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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
America Is Being Stolen!
That capitulation sets an ominous precedent for all academics whose research focuses on areas of the world in conflict. It also signals to partisan agitators inside and outside of academe that false and hyperbolic charges against professors with whose viewpoints they disagree require no logic or evidence. Those charges simply need to be raised and the professor, without due process, will be disciplined, silenced, or even terminated. No university should entertain such an aberrant form of jurisprudence; those that do rightly bring on themselves lasting damage to their reputations.
*To sign the petition, please send an email to rawipetition@yahoo.com and include your name, occupation, and professional affiliation*
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A Statement in Support of Professor Thomas Abowd
*To sign the petition, please send an email to rawipetition@yahoo.com and include your name, occupation, and professional affiliation*
A Statement in Support of Professor Thomas Abowd
RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers, is dismayed to learn that one of its members and supporters, Professor Thomas Abowd, has been subject to racist and hostile actions by his employer, Wayne State University.
We are disturbed in particular that Dr. Abowd was a victim of unsubstantiated accusations of "anti-Semitism, " an allegation that was found to have no basis in fact. Dr. Abowd's colleagues know him to be a compassionate educator and a first-rate scholar whose research on the Israel-Palestine conflict, spatial identities, and issues of racialization in the Arab World and North America is innovative and frequently cited. Wayne State University's refusal to support Dr. Abowd in the face of false denigration of his character is lamentable; its subjection of Dr. Abowd to various forms of racism is inexcusable.
Wayne State University's unwarranted interrogation of Dr. Abowd is a capitulation to a type of slanderous and reactionary activism that has recently targeted Arab American academics such as Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard College, Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University, Hatem Bazian at UC-Berkeley, and Wadie Said, also at Wayne State University.
That capitulation sets an ominous precedent for all academics whose research focuses on areas of the world in conflict. It also signals to partisan agitators inside and outside of academe that false and hyperbolic charges against professors with whose viewpoints they disagree require no logic or evidence. Those charges simply need to be raised and the professor, without due process, will be disciplined, silenced, or even terminated. No university should entertain such an aberrant form of jurisprudence; those that do rightly bring on themselves lasting damage to their reputations.
We, the undersigned, call on Wayne State University to cease its harassment of Dr. Abowd forthwith and to redress any undue distress the harassment has caused. We likewise call on Wayne State University to fulfill its legal and ethical responsibilities to sustain a collegial workplace for its employees and to protect their civil and constitutional rights.
There is good reason to believe that people in the Detroit area, who run this website http://www.antiracistblog.blogspot. com/ are part of the attack on Tom and anyone who mentions Palestine on campus.
They follow Tom and other area organizers to protests, lectures, and the like, recording him and posting pictures of Palestine activists on their site replete with libel.
They have a recent posting about my brother's case at their site, and have been harassing him and others on a consistent basis.
This is a sort of "campus watch" type operation, and I've had first hand experience with these people, including hate emails on two different occasions.
Once, following the publication of my letter to the Michigan Daily I received hate mail and threats.
(see http://paulabowd.blogspot.com)
And another time when I tried to post a comment on the "anti-racist" blog, I received hostile anonymous emails. Tracing the IP addresses of both exchanges lead to a Farmington Hills law-firm called Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa. http://www.kaufmanlaw.com/.
Though this behavior is not surprising, these witch hunts must be fought not only for Tom, but for the preservation of spaces where ideas, especially those most often called "dangerous," can be expressed without repercussion or reprisal.