Special Interview Stony Brook U. Report Praised by Israeli Professor Involved in the ‘dube Affair’ C

Selwyn Troen, the visiting Israeli professor whose letter last summer to colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook triggered the months’-long controversy over the teachings in a course that likened Zionism to racism and Nazism, has praised the recently issued report by a special university commission which proposes a framework for dealing with conflicts of academic freedom and academic responsibility at the Long Island university campus.

Describing the report by “The Commission on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities,” headed by Nobel Laureate C. N. Yang, as a “classic statement on academic freedom and academic responsibility,” Troen said here that “had this report been in place when my complaint was issued, there would have been no need for the accusations which followed.”

Some of the accusations, Troen said in an interview, was the development of what he initially said he interpreted as a clear cut debate on academic freedom and academic responsibility but which derailed into a debate between an Israeli professor (Troen) and a Black South African-born professor of psychology, Ernest Dube, who was accused by a student of teaching that Zionism is as much a form of racism as Nazism.

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the New York offices of the American Associates, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, where he is currently a professor of modern history, Troen labelled as “intentionally malicious” the characterization of the controversy as the “Dube-Troen Affair” when actually, he continued, it was a student in Dube’s class who brought Dube’s syllabus to his attention.

ASKED FOR PROPER ACCOUNTING OF DUBE’S COURSE

Troen said he had never asked that Dube be fired for his teachings in the course, “The Politics of Race,” but only, after seeing the material as presented by the student, asked that the university conduct “a proper accounting” of the course’s content. He was particularly annoyed by the attempt “to stereotype a Black against an Israeli …” during the course of the controversy. “I’m an American historian and not a foreigner,” he asserted.

The 43-year-old Troen, born in Boston and who emigrated with his family to Israel in 1975, was a visiting professor of Human Development and Educational Policy at Stony Brook when a student in Dube’s course last summer brought Dube’s syllabus to his attention.

He later wrote a letter to senior faculty members and administration officials at the university saying that Dube had employed his own personal views “for the propagation of personal ideology and racial biases” in the course.

COMMISSION’S REPORT ESTABLISHES GUIDELINES

Troen, in the United States to address the Organization of American Historians and in New York specifically to vote in the Democratic Presidential primaries last week, provided the JTA with a copy of the commission’s report.

The commission was established last October by Stony Brook president John Marburger to “review courses of racial, ethnic and religious sensitivity to insure the proper balance in presentation between academic freedom and academic responsibility.”

While the commission’s report does not specifically mention the Dube controversy, it does establish guidelines for the establishment of “a mechanism for resolving conflicts which might arise on matters relating to academic rights and responsibilities.” The commission submitted the report to university provost Homer Neal who will review, along with other faculty officials, the report’s content and later make recommendations on its implementation.

The eight-page report by the 10 member commission is divided into two subsections, “The Academic Profession (a proposed statement)” and “The Council on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities (a proposal).” While noting the “unique place in our society” the university occupies, the report continues: “However, the opportunity to pursue learning and truth in a critical and intellectualy disinterested manner is to be found only in institutions of higher learning.”

“Any scholarly community must afford the opportunity for its members to engage in its intellectual efforts without the imposition of a priori conditions or external restraints,” the report says.

“However, the very integrity and vitality of any intellectual community can be maintained and preserved only through the exercise of both its freedoms and its responsibilities. These are not concepts antithetical to one another, but rather complementary principles necessary to sustaining the scholarly traditions of that community. One implies and strengthens the other.”

THE ROLE OF THE COUNCIL

In outlining a proposal for the establishment of a Council on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities to be chaired by a dean of the council, the report said “the council will be charged with advising the president and provost on conflicts between members of the academic community in matters relating to academic rights and responsibilities, on possible abuses of such rights, on breaches of ethics, on questions of conflicts of interest and on behavior by any member of the academic community which might reflect adversely on the reputation of the university.

“The Council will consider issues brought to it through the dean of the Council by individual students, faculty members, department chairs, deans or high administration officers,” the report proposes.

Provost Neal is scheduled to make a decision on whether to implement the commission’s proposals, although it remained unclear whether the university will set up a council to investigate the complaints against Dube’s teachings. Dube continues to teach “the Politics of Race” at Stony Brook and reports indicated he has changed little of the course’s required reading lists to present a more balanced perspective of Zionism.