Prof. Burrows is correct when he writes that many of those who are “most indignant” about the way Brooklyn College handled KC Johnson’s tenure application have not been personally involved in the process and thus have no “access to the actual record.” And a good thing too. At least they haven’t gotten their hands dirty corrupting that record and that process, as some of the signers of Brooklyn College’s statement most certainly have. Nor does one need to have “access to the actual record” produced by the History Department to undermine Prof. Johnson’s tenure candidacy to realize how contrived it is, no more than anyone needed “access to the actual record” to know that Ronald Radosh was being denied promotion by Queensboro College and CUNY because of his then radical politics.
Moreover, I wonder how many of those at Brooklyn College who signed this statement know what the “actual record” really consists of, as opposed to the “record” the History Department chairman manufactured in order to undermine Johnson and what he and those aligned with him have told others about their concoction.
The fact is that according to the “rules” the statement says Brooklyn College abides by, only department chairs and members of division and college-wide tenure review committees have legal access to “confidential personnel information” it claims would support the tenure denial. That means that such names on the statement as Profs. Anderson, Bridenthal, Gerardi, Papayanis, Schaar, Hainline, Uctum, and Zukin, not being members of the various tenure review committees passing on Prof. Johnson, also did not have “access to the actual record”, which however does not seem to bar them from giving soothing assurances that Prof. Johnson was treated fairly.
And what about other signatories? What inside information are they supposedly privy to that Johnson’s “indignant” supporters are not? Indeed, because Johnson provided his supporters -- which he has every legal and moral right to do -- with extensive documentary evidence such as his resume, list of publications, teaching evaluations, reports of annual evaluations, and copies of extensive e-mails between him and the chairman and others in the History Department, his supporters undoubtedly have far more information with which to judge and evaluate him and the fairness of the tenure review process than those who signed the statement, most of whom know virtually nothing about the History Department, its ideological and personal cross currents, Prof. Johnson’s many published books and articles, his superb teaching, and his extensive committee work.
For example, several days ago I received this e-mail from a friend of mine in New York City, referring to one of the signers of the petition:
“We ran into [X...] at a concert this evening and she asked whether I know anything about the Johnson story. I hope you don’t mind but I promised to email her the explanation you gave me.”
That this signatory, usually a person on top of everything taking place on campus, clearly knew little about what was happening and asked my correspondent -- someone with absolutely no connection with Brooklyn College other than her friendship with me -- for an explanation, should give everyone pause. I do not doubt that others whose names are appended to the college’s statement are in the same boat, signing on because interested colleagues on campus, many of them department chairs defending themselves and faculty from the History Department hostile to Johnson, simply asked them to. This is called “collegiality”, and if what happened to Prof. Johnson illustrates anything, it is that not going along to get along in a highly charged politicized atmosphere is not healthy for one’s academic career at Brooklyn College.
But not everybody who was asked to sign the petition did. A retired former colleague of mine, a distinguished historian, was walking across campus the other day and was approached by one of Johnson’s chief tormentors, with the statement in hand. He was asked to sign it. My friend demurred not because he is “uncollegial” -- far from it -- but because, as he told me before I filled him in on the details of the Johnson case, he was in the dark about what was going on. But he was urged to sign the statement nevertheless.
The Brooklyn College petition speaks about “suspending judgment” of Prof. Johnson’s tenure denial “until all the evidence has been produced”, which it asserts, “it will be, in due course.” Forgive me, if I question whether those involved in denying Prof. Johnson tenure would be happy to see “all the evidence” in this case testifying to their animus revealed. Let me provide a case in point, contained in a legal brief Prof. Johnson’s lawyers prepared. It touches on Prof. Burrows, and I’ll quote from it:
“. . . the college’s failure to follow its own procedural rules tainted Professor Johnson’s promotion process. The starkest example of this pattern came in the divisional subcommittee, when a biased member refused to recuse himself, as college guidelines required. Professor Edwin G. Burrows, the History Department’s representative on the subcommittee, had no doubt that Professor Johnson ‘plainly deserve[d]’ the promotion. [quoted in Edwin G. Burrows to KC Johnson, E-mail, 8 November 2001]. But Professor Burrows had another agenda in his subcommittee service. He admitted that, despite Professor Johnson’s qualifications, he ‘perceived’ Professor Johnson as ‘a package’ with Professor Margaret King, a longtime departmental rival of Professor Burrows. ‘When it rains on you,’ Professor Burrows warned Professor King, ‘he [Professor Johnson] gets wet, too.’ [Edwin G. Burrows to Margaret King, E-mail, 15 November 2001]. By refusing to recuse himself after making this statement of prejudice, Professor Burrows. . . violated the university’s own procedural guidelines on a promotion matter.”
The problem Brooklyn College is going to face producing “all the evidence” in this case is that a lot of the evidence is of a similar nature. There are many more e-mails, teaching evaluations -- indeed one by Prof. Burrows himself, in which he praised a class of Prof. Johnson’s he sat in on as “one of the best classes I observed at Brooklyn College,” [Edwin G. Burrows, “Observation of Prof. KC Johnson,” 12 Dec. 1999], memos of annual evaluation conferences, and other documentary materials Prof. Johnson has provided supporters that do not reflect well on the impartiality and fairness of the History Department and others towards his candidacy for tenure. Indeed, they exhibit just the opposite: a chilling degree of bias and animosity towards him that arose suddenly only because Prof. Johnson would not go along with the agenda of two department radicals (once termed “academic terrorists,” by the History Department chair [Philip K. Gallagher to KC Johnson, E-mail, 16 February 2001, and “the lunatic fringe,” fanatics,” and “tin-horn rosebuds” by a Speech Department chair [Timothy Gura to KC Johnson, E-mail, 13 Sept. 2001] who signed the petition), and an insecure chairman growing increasingly anxious to mollify those same “academic terrorists” by limiting the search for a new faculty hire to a female candidate.
But like everybody else interested in “the search for truth”, I’ll be looking forward to the evidence the petitioners claim the college promises to provide in the Johnson case to demonstrate its “commitment to the very highest standards of academic integrity and intellectual honesty. . . ” But like many others who have parsed the evidence so far, I will not be holding my breath waiting for it. Nor are the students at Brooklyn College who have experienced Prof. Johnson’s teaching. Just recently, both the student governments of the College of Liberal Arts and the School of General Studies, unanimously passed resolutions supporting Prof. Johnson and condemning the college’s decision to deny him tenure. But, of course, they too don’t have precious “access to the actual record.” They only know him as a brilliant and compassionate teacher, so their indignation, by the lights of Prof. Burrows, shouldn’t be taken seriously
by Jerry Sternstein on November 27, 2002 at 9:07 PM