A Brooklyn College adjunct professor is claiming that he was fired because of his pro-Palestinian politics. College officials say that Kristofer Petersen-Overton, 26, was fired from teaching a Middle East politics class because he didn’t have a Ph.D. But Petersen-Overton thinks it was because of political pressure from outside the college. “It’s pretty clear that this was politically motivated. I don’t blame the pro-Israel crowd. I blame the administration for caving in to the pressure,” said Petersen-Overton.
"[He] simply did not have the credentials to be teaching at the graduate level,” said Brooklyn College spokesman Jeremy Thompson. Petersen-Overton thinks that he was fired after complaints came from Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Hikind recently faxed a letter to the school alleging the adjunct professor has written several academic papers that are anti-Israeli, and attempt to understand suicide bombers. “This guy was literally radical and one-sided. Whatever your point of view is, if you’re a teacher you’re supposed to present both sides,” said Hikind, defending himself to the News. This isn’t Brooklyn College’s first brush with Middle East controversy: last summer, an alumnus cut his alma mater out of his will because freshman were assigned a book by a “radical pro-Palestinian.”
