A 32 year-old political science professor who has been an active anti-Israel, pro-Arab propagandist on the campus of Waterloo Lutheran University, is facing dismissal from the faculty, but not because of his political views, it was learned here today.
The popular assumption had been that Lebanese-born Dr. George Haggar was informed that his contract with the university would not be renewed next May because of his frequent public denunciation of Israel and of American policy in Vietnam. This won him support among the student body, some 250 of whom submitted a petition for his reinstatement on the grounds of freedom of speech.
It was not Dr. Haggar’s Arab propagandizing but his vitriolic personal attacks on the University’s administration, particularly the chairman of its board of governors, that brought about his dismissal, the Toronto Globe and Mail disclosed in an article based on campus interviews. Dr. Haggar, who is president of the 3,000-member Canadian-Arab community organization, characterized the University that employes him as “autocratic, bigoted and unprogressive.” He heaped scorn on his fellow members of the faculty who he called “clerks” who are “obsequious and expect others to be obsequious too.” He called the chairman of the board of governors, Harry D. Greb, a local shoe manufacturer, “a cobbler who wants to run the university like a cobbler’s shop.” These and other remarks were made by Dr. Haggar in the student newspaper, in his classroom lectures and before open student meetings, the Globe and Mail said.
Haggar has filed a complaint against his dismissal with the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
