To me, the issue of academic freedom is confluent with that of free speech, but their limits differ. My view is that free speech gives anyone, including academics, the right to say anything they want in public—unless that speech is meant to incite immediate violence or danger, or creates an atmosphere of harassment in the workplace. “Hate speech”, in which a group is demonized, is included in this freedom, so that there should be no laws against, for instance, calling Jews “money-grubbing kikes” in a public talk. If that, however, was repeatedly done in the workplace, it should be punished for creating a climate of harassment.

Academics should also have such freedoms—they are, after all, citizens. But the limits of academic freedom are slightly different. While you can’t incite violence or create a climate of harassment in public, or in the classroom, academics also have a responsibility to do their jobs, which involve teaching and, usually, research. If doing your job means promulgating untruths, like teaching your students that the Holocaust didn’t occur, or that creationism is true, then you are professionally irresponsible and should be fired. Likewise with scholarship: if you publish a bunch of papers that promulgate lies, then you have been derelict in your duty of advancing the field, and should be either denied tenure or not promoted.

There are obviously gray areas here. Students might consider that teaching Huckleberry Finn, with its frequent use of the word “nigger”, creates a climate of harassment in the classroom. With the sensitivity of today’s students, almost anything might “trigger” someone, causing them to complain about classroom atmosphere (see my post later today on Western Washington University).

And as for scholarship, well, there’s lots of bad scholarship out there (viz., the ridiculous glacier paper we discussed recently), and it’s up to the university faculty to determine if a professor has accumulated a record of substantive achievement.

But one thing is clear: no professor should be penalized by their universities for what he or she says outside the classroom or university setting.

That’s why the kerfuffle over Joy Karega, as reported on Inside Higher Ed (IHE), baffles me. Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at the notoriously Leftist Authoritarian Oberlin University, has upset both faculty and students for her repeated (and often unhinged) rants on social media, which are bigoted and anti-Semitic. Besides promoting the BDS boycott of Israel, she’s said this:

Some of Karega’s posts — which have since apparently been deleted but were captured in screenshots by the pro-Israel blog The Tower — state opinions that, while controversial, are shared by other supporters of the Israel boycott movement. “Let some tell it, an attack on Zionism is an attack on Jews,” Karega wrote on Facebook last January, for example, after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. “It’s anti-Semitic, so they say. Total nonsense. And I stopped letting folks bully me with that ‘You’re being anti-Semitic’ nonsense a long time ago.”

Also inflammatory — but arguably a legitimate symbol of her political beliefs — Karega shared with that post an image of an ISIS fighter taking off a mask of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Another posted image recalls World War II-era anti-Jewish propaganda, showing Jacob Rothschild, a member of a well-known Jewish banking family, staring down the words, “We own your news, the media, your oil, and your government.”

Here are those Facebook posts:

This is classic anti-Semitism:

She’s also a conspiracy theorist of the most extreme stripe:

In November 2015, for example, [Karega] wrote that ISIS is really part of Mossad, an Israeli intelligence unit, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. “It’s troubling that in this day and age, where there is all this access to information, most of the general public doesn’t know who and what ISIS really is. I promise you, ISIS is not a jihadist, Islamic terrorist organization. It’s a CIA and Mossad operation and there’s too much information out there for the general public not to know this.”

. . . Quoting a blog that reports on many conspiracy theories and describes itself as a “weekly whack at the global oligarchy,” Karega also last year posted that Israel was responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight No. 17, which has widely been attributed to Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. In another post, she wrote that Netanyahu visited Paris after theCharlie Hebdo massacre “just in case the message wasn’t received via Mossad and the ‘attacks’ they orchestrated on Paris.” (Netanyahu was in Paris after the attacks, but to visit Jewish people in France who were attacked.) Karega shared a video from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggesting that Zionists and Israeli Jews were behind 9/11, and wrote that he was “truth-telling,” as well, according to The Tower.

There’s no empirical support for any of this nonsense, but it’s free speech nonetheless. It’s posted on social media, which is a public forum, not an academic venue.

Nevertheless, some people have called for Karega to be disciplined or at least condemned by her university for this stuff, including several Israeli newspapers and, bizarrely, Alan Dershowitz, who (as IHE reports) said that if Karega “had expressed comparably bigoted views about blacks, Muslims or gays,” Oberlin would have condemned her views, even if it defended her right to express them.” (See a Fox News piece on others calling for her firing.)

I disagree with these calls. Karega is free to say what she wants on social media, or public statements. She should not be disciplined or condemned by her University for her extra-job rants, no matter how hateful or bigoted they be. Universities should not be in the business of either condemning or approving of their faculty’s extracurricular statements.

Now if she teaches this stuff in the classroom, or publishes it as counting towards her professional scholarship, then that’s a different matter. One can then judge its contribution to knowledge, its credibility, and so on. Likewise, if she repeatedly criticizes Jews in her classroom in a way that creates an atmosphere of hatred, she should be disciplined or fired.

That aside, she’s free to say what she wants. And to their credit, Oberlin issued this statement:

“Oberlin College respects the rights of its faculty, students, staff, and alumni to express their personal views.

“Acknowledgement of this right does not signal institutional support for, or endorsement of, any specific position. The statements posted on social media by Dr. Joy Karega, assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, are hers alone and do not represent the views of Oberlin College.”

In a report six days later, though, IHE notes that Oberlin seems to be backing off a little:

“These postings are anti-Semitic and abhorrent,” Clyde S. McGregor, chair of Oberlin’s Board of Trustees, said regarding Facebook posts by Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition. “We deplore anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry. They have no place at Oberlin. These grave issues must be considered expeditiously.”

To me, that statement is out of line. I agree with McGregor’s sentiments vis-à-vis Karega’s views, some of which are classically anti-Semitic. But McGregor has no business making an official statement about what is and is not abhorrent about a faculty member’s extracurricular statements. Other people, of course, are free to counter her own speech with their speech, but not in an official university capacity.

If you disagree with my take, or have something to add, by all means put it blow.