Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
“Richard Landes offers a sharply-drawn, no-holds-barred dissection of today’s campus politics at its worst. As a case study of the damage done to academic integrity by the intrusion of anti-Zionism into college life, his book is a must-read.” —Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University
This compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who was accused by students and faculty of having “directly condoned the extermination of a people” based on a deliberate misreading of his 2015 Facebook post on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Salem on the Thames captures the events as they unfolded and discusses topics such as Western sentiments concerning Israeli-Palestinian relations, academics and free speech, antisemitism and diversity on the college campus, and social media and politics. The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards “public shaming” reminiscent of the Salem witch trials that deeply compromises the integrity of academia.
“Salem on the Thames is a collection of essays, but most of them, including a very helpful annotated chronology of events, are by Landes, who has also compiled an extensive archive of primary-source documents at his blog. He and his other contributors dissect each and every way Pessin was sucker punched, lied to, manipulated, and thrown under the bus.”
— Elliot Kaufman, Jewish Review of Books
Table of Contents
Preface
Richard Landes
Introduction
Asaf Romirowsky
Andrew Pessin’s Facebook Post during Operation Protective Edge
Condensed Timeline
Part I: When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime
Richard Landes
1. The Post: On Truth and Metaphor
2. The Shameful Dishonesty of It All: An Annotated Chronology from the Perspective of the Victim
3. The People: McCarthyism, New London Style
Part II: Studies in Pessinology
4. Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency
Ashley Thorne
5. “I Was Rude, You Were Evil”: Reflections on Academia, Liberalism, and the Betrayal of Andrew Pessin
John Gordon
6. The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagues
Fred Baumann
Part III: Reflections: Salem on the Thames – Stampeding a Herd of Cats
Richard Landes
7. What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us
8. Reflections on Academia and Freedom: The Case of Connecticut College, Spring 2015
9. Pessin, Ironic Prophet: The Liberal Emperor's New Clothes of Humanitarian Racism
Part IV: Appendix – Documents
Pessin Affair: Dramatis Personae
Online Petition Posted March 18, 2015
Bibliography