News

Liza Featherstone: Caught in the Web

09.07.2011

While labor lags behind other social movements in Internet organizing, some inspiring models are emerging. At the beginning of the year, Kristofer Petersen-Overton—an adjunct—was fired from the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, just after a right-wing Zionist politician criticized his course on the Middle East for being too sympathetic to Palestinians. In an [...]

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Stephen Leberstein: Open Season on Academics

09.07.2011

The year began with threats of violence against Frances Fox Piven, distinguished professor of sociology and political science at the Graduate Center, following Glenn Beck’s repeated denunciations of Piven on his Fox network show and the posting of her home address on his blog. At the same time, Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a PhD student in political [...]

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Alan Levine: Jews Are Dishonored by a Blind Defense of Israel

20.05.2011

Now that the City University of New York board of trustees has reversed course and approved an honorary degree for Tony Kushner, it is time for the Jewish establishment to reflect upon its failure to speak out. Jewish history tells us that silence is complicity. While individual Jews and progressive Jewish organizations, such as Jews [...]

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Tony Kushner and the Corporatisation of CUNY

10.05.2011

The taboo surrounding critical discussion of Israel in the United States never ceases to amaze me. But when the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) recently decided not to grant an honorary degree to Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner because of his views on Israel, it felt personal. Three months [...]

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New York College Racked Over ‘Pro-Palestinian’ Reading List

24.02.2011

NEW YORK // The Palestinian-Israeli conflict inspires political activism on college campuses across the United States, but rarely has the issue so regularly affected academic life as at Brooklyn College, which has large numbers of Orthodox Jews and Arabs in its student body. It has been less than a year since a book by a [...]

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The Autograph: Kristofer Petersen-Overton Comments on Middle East Politics

22.02.2011

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Life After Re-Appointment: Adjunct Lecturer Petersen-Overton Back at Brooklyn College

19.02.2011

The start of a new semester is frequently charged with excitement and a sense of fresh beginnings. But for Kristofer Petersen-Overton, an adjunct lecturer of political science at Brooklyn College, the beginning of this Spring semester brought the shock of discovering that he was unemployed. Making matters even more con­fusing, he was notified of his [...]

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In Switch, Brooklyn College Will Hire Adjunct on Mideast

31.01.2011

Brooklyn College on Monday reversed an earlier decision not to hire an adjunct professor to teach a seminar on Middle East politics, a decision that the professor and others called politically motivated. In a statement issued Monday evening, Karen L. Gould, the college’s president, said she had endorsed a recommendation from the political science department [...]

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Academic Freedom Under Fire at Brooklyn College

28.01.2011

I had some misgivings about teaching at Brooklyn College. Having worked for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the Gaza Strip, and having written works critical of modern Zionism in the past, I knew that some students might take issue with my political views. Anticipating this, I devoted one of the earliest meetings in [...]

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Brooklyn College Revokes Instructor’s Appointment to Teach Mideast Politics

28.01.2011

Last fall, it was an assigned book that brought the Israeli-Palestinian conflict home to Brooklyn College. A wealthy alumnus said he was cutting the college out of his will because all incoming freshmen had been asked to read “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America,” by Moustafa Bayoumi, [...]

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