This week Sarah Viren published an article in the New York Times detailing how the administration of Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania dealt with a nettlesome tenured professor. I am sharing my letter to the college’s president with my readers for several reasons. To my mind, the college struck a tremendous blow against academic freedom and on behalf of tyranny. The other reason is that I’m a graduate of that college. Needless to say, I am filled with shame over the behavior of my alma mater, and alarm for the future it may presage. Suppressing the universities is a page from the playbook of authoritarians the world over.

Dear President Harring:

I write this as a proud alumnus of Muhlenberg College, the valedictorian of the Class of 1963, and recipient of an honorary degree from Muhlenberg, Doctor of Humane Letters, is order to share with you my deep disappointment in how the College has mishandled the issues presented by its former professor, Maura Finkelstein. The recent revelations in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine point out that the College has contributed to a serious erosion of academic freedom which may be replicated in other American colleges and universities. To that end the College has stumbled into a lose-lose situation. Muhlenberg has been tarnished, and academic freedom dealt a serious setback.

I appreciate the dilemma the College faced. A tenured professor exhibited unpopular, strident and outspoken positions on a vital public issue. Charges were made that Jewish students feared for their safety, or that they would become victims of harassment or hate. A petition was signed by thousands of individuals decrying positions she had posted on social media.

On the other hand, an apparently careful faculty review of the case against her unanimously found that the College administrators had failed to prove “flagrant disregard” for the rules and norms of the college and recommended that her termination be reconsidered. The professor’s reposting of a pro-Palestinian piece on social media harassed no one. A school administrator fanned the flames by sharing the professor’s repost with a student. Members of the administration were flooded with email from bots every thirty seconds to fire the professor.

The missteps in managing this case do little to address the dilemma of if or when a professor has the right to weigh in on her personal political views before her students. Freedom of speech is protected, but patients in a doctor’s office, or students in a class, are in a captive condition and respect for that must be shown. I cannot second guess this case beyond the news report, but as a former faculty member at the Harvard Medical School I can personally attest to the animosity the current president and his administration have towards Harvard in particular, and by extension, to academia at large. The silencing of professors is a step towards tyranny. Our failure to call that out makes us all complicit.

The above reminds me, ironically, of one of my fondest memories of Muhlenberg is our annual production of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in the Egner Chapel under the tutelage of another heterodox professor. I’m sure you know the plot. King Henry II, at odds with Thomas Becket, asks his knights, “Who shall deliver me from this turbulent priest?" They comply with his suggestion. As the historian Timothy Snyder says, they “obey in advance.”

It appears that Muhlenberg College has done the same.

Sincerely,

Henry David Abraham, M.D.

Co-Recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize