times reports this morning: The City University of New York is investigating whether a recent $500,000 donation intended to bolster the humanities and arts at its flagship school may have been improperly diverted. The inquiry was prompted by senior faculty members at the school, the City College of New York, who learned that an account that should have contained roughly $600,000, thanks to the donation, had just $76. Faculty members asked City College officials for an explanation, but were met with “silence, delay and deflection” before appealing directly the university’s chancellor, James B. Milliken. Mr. Milliken then asked Frederick P. Schaffer, the university’s general counsel and senior vice chancellor for legal affairs, to look into the “the expenditure […]

Members of the British government are trying to dershowitz* Southampton University: Eric Pickles has warned Southampton University against “allowing a one-sided diatribe” as the become [sic] the most senior politician yet to intervene in the growing row over a major conference into the legitimacy of Israel. The Communities Secretary’s comments come as a senior Jewish leader called for the event, hosted by the institution’s law school, to be reconstructed or cancelled. … “Given the taxpayer-funded University has a legal duty to uphold freedom of speech, I would hope that they are taking steps to give a platform to all sides of the debate, rather than allowing a one-sided diatribe.” Board of Deputies vice-president Jonathan Arkush will head a delegation to […]

1. Yesterday, University of Nevada professor Gautam Premnath called the University of Illinois to protest the hirefire of Steven Salaita. A giggly employee in the Chancellor’s office told Premnath that Salaita was “dehired.” 2.Within 24 hours, nearly 8000 people have signed a petition calling on the University of Illinois to reinstate Salata. You should too. While you’re at it, please make sure to email the chancellor, Phyllis Wise, at at pmwise@illinois.edu. Please cc Robert Warrior of the American Indian Studies department (rwarrior@illinois.edu) and the department itself: ais@illinois.edu. 3. This morning, the Chronicle of Higher Ed has a fuller report on the Salaita affair. Among the new facts revealed: First, it was a tenured position that Salaita was offered. Second, the […]

The following letter was sent to the parents and guardians of kindergarteners at the Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, which is in Suffolk County, New York. The letter explains that the school’s annual kindergarten show has been canceled. It is signed by the interim principal and several other individuals, at least some of whom are teachers. According to the organization that posted it on Facebook and Twitter, the letter’s authenticity has been confirmed by a parent in the school district. I also googled the names of the signatories, and several of them appear to be legitimate. (UPDATE: The letter’s authenticity has been definitely confirmed by The Washington Post.) The letter reads as follows: Dear Kindergarten parents and guardians: We […]

Jumaane Williams is fast on his way to becoming the Gerald Ford of New York City’s progressive Democrats, putting his foot in his mouth on one issue after another. Turns out he has some interesting views on abortion and same-sex marriage. On abortion, he does the communitarian two-step that was so popular back in the 1990s: I don’t know that the two choices [pro-life or pro-choice] I have accurately describe what I believe. You have to check off a box of pro-choice and you have to check off a box of pro-life and I don’t know that I’m comfortable in any of those boxes. I am personally not in favor of abortion. But his big complaint is that men are […]

In shul this morning, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the rabbi spoke at length about the State of Israel. This is more surprising than you might think. I’ve been going to this shul since I moved to Brooklyn in 1999, and if memory serves, it’s only been in the last two or three years that the rabbi has devoted at least one of her High Holy Days talks to Israel. Throughout the aughts, Israel didn’t come up much in shul. During flash points of the Second Intifada, you might hear a prayer for Jewish Israelis or nervous temporizing about some action in Jenin or Gaza. But I can’t recall an entire sermon devoted to the State of Israel and […]

In the last few days libertarians have been debating the neo-Confederate sympathies of some in their movement. I don’t to wade into the discussion. Several voices in that tribe—including Jacob Levy, Jonathan Adler, and Ilya Somin—have been doing an excellent job. (This John Stuart Mill essay, which Somin cites, was an especially welcome reminder to me.) But this post by Randy Barnett caught my eye. I should preface this by saying that I think Barnett is one of the most interesting and thoughtful libertarians around. I’d happily read him on just about anything. He’s a forceful writer, who eschews jargon and actually seems to care about his readers. He’s also the architect of the nearly successful legal challenge to Obamacare, […]

Climbing aboard the anti-birth control bandwagon, the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-2 on Monday to endorse legislation that would: a) give employers the right to deny health insurance coverage to their employees for religious reasons; b) give employers the right to ask their employees whether their birth control prescriptions are for contraception or other purposes (hormone control, for example, or acne treatment). There are three things to say about this legislation. The Private Life of Power First, as I argue in The Reactionary Mind, conservatism is dedicated to defending hierarchies of power against democratic movements from below, particularly in the so-called private spheres of the family and the workplace. Conservatism is a defense of what I call “the private […]

I had intended to blog about this, but Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber beat me to it. The story goes like this: Jennifer Dibbern, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, was retaliated against for her union activism. It’s as simple as that. Henry is more cautious in telling the story than I am, but having led a campaign for graduate student unionization at Yale, and having been retaliated against for my activism—experiences I wrote about here and here—I see all the tell-tale signs of retaliation. In any event, Henry has lots of links to help you decide what went down at Michigan. And here are some more. Also check out Henry’s excellent follow-up post, in which he itemizes […]