Scholarship rests on impartial inquiry. Its credibility derives from neutrality. A scholar should be neither for nor against his subject; his role is to understand and explain it.
But faculty are human, and have opinions. So the problem is deciding when their personal feelings and opinions get in the way of their academic role to a point where they can’t fulfill the latter. College administrators are called upon to decide, and being human themselves aren’t necessarily right.
The Oct. 7 terror attacks, and the war it spawned, aroused heated passions. Here in the U.S. college campuses have become hotbeds of protests and counterprotests, with some faculty members joining in, which raises a question about whether universities’ basic academic functions are impaired scholars become partisans.
The man wearing the blue shirt in the video below is was an assistant professor at Arizona State University. After this incident on Sunday, May 5, 2024, at a pro-Israel demonstration, ASU initially placed him on leave, then banned him from the campus and declared he “will never teach here again” (see story here).
News reports of the incident say little about the woman in the encounter. Her identity is unknown, it’s unclear whether she was a student, or what preceded the exchange. In the brief videos of the incident (there are several), he cursed her and appears to make slightly push her.
According to Fox News (here), “University officials said they referred the matter to the Tempe Police Department for a criminal investigation since it took place on a city sidewalk,” suggesting ASU decision makers viewed the instructor’s conduct as criminal, in which case firing him is a no-brainer. (Some sources says he resigned before the incident.)
This incident doesn’t strike me as a particularly good case study of how to balance a scholar’s professional role with their personal political lives. I recall an instructor fired by the University of Missouri for aggressive behavior at a demonstration was subsequently hired by Gonzaga University in Spokane because, despite her past, they considered her the most qualified candidate (see story here). This suggests one can still be seen in the academic community as a legitimate scholar despite offensive political behavior.
It’s just that a person can’t do both at the same time, and perhaps that’s what will guide university administrators as they have to grapple with a growing number of their professors taking sides in the emotionally-charged Palestinian-Israeli conflict.