Dear President Gould and BC Administration,
In light of the controversy over the hire of the adjunct professor to the Middle East course, we would like to reaffirm our concerns for the class and the ultimate failure of the administration to address them.
The Middle East is a delicate, controversial subject and requires a professor with academic integrity and balance. While entitled to personal opinions, Mr. Petersen’s writings and affiliations make little indication of a fair and balanced approach to a contentious subject. Mr. Petersen has published his views in one of the most virulent pro-Palestinian forums, and there is little else in his online record displaying either balance or a wider scholarly understanding of Israel and the Palestinians.
Mr. Petersen’s syllabus for the course strongly reflects his one-sided personal sentiments, thus proving that personal opinion is already infecting the classroom before setting foot in it. This is an abuse of claims to so-called “academic freedoms.” A one-sided academic debate, is not a debate at all.
This is just like Brooklyn College wrongfully hiring a professor for an American politics course who then teaches from a syllabus covering the narrow, one-sided perspective of the Republican party only, for example. Just like in the case of Mr. Petersen, this would be a shameful disgrace to academic integrity and quality education. It is a disservice to students who are being intentionally denied a scholarly, balanced class from which to formulate wholesome opinions.
After your support for the one-sided, sole book by Professor Bayoumi distributed to incoming students, complete with misleading and erroneous statistics and critical of US foreign policy in the Middle East, this latest action is all the more troubling to the integrity of the college you oversee.
We call on the Brooklyn College administration to take responsibility for the academic abuse and revise the course syllabus.
Concerned and awaiting your response,
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