From the WSJ Opinion Archives
TASTE COMMENTARY
The Battle of Brooklyn
A talented scholar, a bitter tenure controversy.
By 1999, historian and teacher Robert David "KC" Johnson was well along on a meteoric career--barely past 30, with a string of achievements behind him and a reputation that scholars years older might well envy. That was the year he took a job at New York's Brooklyn College. There this son of Massachusetts schoolteachers would receive an education for which nothing had prepared him--nor, it could be argued, was most of the Brooklyn College history department prepared for anyone like Mr. Johnson.
It soon became clear that Mr. Johnson had certain views likely to put him in the path of trouble. He had the idea, for example, that the department's hires should be chosen on the basis of qualifications other than gender, that students should have the opportunity to learn from instructors who had shown some minimal proof of competence in their fields. He went so far as to maintain that search committees should actually read the dossiers of the applicants they were considering. His resistance to gender-driven hiring didn't endear him to the department's small but vociferous faction of political ideologues--a group that the chairman, Phillip Gallagher, had himself once described, in an e-mail to Mr. Johnson, as "academic terrorists."
How much power such factions can exert was made clear in 1988, when the history department was asked to vote on an honorary degree for alumnus Eugene Genovese--author of "Roll Jordan, Roll" and widely considered the nation's most distinguished historian of slavery. Normally such a request from the administration would sail through. But arrayed against Mr. Genovese was a vocal core of opponents. Jerry Sternstein, a Brooklyn College history professor at the time (now retired), recalls that these opponents included a historian "who regarded the demise of East Germany and the Soviet Union as Paradise Lost."
Mr. Genovese was, to this faction's horror, a member of the National Association of Scholars, which it proceeded to denounce as a right-wing academic group hostile to women and minorities. (Such was its description of an organization mainly concerned with academic freedom.) Small though it was, the anti-Genovese faction won the vote by a substantial majority. There would be no commencement honors for the historian.
KC Johnson would run afoul of the faction in 2001. After the Sept. 11 attack, the provost announced a teach-in in response to it. With two colleagues, Mr. Johnson protested the college's sponsorship of this event, which was freighted with panelists hostile to any U.S. military response and which offered, Mr. Johnson noted, no supporters of U.S. or Israeli policies. One of the speakers, a history-department ideologue, told a campus reporter that Mr. Johnson's complaint was an attack on his "work."
About to apply for tenure, Mr. Johnson had by now accumulated a number of antagonists. One female instructor bitterly complained, on a Web site, that his criticisms and the standards he set "terrorized" other young faculty members. The chairman, who had formerly lavished praise on Mr. Johnson, had become angry over his opposition to candidates the chairman supported for hiring--particularly a female candidate who was, Mr. Johnson argued, notably weak in teaching and scholarship.
The chairman now began charging that Mr. Johnson was guilty of a serious violation--i.e., allowing students to take his classes without taking the prerequisite course. It was the first time in memory, scoffed Mr. Johnson's allies--he had a few--that the chairman had paid attention to such a transgression.
By the time Mr. Johnson's application for promotion and tenure came up, rumors had spread throughout the faculty. One e-mail, which one of his colleagues carefully preserved, said this was a man "plagued by demons" and that he was heavily involved in his work, a trait some of his colleagues considered a sign of dubious mental health. One of his more vocal antagonists repeatedly told her colleagues he had been fired from Williams College, where he had previously taught.
Were it not for its darker aspects, this could be called the story of the scholar who wouldn't cuddle--one of the lesser offenses charged to Mr. Johnson. It was the duty of a professor at Brooklyn College, a member of the Africana studies department told him, to "cuddle" the college's "barely literate" student body. He worried, he said, that Mr. Johnson was asking too much of his students.
In May, Mr. Johnson's application for promotion and tenure having been rejected, he was encouraged to see the light and resign. The chairman had earlier informed him that his failures lay not in his teaching or scholarship but in his lack of collegiality. In October, the department's Appointments Committee voted not to reappoint him. The final decision would rest with the college president.
News of Mr. Johnson's treatment brought a flood of responses from some of the nation's most distinguished historians, 20 of whom, led by Akira Iriye, chairman of Harvard's history department, signed a blistering letter expressing "shock and horror at Brooklyn College's denial of tenure to one of the most accomplished young historians in the country." They noted that the decision reflected a "culture of mediocrity" at Brooklyn, where Mr. Johnson's opponents, who wanted a department "peopled only by leftist ideologues," had invented a litmus test of collegiality, a value they apparently deemed more important than teaching and scholarship.
Prof. Charles Dew, former head of the Williams College history department--which had supposedly fired Mr. Johnson--wrote to the president of Brooklyn College to state: "In all of my years at this college, now numbering twenty-six, I can say without question that losing KC was the most serious loss of a junior member my department has experienced, and this opinion is shared by countless others here. . . . If I could bring him back to Williams, I would do so without a moment's hesitation."
Given news of the vote not to reappoint him, Mr. Johnson's students formed Students Against Academic Terrorism and marched to the college president's office. The Student Government Organization passed its own unanimous vote in support of Mr. Johnson--the first time in memory it had taken such a position on a faculty member.
What Mr. Johnson meant to his students was clearly expressed in their letter to the chancellor of the City University of New York. The professor had challenged them and expected "nothing but the best from his students." In turn, he had been "embraced and appreciated by all those who have had the honor of attending his lectures." Why, the letter asked, should they be prevented from studying with an outstanding professor? Those who asked were apparently under the impression that the prime purpose of the college was the education of its students.
In a telephone interview, Brooklyn College President Christoph Kimmich noted, with a touch of asperity, that a lot of letters about Mr. Johnson had crossed his desk. He had heard, too, that Mr. Johnson seemed to have "a mixed record of service" to the university. Still, the letters and the furor apparently had their effect. A week later, Mr. Johnson received news that the president had decided to appoint him for another year.
The important decision still lies ahead--whether the board of trustees overturns the college and grants Mr. Johnson a promotion and tenure. In their Jan. 27 meeting, the trustees will determine whether the Brooklyn College students who so valued Mr. Johnson will be able to find him there years from now.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
