Local and national faculty groups on Friday blasted what they saw as a violation of academic freedom in the case of Kristofer Petersen-Overton, an adjunct instructor who was removed from teaching an upper-level master’s course on the Middle East following criticism from a state politician -- though the college reiterated its prior statements that the two events were unrelated.
Calling the situation an “ugly byproduct of a labor system that undermines academic freedom for thousands of hard-working adjunct faculty,” Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York, the faculty union at CUNY, said in a statement that the union will not tolerate what she called political meddling in academic decisions. The term “meddling” was a reference to complaints from New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind that the syllabus written by Petersen-Overton lacked balance in presenting a uniformly critical look at Israel in its dealings with the Palestinian territories.
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