Barnett recounts the case of adjunct faculty member Jacques Pluss, who was ditched by Fairleigh Dickinson University ostensibly for absenteeism. It was only later that the university discovered that he was an "officer' in the National Socialist Movement, according to Dean John Snyder.
STILL, IT'S UNSURPRISING--if also dismaying--that Fairleigh Dickinson took refuge in a technicality like Pluss's allegedly deficient attendance record. As Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said in an interview, "Colleges and universities are terrified of taking on the substantive issue in such matters." Dershowitz pointed to the Ward Churchill kerfuffle as a parallel case study.
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AND YET ONE MUST ASK, is the academy really incapable of making certain common-sense decisions without pushing itself down a slippery slope that culminates in a new McCarthyism? After all, Professor Pluss's politics are not on the borderline of acceptability. This isn't Noam Chomsky, who is a putatively gifted linguist but an anti-American crackpot. But as risible as Chomsky's views are, they can still claim some misguided champions in respectable circles; even anti-American crackpot's see Pluss's politics as being beyond the pale.
And why is it such a far-fetched concept in the vast marketplace of academia that individual universities would be willing to step up and say, "We draw a bright line between what's acceptable and what is not." For instance, it's hard to imagine Fairleigh Dickinson suffering much of a public relations hit were it to proudly announce, "Neo-Nazi faculty are not welcome here." And yet, in academia, there is a curious reluctance to make such a forceful statement.
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