After ‘Kafkaesque’ Investigation, Professor Takes Story Public

Ben-Atar lobbied for Fordham to sever ties with the ASA over their boycott.  (Courtesy of Legal insurrection)

Ben-Atar lobbied for Fordham to sever ties with the ASA over their boycott.
(Courtesy of Legal insurrection)

By Katherine Meyer
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Last week, Fordham history professor Doron Ben-Atar drew international attention to Fordham by revealing that he had been investigated by the university over the summer on grounds of potential religious discrimination.
Although the charge was ultimately dropped, Ben-Atar says that the investigation, as well as the conclusions drawn from it, were unfair.
“I went through a Kafkaesque process in which I was never told exactly what I supposedly did wrong, nor was I ever shown anything in writing,” Ben-Atar said in the now-viral reflection he wrote on the experience. “The Jesuit University of New York,” he concluded in the article, “should do better.”
The university official who investigated Ben-Atar, Director of the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance Anastasia Coleman, has refused to comment on the case. Other faculty members who were directly involved, however, say that the investigation was appropriate.
Ben-Atar, who is based at Lincoln Center and has been employed at Fordham since 1996, said he first learned of the investigation when he received an email from Coleman in May 2014 that alleged he “may have acted in an inappropriate way and possibly discriminated against another person at the University.”
He said the investigation’s roots go back much further, though, to a decision made in spring 2013, when the American Studies Association (ASA) voted to support a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
ASA Boycotts Israeli Institutions
 The ASA is a national academic organization with thousands of individual and institutional members, Fordham being one of them. The organization has a history of taking political stances on issues like apartheid, anti-immigrant discrimination and the Occupy movement, and the boycott of Israeli academic institutions was a continuation of this political activism, according to the ASA website.
The boycott was voted into effect by the organization’s national council, and under its guidelines, the ASA refuses to “enter into formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, or with scholars who are expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions…or on behalf of the Israeli government,” according to a guide it released on the subject. In the guide, the organization called the move an “ethical stance, a form of material and symbolic action,” explaining that the boycott was enacted because academic institutions in Israel play a significant role in denying the rights of Palestinians living there.
McShane Denounces Boycott
Members of the ASA (such as academic institutions) were not required to support the boycott, and many, including Fordham, officially denounced it. Father Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the university, issued a statement in December 2013 that said Fordham “stands resolutely in opposition to the call for the boycott of Israeli universities recently advocated by the members of the American Studies Association.” He asserted, however, that members of Fordham’s faculty are free to have their own, perhaps different, opinions on the matter.
McShane’s announcement came at a time when many of Fordham’s faculty had been advocating both for and against the boycott since its introduction seven months earlier. His move was welcomed by many, but some of the faculty, Ben-Atar included, wanted to take further steps against the boycott.
Professors Advocate More Action
This group of professors (several of whom, including Ben-Atar, are Jewish) advocated terminating Fordham’s membership in the ASA. While over 250 universities formally opposed the boycott, far fewer withdrew from the ASA or did not renew their memberships — eight, to be exact, were confirmed as having withdrawn, according to a report by the website Legal Insurrection.
So in February 2014, a meeting was held at Lincoln Center to discuss severing ties with the ASA. The meeting minutes reported it was attended by a handful of faculty, and members of the American Studies executive committee from the English, History, Languages, Sociology, and African American Studies departments. This included Ben-Atar and the chair of the American Studies Department, Micki McGee, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology.
According to the official meeting minutes, which Ben-Atar shared with The Ram, Ben-Atar had advocated that the “American Studies Program at Fordham should make a stand: oppose to bigotry, distance itself from the ASA.” If it did not distance itself, the minutes say, Ben-Atar said he would “withdraw from the American Studies program, and fight the American Studies Program at Fordham in every forum and in every way.”
Fordham’s American Studies executive committee ultimately decided not to sever ties with the ASA, and Ben-Atar later followed through on his pledge and distanced himself from the department, one of six members to do so. All of them, Ben-Atar said, were Jewish
AMST Chair Files Report
But the comments Ben-Atar made about fighting the American Studies Program did not die so quickly. Soon after the meeting, McGee filed a report against him with Fordham’s Institutional Equity Office, charging him with harassment, intimidation, and a threat to disrupt or interfere in a University program or function.
She specifically cited his words at the meeting in her report, as well as emails he allegedly sent to her and others in the American Studies Department that described her as “anti-Semitic and ‘Jew-hating’ because [she] did not publicly object to the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” This is according to McGee’s personal statement on the matter, which she supplied to The Ram.
In an email interview, McGee alleged that the harassment went on for several months before the meeting, and she never pressed charges because she “did not want to expend additional energy on dealing with [Ben-Atar’s] behavior.”
“It was only when he threatened the program if we did not comply with his demand, and when it was clear that the Program Committee was committed to neutrality on this matter and thus would not be complying with his demand, that I moved forward on filing a complaint,” McGee said.
Ben-Atar maintains that he did not harass or intimidate anyone.
“What did I do? I used the word fight,” Ben-Atar said in an interview. “As if there was any suggestion, or any indication that this at all had to do with violence or anything…I was just going to speak up. And that’s what I did.”
Ben-Atar later conceded that he had spoken in the heat of the moment, but he could not understand why anyone would turn to legal action in that context.
“It was an emotional meeting, people were sharing ideas…but to bring legal action against somebody—I mean think about what it does to the atmosphere in the university,” he said. “The idea that anything you say in a meeting could be put up against you as a disciplinary charge…its clearly a free speech issue. It’s my right to express my opinion.”
McGee, however, saw the incident differently.
“I do not find the claim that he spoke rashly or emotionally credible,” she said in an email. “And yes, I think he intended to do harm to the program, otherwise I would not have filed the report. And I think he has done harm to the program through his conduct over the past ten months.
“The issue here,” McGee said, “is not anti-Semitism. The issue is how does the university deal with a faculty member who is harassing one or more other faculty members in order to score a political win for his cause.”
English professor Glenn Hendler was also at the meeting, and said he agrees with McGee’s opinion on Ben-Atar’s actions. Hendler was a prior director of the American Studies program, and is still on its affiliated faculty. He has supported the ASA’s boycott.
“[I] strongly objected to Prof. Ben-Atar’s threat to ‘fight the American studies program at Fordham,’” Hendler said again, in an email interview. “Not to fight a policy decision, not to fight to change a vote, not to fight to elect different members of the executive committee, but to fight the program itself… I think that carrying one’s political opinions to the point of threatening to damage a program is illegitimate.”
Investigation Launched
In May, after McGee filed her complaint, Ben-Atar says he received an email from Coleman, who is also the university’s Title IX coordinator and in such responsible for investigating claims of discrimination, saying he had acted in an inappropriate and possibly discriminatory way.
The email did not say exactly why Ben-Atar was being investigated, or explain the nature of the charges against him, according to a copy of the original email Ben-Atar provided to The Ram. There was only a request for him to set up a meeting to speak with Coleman about the allegations against him. After he asked what had prompted the investigation, Coleman clarified that it was “about [his] behavior regarding American Studies” in a follow-up email. After this exchange, Ben-Atar said he called his lawyer.
What followed was what Ben-Atar called an “unpleasant summer.” Coleman apparently conducted her investigation soon after contacting him, but Ben-Atar said she still refused to reveal the exact accusations. He said he remained in the dark until Coleman released her investigation report on July seventh, which placed the investigation within the grounds of “religious discrimination.”
Coleman Clears Charges
Coleman cleared him of this charge, but also included in her report (a copy of which Ben-Atar provided) that he had “created an atmosphere of incivility,” had “initially refused to participate in the investigation without [an] attorney present,” and had failed to clarify what he meant by saying he would fight the program.
All of this, Coleman said in the report, constituted a “possible violation” of the University Code of Conduct.
Ben-Atar maintained that he cooperated fully with Coleman’s investigation, and had been willing to meet without his lawyer. He also argued that he did not violate the Code, and said the investigation was conducted poorly.
Coleman declined to comment for this article, instead referring a request for comment to the university’s Senior Director of Communications
News and Media Relations, Bob Howe.
Ben-Atar Goes Public
Following the release of Coleman’s report, Ben-Atar said his first goal was to have the letter, which he called unjust, withdrawn. When it became apparent to him that this was unlikely to happen, he decided to take the problem public, and wrote in a letter to Fr. McShane that he “could not accept the unjust conclusion.”
He is pleased with the reception his story has gotten.
“I’ve been invited to speak about it and it has given great PR to the performance of my play Peace Warriors in Toronto next month,” Ben-Atar said. “What happened to me is emblematic of the new reality for Jews on American campuses, and I’m honored to be counted among those speaking up against the rising tide of the oldest hatred.”
The story has also been picked up by multiple websites and news organizations, including the New York Post, Legal Insurrection, National Review Online, Christian Science Monitor, and several others.
McGee, for her part, is eager to leave the whole episode behind and allow the American Studies department to return to normal.
“I believe that at this time it is imperative that the American Studies Program, and myself as its director, be supported in our efforts to return our focus to activities that directly serve the needs of our students, who are at the center of our mission,” she said in her official statement.
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Katherine Meyer is the News Editor for The Fordham Ram.