Letter from Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to Interim Dean Elizabeth Cole

Identifier

ar_007

Title

Letter from Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to Interim Dean Elizabeth Cole

Description

Letter to Interim Dean, Elizabeth Cole, to express concern regarding disciplinary sactions against Professor John Cheney-Lippold.

Creator

Judith Tucker

Amy Newhall

Subject

Arab Americans -- Michigan -- Ann Arbor

Arab-Israeli conflict

Islam

Islamophobia -- Michigan

Islamophobia -- Michigan -- Ann Arbor

Student organizations -- Michigan -- Ann Arbor

University of Michigan -- Faculty

University of Michigan -- Students

Source

https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/149383

Publisher

Islamophobia Working Group (University of Michigan)

Spatial Coverage

University of Michigan -- Ann Arbor

Tuscon, Arizona

Date

2018-10-16

Type

Text

Format

text/PDF 433 kB

Rights

This content may be under copyright. Researchers are responsible for determining the appropriate use or reuse of materials.

Rights Holder

Copyright is held by the Regents of the University of Michigan but the collection may contain third-party materials for which copyright is not held. Patrons are responsible for determining the appropriate use or reuse of materials.

Language

Eng

Provenance

Letter originally written by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA). Letter was later saved (without alteration) by the Islamophobia Working Group (University of Michigan) on 2019-01-28 to be compiled with a larger collection on letters in support of Professor John Cheney-Lippold.

Bibliographic Citation

[item], https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/149377, Islamophobia Working Group (University of Michigan) records, Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan

extracted text

October 16, 2018
Elizabeth R. Cole
Interim Dean
College of Literature, Science and the Arts
University of Michigan
ecole@umich.edu
Dear Dean Cole:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and
its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about your decision to
impose disciplinary sanctions against Professor John Cheney-Lippold of the Department
of American Culture because he rescinded an offer he had made to write a letter of
recommendation for a student that would be used to support her application for a studyabroad program in Israel. As a result of your action, Professor Cheney-Lippold will be
ineligible for a salary increase for the current academic year and his sabbatical eligibility
and credits will be frozen for two years. We regard your decision to punish Professor
Cheney-Lippold for acting on the basis of his convictions and exercising his discretion as a
faculty member as a distressing and dangerous violation of his academic freedom.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and
North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the
International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2500 members worldwide.
MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within
the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

On September 5, 2018, Dr. Cheney-Lippold informed a student to whom he had earlier
agreed to provide a letter of recommendation that he was no longer willing to do so
because he had become aware that the student would use the letter to apply to an
academic program in Israel. In a letter to the student Professor Cheney-Lippold explained
that his decision was informed by the “academic boycott against Israel in support of
Palestinians living in Palestine.” While Professor Cheney-Lippold inaccurately stated in
that letter that University of Michigan departments had endorsed such an academic
boycott, he later corrected himself and referred to individual professors rather than
departments. As we understand it, as a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) campaign, Dr. Cheney-Lippold saw himself as adhering to BDS guidelines
which, among other things, stipulate that “international faculty should not accept to write
recommendations for students hoping to pursue studies in Israel….”

MESA has taken no formal position either for or against the BDS campaign, but in keeping
with the principles of academic freedom and the constitutionally protected right to free
speech it is committed to vigorously defending the right of faculty and students to
advocate for or against it. We regard your decision to arbitrarily impose disciplinary
sanctions on Professor Cheney-Lippold, without affording him any opportunity to explain
or justify his action in a fair hearing process with faculty participation, as having violated
those principles and that right, as well as your university’s ostensible commitment to
faculty governance.
Your justifications for taking disciplinary action against Professor Cheney-Lippold are
unconvincing, if not tendentious. You assert that by declining to write a letter Professor
Cheney-Lippold denied the student in question an academic opportunity, but of course
providing such a letter is no guarantee of admission to any program. Nor do your claims

Re: Disciplinary sanctions against Professor John Cheney-Lippold
October 16, 2018
Page 2

that Professor Cheney-Lippold violated the student’s privacy and that he used class time
to discuss his decision not to provide the student with a letter provide reasonable
grounds for the grossly disproportionate sanctions you have imposed on him. More
broadly, we believe that it should be entirely up to a faculty member to decide whether or
not he or she wishes to write a letter of recommendation for a student, unless it can be
clearly demonstrated that a refusal to do so was motivated by racial, ethnic, religious or
gender bias.

We call your attention in this regard to “On the Relationship of Faculty Governance to
Academic Freedom,” issued in 1994 by the American Association of University Professors,
which states that “[p]rotecting academic freedom on campus requires ensuring that a
particular instance of faculty speech will be subject to discipline only where that speech
violates some central principle of academic morality, as, for example, where it is found to
be fraudulent (academic freedom does not protect plagiarism and deceit).” Professor
Cheney-Lippold’s decision not to write a letter of recommendation was entirely his to
make and certainly violated no principle of “academic morality.” We do not see it as
acceptable for deans, university administrators, or members of boards of trustees or
boards of regents to arrogate to themselves the right to define the boundaries of academic
freedom, which is what you have done in this case.

We further note that article 601.01 of the University of Michigan’s Standard Practice
Guide, on freedom of speech and artistic expression, states that “Expression of diverse
points of view is of the highest importance, not only for those who espouse a cause or
position and then defend it, but also for those who hear and pass judgment on that
defense. The belief that an opinion is pernicious, false, or in any other way detestable
cannot be grounds for its suppression.” Professor Cheney-Lippold clearly acted on the
basis of sincerely held convictions about an issue of public concern, and your decision to
sanction him constitutes a clear violation of the letter and spirit of this article. It is
moreover an infringement of his academic freedom and of the right of faculty to decide for
whom they wish to write letters of recommendation.
We therefore call on you to immediately rescind your decision to impose disciplinary
penalties on Professor Cheney-Lippold and to publicly reaffirm the University of
Michigan’s commitment to respect, and vigorously protect, the academic freedom and free
speech rights of its faculty.
Sincerely,

Judith E. Tucker
MESA President
Professor, Georgetown University
Amy W. Newhall
MESA Executive Director