Rich Baehr writes:
A distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College for Women, Andrew Pessin, who once taught at Kenyon, has been hounded from his job after becoming a target by the campus SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine, a group
dubbed "Hamas on Campus"], their faculty friends, and their fellow haters around the world, who bombarded the Professor with vicious email and threats. The "crime" Professor Pessin committed was using some colorful language in a post last August during the war in Gaza to describe [the vicious, terrorists known as] Hamas. Pessin’s real crime is that he is Jewish and pro-Israel, a combination which appears to make him unique among the faculty at this liberal arts college. The real assault on Pessin began six months after his original post during the war, and though he apologized to the student who claimed to have been offended, the campaign against him was in full attack mode by then.
I have attached below some articles that have been written on this issue to give you some background on Pessin’s case. He is currently on medical leave, living off campus for his own safety and sanity. Several months back, his wife had surgery for a brain tumor, and she has not fully recovered. Professor Pessin has his hands full, and he should not fight the evil coming at him alone.
I have provided below the email address of the President of Connecticut College. Feel free to let her know that the issue here is not a Facebook post, but a drive to make Connecticut College “free" of pro-Israel people. So far, the President has acted badly, creating a kind of moral equivalence between someone typing a Facebook post about Hamas, and the campus responding
en masse, as if it had been mortally wounded by the post six or seven months after the fact, and turning with real ugliness on a once popular and respected Professor. In the last few weeks, the college has added three new Deans of Equity and Inclusion.