Free Speech at CUNY

The Girl Can't Help It!

2008-08-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Our courageous Brooklyn College colleague, Robert “KC” Johnson, offers timely commentary on the PSC’s leadership’s chronic attachment to the cause of accused terrorists:

“A number of my Brooklyn College colleagues were profiled in a Chronicle article discussing their protests against the treatment of Syed Fahad Hashmi. Hashmi, a 2003 Brooklyn College graduate, is currently being held without bail, awaiting trial on charges of providing material assistance to Al Qaeda.The petition, alas, seems unlikely to achieve its stated intent. Given the Bush administration’s record on terrorism cases and civil liberties, it’s plausible to believe that Hashmi’s civil liberties have been violated. Yet the petition’s presentation of the case is so one-sided—and its comments about the case’s effects on the academy so off-the-wall—as to make any undecided reader less, rather than more, likely to embrace the signatories’ position.

The Chronicle appropriately describes the case against Hashmi as “murky.” And political science professor Jeanne Theoharis, the statement’s author, has said that the signatories take no position on the merits of Hashmi’s guilt or innocence. Yet their petition and the remarks of the petition’s two chief sponsors (Theoharis and political science professor Corey Robin) read as if cribbed from a defense brief.It’s not clear how a one-sided presentation of the facts of the case will rally support for the signatories' claim that Hashmi’s civil liberties have been violated. (Such a strategy, it seems to me, only undermines the credibility of the petition's broader assertions.) In their commentary about the case’s possible effects on free speech and the academy, however, the signatories cross over from one-sided to merely bizarre.Affirm the signatories, “The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an activist within the Muslim community, threatens the First Amendment rights of others. While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech, and associations are constitutionally protected, the government may attempt to use them as evidence of his criminal intent."

Well, yes: for instance, the government may point out that Hashmi’s praise of John Walker Lindh (the American Taliban) provides insight into his state of mind. Similarly, in the 1960s, it was perfectly appropriate for federal prosecutors in trials of KKK members to use their (constitutionally protected) racist statements or memberships to provide insight into the Klansmens’ mindsets. There isn’t anything particularly unusual about such a trial strategy, and it’s absurd to say that such an attempt “threatens the First Amendment rights of others.”(By the way, I assume that each of the signatories is committed to advocating the repeal of all hate crimes laws—since such legislation is based on the premise of using “constitutionally protected” “political and religious beliefs, speech, and associations . . . as evidence of . . . criminal intent.”)

The statement’s authors stretch credulity even further when they discuss the case’s alleged effect on the academy.Theoharis: “It’s particularly significant in a moment when we are seeing the criminalization of Muslim students. I think that he is a devout and practicing Muslim who is very political. If he can be treated like this, it sends a message to other young people, particularly other Muslim young people, that you know you are not protected. I think it is crucial in terms of students thinking they can be who they want to be and espouse the politics that they want to espouse.”

Robin: “The classroom is supposed to be a kind of sacred space where students can express their beliefs, and faculty are obligated to push them. It’s chilling to me to think that that whole process, which is the essence of what it means to be an educated person, could suddenly become an item of scrutiny in a court of law.”The signatories present no evidence that the government intends to use at trial (or has even investigated) Hashmi’s utterances in the “sacred space” of the “classroom,” or that the government intends to make the classroom “an item of scrutiny in a court of law.” Nor do the signatories present any evidence to suggest a pattern of “the criminalization(!) of Muslim students.”

That hundreds of professors could sign a statement associated with such claims says more about the academy than any violations of civil liberties by the government.Two individual signatories particularly raised eyebrows. By all accounts, Hashmi is an extremely religious man. Yet the list of signatories included would-have-been Brooklyn Sociology Department chairman Tim Shortell, who had previously branded all religious people “moral retards.” It’s not clear if Shortell considers Hashmi a “moral retard,” too."

And among the signatories of this petition? Our very own “Sue” O’Malley. At the same time that she is taking Sharad Karkhanis to court for suggesting, in an albeit sarcastic manner, that she has in the past been a prominent advocate for convicted criminals at CUNY, she is making Sharad’s case by standing behind Syed Hashmi! Far be it from us to question O’Malley’s exercise of her First Amendment rights. But how she can join in the cause of Hashmi while suing Karkhanis for making statements of fact is well beyond our ken.

Brutus

Curiouser & Curiouser

2008-08-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

This blog was inactive for six days--after having been reported to Google as a "spam blog."

At about the same time, Brooklyn professor Mitchell Langbert's blog was inactive, having been reported to Google as a "spam blog."

We're sure that it's only a coincidence that two blogs highly critical of plaintiff Susan O'Malley were shut down at the same time, for the same bogus reason.

Right?

publius

More Insanity at CUNY: Silencing Dissidents in the Name of "Democracy"

2008-08-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

Chief among the reasons for beginning this blog was our concern that “Sue” O’Malley’s lawsuit was but the opening move in a systematic effort to stiffle and silence opposition to the New Caucus radicals who control our faculty union. Of late, the PSC has agreed to a new contract with CUNY, one which delivers de facto pay cuts, and does nothing regarding teaching loads or substantive benefits.

Despite the suspicious timing of the contract ratification process—in the dog days of summer—many of our colleagues have pleaded for a free, frank and full discussion of the contract before it is approved. But true to form, the leadership has dismissed their objections and denied them access to modes of communication paid for by their own dues.

The PSC’s curious, but characteristic, insistence on conformity and censorship has now been noticed in the pages of Inside Higher Education:

Revolt in the Adjunct Ranks

“When the current leaders of the faculty union at the City University of New York were elected in 2000, they ousted their predecessors with a vow to be more activist and to deliver more for faculty members, including part timers. Since then, the union leaders have indeed been activist and politically vocal, drawing regular criticism from professors who would prefer to see the Professional Staff Congress take a more moderate stance.

But in an unusual reversal that points to some of the tensions in academic labor over how to balance the needs of full-time and part-time professors, the union (affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers) is facing intense criticism from those whom it pledged to help: the part timers who lack the pay or job security of those on the tenure track. Some part-time professors are organizing to urge the entire union membership to reject a contract recently negotiated by the union.

The dissident part timers charge that the contract — by failing to achieve anything in the way of job security for most part timers and by calling for the same percentage increase wages for most full-time and part-time professors, even though the former enjoy much higher salaries — effectively adds to the inequality between those on and off the tenure track. Adding to the controversy is anger from part timers who say that the union’s leaders are blocking them from communicating their concerns to the union’s full membership.

The union leaders told the critics of the contract that they could not distribute their views in the union newspaper (it was too late for the deadline, they said) or use e-mail to the entire membership because the union leaders have voted to endorse the contract, making that stance official policy even before the membership votes.

Because adopting a contract is one of the union activities that requires a membership vote, this has infuriated many adjuncts and some others — even some who think the new contract was the best the union could hope for. Some critics have noted that they are shocked that the union would block its own members from sending e-mail to the union’s list of member names, when union leaders boasted that one of their contract gains was the right to do union business on CUNY computer networks.”

Despite the bully-boy efforts of Steve London, the PSC’s First Vice-President, and his henchman Peter Hogness, censor-in-chief of the union’s newspaper The Clarion, the dissidents have been able to get some media coverage. The most welcoming, and best circulated, venue for alternate views has been The Patriot Returns! Little wonder, then, that Barbara and “Sue” have been trying their best to shut Sharad Kharkanis and his newsletter down. Heaven forbid that faculty members could disagree with these “dear leaders.”

Brutus

A Missile Missive from Mitch

2008-07-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Trenchant commentary on the crazies who control the Professional Staff Congress from our colleague Mitch Langbert:

The Professional Staff Congress and Revolutionary Unionism

"The temperate, prudent, courageous, just and of course virtuous Sharad Karkhanis has written an excellent issue of Patriot Returns. Karkhanis named his newsletter after our Patriot missles, which shot down Iraqi Scuds in 1991. With a circulation of 13,000, Karkhanis's newsletter aims to shoot down the Scuds of the perverse CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) and hopefully blow the PSC leadership back to Cuba, although I doubt that even Castro or his brother would want them. Maybe North Korea's Kim Jong-il would welcome them since they seem to aim to give the CUNY faculty a North Korean-style wage-and-benefit package, but even he might find them tiresome.

In the early twentieth century there were alternative models of unionism being proposed. The mainstream AF of L, created by Samuel Gompers and Adolph Strasser, advocated a form of unionism that labor scholar Robert F. Hoxie called business unionism. Business unionism does not question the underlying assumptions of the capitalist economy and resorts to political gamesmanship only in order to "reward friends and punish enemies". Its emphasis is improving wages, benefits and working conditions, not changing the world. Gompers expressed the pro-capitalist essence of business unionism when someone asked him: "What does labor want?" Gompers responded: "More". Like any profit-maximizing capitalist, and any red-blooded American, business unionists aim to advance themselves economically. In contrast, models of unionism that were prevalent during the early twentieth century included the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) and the communist unionism of the Socialist Labor Party's Daniel de Leon's Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and others. American workers rejected what labor scholar Hoxie called revolutionary unionism in favor of business unionism. The gulf between the "New" Left and the business unionists reached a crescendo during the Vietnam War in 1965 when AFL-CIO president George Meany announced his support for the Vietnam War.

Inverting the historical pattern, the PSC leadership has rejected business unionism in favor of revolutionary unionism. Its repeated calls for demonstrations; the anti-Iraqi War protests several years ago; the endless radical rhetoric that has alienated New York's political establishment (social democratic thought it be); and the utter contempt with which the PSC's leadership treats economic and workplace issues all suggest that the PSC does not operate as a mainstream union. The low contract numbers that Karkhanis decries result from the PSC's leadership's strategic choice to favor revolution over selfish gain, or even selfish keeping your head above water and avoiding the bankruptcy judge.

Perhaps the the PSC leadership does not need to worry about electric, heating, gasoline and food bills. Perhaps like Professor Ros, they live in high rent apartments on six figure incomes. Perhaps they can afford to contribute $5,000 to the Obama campaign.

If so, isn't it time to get back to reality and rocket this crew back to Cuba via one of Karkhanis's Patriots?"

Brutus

Counsel Carasso

2008-06-18T02:30:00.000-07:00

In one respect, Susan O’Malley’s lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis is a deadly serious assault on a basic tenet of academic freedom—the right of professors, at a publicly funded university, to publicly criticize their elected faculty leadership. In another respect, however, the lawsuit could best be compared to a bad Country Western song—“The Ballad of 'Thin-Skinned Sue',” the professor who seemed to stand for election to every faculty post under the sun, and who then struck back at one of her most caustic critics by filing a lawsuit that she herself described as “very, very silly.”

It seems as if “Thin-Skinned Sue” has managed to find herself an equally thin-skinned lawyer. In a posting on his website recently forwarded to us by a reader, attorney Joseph Carasso lashed out against the authors of this blog. In a line that doesn’t indicate judicial temperament, he fumed, “It is scary to think that young impressionable students are taught by people who not only are cowards and lack honor, but misinform and lie with ease.” He further labeled us a “coward” for refusing to “proclaim their identity to the world.”

In the blog’s founding statement, we addressed the question of our posting pseudonymously. As we noted, “Lest we, too, be subject to a lawsuit from the PSC leadership, this blog is published pseudonymously by CUNY faculty members.”

In that respect, we concede that the O’Malley/Carasso lawsuit already has had something of a chilling effect. As full-time faculty members at CUNY, we have suffered through the last seven years of ineffectual leadership by the faculty union, as O’Malley and her cronies in the leadership have focused on international causes and their base among the adjuncts, while avoiding the pressing problem of low salaries for full-time professors. As a result, we simply don’t have the money to hire competent counsel if O’Malley should decide to drop one of her “very, very silly” lawsuits on us.

In our post about Carasso, we cited a trade website to note that Carasso was a literary agent for ARP. In his posting, Carasso denies any association with ARP. Despite his ad hominem attacks against us, we accept him at his word, apologize for repeating the trade website’s error, and have corrected the original posting.

The rest of Carasso’s screed is all huff and no substance—a little like O’Malley’s lawsuit itself. In our original post, we observed that Carasso has “advertised himself as providing ‘low-cost legal advice for independents.’” We linked to a column in Filmmaker Magazine by Carasso himself. The article was subtitled, “Joseph Martin Carasso on low-cost legal advice for independents.”

Carasso now claims, “I certainly never advertised for low cost legal services.” Is he now asserting that he, in fact, never wrote the linked column? If so, his beef would seem to be with Filmmaker Magazine, which claimed that he did, not us. Or is he asserting that Filmmaker Magazine reached out to someone with no knowledge in the field to pen an article on “low-cost legal advice for independents”? Again, if so, his beef would seem to be with Filmmaker Magazine, not us. Or is he suggesting that he falsely advertised himself to Filmmaker Magazine as an expert on “low-cost legal advice for independents,” even though he knows little about the topic?

Whichever of the three arguments Carasso is presenting—his post is wholly unclear on the matter—there’s nothing he has offered that rebuts our original post.

Carasso’s rebuttal doesn’t even attempt to challenge our suggestions that he isn’t exactly a word-class attorney with expertise on academic freedom issues. As we noted in the original post, Caraaso is “a graduate of the William Mitchell College of Law (not an institution many would confuse with a Tier-I law school), [and] Carasso’s Lexis/Nexis entry lists his specialties as entertainment litigation and personal injury matters.” He doesn’t deny the description.

Indeed, had we been so inclined, we could have provided more detail in our original post about Carasso’s apparent mediocrity, such as the peculiar fact that this veteran (26-year) attorney lists on his website a grand total of one reported decision. His client in that case? None other than . . . Susan O’Malley, in an ugly lawsuit described in the following manner by the ruling: “This personal injury action arises out of an accident involving five teenagers, some illegal drugs, and a paintball gun.”

Despite the insinuations of his posting, Carasso has been rather cavalier with facts in his own work. In his filing against Karkhanis, Carasso—who describes “computer and software technology” as one of his firm’s “areas of practice”—stated that Karkhanis’ IP address is Patriotreturns.com. Patriotreturns.com is a domain name, not an IP address—a basic fact with which, we would think, an attorney who specializes in “computer and software technology” would be aware.

Finally, our post also mentioned that Carasso served as a consultant to a film called, “How Do You Spell Murder?” Carasso responds not by challenging the point in any way, but by terming himself “proud” of his work. The filmmakers, he adds, have also produced such high-quality intellectual fare as “ELVIS ’56.”

In the name of free speech, we think it’s best to let Counsel Carasso’s pride speak for itself.

Publius

Standing Up to "Sue" and the Censors

2008-06-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

At the Democracy Project, Phil Orenstein continues to take on the publicly supported censors of the academic left. Please read the entire post.

“More on Fantasizing "The New McCarthyism"

I continue to deal with the contentious themes of “guilt by association” and the imaginary new sacred cow, “the New McCarthyism” in response to a comment on FrontPage Magazine's reader forum.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article on my experience at a CUNY Forum titled, "Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY” which was published on FrontPage Magazine, posted here on Democracy Project, Campus Watch, and also picked up on Daniel Pipes’ blog, demonstrating the urgency of these issues. The CUNY forum featured the panelists, Deborah Almontaser, founder and former principle of the Arabic language public school, Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), and CUNY faculty union official Susan O’Malley who filed a $2 million defamation lawsuit against Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis.

There were a few interesting comments on FrontPage Magazine's reader forum one of which I chose to respond to online. The writer challenged my “obsession” with “guilt by association” which is basically similar to the accusations at the CUNY forum leveled at such awesome figures as Daniel Pipes, Dr. Karkhanis and CUNY Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. They charged that a vast rightwing campaign of Islamophobia which they call “the New McCarthyism” is spreading throughout the nation “attacking” Arabs, Muslims, college professors and Senator Barack Obama as well, based upon the false premise of “guilt by association.”

In my article I argued that such allegations are pure fantasy that has risen to a new level of hysteria, with wild accusations of “racism” and “Islamophobia,” which has precluded any rational discussion about national security threats and sober concerns about stealth Islamic infiltration into government, education and academia. The title of my article initially was to be “Guilt by Association and Recruitment” but was changed by the editors of FrontPage Magazine. My original intent was to report on one of the panelists, Susan O’Malley who has endorsed and made efforts to recruit convicted terrorists for teaching jobs at CUNY. My interest was primarily in the lawsuit against Dr. Karkhanis, the real victim in all this furor, for having the courage to blow the whistle on O’Malley’s dubious activities within the CUNY system. The intent of her lawsuit was to bully and silence her critic, and trample his constitutional free speech rights in order to protect herself from scrutiny.

Slandering a good man from the auspices of a CUNY forum, and arguing on the merits of her case against Dr. Karkhanis is a disgrace and embarrassment to the entire CUNY system. O’Malley, a long-standing academic public figure had the gall to sit piously on the panel and use the forum for her personal agenda to paint a far-fetched portrait of lies as the victim of 13 years of “attacks” by a “crazy man” who has plagued her with false accusations of guilt by association similar to those directed at Muslims, Arabs, Ms. Almontaser, and Senator Obama. Susan O’Malley and company, who hold respectable positions of authority in academia as tenured professors and public officials, unsurprisingly want to deny the significance of their associations and support for criminals and terrorists, in order to avoid scrutiny and accountability for their actions. Regrettably, due to their status and authority, such paranoid fantasies as “the New McCarthyism” and frantic denials of “guilt by association” have trickled down into the body politic to become some of our latest sacred cows.”

"....Ms. Vera is dreadfully confused about the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” let me attempt to enlighten her about the legal system of the United States and basic civic duties of citizens, of which she seems to be sorely misinformed. The "presumption of innocence" is a basic doctrine of criminal law in which the government is required to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. For public service responsibilities, however, the process is the other way around. The people, not a government court of law must make critical judgments and informed choices in selecting the people who will serve them, and there is no presumption of innocence in this public domain. The burden of proof is on the individuals or institutions that aspire to public service, whether they’re public school principles, CUNY union officials or president of the United States. It is the civic duty of the citizens in a democracy, to judge their fitness to serve, and to continue to hold them accountable while in office. The “guilt” we’re talking about here, is their fitness for the job, not whether they’re good or evil people. Ms. Almontaser was the principle of a public school and O’Malley is a CUNY public figure, in both cases municipal positions paid for by taxpayer monies. The best way to judge public figures is by the company they keep, not just sugar-coated promises. They are working for you and me and their resumes must include good personal references, in order to be hired with our tax dollars. If they have numerous shady associations and dealings in their past, I wouldn’t hire them. I certainly wouldn’t hire someone with radical Islamic connections, or who endorses convicted terrorists."

Debbie and "Sue" on Paranoid Fantasy Island

2008-05-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

On site reporting and insightful analysis by Phil Orenstein at FrontPage Magazine. Please read the entire piece.

Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”

By Phil OrensteinFrontPageMagazine.com 5/22/2008

"After the lengthy front page tribute in the New York Times treating Deborah Almontaser, founder and former principle of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), as the later day Mother Theresa, I thought the public forum she would be addressing later that evening, alongside her embattled sister in solidarity, City University of New York (CUNY) faculty union official Susan O’Malley, would be thronged by numerous admirers and reporters. But there were no such crowds or media. Wandering the endless corridors of the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan, I bumped into the panelists Susan O’Malley and Ms. Almontaser, who were just as lost as I was, looking for the classroom where the public forum, “Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY,” was to be held.

A little more than 20 people including CUNY faculty, students as well as the speakers showed up. The poor attendance may be due to the fact that the CUNY Senate Forum email list received the announcement on Sunday after 10 PM, the day before the event. I was the only person at this “public” forum sponsored by the Middle East Student’s Association (MESO), who attempted to speak up to dispute the cunning agenda and break through the monolithic conformity of the group.

Billed as an important forum to address the issues of Islamophobia at CUNY, the email announcement stated: “Around the country, Islamophobic and Anti-Arab attacks on professors have increased, most notably at Columbia and Barnard. This movement to attack and discredit dissent has been called "the New McCarthyism" – shutting down reasoned debate on important issues….. Ms. Almontaser will appear on this panel along with CUNY Professor Susan O' Malley and others working to expose the attack on academic freedom across the nation…There is some urgency here as these attacks are one tip of a vast ideological iceberg that is also threatening to impact the current election campaign.”

Although the issue of the “anti-Arab attacks” at Columbia and Barnard was not broached in the forum they were most likely referring to the recent public uproar of Columbia and Barnard alumni over the ill-advised tenure decision of Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj granted by virtue of her unimpressive scholarship of one book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society based on flimsy evidence and hearsay, which purports that the historical origins of the State of Israel are fictitious.

What I witnessed was a closed forum dedicated to a veiled radical agenda, riddled by hysterical paranoia, name-calling, slanderous accusations against prominent scholars and city officials, and strategies for their ouster, where the panelists professed that “attacks” against Arabs and professors are a coordinated right wing smear campaign launched by Daniel Pipes, CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and their ilk, which they dubbed the “New McCarthyism.” But Mr. Pipes and company whom they demonized with such venom, have simply exercised their First Amendment rights of critical journalism and free speech, civilly exchanging opinions and information in online magazine articles, speeches, op-eds and blogs, where all sides of the issues were often given a fair hearing in the media.

I was confused as to the reasons for their excessive paranoia. How are Pipes and company threatening their academic freedom? The so-called “New McCarthyites” have been vociferous, no doubt, but they demonstrated nothing resembling the violent student mob attacks at Columbia University on Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, because he expressed disagreeable views. Mr. Pipes and a few opinionated bloggers, including myself, are not U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy. What is this “vast ideological iceberg” that is “threatening to impact the current election campaign” of which the so-called attacks on academic freedom are only the tip?

....I waited until the end of the forum and approached Ms. Almontaser civilly and asked her a number of questions. I said to her that I am opposed to the KGIA, because public schools in the U.S. funded by the taxpayers, should not teach students in Arabic or in any one particular language other than English. She answered that there are dual language public schools that focus on Spanish language, or Chinese so there ought to be a school which immerses the student in Arabic language study, especially since there is such an urgent need for Arabic translators and diplomats. I replied that public schools should offer Arabic, Spanish, French and other languages as electives, but only English should be the standard in American schools. But she countered that the elective program is not good enough. We need a more comprehensive language program.

I asked her why she placed Muslim imams on the school’s advisory board and why was everyone involved so secretive. The difficulty of obtaining inside information to keep the academy transparent to the public was naturally a cause for concern. The names of the clerics, on the advisory board for instance, were only later revealed in a letter to the New York Sun. She blamed the Department of Education for the lack of transparency and claimed she was always forthcoming about the curriculum, the books, and the teachers, but DOE never put it on their website. However, sources from STM claim that queries submitted to the DOE suggest that there was no indication on Almontaser’s part that she was seeking transparency concerning the curriculum.Regarding the imams on her board, she answered that when she was designing the school she was seeking advice from her friends in the community and these imams were eager to offer help. Anyway, as Almontaser declared, the board has already been disbanded by the Department of Education. But Imam Abdur-Rashid, a board member who has written in a radical vein “on the way white Americans "robbed" Africans and Muslims of their heritage,” hasn’t heard the news of the board’s demise according to Andrea Peyser of the New York Post.

A bystander listening to our conversation interjected that rabbis and reverends were on the board as well as imams – all the major beliefs were represented. I replied that I am opposed to having any religious clerics, of any faith sit on a public school’s advisory board. It’s illegal, unconstitutional and breaks the separation of church and state. It’s fine for a private Yeshiva, Christian or Islamic school to employ religious figures, but not in a public school. I asked Ms. Almontaser why not launch a private school to immerse the student in Arabic language and culture, or a public school with a better Arabic elective program? She answered that she was no longer a principle and cannot make decisions. I thanked her for her open and honest answers and mentioned that I would investigate further.

What was most disturbing about the whole issue of the Arabic themed school, was the total lack of any American themed plans for a school where pride in country, patriotism and respect for our flag would be instilled in our youth. Instead of focusing on cultural immersion into balkanized entities of Arabic, Chinese or Spanish traditions and languages, the most pressing need today is teaching our children about the greatness of our common American heritage. The focus of education should be imparting a first-class knowledge of United States history. The history of America is the history of all people, all races, ethnicities and religions. The people of numerous cultures and national origins that immigrate to our shores in order to share in the bounties of the great American experiment must assimilate to American culture first, rather than the other way around. The moral rot of multiculturalism dictates that the assimilation process should proceed the other way around. They want to tear apart our country into disconnected identity groups, which will ultimately bring our nation to ruin. Instead of using the classroom to teach minority students and new immigrants that Western Civilization is the villain and they are its victims, teachers should be imparting the basic principles of assimilation into the fabric of American society. Teach the core values and ideals of America – courage, honor, honesty, religious freedom, individual rights, civics education, free enterprise, work ethic, etc. It is imperative for teachers to respect the flag, respect our country and be proud Americans. The heart of the problem in education today that is poisoning our next generation is that too many teachers and academics are just the opposite. That travesty was demonstrated in every spoken word at the forum and that is why the KGIA is such a dangerous idea that must be stopped.

....The third and final panelist was CUNY faculty union official Susan O’Malley, who has filed an ongoing $2 million defamation lawsuit against Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis, for his audacity to state that it’s not appropriate to place convicted terrorists, Mohamed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg on the CUNY payroll. In his introduction, the moderator stated O’Malley has been “attacked” as a “so-called terrorist sympathizer” as he listed her credentials. She defended herself with the same cries of Islamophobia and racism as Almontaser but only O’Malley’s persecution came from a “crazy man” and his conservative allies. She cried that in her case, for at least 13 years she has been “attacked by a crazy man named Sharad Karkhanis.”

To explain the methods Karkhanis and his friends used to “attack” her, she expounded on the “craziness” of guilt by association that was used to smear KGIA and its founder, Ms. Almontaser. The same strategy is being used to attack Senator Obama, by associating him with controversial figures, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, the unrepentant former leader of the Weather Underground. The method is to take something irrelevant out of context and repeat it over and over again until it is cited as established fact. This leads to the “establishment of lies” which inadvertently appear in everyday conversation, as people rehash them as household words. That is how she was smeared by Karkhanis and she proceeded to tell her tale of anguish.

Karkhanis put out a newsletter, The Patriot Returns, which he distributes to 13,000 CUNY faculty, in which she’s been “red-baited, lesbian-baited and everything-baited,” called “a terrorist” and a “friend of terrorists,” and even declared that she was “at an al-Qaeda training camp.” She claimed to have endured “about 50 attacks” from the various issues of the newsletter. He doesn’t do it alone, she explained. It’s an effort of a group of rightwing conservatives, probably including Daniel Pipes, from whom she’s received emails. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld was also closely “connected with these attacks.”

O’Malley continued, saying he put out these “attacks” over and over, for such a long period of time that everywhere she went, even up in Albany, “people knew her as the butt of this person’s attacks” and were afraid to associate with her. The attacks became such a nightmare and she “started really freaking out.” She feared boarding an airplane one day and being turned away because she’s a terrorist. She said she would have loved to respond to his accusations, but it was just impossible, so she had her lawyer friend send a letter to Karkhanis asking him to “please stop attacking her, and he said he would not.” She wanted it to stop, she wanted quiet and since she was no longer head of the CUNY University Faculty Senate (UFS), she filed a libel suit against him.

She continued in defense of her actions to try to hire Mohamed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg. She explained that the “attacks” on her became most virulent after 9/11 when Yousry, an adjunct at York College was removed from the classroom without discussion or due process rights, after he was convicted for aiding terrorism. As UFS chair she was in a position to protect faculty, especially adjuncts whose “academic freedom and right to due process were limited.” After calling her UFS office in desperation since he couldn’t find work, she tried to find a teaching position for him since his academic career and his life were destroyed after his dismissal. She knew Yousry to be “very fine teacher” and a “man of stature.” She rationalized that he should be considered “innocent until proven guilty which is part of the law in this country.”

Essentially, Ms. O’Malley is either unfamiliar with the U.S. legal system or is feigning ignorance as a cover for her actions in her capacity as CUNY union official. Yousry was convicted along with co-conspirator Lynne Stewart in federal court and found guilty as charged for providing material support for terrorism and defrauding the government. How could a man with a terrorist conviction be “a man of stature?”

O’Malley conveniently forgot to mention a few things about Mohamed Yousry. He was removed from his adjunct position only after he was indicted, but was paid salary for the entire semester. O’Malley should also be grateful that Yousry did indeed receive contractual and legal rights of due process as his grievance followed all the proper channels from “step one” at the college level all the way up to arbitration with all expenses paid by dues paying union members. Mr. Yousry lost his case. This was all spelled out in plain English in The Patriot Returns 35.4. What makes her think that “the CUNY administration was going to roll out a welcome mat in CUNY for this terrorist and put him back on the payroll after his conviction in Federal Court and after CUNY prevailed in arbitration?”

She has yet to answer the following question raised in the same issue of The Patriot Returns: “Has Queen O'Malley ever made a "Job Wanted" announcement like this for a non-convicted, non-violent, peace loving American educator for a job in CUNY? There are hundreds of qualified people looking for teaching jobs. Why does she prefer convicted terrorists who are bent on harming our people and our nation, over peace-loving Americans?”

In a similar fashion, O’Malley sought to help find employment for former John Jay College adjunct Susan Rosenberg who was a Weather Underground terrorist convicted as an accomplice in the murder of two police officers and a security guard and for her role in the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol and was imprisoned for a 58 year sentence for the possession of 700 pounds of dynamite and weapons. She served 16 years of her sentence until she was pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

However, the fact is that out of a total of 40 issues of The Patriot Returns, Karkhanis published over a 15 year span, only nine actually mentioned Susan O’Malley by name, and nowhere did Karkhanis state that she was a “terrorist” or that she was “at an al-Qaeda training camp.” He simply reported the facts and voiced his objections, often satirically, regarding her compulsive efforts to find teaching jobs for convicted terrorists, in her capacity as UFS/CUNY chair, Trustee ex-officio and PSC Executive Committee member. He exposed O’Malley’s letters to the New York Post and the Daily News defending Rosenberg’s right to teach, her postings on the CUNY /UFS Discussion Forum seeking teaching opportunities at CUNY for Yousry and Rosenberg, her appeals to the staff at a UFS Plenary Session for CUNY to hire Yousry, and other indications of her obsession to employ convicted terrorists. In their defense she downplayed the gravity of their convictions arguing in Yousry’s case, “it's becoming increasingly clear that he really did just about nothing.” In Rosenberg’s defense she argued in her letters from the standpoint that rehabilitation is one of the goals of the U.S. criminal justice system. Susan Rosenberg, having served her time, and having been “evaluated satisfactorily by her department,” should now “be integrated back into society” with a suitable teaching assignment as planned by John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The Patriot Returns focused on numerous CUNY union officials who had a penchant for idolizing criminals and terrorists, of whom O’Malley was a mere lightweight. The few times Karkhanis wrote about O’Malley, he would typically engage in collegial satire referring to her as the “Queen of Released Time” for seeking way too many CUNY leadership positions in lieu of teaching assignments. In the “Rumor Column,” he wondered whether the “Queen” would abdicate her throne to take the Harvard presidency after Larry Summers resigned. Typically, The Patriot Returns expends the most ink excoriating the PSC leadership for spending the faculty member’s union dues on inappropriate political causes while they repeatedly failed to deliver a beneficial contract. While they were actively mobilizing the CUNY membership to march against the Republican Party, organizing anti-war campus teach-ins after 9/11, donating the member’s dues money to support the legal defense of imprisoned terrorists Lori Berenson and Sami al-Arian and a host of other radical causes too numerous to mention here, the member’s health and welfare fund of $15 million dwindled to just about nothing. PSC/CUNY, of which O’Malley is an Executive Committee member, issued a Delegate Assembly Resolution donating $5000 and demanding the immediate release of Lori Berenson, currently serving a 20 year prison term in Peru on terrorism charges.

O’Malley had plenty of opportunities to take on Dr. Karkhanis and refute his accusations. She could have responded in the Clarion, the CUNY faculty union newspaper or the UFS faculty newsletter, which at one point she was an editor. Instead she chose to hire a lawyer and sue Karkhanis in New York State Supreme Court in order to silence his critical tongue and shut down The Patriot Returns. The poor retired professor, Dr. Karkhanis’s First Amendment rights have been threatened more than anyone of the fakers in the room.

Meanwhile, Prof. O’Malley continued to lecture on the “New McCarthyism,” the vast movement targeting her and her comrades through email harassment, blogs and other forms of “bullying through the internet.” This vast movement holds an ideology that seeks to destroy rather than talk. She then directed her venom toward CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a STM advisor whom she described as so anti-Muslim that it’s a contradiction for him to be on the CUNY board. She mentioned her discovery in the New York Times article that he worked for the FBI. While she knew that “he has been very, very conservative,” this was the “hole in his career” that she didn’t know about, in trying to “piece together his life.” She had spent a number of years as the faculty representative on the CUNY Board of Trustees and debated with him constantly. A number of panelists and people in the audience broke into an emotional discussion about the CUNY board and why they should remove Wiesenfeld. One person said Wiesenfeld was behind the “attacks” on KGIA and as part of “a vigilante squad, a hate group” agreeing with O’Malley that his anti-Muslim credentials make it a contradiction for him to be on the board. Another described the makeup of the board as mostly conservative, having been appointed by a Republican administration, and therefore doesn’t care too much about the students. Naturally, Wiesenfeld is the loudest. They continued to demonize Wiesenfeld, reciting a laundry list of character faults and random insults without an intelligible word about the substance of what he had to say. His “devious personal attacks make any kind of constructive debate impossible,” as he “screams louder than you,” to show he is “more powerful than you.”

Later on the discussion came back to Wiesenfeld, as someone in the room requested that they return to their favorite topic, how to get him off the CUNY board. This person said she wrote to the CUNY board about Wiesenfeld regarding a “vile interaction” she observed between him and someone else in what was a “major, major attack,” that was “really outrageous.” They basically denied it saying “he didn’t do it in his capacity on the Board of Trustees.” She described being “shocked” meeting him. “He walked by me, pushed me, and cursed me out.” She questioned “if it is so difficult to get him off the board” and “what more is there for us to do,” to speak out as a community, that “we won’t stand for it.” The room then launched into a brainstorming session for Wiesenfeld’s ouster. Some suggested writing letters, a good article in Inside Higher Ed, or local press. One said that the only way would be through the chair, Benno Schmidt since Wiesenfeld was appointed by the governor and has to finish out his term. O’Malley added that Wiesenfeld and the rest of his coordinated movement have been making the rounds of the Republican political circuit, speaking out against Muslims and the KGIA, honoring Dr. Karkhanis as Educator of the Year, and controlling the microphone and media. As they strategized how to take back the microphone and the press, they conveniently forgot to mention the sympathetic article in the morning New York Times, and the knee-jerk reaction of eight million New Yorkers to venerate anyone who paints themselves as a victim of intolerance and hatred. Hopefully, as one person mentioned, the new governor David Paterson could remove CUNY chairman Benno Schmidt and their group could become more active in the vetting process for trustees. Perhaps Paterson would help their cause and bring back CUNY to its original mission, returning to the policies of open admissions and affirmative action to serve all New Yorkers regardless of their racial status or aptitude. This last comment received a generous round of applause.

Actually, trustee Wiesenfeld is a hero to many New Yorkers for his efforts in bringing higher academic standards to CUNY. As a result of abolishing the failed policies of open admissions and remedial education that turned the once great academic institution into a worthless “diploma mill,” CUNY now is experiencing a wonderful renaissance, where even minority enrollment is up and their diplomas have real value.

At one point in the discussion the true condescending nature toward “people of color” slipped out accidentally. Almontaser described the KGIA as a school that caters to children of Arab descent immersed in their own culture, but welcomes students of all backgrounds and ethnicities as well. But only a dozen of the 60 students presently enrolled are Arab. Her dream that this school would function as a home to Arabs and Muslims was shattered, and now regrettably the school caters mostly to non-Arabs. One person in the audience said that mostly African Americans and Puerto Ricans enrolled their kids at KGIA because they think it would lead to a great job as a translator, as others in the room seemed to agree and chuckle quietly. How telling that they should look down their noses at the very people they claim to protect and defend, for attempting to rise above their surroundings and strive to build valuable marketable skills.

While posing as the paragons of diversity and multiculturalism, Ms. Almontaser and Prof. O’Malley betray a patronizing nature that they try to conceal. They demonize their critics in order to bully them into silence, while posturing as hapless victims of a hateful “vigilant squad” of anti-Muslim “attacks.” The same type of scrutiny that they christen “guilt by association” that is used to vet politicians running for the highest offices must be utilized to examine the actions of lesser public officials.

No one who chooses a leadership role is immune from scrutiny. Echoing the sentiments of President Harry Truman, Hillary Clinton admonished Senator Obama: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” If a public official were to associate with David Duke, participate in Stormfront rallies and condone the message of “White Pride” T-shirts, there would be universal condemnation and justified public outrage. Whether this person was a public school principle, a CUNY union official or Barack Obama, he or she would summarily be toast. Any teacher will tell you that a student caught hanging out with troublemakers would be severely reprimanded. These lesser public officials likewise should continue to be rigorously vetted and judged by virtue of the troublemakers they associate with and recruit. Any attempt to thwart the process of freedom of criticism via the courts or any other forms of intimidation or censorship, will be viewed as a direct threat to the First Amendment rights of all and a danger to our national security at a time of global crisis and Islamic terrorism."

Give 'em hell, Phil! And keep it coming!!

Brutus

The Company She Keeps?

2008-05-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

From Andrea Elliott at the New York Times

Three opponents of a Brooklyn public school that teaches mandatory Arabic filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the school's founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, claiming that she had defamed them by saying that they stalked her.

The women, Sara Springer, Irene Alter and Pamela Hall, are members of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, a group that has protested the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which opened in Boerum Hill last fall.

The plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, are seeking punitive damages.

In a firestorm of controversy, Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the school's founding principal last August after an article in The New York Post stated that she had "downplayed the significance" of T-shirts bearing the slogan "Intifada NYC." Ms. Almontaser said that her words were distorted by The Post and that she was forced to resign by the mayor's office.

The lawsuit against Ms. Almontaser references, among other things, a public statement she made on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 16 in which she said, "Members of the coalition stalked me wherever I went and verbally assaulted me with vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments." The lawsuit cites a nearly identical statement in a complaint filed by Ms. Almontaser against the mayor's office and the Department of Education last fall.

Ms. Almontaser said she could not comment on the lawsuit, and her lawyer was unavailable.

"They picked this whole fight from day one," said Rabbi Michael Feinberg, a member of Communities in Support of KGIA, a group devoted to having Ms. Almontaser reinstated as the school principal. "I don't know if they stalked her or not. But they have been absolutely relentless in the campaign of lies, distortions and calumny to shut down the school and have Debbie step down as principal."

Ms. Alter denied this. "It's a criminal offense to accuse someone of stalking," she said. "The reality is we've never done that. So we are quite upset."

It is not clear to us at this stage if Professor O'Malley will be filing an amicus brief. But surely "Sue" could recommend a good defamation/libel lawyer for Dhaba. They do spend a good deal of time together these days, after all.

Brutus

An Antipodean Admirer

2008-05-18T06:31:00.000-07:00

An update from Australia’s John Ray at EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL

“….Since last September the Editor, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis has been fighting a $2 million defamation lawsuit filed against him for daring to express disapproval of PSC-CUNY union official Susan O'Malley's attempts to find teaching jobs for convicted terrorists within the CUNY system. It's a sign that TPR is still chock-full of its acclaimed spit and vinegar and Dr. Karkhanis is prepared to go the distance to fight a frivolous lawsuit that aims to silence him and shut down TPR, the only insider's watchdog of the dangerous antics of the PSC.

There has been no response from the O'Malley camp since early March, when Karkhanis's attorneys filed an answer to all accusations in the formal legal complaint, O'Malley v. Karkhanis denying every single charge and concluding that O'Malley has no case whatsoever. Dr. Karkhanis resolutely denies having published any material in TPR that was defamatory and refutes the claims that O'Malley has suffered damages and her reputation has been harmed. The answer to O'Malley's complaint states:

The Defendants' utterances here at issue are expressions of opinion that pursuant to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States are not actionable. The defendant's utterances here at issue are legally protected satire.

The publication of political satire is a First Amendment right. Criticism of Susan O'Malley, a public official who has been trying to place terrorists on the CUNY payroll, is a free speech issue in a free market of ideas and opinions, not slander or defamation of character. American colleges have become so backward that Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Abigail Thernstrom lamented, they have become "islands of repression in a sea of freedom." Now they seek to utilize the courts to legalize their repressive status quo in order to permanently silence critics and watchdogs. In order to continue the fight until all the charges of defamation are dropped, friends of Dr. Karkhanis have set up a legal defense fund in the name of The Patriot Returns, Inc. to help defray the cost of current legal bills and to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary. They ask for your donations to help fight the battle for free speech not only for Dr. Karkhanis, but other faculty and students whose First Amendment rights are likewise being infringed by repressive campuses.

The Patriot Returns has been doggedly exposing the fanaticism of a PSC union leadership more absorbed with fomenting workers revolution against capitalism and American imperialism, than securing a good contract for the membership, and for his exemplary work, Dr. Karkhanis is being sued for $2 million. Their irregular behavior has recently manifested in numerous PSC political resolutions proposed at the 2008 NYSUT Representative Assembly opposing the "U.S. Policy of Permanent and `Preemptive' War," supporting the "Jena 6," extending "Solidarity to Peruvian Teachers," opposing "U.S. Expansion of the War into Iran," and scarcely any resolutions advancing the welfare and working conditions of the CUNY faculty membership.

The PSC has introduced resolutions in support of striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico at the bi-annual American Federation of Teachers convention in Boston and the 2006 PSC Delegate Assembly, which were passed without dissent. PSC also organized a couple of demonstrations at the Mexican Consulate in Manhattan to show solidarity with their comrades in Oaxaca. They widely promoted rallies on campus for their "brothers and sisters" in Oaxaca and more recently the militant striking teachers in Puerto Rico. They made CUNY campuses their base of operations, organized faculty and students and employed such tactics as "tabling, roving the cafeteria, faculty distributing flyers to their classes, getting signatures and donations in department meetings" in order to build a mass movement for international worker's struggles.

The hard work of the PSC on behalf of international striking teachers has garnered laudatory reviews on the pages of Challenge, the revolutionary communist blog of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) which boasts that it will smash capitalism through armed revolution.

PLP is now teaming up with the PSC, bringing the lessons home to CUNY campuses of the ongoing struggle against capitalism taught by the striking teachers in Oaxaca and Puerto Rico. With their rallying cry, "Lucha s¡! Entrega no!" (Struggle yes, surrender no!) and enthusiastic support from the PSC, they have organized recent CUNY PLP forums, and are planning future conferences, rallies and a Party newsletter at CUNY, in order to advance their violent communist objectives and win new believers. Heaping praise on the PSC, they show their affection to their dear comrades in arms:

comrades in the PSC know we must intensify our efforts amid these kinds of struggles to build the Party itself at CUNY. The Party is the essential weapon to win, not reform demands to be reversed by capitalists' state power, but win all workers' liberation - communism.

We must not allow this frivolous lawsuit to shut down political speech and silence TPR, or for that matter any other free press watchdog committed to exposing the dangerous machinations of the PSC on CUNY campuses.”

Well put, Dr. Ray!

Brutus

CUNY's Charybdis Loses In Federal Court

2008-05-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Barbara Bowen, Silly "Sue" O'Malley's long time comrade in the struggle for stiffling free speech, of late has lost a major First Amendment case in the Second Circut. Our Brooklyn College colleague Mitch Langbert provides details and commentary:

"David Seidemann just e-mailed me that he has defeated the Professional Staff Congress's (PSC), CUNY's faculty union, in a federal court law suit, Seidemann v. Bowen, in federal district court. This case is of national importance because it establishes standards of disclosure for agency fee bargaining units. An agency fee arrangement occurs where the union agreement compels non-members to pay dues even though they elect not to belong to the union. Agency arrangements differ from union shops in that under agency arrangements members are permitted to refuse membership in the union (unlike union shops), but they are compelled to pay dues nevertheless.

CUNY has an agency shop. A number of faculty, myself included, do not belong to the union but are compelled to pay dues. Professor Seidemann's law suit concerned the PSC's failure to accurately disclose the portion of dues that the PSC devotes to political contributions unrelated to the PSC's collective bargaining and higher education activities. The PSC is an unusually ineffectual union that has failed to win wage increases one half of what New York City's modestly paid teachers (in comparison with teachers in neighboring municipalities and suburbs) have won. The teachers won 16 percent over three years and the PSC won six percent over three years for CUNY's faculty. The PSC has repeatedly refused to represent faculty in grievances. At the same time, the PSC has served as a conduit for political contributions to various extremist causes. Before Sharad Karkhanis's and David Seidemann's protests, the PSC was sending Iraqi War literature to the CUNY faculty almost daily, even as it failed to represent faculty in collective bargaining and grievances.

According to Professor Seidemann, the federal court ruled by summary judgment* that:
1) the PSC violates the First Amendment rights of agency fee payers because it fails to provide them with sufficient information to gauge the propriety of the union's agency fee expenditures;
2) the PSC unlawfully charged objecting non-members for some of the union's political activities by inaccurately characterizing them as contract-related activities. Among the activities that the PSC improperly claimed were contract-related was a forum on an anti-war resolution. The PSC also improperly charged fee payers for public rallies, picket lines, concerts, letter-writing campaigns - all political activities - under the category "office supplies". (How does one confuse a paper clip with a picket line?)
3) Further, the District Court enforced a ruling in Professor Seidemann's case made by the Second Circuit in August 2007 that held as unconstitutional the PSC's requirement that non-members annually renew their objections to political expenditures. (The Second Circuit ruling applies to all public unions in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut.)

*The Court finds that plaintiff is entitled to a declaratory judgment that defendants' notice to fee payers for the years at issue violated plaintiff's rights under the First Amendment. Plaintiff is entitled to injunctive relief and defendants are enjoined and prohibited from requiring nonmembers to file an annual objection or to identify the percentage of the agency fees in dispute in order to file an objection. Defendants shall send plaintiff and all nonmembers a notice that complies with Hudson and the Second Circuit's Mandate as set forth herein. Defendants shall provide the financial [*37] information necessary for fee payers to gauge the propriety of the agency fees, either by mail or by posting on the union's website, at least thirty days prior to the start of the fee payer objection period. The financial information PSC provides to fee payers shall set forth the basis for the allocation of both the chargeable and non-chargeable expenses."

Brutus

"Sue's" Slanted Takes on Free Speech

2008-04-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

While the attorneys for Professor Susan O'Malley continue to press her case for silencing Sharad Karkhanis, she is busy defending against the threat of "Islamophobia." CUNY staff, faculty and students, as well as our employers--the general public--recently received invitations to the following event:

"Academic Freedom & The Attack on Diversity at CUNY — An Urgent Conversation
Debbie Almontaser, Professor Susan O Malley, Mona Eldahry...Adem Carroll...
Monday 04/28/2008; 6:00 - 8:00 pmRoom: Social Lounge (5414)CUNY Grad School 365 Fifth Avenue (34 St)...

Around the country, Islamophobic and Anti-Arab attacks on professors have increased, most notably at Columbia and Barnard. This movement to attack and discredit dissent has been called “the New McCarthyism” –shutting down reasoned debate on important issues. Unfortunately this hurtful trend is also significantly represented at CUNY at its Trustee level, in the person of Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who is also head of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition....

With no factual basis, Wiesenfeld’s STM coalition has been waging a relentless attack on Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual language public school, depicting it as an “Islamist vocational school…with an Arab supremacist mindset in the mold of KGIA’S principal Dhabah Almontaser.” Forced out of her job by right wing tabloids & with no push back from the Bloomberg Administration, Founding Principal Debbie Almontaser has been fighting for her rights. She has been defended by educators, community groups and parents in coordination with Communities in Support for the Khalil Gibran International Academy...

Ms. Almontaser will appear on this panel along with CUNY Professor Susan O’ Malley and others working to expose the attack on academic freedom across the nation:

PLEASE JOIN US: There is some urgency here as these attacks are one tip of a vast ideological iceberg that is also threatening to impact the current election campaign. What does this mean for CUNY students and faculty?

Co-sponsored by MESOMiddle East Students Org:
CISKGIA:(Communities in Support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy)
For more info contact http://kgia.wordpress.com/
Zeeshan SuhailWeblog: http://ZeeshanSuhail.blogspot.com/"

Here at the Free Speech at CUNY blog, we are not quite sure what a "vast ideological iceberg" would look like--due, perhaps, to the effects of global warming. We are quite sure that Professor O'Malley, Ms. Almontaser and company have First Amendment rights to warn about it, however, and to criticize such critics of the troubled Khalil Gibran International Academy as CUNY trustee Wiesenfeld. We'd prefer that their tone be a little less shrill and a lot more civil, but this is a matter of taste, not law. Free speech isn't always decorous, after all.

Nor should it be dangerous. Thus we continue to marvel at O'Malley's ability to denounce Sharad Karkhanis' exercise of his First Amendment rights as libel, while at the same time attacking her political and ideological opponents with unabashed glee.

Brutus

Sorry "Sue," Sharad's Not Been Silenced Yet

2008-04-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

As our CUNY colleague Mitch Langbert notes:

Karkhanis Blasts Professional Staff Congress

Sharad Karkhanis, who has been attacked in a Professional Staff Congress (PSC)-related law suit, has just released his latest newsletter, Patriot Returns. Karkhanis offers brilliant coverage of David Seidemann's case, about which Candace de Russy and I have blogged. The Chronicle of Higher Education has also covered the case. Karkhanis notes:"Convinced that the PSC had treated agency-fee payers unfairly, David Seidemann, a Yale educated full professor of Geology at Brooklyn College, has been patient and tenacious in seeking justice. Since 2002, he's amassed voluminous documentation, collected and examined all relevant information and legal precedents, and pursued the PSC with the tenacity and conviction of an irate faculty member. Seidemann sensed that there was some hanky panky going on with his and your hard-earned dollars. The 1% of our gross salary that goes to union dues or agency fees should be spent for our benefit rather than being diverted to further the New Caucasians' political agenda."Karkhanis asks:"Our question is, although permissible in the eyes of the law for the union to spend monies to march, parade and shout out loud to bring pressure on the management on behalf of the dues paying members, how germane is it for the PSC to spend dues money on excessive participation in such activities?"See the entire blog here. The PSC leadership has spent its time on anti-Iraqi War crusades while neglecting its function of representing faculty. Barbara Bowen and her colleagues have failed CUNY's faculty.

Posted by Mitchell Langbert at 2:13 PM
Labels: David Seidemann, higher education, professional staff congress, PSC, sharad karkhanis

Reminder to "Sue": Satire is Protected by the First Amendment

2008-04-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

A timely reminder from our good friend Phil Ornstein at Democracy Project:

Struggle Si, Surrender No!
The leading article in the latest issue of The Patriot Returns was one of the funniest pieces I’ve read in a long time. The faculty union of the City University of New York (CUNY), the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) is at it once again, and TPR satirizes the revolutionary zeal of the leadership and their myriad political crusades, this time standing in solidarity with the Mexican teachers on strike in Oaxaca. This current issue demonstrates that the TPR newsletter hasn’t lost its satirical cutting edge. Since last September the Editor, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis has been fighting a $2 million defamation lawsuit filed against him for daring to express disapproval of PSC-CUNY union official Susan O’Malley’s attempts to find teaching jobs for convicted terrorists within the CUNY system. It’s a sign that TPR is still chock-full of its acclaimed spit and vinegar and Dr. Karkhanis is prepared to go the distance to fight a frivolous lawsuit that aims to silence him and shut down TPR, the only insider’s watchdog of the dangerous antics of the PSC.

There has been no response from the O’Malley camp since early March, when Karkhanis’s attorneys filed an answer to all accusations in the formal legal complaint, O’Malley v. Karkhanis denying every single charge and concluding that O’Malley has no case whatsoever. Dr. Karkhanis resolutely denies having published any material in TPR that was defamatory and refutes the claims that O’Malley has suffered damages and her reputation has been harmed. The answer to O’Malley’s complaint states:

The Defendants' utterances here at issue are expressions of opinion that pursuant to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States are not actionable. The defendant's utterances here at issue are legally protected satire.

The publication of political satire is a First Amendment right. Criticism of Susan O’Malley, a public official who has been trying to place terrorists on the CUNY payroll, is a free speech issue in a free market of ideas and opinions, not slander or defamation of character. American colleges have become so backward that Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Abigail Thernstrom lamented, they have become “islands of repression in a sea of freedom.” Now they seek to utilize the courts to legalize their repressive status quo in order to permanently silence critics and watchdogs. In order to continue the fight until all the charges of defamation are dropped, friends of Dr. Karkhanis have set up a legal defense fund in the name of The Patriot Returns, Inc. to help defray the cost of current legal bills and to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary. They ask for your donations to help fight the battle for free speech not only for Dr. Karkhanis, but other faculty and students whose First Amendment rights are likewise being infringed by repressive campuses.
The Patriot Returns has been doggedly exposing the fanaticism of a PSC union leadership more absorbed with fomenting workers revolution against capitalism and American imperialism, than securing a good contract for the membership, and for his exemplary work, Dr. Karkhanis is being sued for $2 million. Their irregular behavior has recently manifested in numerous PSC political resolutions proposed at the 2008 NYSUT Representative Assembly opposing the “U.S. Policy of Permanent and ‘Preemptive’ War,” supporting the “Jena 6,” extending “Solidarity to Peruvian Teachers,” opposing “U.S. Expansion of the War into Iran,” and scarcely any resolutions advancing the welfare and working conditions of the CUNY faculty membership. The PSC has introduced resolutions in support of striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico at the bi-annual American Federation of Teachers convention in Boston and the 2006 PSC Delegate Assembly, which were passed without dissent. PSC also organized a couple of demonstrations at the Mexican Consulate in Manhattan to show solidarity with their comrades in Oaxaca. They widely promoted rallies on campus for their “brothers and sisters” in Oaxaca and more recently the militant striking teachers in Puerto Rico. They made CUNY campuses their base of operations, organized faculty and students and employed such tactics as “tabling, roving the cafeteria, faculty distributing flyers to their classes, getting signatures and donations in department meetings” in order to build a mass movement for international worker’s struggles.

The hard work of the PSC on behalf of international striking teachers has garnered laudatory reviews on the pages of Challenge, the revolutionary communist blog of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) which boasts that it will smash capitalism through armed revolution.

PLP is now teaming up with the PSC, bringing the lessons home to CUNY campuses of the ongoing struggle against capitalism taught by the striking teachers in Oaxaca and Puerto Rico. With their rallying cry, “¡Lucha sí! ¡Entrega no!” (Struggle yes, surrender no!) and enthusiastic support from the PSC, they have organized recent CUNY PLP forums, and are planning future conferences, rallies and a Party newsletter at CUNY, in order to advance their violent communist objectives and win new believers. Heaping praise on the PSC, they show their affection to their dear comrades in arms: comrades in the PSC know we must intensify our efforts amid these kinds of struggles to build the Party itself at CUNY. The Party is the essential weapon to win, not reform demands to be reversed by capitalists’ state power, but win all workers’ liberation — communism.
We must not allow this frivolous lawsuit to shut down political speech and silence TPR, or for that matter any other free press watchdog committed to exposing the dangerous machinations of the PCS on CUNY campuses. With this as a background, here then is the article in the current issue of The Patriot Returns. Please enjoy...

AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR NOBLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN OAXACA, MEXICO
Dear Valiant Oaxaquenos:Once again we stand by you in complete Solidarity during your great struggle against those who would enslave us all, the Imperial Corporatist NeoLiberals, or as we call them, the NeoConservatives. While we may say potato, and you say patata, we both understand that these groups are one and the same. These Dark Lords will not rest until they extinguish all the major centers of worldwide revolutionary activity, and that makes our PSC-CUNY Union the biggest target on the planet. Read more...
— Phil Orenstein Apr. 14, 2008 12:36 AM

Will the Real Susan O'Malley Please Stand Up?

2008-01-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

Susan O’Malley’s recent complaint reveals a very different Susan O’Malley than many around CUNY have encountered in the last decade. Sometimes, it seems as if O’Malley’s chief problem is with the historical record rather than with Sharad Karkhanis. But, of course, it’s not possible for her to obtain $2 million from the historical record.

The complaint: “SUSAN O’MALLEY has always conducted her professional duties with dignity and grace.”

The record: How, then, to explain O’Malley’s unfounded allegations against a CUNY trustee? Reported Inside Higher Ed, “Susan O’Malley, a professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, said that CUNY’s trustees tried to prevent an adjunct at her campus from teaching the novel The Scar of David. CUNY officials could not be reached for comment, but press accounts suggest that the book was in fact taught.”

Unfounded allegations are inconsistent with someone who “has always conducted her professional duties with dignity and grace.”

The complaint: “SUSAN O’MALLEY found the position of UFS chair to be a demanding, high-stress, nerve-wracking position.”

The record: As far as can be determined, no one forced O’Malley to serve multiple terms as UFS chair. Or to stand for election to the PSC executive committee. Or to serve as executive director of the MLA’s Radical Caucus. Or to issue repeated public comments on higher education issues.

Perhaps O’Malley, for some reason, has regularly placed herself in “high-stress” and “nerve-wracking” situations. Or perhaps she enjoyed the power and influence that flowed from her myriad high-level elective positions, regrets that she has been voted out of office (UFS) or demoted (PSC), and is looking for someone to blame for her political setbacks.

The complaint: “During her term as UFS chair, SUSAN O’MALLEY worked a minimum of 5 days per week, 8 hours per day, and often worked into the evening, on weekends, and during the summer.”

The record: This claim is a bold one indeed. But though the complaint filed by O’Malley attorney Joseph Martin Carasso contained a number of exhibits, it did not include timecards or any other items that would corroborate this assertion. Apparently, O’Malley believes that not only everyone should take her word for how much time she worked as UFS chair, but this uncorroborated assertion should help her obtain $2 million from Karkhanis.

The complaint: “SUSAN O’MALLEY has always conducted her professional duties with dignity and grace.”

The record: “Dignity” and “grace” are not two words that immediately spring to mind to describe O’Malley’s performance in the KC Johnson tenure case. After going out of her way to identify herself as UFS chair, O’Malley published a statement, sent to all CUNY faculty, that misrepresented both Johnson’s publication record and the process through which he received tenure.

Erin O’Connor of Critical Mass blasted O’Malley’s performance in the case, which O’Connor described as that of a powerful senior professor seeking “to libel those junior faculty [she and her allies] seek to fire.”

The complaint: “SUSAN O’MALLEY likes and enjoys teaching and, in fact, defines herself as a teacher as well as a scholar. During her four years as UFS chair, she missed her students.”

The record: However much O’Malley “missed” her students, it evidently wasn’t enough to set aside her ambitions to hold elected office within the CUNY governance structure.

Moreover, on at least one occasion, O’Malley used her position to directly harm her community college students. Chancellor Goldstein created funds for 200 new community college hires, to be assigned to liberal arts departments. O’Malley, however, wanted the lines to go to more easily politicized skills instruction. Her response to the Chancellor’s proposal: “We must change this."

Trying to stop the hiring of 300 new tenure-track faculty members doesn’t sound like behavior associated with someone who “likes and enjoys teaching and . . . missed her students.”

The complaint: O’Malley “never politicked to be reassigned from teaching.”

The record: O’Malley’s initial election as UFS chair—and the released time from teaching that the position provided—was very tight. She now appears to be claiming that she never “politicked” for that position—and that this assertion should help her obtain $2 million from Karkhanis. This line of reasoning doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Who, then, is the real Susan O’Malley? The complainant demanding $2 million from Sharad Karkhanis, on the grounds that she “has always conducted her professional duties with dignity and grace”? Or the Susan O’Malley who made unfounded allegations against a CUNY trustee and an untenured CUNY professor; who tried to block the hiring of 300 new professors; who politicked to win election as UFS chair; and who seemed to revel in her power as UFS chair and ex oficio CUNY trustee?

Publius

O'Malley Rationalizes Yousry and Rosenberg

2008-01-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

No one—not even Susan O’Malley—would deny that during her time as UFS chairperson, she advocated the continued employment at CUNY of Susan Rosenberg and Mohammed Yousry. Most people (although perhaps not O’Malley) would agree that Rosenberg and Yousry were convicted of terrorist-related activities. Much of O’Malley’s lawsuit against Sharad Kharkanis appears to be based on her claim that it was defamatory—to the tune of $2 million—for Kharkanis to assert that because O’Malley demanded the continued CUNY employment of Yousry and Rosenberg, she wanted to see terrorists employed at CUNY.

Rosenberg, it’s worth recalling, was convicted of armed robbery in a Weathermen attack that left two policemen dead. She nonetheless was hired as an adjunct at John Jay after Bill Clinton commuted her sentence; when the John Jay president elected not to reappoint her (as was his right), she became a cause célèbre of the Barbara Bowen-led PSC top brass. That, of course, included then-PSC executive committee member Susan O’Malley.

O’Malley concedes that—as UFS chair—she criticized the decision not to reappoint Rosenberg. Why? In her filing, she asserted that she had a “duty” to represent the opinions of the faculty, and there was “outrage” at John Jay over the decision not to reappoint Rosenberg.

How did O’Malley reach this determination? Her complaint doesn’t say. Did she take a poll of the John Jay faculty? Did she spend several weeks on campus to ascertain grassroots opinion? Did she speak to a handful of her cronies on campus?

It would seem, in short, that O’Malley has a flexible interpretation of “duty.”

Her explanation of her behavior in the Mohammed Yousry affair was even more tortured. Yousry was the former York adjunct who was suspended after being brought up on federal charges related to aiding lawyer Lynne Stewart get around federal guidelines designed to prevent convicted Egyptian terrorist Sheikh Abdul Rahman from communicating with his followers. Yousry was subsequently convicted on all charges.

O’Malley admits that she criticized the decision to suspend and then not reappoint Yousry. Why? Again, she cited her “duty” as UFS chairperson. “The faculty at York College . . . did not understand [Yousry] he was removed from the classroom in the middle of the term and forbidden to teach there again.”

Some people might argue that if the faculty at York College did not understand why it was not a good idea to have someone charged with serious federal crimes as an adjunct faculty member at their school, it was O’Malley’s “duty” as UFS chair to explain the situation to them.

The complaint concedes that O’Malley took the highly unusual decision to announce “at a UFS meeting that she heard that Yousry was looking for a job.” Neither O’Malley nor her attorney, Joseph Martin Carasso, reveal how many other times O’Malley used her position as UFS chair to announce the availability for hire of a potential adjuncts.

Nonetheless, asserts O’Malley, she wasn’t envisioning KCC extending an offer to Yousry—as Karkhanis suggested—because she had no influence over the KCC personnel process.

This assertion is laughable on its face: the chair of the UFS—the elected head of the faculty university-wide—takes the all-but-unprecedented decision to announce from the Senate floor that a politically controversial adjunct is looking for a job at CUNY. And it’s attorney Carasso’s claim that such a move couldn’t influence decisionmakers in O’Malley’s own academic department?

But take O’Malley at her word: she had no personnel influence, even as UFS chair. Even so, how could anyone possibly claim that Kharkanis--or anyone else--demonstrated bad faith by asserting that the head of the UFS likely had influence over her colleagues? At any university in the country (apart, evidently, from KCC during the O'Malley tenure as UFS chair), the elected leader of the faculty has influence over his or her colleagues.

O’Malley tries one other argument—but unfortunately, she just couldn’t override her ideology, even to advance her lawsuit. Carasso informed the court that O’Malley “does not support [Yousry] in his alleged ‘terrorist’ activities.”

“Alleged”? Yousry has been tried and convicted.

So, O’Malley’s basic position is this:

Yes, she criticized Rosenberg’s non-reappointment.
Yes, she criticized Yousry’s non-reappointment.
Yes, she took the extraordinary step of announcing Yousry’s availability for a job from the Senate floor.
No, even now, she can’t bring herself to admit that Yousry was convicted of aiding terrorism.

And based on those facts, she’s contending that because Sharad Kharkanis wrote that she favored the employment at CUNY of Yousry and Rosenberg (people convicted of terrorist-related activity), he should pay her $2 million? Most people would consider such a claim—as O’Malley herself admitted to the New York Sun—“very, very silly.”

Publius

A "Sore Loser" Rationale?

2008-01-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

In her lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis, Susan O’Malley claims that she “has lost the esteem and respect of her colleagues and members of the KCC and CUNY Community.” For this development, she blames Karkhanis, to the tune of $2 million.

Of course, O’Malley’s complaint also asserts that she “has acquired and retained a high standing and reputation among the CUNY academic community.” [emphasis added]

How O’Malley has simultaneously “lost the esteem and respect of her colleagues” and “retained a high standing and reputation among the CUNY academic community” neither O’Malley nor her attorney, entertainment law/personal injury specialist Joseph Martin Carasso, chose to reveal.

Leave aside, for a moment, this seemingly fatal intellectual contradiction in the O’Malley complaint. Few would challenge the assertion that the former UFS chairperson/PSC executive committee member is best known on her home campus, Kingsborough Community College. Indeed, the O’Malley complaint itself speaks of her “long service to KCC” and “her long career dedicated to governance” at KCC. The complaint adds that her “life has been dedicated to teaching, scholarly research and governance at KCC.”

Kingsborough professors, in short, know Professor O’Malley well. If the O’Malley complaint had any merit, presumably KCC professors—the people who know her best, because of her “long service” to the institution—would have seen through Karkhanis’ allegedly defamatory falsehoods. Indeed, if O’Malley had been subjected to a campaign of defamation worth $2,000,000, she might even have benefited from a surge of sympathy on her home campus.

This past fall, Kingsborough featured a campuswide election for two seats in the University Faculty Senate. Professor O’Malley chose to run for one of the seats. But while 105 ballots were cast, O'Malley tallied only 30 votes. (Voters could select two candidates on their ballot.) Donald Hume and Gary Sarinsky were elected instead.

It’s easy to understand how this embarrassing outcome—the former president of the UFS not only failing to win a seat in the body over which she once presided but losing by a greater than two-to-one margin to Hume and just under that margin to Sarinsky—would constitute a crushing blow to a figure who has stated that her “life has been dedicated to teaching, scholarly research and governance at KCC.” And it’s also easy to understand that a figure so decisively repudiated by the colleagues who know her best would seek to lash out at her critics.

It surely is easier for Professor O’Malley to believe that she was defeated because of a $2 million campaign of defamation, and not because the people who know her best made a reasoned judgment that her agenda isn’t good for Kingsborough or CUNY. Unfortunately for O’Malley, being a sore loser doesn’t usually qualify as grounds for a favorable judgment.

Publius

Who Is Joseph Martin Carasso?

2008-01-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

In a city teeming with attorneys, it might have been assumed that Susan O’Malley could have found a First Amendment or libel law specialist to file her $2 million lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis.

Instead, the former UFS chairperson/PSC executive committee member turned to a 54-year-old entertainment attorney named Joseph Martin Carasso. A graduate of the William Mitchell College of Law (not an institution many would confuse with a Tier-I law school), Carasso’s Lexis/Nexis entry lists his specialties as entertainment litigation and personal injury matters.*

Carasso also served as consultant to a 2003 film called How Do You Spell Murder?, which “documents the L.I.F.E. literacy program at the New Jersey State Prison, one of the few inmate-run literacy programs in the United States.” He also has advertised himself as providing “low-cost legal advice for independents.”

It’s not clear how any of this experience—or, presumably, his personal injury lawsuits—prepared Carasso for filing what Brooklyn College professor Mitchell Langbert has termed a case “consistent with the long-observed deterioration of universities’ willingness to tolerate dissent,” which “may suggest an extension of this deterioration to universities’ use of the courts to suppress external criticism.”

In an interview with the New York Sun, O’Malley termed her cause of action “very, very silly.” Perhaps that’s why she had to turn to an entertainment and personal injury lawyer to get an attorney willing to file the suit.

Publius

*--corrected, in light of Carasso's subsequent denial of an association with ARP

Paranoia As Defamation?

2008-01-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

Among the oddest of the many odd claims in Susan O’Malley’s $2 million lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis is the following item:

“Plaintiff fears that people who only know her through [The Patriot Returns] . . . will harm her.”

Why? Because Karkhanis noted (correctly) that O’Malley had supported the employment at CUNY of people convicted of or charged with terrorist-related activity.

The inclusion of this clause suggests the close coordination between the former PSC executive committee member’s lawsuit and the PSC leadership: PSC spokesperson Deborah Benz, asked for a comment on the suit, replied, “Free speech, however, has limits . . . in a post-9/11 world.” (This is from the same union leadership that said it was OK for Brooklyn College’s Tim Shortell to term all religious people—including his religious students—“moral retards.”)

One major problem with O’Malley’s claim: the law—at least to date—doesn’t allow paranoid musings to be offered as evidence. And O’Malley appears to have no other grounds to substantiate her claim.

The former UFS chairperson says that she’s afraid people “will harm her.” Has she received any threats of harm? The complaint mentions none.

Has she filed a report alleging threats with the Brooklyn Police? Or with CUNY Security? Again, the complaint mentions no such action.

In recent years, critics of neoconservative theorists have contended that the neocons’ theories have actually promoted rather than combated terrorism. By O’Malley’s reasoning, each and every person who has made such a criticism of the neocons (including some of the PSC upper leadership) has opened themselves up to a $2 million lawsuit. Surely the neocons have as much reason to fear that people “who only know them through” the anti-war criticism that their policies have promoted terrorism “will harm them” as O’Malley does to fear people who only know her through The Patriot Returns.

We no longer live in 17^th century Salem, Massachusetts: the long hand of the law cannot impose sanctions just because an influential figure—like O’Malley at CUNY—feels afraid.

Publius

Candid O'Malley

2008-01-03T04:07:00.000-08:00

A recent court filing contained some highly unflattering descriptions of former UFS chair and PSC executive committee member Susan O’Malley. Readers learned that some consider O’Malley:

“a person of vicious, disreputable, criminal, and ‘terrorist’ character, who supports ‘terrorist’ activities at the present time in the United States, who actively goes out of her way to assist convicted criminals without regard for the CUNY academic community, who acts purely for her own selfish reasons, and not for the best interests of the academic community, who believes in those who practice or preach terrorism or violence and murder and has the ability or influence to secure jobs for criminals and ‘terrorists’ instead of and at the expense of decent upstanding citizens and law-abiding Americans.”

“a thief, a person of dishonest and disreputable character, who works for her own selfish interests and against the best interests of the CUNY academic community, who improperly takes money and/or dues from the PSC and uses them for her own benefit, and further a person who dislikes and looks down on her academic colleagues and staff.”

“unscholarly, lacking scholarly excellence, and characterize[es] her academic achievements dishonestly.”

“a person of lazy and disreputable character, and who was working for her own selfish interests . . . She dislikes teaching, mistrusts her staff and colleagues, and is in all respects a person who has failed to contribute anything of value to her students, CUNY governance, and the CUNY academic community.”

“a person of disreputable character, who participated in a demonstration in front of Chancellor Goldstein’s home and who advocated demonstrations of no value or merit for her own interest and against the interest of the CUNY academic community.”

None of those descriptions of O’Malley came from Sharad Karkhanis, the person that O’Malley is suing for $2 million in a lawsuit that she herself has described as “very, very silly.” Indeed, apart from the word “terrorists”—Karkhanis’ description of Susan Rosenberg and Mohammed Yousry, both of whom were convicted of terrorist-related activity—none of those words appeared in any Karkhanis publication to describe O’Malley.

Instead, these descriptions of O’Malley all come from O’Malley’s attorney, Joseph Martin Carasso, an entertainment law specialist that O’Malley prevailed upon to file her “very, very silly” lawsuit. Given that Carasso’s descriptions of O’Malley are far more severe than anything Karkhanis has written about her, will Carasso be next in line to experience an O’Malley lawsuit?

Perhaps that’s why Carasso had demanded—in what would be an extraordinary provision—a court order that “all pleadings, papers, exhibits and other matters filed with the Court in this action be sealed.”

Publius

O'Malley v. Karkhanis: the Complaint

2008-01-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

A recent posting in Mitchell Langbert’s blog, “...Does Mad Magazine Defame?” provides the greater part of the text of the full complaint in the libel case of O’Malley v. Karkhanis. If, as Publius notes below, “Sue” wins the day, lampooning will be illegal at CUNY, and soon across the American academy. O’Malley’s suit may be “silly,” but the implications are not.

Brutus

Silencing Sharad Won't Be Simple

2008-01-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

At the Democracy Project blog, Phil Ornstein recounts Sharad Karkhanis’ decades-long efforts in the cause of free speech in India and the United States. Phil also reminds us that this is not the first time that Susan O’Malley has tried to silence her most effective (and amusing) critic:

“In 1996, faculty union official and former chair of the CUNY Faculty Senate, Professor Susan O’Malley ordered Karkhanis to stop publication of TPR. Fearing repercussions to their careers, other critics bowed to O’Malley’s repressive exploits but Karkhanis refused to be silenced.”

If Sharad was willing to run the risk of disagreeing with Indira Ghandi, he is well able face the wrath of CUNY’s “Dear Leader” and Prof. “Sue.” The latter would be well advised to drop her "silly" lawsuit soon.

Brutus

O'Malley's Curious Claim

2008-01-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

In recent years, Sharad Karkhanis has mocked PSC head Barbara Bowen as the “Dear Leader.” The details of former UFS chair/PSC executive committee member Susan O’Malley’s complaint against Karkhanis (in a case that O’Malley herself has termed “very, very silly”) suggests that absolutist tendencies aren’t confined to the union’s leader.

Indeed, the complaint is chilling, essentially suggesting that expressing skepticism about the PSC/UFS leadership’s motives—even in the context of election campaigns—constitutes grounds for a defamation suit.

Portions of O’Malley’s complaint—penned by entertainment attorney Joseph Martin Carasso—appear to be based on the premise that the court system should be used not to redress grievances but to bolster a client’s self-esteem.

Carasso tells the court that:

“SUSAN O’MALLEY is a distinguished scholar and teacher”;

O’Malley “has many friends and associates among her fellow faculty”;

O’Malley “has served with distinction in various CUNY university and governance roles”

His client received a UFS resolution honoring “her great humanity and her intelligence, and acclaiming SUSAN O’MALLEY as a worthy and eminent leader.”

“SUSAN O’MALLEY worked hard for her achievements”

“SUSAN O’MALLEY’S life has been devoted to teaching, scholarly research, and governance at KCC and CUNY.”

“SUSAN O’MALLEY had a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher, and has made outstanding contributions to university governance and to the Faculty Staff Union.”

Is it O’Malley’s belief that to publicly challenge any of these cozy descriptions of herself constitutes defamation?

Perhaps because his background is in the entertainment world—where shameless flattery is the order of the day—rather than libel law, Carasso went overboard, and in the process appears to have fatally undermined his client’s already feeble case. Included in Carasso’s paeans to O’Malley is this highly revealing clause:

SUSAN O’MALLEY has acquired and retained a high standing and reputation among the CUNY academic community for her advocacy of high academic standards and accessibility of higher education, her humanity and intelligence. [emphasis added]

O’Malley’s entire lawsuit is based on a claim that Karkhanis’ allegedly defamatory attacks have ruined her reputation. Yet here is her own attorney affirming—under, he writes, penalty of perjury—that O’Malley retains “a high standing and reputation among the CUNY academic community.”

So what, exactly, is her case?

No wonder O’Malley has termed her action a “very, very silly” lawsuit.

Publius

O'Malley at the MLA: Defamed, but not Discouraged.

2007-12-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

Despite claims that Sharad Karkhanis has caused her profound psychic and professional harm, CUNY’s Prof. “Sue” has been rather busy at the 2007 meeting of the MLA. The Radical Caucus in English and Modern Languages presented two resolutions to that body’s Delegate Assembly: one on Zionism; the other on Ward Churchill. Since “Sue” serves as the RC’s Executive Director, we presume that both resolutions express her sentiments, and as such should be shared with her admiring public:

On Zionism and its critics:

“Whereas some organizations and individuals have urged that faculty, writers and speakers who criticize Zionism and Israeli policies be denied tenure, disinvited to speak, speak only when “balanced” by a pro-Zionist speaker, or be fraudulently called “anti-Semitic”; and

Whereas this constitutes a serious danger to academic study and discussion in the USA today,

Resolved that the MLA defend the Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.”

On Ward Churchill:

“Whereas, upon criticism of Professor Ward Churchill for his remarks concerning the 9/11 attacks, the University of Colorado initiated proceedings against him, and investigations of his scholarly work, and removed him from his directorship of the Ethnic Studies Dept. and subsequently from his tenured teaching position, and

Whereas such acts of retribution threaten free expression in the university setting, particularly against those in historically marginalized disciplines,

Be it resolved that the Modern Language Association condemns this action of the President and Regents of the University of Colorado.”

That the radical “Sue” would rally to the support of Ward Churchill is not surprising. Nor is the anti-Israel bias of a long standing member of the PSC’s New Caucus and Executive Board. But O’Malley’s asymmetric approach to issues of free speech is astonishing. While her attorney is filing a full civil complaint for libel and defamation in New York, she is running through the corridors at Chicago’s Hyatt Regency and shouting that academic freedom is in jeopardy! Not bad for someone who, supposedly, has been sorely wounded by Sharad’s virtual slings and arrows. We marvel at her recuperative powers, or perhaps at her hubris.

Brutus

A Thinly Veiled Attack on a Trustee?

2007-12-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Today’s number of Inside Higher Ed includes a feature on the recent meeting of the Modern Language Association, in particular on debates within the MLA’s Delegate Assembly over resolutions defending the academic freedom of campus critics of policies and politics in the Middle East. A resolution by Montclair State University’s Grover Furr called on the MLA to “defend the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel” but did not refer to the Jewish state’s supporters. The resolution that prevailed acknowledged that the Middle East was a subject of “intense debate,” and stated that it was “essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue.”

Among the voices heard in these exchanges was that of our favorite defender of free speech, Prof. "Sue," who also happens to be the Executive Director of the MLA's Radical Caucus. “Susan O’Malley, a professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, said that CUNY’s trustees tried to prevent an adjunct at her campus from teaching the novel The Scar of David. CUNY officials could not be reached for comment, but press accounts suggest that the book was in fact taught.”

As by all other reports it seemed to have been. Since O’Malley is such a stickler for facts, and so willing to file libel suits against her critics, her comments in Chicago are particularly odd. Was she making a mistake when representing events at Kingsborough? If so, she owes the unnamed members of CUNY’s Board of Trustees an apology. Or was she continuing her personal, and the PSC’s political, feud with Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld? If so, perhaps Mr. Wiesenfeld might want to consider legal action against her.

Brutus

Will Bowen Now Go After THE JEWISH PRESS?

2007-12-29T14:47:00.001-08:00

Chief among the actions that have landed Sharad Karkhanis in civil court has been The Patriot Returns! 's systematic exposure of “Sue” O’Malley’s and the Professional Staff Congress’s support for unsavory characters and radical causes. The case that he so effectively made is amplified and documented in the December 19th number of The Jewish Press. In a feature entitled “CUNY Professors Decry Their Union’s Anti-Israel, Anti-American Activities,” Elliot Resnick substantiates many of the claims that have been made by Sharad, in particular the close connections between Barbara Bowen and Michael Letwin.

Given her public commitments to free speech and freedom of the press, we wonder how soon it will be before Bowen threatens The Jewish Press with an O’Malley-style lawsuit.

Brutus

Selective Free Speech at CUNY

2007-12-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress has been conspicuously quiet regarding the case of O’Malley v. Karkhanis, save for noting that “free speech...has limits.” In light of “Sue” O’Malley’s long service to the PSC, and her prominent membership in their ruling, radical New Caucus, this silence is puzzling. Perhaps Barbara Bowen knows a bad lawsuit, and a losing issue, when she sees one.

Or, perhaps not. As the January, 2008 issue of the union’s house organ, the Clarion reports, the PSC has brought suit in federal court against the CUNY regarding use of the e-mail system at La Guardia Community College for union business; a grievance and a complaint to New York’s Public Employment Relations Board have also been filed. At issue is CUNY’s "Policy on Acceptable Use of Computer Resources." The university argues that the union’s access to campus e-mail must be dealt with as part of the collective bargaining system; the union insists that its First Amendment rights have been abrogated.

To what degree the recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board that employers can prohibit workers from using e-mail systems to send out union-related messages will influence either the grievance process or the PERB is unclear. But we doubt that Bowen will get very far with her First Amendment violation federal lawsuit. As they have in the past, the leaders of the PSC are staging a stunt in hope of whipping up support from their members. And, we suspect, of directing attention away from Susan O’Malley, who still serves on the Executive Board as a Community College Officer. We wish “Sue” all the best in what may well be many, many days in court.

Brutus

"Sue" to Sharad: Season's Greetings!

2007-12-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

On Friday, December 21st, just in time for the holidays, the attorney representing Susan O'Malley delivered the full complaint to the members of Sharad Karkhanis' legal team. Here at "Free Speech at CUNY," we hope to provide coverage on and commentary about the lawsuit as soon as possible.

Brutus

Say It Ain't "Sue"?

2007-12-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

The latest number of The Patriot Returns! delivers good news about the ever-diminishing status of Susan O’Malley. In a campus wide election, Professor “Sue” lost her long-held seat in the University Faculty Senate as a representative from Kingsborough Community College. Members of KCC’s faculty also rejected her bid to serve as alternate senator.

At this point, it is not clear that O’Malley will be “Sue”-ing those who voted against her for libel and defamation.

Brutus

A Holiday Season Pardon for Sharad?

2007-12-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

At the Democracy Project, Phil Ornstein compares the maneuvers of “Sue” O’Malley and Barbara Bowen to the friends of free speech in power in the Sudan. (We do wonder how CUNY’s weird sisters would fare under Sharia law.)

“Taking a page out of Khartoum’s playbook, PSC leader O’Malley, notorious for trying to censor The Patriot Returns, has now filed a lawsuit charging her most outspoken critic with libel and defamation to scare him and any other would-be dissenters into silence, in order to distract attention from the fraud, abuse and incompetence of the PSC leadership. The PSC, also notorious for shutting down forums for free speech when they became too critical, now wants to hide damaging disclosures before the upcoming elections for some union stalwarts. It was initially reported in the New York Sun that the PSC failed to deliver a decent contract and they squandered the member’s welfare fund by the sum of 97% on political causes and contributions to the legal funds of terrorists. Now O’Malley, former chair of the University Faculty Senate (UFS), who sits on the PSC executive board, is running for election for the Kingsborough Community College seat on the UFS in the next two weeks. Trying desperately to duck bad press and avoid the glare of the media spotlight, she has maintained a low profile saying nothing about the lawsuit except that it is “very, very silly” in an interview with New York Sun reporter, Annie Karni….

The PSC and UFS leadership has utterly misjudged Karkhanis’ character. Instead of groveling to the whims of an elitist PSC regime and pleading for forgiveness, as they must have surmised, he has determined to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. He will fight forever for his First Amendment right to dissent, to criticize and satirize in written expression, and so will I, as well as many other friends and unsolicited defenders of free speech and freedom of the press.
It remains to be seen whether or not the PSC will follow in the footsteps of their Sudanese cohorts and grant a pardon to Karkhanis and retract this “silly” lawsuit or continue routine illegal activities defrauding the dues paying members, in this case funneling the union dues to pay for Susan O’Malley’s lawyers in a protracted highly visible court case. This private legal affair, which will be under the lens of severe scrutiny, is not a PSC or UFS case and any CUNY union funds used for O’Malley’s frivolous libel suit to censor free speech will be brought to light.

The PSC leadership has erred by not taking the time to research the political and literary background of Dr. Karkhanis. Examination of his background would have revealed a long distinguished career championing the inviolable rights of freedom of speech and conscience and especially fighting for freedom of the press in his native land, India. He published a book, Indian Politics and the Role of the Press highly critical of Mrs. Indira Gandhi's emergency regime, which censored the press. In a repressive environment he dared to challenge the ruling establishment, admonishing India’s Prime Minister that “press censorship was resented all over the world” and despite deteriorating social conditions as the justification for invoking emergency rule, defending freedom of the press is vital for safeguarding democratic institutions. But instead of meeting with a hostile reaction or punishment, Karkhanis’s remonstration was amicably received in a candid meeting with Mrs.Gandhi. Why should we expect anything less critical from him as a professor at CUNY with respect to the censorship and fraud of the PSC?”

Will Sue "Sue" Dan?

2007-12-01T00:55:00.000-08:00

To date, there are some things about what Susan O'Malley herself has termed her "very, very silly" lawsuit that even "Sue" doesn't deny.

For instance, she did advocate the retention of Mohamed Yousry as a CUNY adjunct. And Mohamed Yousry was convicted in a Manhattan federal court of providing material aid to terrorism and conspiring to deceive the government.

O'Malley's defense appears to be that Yousry wasn't a "terrorist," and therefore suggesting that she supported the hiring of terrorists is defamatory.

Is Sue, then, going to sue Daniel Pipes? After all, in a 2005 blog posting, Pipes termed Yousry a "terrorist prof."

We're guessing, however, that Pipes is safe from "very, very silly" O'Malley lawsuits. Why? Because he's not a former CUNY professor who has led the charge against Barbara Bowen and the current leadership of the PSC. So "Sue" has little to gain politically from "suing" him.

Publius

Will "Sue" Sue Roger?

2007-11-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

To date, there are some things about what Susan O'Malley herself has termed her "very, very silly" lawsuit that even "Sue" doesn't deny.

For instance, she did advocate the hiring of Susan Rosenberg as a CUNY adjunct. And Susan Rosenberg was a former member of the Weathermen Underground. And Susan Rosenberg was convicted of armed robbery in a crime that left two policemen dead.

O'Malley's defense appears to be that Rosenberg wasn't a "terrorist," and therefore suggesting that she supported the hiring of terrorists is defamatory.

Is Sue, then, going to sue Roger Kimball? After all, in a 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Kimball was quite blunt in deeming Rosenberg a terrorist.

We're guessing, however, that Kimball is safe from "very, very silly" lawsuits. Why? Because he's not a former CUNY professor who has led the charge against Barbara Bowen and the current leadership of the PSC. So "Sue" has little to gain politically from "suing" him.

Publius

"Sue" Breaks Her Silence

2007-11-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Professor “Sue” O’Malley has been silent (and presumably locked way by her attorneys in a secure location) since commenting to the New York Sun about her “very, very silly” defamation case against Sharad Karkhanis.

But in the wake of the recent Board of Trustees brouhaha, the temptation to join the pack and pile on Jeffrey Wiesenfeld has been just too much for University Faculty Senate executive committee member ex-officio O’Malley. Under this moniker, she has invited CUNY faculty to peruse the website for Stop The Madrassa and informed them that Wiesenfeld is active on their New York metropolitan and national advisory boards.

As such, Wiesenfeld appears to be guilty by association of the heinous crime of “lack of respect for Muslims,” since Stop the Madrassa has objected to a new public school dedicated to teaching Arabic history, teaching and language.

Unless we’ve been misinformed, Trustee Wiesenfeld has the same right to speak against the use of public monies for such a school as ex-Trustee O’Malley has to solicit a job at CUNY for Mohammed Yousry. O’Malley may decide that Wiesenfeld and his politics are obnoxious; he may deem her to be a numbskull. But both are public figures, and fair game for criticisms (and witticisms) protected by the First Amendment. It is a pity that only one of them appears to understand this.

Perhaps when she has had her day in court, Prof. “Sue” will consider taking a remedial course on the Constitution at Kingsborough Community College.

Brutus

Irony Deficiency: II

2007-11-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

More than a few of our colleagues at CUNY’s Faculty Senate continue to come unhinged over presumed slights to their senatorial privileges by Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. In the words of Manfred Philipp, the successor to Prof. “Sue” as senate chair and trustee-ex-officio, “A cry of libel by a board member is tantamount to an attempt to suppress the free expression of opinion…”

Pray tell, Professor Philipp: would a $2,000,000 lawsuit against a colleague also count as an attempt to suppress free speech?

True, you’ve stated that you “will decline to exercise any so-called right to cry libel” when you hear testimony that you might disagree with. Fine.

But will you, along with your tax and tuition-supported Executive Committee, cease offering covert support for “Sue” O’Malley’s claims to do otherwise?

Brutus

Irony Deficieny at CUNY

2007-11-25T14:49:00.001-08:00

Those humorless leftists who dominate the official venues for faculty discourse at the City University of New York are at it again! During the course of the November 19th public hearing by the Board of Trustees, CCNY Professor Bill Crain denounced that body for raising tuition by 5%, ending an associate’s degree track at John Jay College, and raising admissions standards. These, and related nefarious initiatives, would result in a “whiter, more middle class university,” he claimed. That Crain is white, and a member of the upper-middle class, seemed to have troubled him not at all.

That Crain, whom Sharad Karkhanis once dubbed the "the Mahatma Gandhi" of the Professional Staff Congress, should so complain is hardly noteworthy. Indeed, he seems to do little else. What was of interest was the response of University Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the most steadfast voice for sanity and accountability at CUNY. Weisenfeld rebutted the charges, and in response to a demand that Crain be allowed the opportunity to respond, replied that “libel doesn’t deserve a response.”

This was too much for Bill and the New Caucus claque on hand, including Barbara Bowen. Crain proclaimed that it was unbecoming of a board member to accuse a faculty member of libel, and demanded an apology. To date, one has not been forthcoming.

However, why it is not suitable for Trustee Wiesenfeld to suggest that Professor Crain’s remarks amounted to libel, but it is OK for ex-Trustee O’Malley to sue Emeritus Professor Karkhanis for publishing matters of fact is beyond our ken. In between their stints at saving the university from higher standards, perhaps Bill Crain and Barbara Bowen can help all of us understand.

Brutus

Holding the Moral High Ground

2007-11-22T05:14:00.000-08:00

Further support for free speech at the City University of New York from Phil Ornstein at the Democracy Project:
November 21, 2007

Sharad Karkhanis Stands on the Moral High Ground

The vast majority of Americans don’t want convicted terrorists or terrorist sympathizers teaching their kids. But a City University of New York faculty union leader, Susan O’Malley is suing Dr. Sharad Karkhanis, CUNY professor emeritus, for criticizing her for being obsessed with “finding jobs for terrorists” at CUNY. However, she is surely not the only one “recruiting terrorists” on campus. CUNY faculty and Professional Staff Congress (PSC) leaders besides O’Malley have been defending convicted terrorists’ right to teach and donating to their legal funds using the members’ union dues for these and numerous other political causes. Now, CUNY professor Francis Fox Piven, from the New Caucus of the PSC, has stepped up to defend South African scholar Adam Habib who was accused of engaging in a terrorist activity and barred from entering the United States by the State Department. Professor Piven said “(w)e think this is a clear violation of academic freedom” and invited him to him to speak at the American Sociological Association's annual conference, saying “(h)e would be much in demand” at a number of CUNY campuses.

Sharad Karkhanis will not be silenced. He continues to speak out with a louder voice than ever and will fight to uphold his constitutional rights that are now in jeopardy. Fortunately in America we have the First Amendment right to criticize, satirize and dissent, as he has done with great verve in The Patriot Returns, blasting such preposterous appeals to bring convicted terrorists into the classroom. Defenders of the free speech rights of Karkhanis maintain that the lawsuit is a frivolous one, since O’Malley, one of the targets of Karkhanis’ political satire, was merely offended, as I have argued. The lawsuit has no constitutional basis since there is no law in the United States against being offended. Numerous blogs and articles in support of Karkhanis have been pouring in to the Free Speech at CUNY weblog expressing outrage at the academic elites who seek to silence all criticism and crush dissenting points of view. Professor Mitchell Langbert has been blogging up a storm as well. He brought up some interesting points about the incongruity of lawsuits and collegiality challenging PSC President Barbara Bowen to answer whether she believes it is within the bounds of collegiality for colleagues to sue one another.

While searching for a definition for “collegiality” I found an article that resonates with Langbert’s contention. Dr. Nicholas T. Kouchoukos, past president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, laments the disappearance of collegiality from his field. He defines collegiality as “respect for one's colleagues and for their professional endeavors,” and citing a case in point of its loss, he revealed professionals within the same specialty slugging it out in malpractice suits in court. One seems to find rotten apples in every barrel.

President Bowen never answered Langbert’s question, however he did get a very telling response from a defender of O’Malley, a CUNY Professor named David Arnow, who is on the Brooklyn College PSC executive committee and has been a member of the University Faculty Senate (UFS):

Defenders of Karkhanis just don't have the moral high ground to invoke 'collegiality'. As for law suits: for all its faults, the U.S. system of law towers over that of any other country I know. Law suits that redress wrongs are part of that system. If there really is a wrong, it ought to be redressed, shouldn't it? How would you right a wrong? Fisticuffs?

I don't know the details of Libel law, but I know that it is happily fairly limited, compared say to the U.K., and so the absurd lies you spin for the Sun are protected-- as they should be. Still, repeated false public accusations of specific criminal acts might satisfy the definition of libel. Your buddy may have crossed the line. Not to worry, I'm sure that the people you and he work for have very deep pockets.

Now, answer the questions that I posed below. Don't try to wriggle out of them: My first question for you is: Have you stopped molesting small children yet? And my second question is: Supposed I posed this question everywhere. Would you sue? Or would you take it in the collegial, satirical sense that it was perhaps intended?

Aside from innuendo, hypothetical molestation conundrums, and the lecture on libel law, it’s the first sentence that is so stunning in its pomposity that I need to address. The mention of the “moral high ground” betrays the elitism and phony righteousness so symptomatic of the PSC leadership who think they are on a mission to save the world. But the moral high ground is held by neither leftwing nor rightwing ideologues, who claim to determine the truth for everyone. Rather, it’s the other way around: the majority of the people of America determine the moral high ground. These fringe ideologues who think they hold the monopoly on truth and are smarter than the rest of us, are the same academic elites who would sue and silence outspoken pests like Karkhanis rather than offering a “collegial” rebuttal or debate. After Langbert offered him an opportunity for intelligent debate on the issues with a series of challenging questions, Arnow, in typical elitist fashion, shut down all further discussion with the following response:

You can put my email anywhere you like, but the gibberish above again evades my questions about whether you've stopped molesting small children and I am not going to waste any more time writing to you. I'm adding you to my spam filter.

From the lofty perch of his claim to the moral high ground, Arnow must believe defenders of Karkhanis, whom he claims are on the moral low ground just don’t merit a response. But it’s the lowly professor Karkhanis and his defenders who speak for the majority of Americans who hold the moral high ground. These are the decent hard working people who pay a lot of money to send their kids to college. They don’t want their kids to be lectured by convicted terrorists. Weather Underground terrorist Susan Rosenberg, convicted terrorist conspirator Mohammad Yousry, Lynne Stewart, Sami Al-Arian, Lori Berenson, Adam Habib and their ilk shouldn’t be promoting their bloodstained ideology in the classroom. The majority of Americans are disgusted with an academic elite that crushes dissent and free speech. Americans who want colleges free from this vermin and who want to ensure free speech for Sharad Karkahnis, are the ones who are now rallying to his side.

Karkhanis speaks for the vast majority of Americans from within the cloistered walls of an elitist institution that silences dissenting points of view. He exposes the clandestine shenanigans of the CUNY faculty union, the PSC, for all Americans to read on the pages of The Patriot Returns and he will never be silenced. The majority of Americans are on his side. Sharad Karkhanis indeed stands on the moral high ground.

Dancin' Sheikh to Sheikh?

2007-11-21T07:53:00.001-08:00

There is an interesting observation on a critical free speech and libel case at the Chesler Chronicles blog. There the ever-vigilant Phyllis Chesler comments on the case of Dr. Rachel Erenfeld, the Israeli-American scholar who has been sued by Sheik Kahlid Bin Mahfouz, a noted “libel tourist,” for the contents of her recent book Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed--and How to Stop It.

“Thus, Free speech and academic freedom are indeed under siege in the West—not because of western government censorship but because Islamists like Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz either sue authors and publishers or influence intellectual points of view by funding academic Institutes, organizations, and conferences.”

While we have no proof of any connections between the Sheikh and CUNY’s Susan O’Malley, we are struck by the similarities between his efforts to stifle speech aimed at militant Islamists, and her attempt to silence Sharad Karkhanis’s coverage of faculty advocacy for Mohammed Yousry and company.

Might it be that Prof. “Sue” and Bin Mahfouz have been dancing sheikh to sheikh?

Brutus

PS: Thanks to Candace de Russy at Phi Beta Cons for the links.

Why They'd Like to Silence Sharad

2007-11-20T20:25:00.000-08:00

Professor Mitch Langbert, another voice for sanity at the City University of New York, on why the faculty union wants to shut down Sharad and The Patriot Returns:

The Professional Staff Congress, CUNY's faculty union, has elected the "New Caucus", a group of left-wing extremists to its leadership. In his latest Patriot Returns, Sharad Karkhanis, who has been harassed with a law suit by "Sue" O'Malley, a member of the extremist group, takes the union to task. Karkhanis writes:

The concerns of Barbara Bowen and her fellow New Caucasians have never been limited to such issues as higher salaries, lower teaching loads, and better benefits, of course. These mundane matters often seem of secondary importance to larger political goals, such as ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and preventing one with Iran. Indeed, the Dear Leader was one of the featured speakers at United for Peace and Justice's October 27th march to Foley Square...

Karkhanis has a point, and once again, as always, serves a major public service through his newsletter. If New Caucus leader and union president Barbara Bowen expects to win Eliot Spitzer and his fellow Democrats over, might she not leave the attacks on the Democrats to Republicans? Bowen's combative approach has repeatedly failed. As a result, I have invited Randi Weingarten to commence a merger of her United Federation of Teachers with the Professional Staff Congress.

A Faculty Union Fluent in Doublespeak

2007-11-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

A recent feature in The New York Sun points to the political myopia of the doyennes of the PSC, CUNY’s would-be one party faculty union. Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and one of the founders of the radical New Caucus, has expressed support for Adam Habib, a South African scholar denied entry to the U.S. on the grounds of purported links with terrorism. Were Habib granted a visa, he would be in great demand as a speaker at CUNY’s Graduate Center and other venues, Dr. Piven suggested. At stake in the Habib case is the “violation of academic freedom.”

Our distinguished colleague’s comments are grounded on the principle that the free exchange of ideas, in this instance criticisms of American foreign policy, is central to academic life. This is a principle that all involved in the higher learning should endorse. Yet, to date, she has not made a public statement on the libel case filed by Prof. “Sue.” Are Habib’s rights to free speech somehow different than those of Karkhanis? Are the privileges of academic freedom to be granted only to right thinking (and left-leaning) figures like Habib, Lynne Stewart, Mohammed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg?

We’d welcome Distinguished Professor Piven’s support.

Brutus

The Return of THE PATRIOT RETURNS

2007-11-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

Despite the size of “Sue” O’Malley’s damages claim, and the disapproval of CUNY’s very own “Dear Leader,” Sharad Karkhanis will not be silenced. The latest number of his The Patriot Returns newsletter is now online. We welcome all those interested in the daffy, and dangerous, doings at the City University of New York to visit his site.

Brutus

"Sue" v. Sharad: Round Two

2007-11-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

On Friday, November 9th, attorneys representing Sharad Karkhanis filed, on his behalf, a formal notice of appearance in the case, along with a demand for a complaint, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York. This filing compels Susan O'Malley and her attorney to file her formal complaint, setting out in detail the factual basis for her claims, within 20 days.

Friends of Sharad, free speech at CUNY , and the First Amendment will be eager to see that complaint.

Brutus

Prof. "Sue": Public Statements by a Public Figure

2007-11-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

Lest anyone assume that Emeritus Professor Sharad Karkhanis has pulled his comments from thin air, the records of CUNY’s University Faculty Senate provide ample evidence to the contrary. At the April 5, 2005 plenary session of the UFS, chaired by Professor “Sue” O’Malley, the following resolution was passed:

“Statement on Recent Violations of Academic Freedom & Due Process

The University Faculty Senate of the City University of New York, committed to the First Amendment, in accordance with the AAUP definition of academic freedom, and to the belief that people are entitled to the State presumption of innocence, expresses its concern over local violations of personal and academic freedom that have resulted from political pressure in the current climate of fear.

We deplore the denial of due process for adjuncts in two recent cases, which in effect denies them academic freedom:

We deplore the decision by the Central Administration of CUNY to remove Mohammed Yousry in April 2002 from his post as an adjunct in Political Science at York College. Our disagreement with the Central Administration's decision in no way trivializes the federal charges against him, but addresses the Chancellery's refusal to initiate formal proceedings and to accord Mr. Yousry due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and all legal processes are exhausted.

We deplore the exclusion of Susan Rosenberg from any further teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice as a result of a decision in December 2004 by President Jeremy Travis in response to complaints by a police fraternal organization and without appropriate faculty consultation. President Travis offered no academic grounds for the exclusion, and his decision compromises the long-held academic tradition of faculty self-governance in selecting who shall teach and what shall be taught.

Similarly, we deplore the actions of School Chancellor Joel Klein in removing Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi on February 15, 2005, from continuing to participate in faculty development workshops on the Middle East for high school teachers following political attacks on his person and his scholarship in the NY press, and we commend Columbia President Lee Bollinger for his support of Professor Khalidi's academic freedom.

We draw the attention of trustees and administrators to the observation by Professor Morris Raphael Cohen in 1940, following the dismissal of Bertrand Russell from City College under pressure from political and religious groups: "The citizens of New York are facing a grave and momentous crisis. Shall the education of our youth remain in the hands of competent and properly trained educators or shall the appointment and removal of professors be controlled by popular clamor of the ignorant?"

It is inexcusable that 65 years later we have to ask the same question.”

At the time, O’Malley was serving as both chair of the Executive Committee and the entire UFS. In those capacities, she oversaw the drafting and passage of the resolution. She was also a sitting member of the Executive Council of the Professional Staff Congress. Since O’Malley and her radical colleagues took control of two of the most powerful institutions within the City University of New York, they’ve raised the cris de coeur that “academic freedom” was being violated when they’ve failed to have their way. Their understanding of the First Amendment protections is rather partisan, to say the least.

As the details of the UFS and PSC reign of errors come to more light in the course of Prof. “Sue’s” lawsuit, we hope those paying for CUNY (tuition payers and the tax paying public alike) will insist on accountability from its the trustees and administrators. At the least, they should insist that extremists like O’Malley and Bowen not receive subsidies in the form of released time for their political antics. These weird sisters should, of course, be as free as Sharad Karkhanis to pronounce and publish what they’d like. But why should it be on the public’s dime and time?

Brutus

What the H*ll is Going on at CUNY?

2007-11-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

Rather concerned comments about the Professional Staff Congress and Kingsborough Community College and the City University of New York at the RS: RedState blog:

Here We Go Again- More Education Unions against America
By pagar

...More info on how American unions are seeking to destroy Us thru our education system.
"The faculty union of the City University of New York known as the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has a penchant for aiding and abetting terrorists and supporting political causes with the member’s dues. Now determined to forever silence all criticism, one of the prominent union big wigs has just filed a $2 million lawsuit to shut down the one remaining gadfly, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis Professor Emeritus from Kingsborough Community College who has been tirelessly exposing the malfeasance of the PSC and the incompetence of its leaders in his influential internet newsletter The Patriot Returns."
"The subject of much of TPR’s biting satire is aimed at the union’s excessive promotion of a one-sided political agenda instead of winning better contracts for the members. TPR has carefully documented the PSC leadership’s pursuit of revolution instead of their jobs, elaborating on their campaigns to devote more time and resources to future global crusades. This includes such activities as mobilizing the membership to protest the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in New York. Additionally, the PSC has passed a resolution sympathizing with Hugo Chavez, sponsored a conference called Educators to Stop the War, calling for teachers to develop an anti-war curriculum. The PSC leadership has organized and funded New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for helping Peruvian Marxist terrorists, and donated thousands to the defense of Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad."
Read the entire article, and one will get a better understanding of how the unions that have taken over these colleges are intent on driving every student as far left as they can.
" Also past issues attacked O’Malley’s support for anti-religious Professor Timothy Shortell’s bid for chairmanship of the Sociology Department of Brooklyn College. He is noted for his claims that all religious people are “moral retards” and “an ugly, violent lot,” and statements, "Christians claim that theirs is faith based on love, but they'll just as soon kill you."
"As a free speech issue that rises above the plight of one poor professor in CUNY, who has paid his union dues for forty years and now frets over how to obtain the necessary legal funds to go to battle for his rights, it is an issue that threatens all concerned citizens and purveyors of opinions who write, blog and dissent in the free market of ideas in America."
As noted by some of the links, CUNY has had other problems with dissension in the ranks.
In an off-topic note, the subject of that link, K.C.Johnson has done so much for the cause of the Duke students charged by Nifong, at his Durham-in-Wonderland.blogspot.com
The articles and links document some scary going-ons with this union and the power it holds to destroy conservative facility and students. One needs to read all the links in the article to get the true feel of just how bad the situation is at the college.

CUNY’s Cause Célèbre-ty!

2007-11-10T15:07:00.000-08:00

Our “Sue” O’Malley makes it to the New York Post’s gossip page, Page Six!

MILITARY OPTION

November 6, 2007 -- WHILE one CUNY professor was making a failed attempt to land jobs there for convicted radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, her co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, Marymount Manhattan College was inviting Dr. John Alexander to speak there tomorrow. The former Green Beret, a senior fellow with the Defense Department's Joint Special Operations University and the Army War College, has advised the highest levels of government on intelligence matters and was a mentor to the minister of defense in Afghanistan. Alexander just returned from Rwanda, where he and his wife, Victoria, were tracking silverback mountain gorillas.

Life Ain't Easy for a Girl Named "Sue"

2007-11-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

More mullings about the O’Malley lawsuit from “Luther” at the the HazZzMat blog:
Friday, November 09, 2007
Union Local Sues a Satirist "Brother"

The faculty union of the City University of New York known as the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has a penchant for aiding and abetting terrorists and supporting political causes with the member’s dues. Now determined to forever silence all criticism, one of the prominent union big wigs has just filed a $2 million lawsuit to shut down the one remaining gadfly, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis Professor Emeritus from Kingsborough Community College who has been tirelessly exposing the malfeasance of the PSC and the incompetence of its leaders in his influential internet newsletter The Patriot Returns....Free Speech for Sharad, Phil Orenstein, Front Page Magazine, 11/9/2007
If you can't succeed in silencing a critic with shunning, threats, or denial of tenure, file a nuisance lawsuit. Dr. Karkhanis probably isn't surprised, but we should be disgusted by a faculty union representing people who claim to offer diverse viewpoints using legal action to silence a critic.
Name-calling may offend, but it never harms one’s life or limb, or sets fire to one’s home or property. Criticism may hurt someone’s feelings, but cannot injure one’s reputation. O’Malley has caused more damage to her reputation [as a union leader] by suing a distinguished retired professor for criticism, than the criticism itself has wrought....(Free Speech for Sharad, continued...)
Indeed...if you'd like to read what has caused such outrage, and cost so much lawyer time, at the CUNY Union Local, click her for Dr. Karkhanis's The Patriot Returns

Luther

There Once Was a Union Maid, Who Never Was Afraid?

2007-11-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

Candace de Russy at NRO’s Phi Beta Cons continues to monitor the the political motivations and machinations behind “Sue” O’Malley’s actions:

At Democracy Project, Phil Orenstein bitingly takes up the cause of Sharad Karkhanis, a professor emeritus at Kingsborough Community College, who (as I’ve noted) has recently been sued for libel by a longtime union leader. In his online newsletter, The Patriot Returns (TPR), Karkhanis has ceaselessly written of alleged malfeasance and incompetence on the part of the faculty union of the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). Orenstein claims the litigant, Professor Susan O’Malley, has “determined to forever silence all criticism … to shut down the one remaining gadfly.”
Felicitations to Orenstein for drawing scrutiny to the PSC’s execrable record. He traces its record of “pursuing revolution,” “aiding and abetting terrorists,” and “supporting political causes with the member's dues … instead of winning better contracts for the members.”

Well, "Sue," what about those "goons and ginks and company finks, and deputy sheriffs who made the raids?" If unions maids of yore could stand up to them, surely you can handle a little satire, no?

Brutus

An APB on O'Malley?

2007-11-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

A trenchant observation by one of New York’s Finest on the NYPD RANT Blog's Message Board:

In order to win this lawsuit, this O'Malley broad is going to have to show that Lynne Stewart, et al., are not, in fact, terrorists, or have terrorist connections.

What's she going to say in court---that Lynne Stewart is a pure as the driven snow? Bulls***. Also remember that the level of proof in civil court is a "preponderance of the evidence," a very easy level to make by a Plaintiff.

If I had to bet, if this thing goes to court, the other professor will have his court costs paid by O'Malley.

O'Malley forgot that when you're in a snake pit, you're going to be bit by a snake. And she's hanging out in a snake pit of terrorists.

We politely suggest that Ex-Trustee O’Malley make sure that any outstanding parking tickets are paid, that she obey all rules of the road if and when driving, that she not jay walk, litter, spit on the street or commit any other possible misdemeanor. A boy in blue might well be keeping a watch on our Professor “Sue.”

Brutus

Professor "Sue" O'Malley's Self-Censorship

2007-11-07T07:03:00.001-08:00

Further comments from Candace de Russy at NRO’s Phi Beta Cons
More on the Libel Suit over ‘Terror’

“As I’ve previously noted, a CUNY professor, Susan O'Malley, has slapped a fat defamation lawsuit on professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis.Karkhanis has chronicled what he calls O'Malley's “obsessive” exertions in trying to land jobs for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg. He wrote:
Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a nonconvicted, nonviolent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY? … Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?
Karkhanis maintains O'Malley went beyond the pale in trying to find a job for Yousry, who's out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for aiding Stewart in passing messages from 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel-Rahman. How does O'Malley respond? According to The New York Sun, she’s mum at the moment.”

Since it is autumn, of course, mums are in season.

Brutus

Free Speech for Sharad!

2007-11-07T06:36:00.001-08:00

From Phil Ornstein at the Democracy Project
November 7, 2007
The faculty union of the City University of New York known as the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has a penchant for aiding and abetting terrorists and supporting political causes with the member’s dues. Now determined to forever silence all criticism, one of the prominent union big wigs has just filed a $2 million lawsuit to shut down the one remaining gadfly, Dr. Sharad Karkhanis Professor Emeritus from Kingsborough Community College who has been tirelessly exposing the malfeasance of the PSC and the incompetence of its leaders in his influential internet newsletter The Patriot Returns.
The subject of much of TPR’s biting satire is aimed at the union’s excessive promotion of a one-sided political agenda instead of winning better contracts for the members. TPR has carefully documented the PSC leadership’s pursuit of revolution instead of their jobs, elaborating on their campaigns to devote more time and resources to future global crusades. This includes such activities as mobilizing the membership to protest the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in New York. Additionally, the PSC has passed a resolution sympathizing with Hugo Chavez, sponsored a conference called Educators to Stop the War, calling for teachers to develop an anti-war curriculum. The PSC leadership has organized and funded New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for helping Peruvian Marxist terrorists, and donated thousands to the defense of Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to TPR, the PSC even hosts an “International Committee” replete with a foreign policy spokesperson, who has issued public statements against economic and military aid to Israel and a statement condemning the war in Afghanistan, “joining in solidarity with the victims of U.S. military power,” namely the Taliban. The New York Sun, reported that while the leaders of the PSC have been running amok in politics, their union failed to deliver a new contract and in the past five years the member’s health and welfare fund reserves fell by 97% “with only a trickle of money remaining for faculty members' prescription drug, dental, and medical insurance plans.”
One of the union leaders, Professor Susan O’Malley, a member of the PSC executive committee, former chair of the University Faculty Senate and professor of English has been a regular target of Dr. Karkhanis’s irreverent discourse. Past issues of TPR have exposed O’Malley’s pleas to find a teaching position for convicted terrorist conspirator, Mohammad Yousry. TPR documented her protests against the firing of imprisoned Weather Underground terrorist Susan Rosenberg and her attempts to find Rosenberg a job at CUNY. Also past issues attacked O’Malley’s support for anti-religious Professor Timothy Shortell’s bid for chairmanship of the Sociology Department of Brooklyn College. He is noted for his claims that all religious people are “moral retards” and “an ugly, violent lot,” and statements, "Christians claim that theirs is faith based on love, but they'll just as soon kill you."
The legal claim focuses on several allegedly defamatory statements made in the March 12, 2007 issue of The Patriot Returns entitled: MOHAMMED ON HER MIND! Karkhanis wrote that O’Malley “is obsessed with finding jobs for terrorists and, in particular, for Mohammed Yousry” and “She does not worry about the "ordinary" adjunct ~ but she is worried about convicted terrorists!" and that “...she is recruiting naive, innocent members of the KCC faculty into her Queda-Camp, to infiltrate college and departmental Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY.” O’Malley’s lawyer claims that these and others are “false, damaging, and defamatory statements regarding Professor O'Malley” and that “(t)hey are intended to inflict harm through their falsehood. The statements were made to injure Professor O'Malley's reputation and to lower the opinion of her in the CUNY community.”
In a certified letter, O’Malley’s lawyer instructed Karkhanis “to retract the above defamatory statements immediately and to refrain from making any other defamatory statements.” However, Karkhanis is standing by every statement he has made saying that he would rather serve time in jail than retract his statements. He considers the lawsuit “an attempt to infringe on his freedom of speech” and views O’Malley as a public figure that he has a right to satirize and criticize.
TPR is an influential dissenting voice inside the CUNY community and functions as a check against the abuses of power of an omnipotent union that seeks to censor all criticism of the leadership. O’Malley who is on the “Editorial Collective” of the magazine Radical Teacher has earned the title from TPR, “The Queen of Released Time” for seeking union positions and political activities in order to be released from teaching assignments. The timing of this lawsuit is apparently calculated to benefit O’Malley and the union leaders by shutting down The Patriot Returns in anticipation of the coming campus chapter PSC elections and the 2008 university-wide union elections. A campus free of dissention from the pages of TPR would pave the way to PSC incumbent election victories.
Although this is a case of silencing political opposition, putting politics aside, all in all this is a not a partisan issue of left vs. right. It is not a money issue either, for what could a prominent union leader gain by suing a retired scholar with two cents to his name. As a free speech issue that rises above the plight of one poor professor in CUNY, who has paid his union dues for forty years and now frets over how to obtain the necessary legal funds to go to battle for his rights, it is an issue that threatens all concerned citizens and purveyors of opinions who write, blog and dissent in the free market of ideas in America. It is an issue that should concern both conservatives and liberals alike. The academic elites are clamping down on overly opinionated Americans, attempting to humble and scare voices of all political stripes into silence.
But the bottom line is that Karkhanis has simply offended Susan O’Malley. In today’s climate of reverse McCarthyism, anyone who is insensitive to a person’s feelings is labeled a fascist, racist, homophobe or Islamophobe. The elites have put the albatross of political correctness around our necks censoring offensive views, remarks, jokes and in this case Karkhanis’s political satire in TPR. O’Malley, a victim of nothing more than allegedly repugnant opinions, chose to terminate free speech with a lawsuit, rather than responding in kind and continuing the debate. But this is nothing new. For over a decade O’Malley and the union leadership have been ordering TPR to stop publication, and have successfully shut down all other forums for holding the union leaders accountable for their actions. But Karkhanis refuses to be silenced.
The United Federation Of Teachers (UFT), New York City’s largest teacher’s union was founded in the 1960’s in a less litigious climate than today. In those days, the union, frequently the target of dissention and vicious attacks against its leaders, contracts, and policy, settled their disputes on the delegate assembly floor, often with rancorous debate, name-calling and accusations, without resorting to censorship or lawsuits. The critics of Albert Shanker, president of the UFT, branded him with far worse epithets than being lambasted as a recruiter for terrorists. Shanker was vilified as a racist, militant extremist and depicted as becoming so power hungry that he was feared to be intent on destroying the planet if he got hold of a nuclear device which was the scenario presented in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper (1973). However, Shanker never took Woody Allen to court for public defamation and injuring his reputation with his irreverent humor.
Name-calling may offend, but it never harms one’s life or limb, or sets fire to one’s home or property. Criticism may hurt someone’s feelings, but cannot injure one’s reputation. O’Malley has caused more damage to her reputation by suing a distinguished retired professor for criticism, than the criticism itself has wrought.
Just as Albert Shanker, or any prominent figure in the spotlight, O’Malley is a union leader who is in the public arena. She is fair game for criticism of her actions and has to take the hits. In a democracy one is generally held directly accountable to those she serves. She has made some unwise and foolish decisions, like attempting to find teaching jobs for convicted terrorists. If she can’t take the heat and be accountable to dues paying members for her actions, she should go home and take up knitting, an enjoyable craft that will garner no antagonism or public criticism. No longer would she be the target of Dr. Karkhanis mocking satire on the pages of The Patriot Returns. If Professor Susan O’Malley would rather remain in the public arena, she should stand up and take it, lick her wounds and stop bellyaching. Instead of behaving like a sniveling child, she should offer a rebuttal to TPR’s accusations. However, when all's said and done, she should be very, very ashamed of herself and retract this frivolous lawsuit at once, which even she herself has deemed,“very, very silly.”

Legal Scholars Take Note of O'Malley v. Karkhanis

2007-11-06T22:47:00.000-08:00

From Professor Paul Secunda at the Workplace Prof Blog
November 5, 2007

CUNY Defamation Suit as an Attack on Academic Freedom?

The intersection of academic freedom and defamation of another professor is a tricky area.
Take this case from last week's Inside Higher Ed:
No one could accuse Sharad Karkhanis of pulling his punches. The emeritus professor at Kingsborough Community College publishes The Patriot Returns, an online newsletter that critiques the leadership of the faculty union at the City University of New York. The overall thrust of the newsletter is that the Professional Staff Congress, which is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, is poorly run, focused too much on leftist politics to be effective on behalf of its members.
By carefully monitoring meeting minutes, newsletters, blogs and the like, Karkhanis acts as a self-appointed watchdog of the union. And he can bark. He mixes his analysis with choice nicknames. Barbara Bowen, the president of the union, is dubbed “Dear Leader,” after the North Korean dictator.
One of Karkhanis’s other favorite targets has been Susan O’Malley, a professor of English at Kingsborough and a member of the union’s executive board. The newsletter has dubbed her “The Queen of Released Time” for her ability to win time off from teaching for her union or Faculty Senate duties. O’Malley is now fighting back — she’s sued Karkhanis for $2 million, charging him with libel and defamation. To O’Malley, the issue is one of her damaged reputation. Given that faculty unions normally pride themselves on defending the right of dissenting professors — especially those who poke fun or criticize those in power — some professors see the lawsuit as an attack on academic freedom . . . .
Several CUNY faculty members who have been critical of their union have been blogging in defense of Karkhanis, arguing that his blog deserves First Amendment protection and suggesting that leaders of the union are nervous about the popularity of his newsletter, particularly given active opposition that came close to unseating the union leadership in the last election and that is expected to mount another challenge soon.
So stinging satire or a meritorious claim for damage to reputation? And where exactly does academic freedom start and libel begin? And finally, is O'Malley a "public figure," so malice has to be shown to support a defamation claim consistent with the First Amendment?
PS

Libel, Satire or Terrorism at CUNY?

2007-11-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

Encouraging words from the Center for the American University’s excellent Minding the Campus site by Anthony Paletta:

Sharad Karkhanis, professor emeritus at Kingsborough Community College, is a vitriolic critic of the faculty union at the City University of New York. He's accused Susan O'Malley, another professor at Kingsborough, of seeking to "recruit terrorists" to teach at CUNY. O'Malley has responded with a two million dollar libel suit, reports the New York Post.
Karkhanis considers his writing to be satire. It's not particularly civil language; but then again, as KC Johnson has pointed out, two of O'Malley's prospective hires were terrorists, or quite near to being ones - Susan Rosenberg "was a member of a terrorist organization" and Mohammed Yousry "was accused and convicted of aiding a convicted terrorist." Not all, predictably, agree on the substance of the comments: John K. Wilson, for one, has called them "idiotic" but he does dub the idea of a two million dollar libel suit in response as "frivolous and absurd."
Fortunately, others agree; a new blog, "Free Speech At CUNY" has ably taken up Karkhanis' case.
"Free Speech At CUNY" offers some delightful background on Karkhanis' assailant. O'Malley, former university faculty senate chair, former faculty representative on the CUNY board of trustees, and an all-around perennial in CUNY union posts, was the arranger of a 2004 CUNY conference on "Defining and Defending Academic Freedom"; the site provides the text of numerous faculty union statements on "dissent" and "academic freedom" in which O'Malley, as part of the union leadership, seems to have had a hand. The current case is useful in clarifying what she actually meant; freedom for her, libel suits for her opponent.

From Obscurity to Celebrity: "Sue" O'Malley Hits the Big Time!

2007-11-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

From the wire services of United Press International and Britain’s Earthtimes:

Prof. sues colleague for alleged libel

NEW YORK, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A City University of New York professor is suing a colleague who criticized her for allegedly trying to "recruit terrorists" for teaching positions.
Susan O'Malley claims in her lawsuit that professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis defamed her by lobbing accusations that she has an "obsession with finding jobs for terrorists" in recent issues of a newsletter he mails to faculty members of the city university system, the New York Post reported Monday.
Karkhanis wrote on the topic of O'Malley's efforts to find employment in CUNY for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant, Mohammed Yousry, and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg.
"Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a non-convicted, non-violent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY?" he wrote. "Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?"
Karkhanis wrote O'Malley "is recruiting naive ... faculty into her Qaida-Camp to infiltrate ... Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission -- to recruit terrorists in CUNY. Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted and freed-on-bail terrorist-friends."
The suit claims Karkhanis' accusations are libelous.

After years of (successfully avoiding) laboring in academic obscurity at Kingsborough Community College, Susan O’Malley now seems poised on the verge international celebrity. God Save Our Queen!

Brutus

The Sounds of Silence

2007-11-05T09:34:00.001-08:00

The "Sue" O’Malley lawsuit is certainly generating attention in online, as well as print, media:

From the the New York Times City Room
“A professor at Kingsborough Community College, Susan O’Malley, has filed a $2 million lawsuit against an emeritus professor there, Sharad Karkhanis, accusing him of defaming her by accusing her of having an “obsession with finding jobs for terrorists” in recent issues of a newsletter he’s been e-mailing to CUNY faculty members for 15 years. Mr. Karkhanis called the lawsuit meritless and said he would fight it. [New York Post]”

From the University Professionals of Illinois
"Muzzling a Watchdog? -- No one could accuse Sharad Karkhanis of pulling his punches. The emeritus professor at Kingsborough Community College publishes The Patriot Returns, an online newsletter that critiques the leadership of the faculty union at the City University of New York. The overall thrust of the newsletter is that the Professional Staff Congress, which is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, is poorly run, focused too much on leftist politics to be effective on behalf of its members. (Inside Higher Ed, Nov. 2) “

In light of the celebrity—or perhaps notoriety?—that Professor O’Malley has craved lo’ these many years, it is quite surprising that she is now not available for comment. Might it be that her attorneys are muzzling the PSC’s main muzzler?

Brutus

PS: Happy Birthday, Art Garfunkel!

A New York POST-ing on THE PATRIOT

2007-11-05T05:30:00.000-08:00

From the pages of the New York POST

CUNY PROF WAR
LIBEL SUIT OVER 'TERROR'

By DAREH GREGORIAN

November 5, 2007 -- A CUNY professor has filed a $2 million lawsuit against a fellow Ph.D. who's been lambasting her for allegedly trying to "recruit terrorists" to teach within the City University system.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Susan O'Malley charges that professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis defamed her by accusing her of having an "obsession with finding jobs for terrorists" in recent issues of a newsletter he's been e-mailing to CUNY faculty members for 15 years.
Citing O'Malley's efforts to land jobs for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, Karkhanis wrote:

"Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a nonconvicted, nonviolent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY? . . . Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?"

The retired Kingsborough Community College political-science professor said O'Malley, an English professor there, "is recruiting naive . . . faculty into her Qaeda-Camp to infiltrate . . . Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY. Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted and freed-on-bail terrorist-friends."
O'Malley believes the terrorist-recruiter claim to be libelous. But an unapologetic Karkhanis, 73, told The Post: "Give me a break. I'm going to fight this vigorously."
He added that he considers what he wrote to be satire but that he was also "raising questions I believe are appropriate."
He said O'Malley crossed the line when she tried to land a job for Yousry, who's out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for helping Stewart disseminate messages from 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel-Rahman.

O'Malley, on leave from CUNY, could not be reached for comment.

Tempus Fugit?

2007-11-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

In the Professional Staff Congress’s archive of academic freedom resolutions one can find the following:

“Resolution in Defense of the PSC Leadership’s Stand on Dissent and Academic Freedom

Presented by Steve Leberstein, Manny Ness and Miriam Thompson, February 28, 2002

Whereas, the leadership has shown strength and resilience in guiding the union’s diverse constituencies’ efforts to influence the mission and course of the public university, and

Whereas, the leadership has steadfastly championed the right of the CUNY student body and its faculty and staff to academic freedom and uncensored public discourse about major public policy issues, and

Whereas, the leadership has been attacked for the principled stand in defending our members when they were vilified by the press, the Chancellor, the Board of Trustees and the Mayor for questioning government policy, and

Whereas, the leadership tried to temper the stance of the University administration at a time when questioning of the government and dissent were imperiled, and to protect the welfare of its students, staff and faculty by so doing; now therefore be it

Resolved, that the Delegate Assembly express its support for the PSC leadership’s defense of the First Amendment and our members’ and students’ academic freedom.”

The PSC’s Leadership included in 2002, as it does in 2007, Barbara Bowen and "Sue" O’Malley. If CUNY’s own Charybdis and Silly were so ardent in their defense of the First Amendment some five years ago, what has changed? If Professor O’Malley was an impassioned champion of “uncensored public discourse” some five years ago, where has that passion gone? Time flies, we admit, but memories and moral claims do linger.

Brutus

Desperately Seeking Susan; or, Ms. O'Malley's Misadventures in the Cause of Academic Freedom

2007-11-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

From the enchanted groves of the AAUP's Academe, Mar/Apr 2005
by Jordan E. Kurland

"The theme of the 2004 fall conference of the City University of New York's University Faculty Senate, held on December 3 at Hunter College, was "Defining and Defending Academic Freedom." The conference program, arranged by faculty senate chair Susan O'Malley, featured several AAUP experts on academic freedom, including past and present chairs of the Association's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. University of Virginia law professor Robert O'Neil, who is also director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, a former Committee A chair, and the current chair of the AAUP's Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis, reviewed post-September 11 threats to academic freedom in specific incidents on campuses and in new federal and state laws and regulations. University of Illinois law professor Matthew Finkin, also a former Committee A chair and chair of the committee that investigated the recent case of CUNY adjunct instructor Mohamed Yousry, discussed that case in the context of previous AAUP investigations involving CUNY and of broader issues of academic freedom and due process affecting adjunct CUNY faculty. The investigating committee's report appeared in the November-December 2004 issue of Academe. Historian Joan Wallach Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study, who is currently Committee A chair, led one of several conference workshops and spoke briefly about academic freedom problems now facing the country in general and CUNY in particular. The AAUP's associate general secretary Jordan Kurland also led a workshop. City College historian Stephen Leberstein, a Committee A member, provided a digital presentation of an exhibit, "The Struggle for Free Speech and Academic Freedom at CCNY, 1931-42," that was on view at City College in the fall and was scheduled for showing at the Graduate Center in February and March."

It appears that Professors O'Malley and Scott would like to give a new meaning to "A-type personalities." Making the academy safe for Mohammed Yousry certainly seemed to be front and center in O'Malley's mind. Quite the strange poster boy for progressive academics!

Defamed in Darwin? Maligned in Melbourne? Parodied in Perth?

2007-11-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Since Susan "Sue" O’Malley seems dedicated to silencing all critics, foreign and domestic, her attorneys may wish to add Australia’s John J. Ray to her ever-lincreasing enemies list. Dr. Ray, who posts his virtual opinions on the EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL blog, has been recycling materials related to O’Malley’s admiration of and advocacy for Mohammed Yousry from such sites as Phi Beta Cons, which, in turn, quote from The Patriot Returns, among others.

With such inflammatory leads as “Love of Terrorists in U.S. Academe,” and such direct quotes as Professor Senator O’Malley’s on October 24, 2006—“Do you think CUNY could hire Mohammed Yousry? What do you think? I have his phone number. I could find out if he wants to be hired and if anyone would like to try to hire him”— John Ray seems about as liable as Sharad Karkhanis to a libel suit. It is not clear that O’Malley’s attorneys are licensed as either barristers or solicitors down under ,but what matter? With the current exchange rate, an additional $2,000,000 suit would net some 2,180,000AD: still a tidy sum after transportation and court costs. As to the prospects of winning in an antipodean court? Australians, we’ve been told, are still very fond of the Queen.

Brutus

How to Lose Friends and Not Influence People

2007-11-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

Advice to "Sue" O’Malley from John K. Wilson at College Freedom

Friday, November 02, 2007
Libel Suits Are Not a Way to Protect Academic Freedom
InsideHigherEd reports on the case of a libel suit at City University of New York. I support Susan O’Malley’s defense of the academic freedom of Mohammad Yousry, and I believe Sharad Karkhanis’ attacks on her are idiotic and juvenile. Nevertheless, this libel suit is both frivolous and absurd, and to call a libel suit aimed at silencing critics a defense of “academic freedom” is obscene. Both conservatives and liberals on campus have faced attacks in the form of libel suits. It’s time for academics, left and right, to get together and agree that, morally speaking, all libel suits are a violation of the academic standards of free expression we should all embrace. I’m planning to write a book about the threat of libel suits to free expression, and I encourage with similar stories to contact me at collegefreedom@yahoo.com.

Doctor Bowen and Ms. Hide

2007-11-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

The Professional Staff Congress appears to be of (at least) two minds when it comes to questions of free speech and academic freedom. At times, it is vigilant and vociferous when detecting and denouncing threats to these cherished rights on any of CUNY’s nineteen campuses. The union even has its very own academic freedom committee:

“Academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas and information are at the heart of a university and the key to creating an environment for learning. Protection for these freedoms must be among our highest priorities.”

In 2005, the union’s president, Barbara Bowen, quarreled quite publicly (and quite bitterly) with the university’s chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, over less than friendly press coverage of some of her radical confreres. CUNY’s crop of critics of capitalism, racism and patriarchy seem to have rather thin skins these days. Indeed, Professors Bowen, O’Malley and company requested that the American Association of University Professors investigate the supposedly sorry state of academic freedom at CUNY, with an eye toward censuring the university. No such sanctions have been forthcoming.

At other junctures, however, neither the Bowen-dominated PSC nor the O’Malley-led University Faculty Senate have been so fastidious about faculty rights. When our indefatigable colleague Robert “KC” Johnson fell afoul of "academic terrorists" at Brooklyn College on his way to tenure, the union offered him but the shortest of shrifts. The Hillary Clinton (for Senator) button on his book bag did not absolve him of the sins of insisting on multiple political perspectives at a post-9/11 teach in. Susan O’Malley denounced Chancellor Goldstein’s decision to grant Johnson tenure (and preserve CUNY’s reputation) as part of a process that one judicious observer called a case of libel. It seems that some libels are more serious than others.

Now some four years after the Johnson imbroglio, the sisterhood of usual suspects is at it again. The reasons why, at this late date, "Sue" O’Malley’s amour-propre has been so damaged by the satiric shafts of The Patriot Returns will, in due course, come to light. So, too, will the benefits to Barbara Bowen should her most consistent and trenchant critic be silenced. Since the issues involved in the O’Malley v. Karkhanis case are not limited to CUNY, but resonate across the American academy, we hope that many will take notice. Ms. Hide's recent comments notwithstanding, there is nothing "silly" about her lawsuit.

Brutus

Does It Depends on the Meaning of What "Free" Is?

2007-11-03T12:41:00.001-07:00

From e-pages of the New York Teacher come examples of the PSC’s passionate commitment to the First Amendment:

Higher ed union defends free speech
The Professional Staff Congress, representing academic and professional staff at the City University of New York, scored several First Amendment victories recently.
The union, led by President Barbara Bowen, went to bat for members at Baruch College, Kingsborough Community College and the College of Staten Island.
At Baruch College, the administration had issued a gag order to prevent staff from speaking to the media without getting permission from the college. PSC objected to the demand, which was reminiscent of an order issued — and since rescinded — at LaGuardia CC.
After Patrick Lloyd of Kingsborough CC was suspended from two online discussion lists, the union filed improper practice charges with the state Public Employment Relations Board. Lloyd had been reprimanded for circulating union literature and discussing the union's upcoming elections. The college settled on the matter.
When Irwin Blatt, a PSC retiree and adjunct professor at CSI testified on behalf of a colleague at a discrimination hearing, the college cut Blatt's hours at the school. He was later awarded $170,000.
— PSC Clarion

Why then their reluctance to take an unambiguous stand for the First Amendment rights of Sharad Karkahis, a dues paying member of the Retirees Chapter? Surely President Bowen and her supporters would not play favorites in so serious a matter as this, would they?

Brutus

Susan O'Malley: An Accidental "Libel Tourist?"

2007-11-03T11:02:00.001-07:00

Timely commentary from Critical Mass :

Libel tourism at CUNY
We've read a lot in the news lately about "libel tourism," or the habit alleged terror financiers have of using the accommodating English courts to mount--and win--spurious libel suits against those who purport to expose their ties to terror. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil, has been a target of one of these, and is now defending her free speech rights in the American courts. And over the summer, Cambridge University Press became so worried about a similar suit that it recalled and pulped Alms for Jihad, a book about ties between Muslim charities and terrorism.
Now, in a curious academic twist, a CUNY English professor and faculty union leader is doing some local libel tourism, suing a fellow CUNY professor who has satirically attacked her for her efforts to ensure the academic employment of convicted terrorists such as former Weatherman Susan Rosenberg.
Susan O'Malley is a frequent target of Sharad Karkhanis, whose online newsletter charts--and regularly pillories-- the antics of CUNY's faculty union, which he regards as both incompetent and ideologically biased. Karkhanis has devoted special attention to O'Malley. And she doesn't like it.
Expressing sharply worded criticism of O'Malley's work for the union, Karkhanis's writing would appear to be nothing more outlandish than an exercise of his free speech rights, not to mention his academic freedom. But there are a lot of academics out there who view unwelcome criticism as a form of "assault" (the word is everywhere in debates about such things). They reason from that overblown characterization, which misconstrues words as weapons, that hurtful language is an actionable violation of one's person. And then they get onto the terrain that leads them to craft speech codes and, in this case, to sue.
The doublespeak surrounding the lawsuit is fascinating. It's become common for defenders of an academic status quo that is in many ways indefensible to accuse critics of that status quo of threatening academic freedom. That's what the AAUP did in its Freedom in the Classroom statement. It's what the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University does in its recent statement. And it's what O'Malley is claiming now--even though the facts suggest that if anyone is threatening open debate and academic freedom, it's her.
Here's O'Malley's lawyer, speaking to Inside Higher Ed: "What the Web site is trying to do is to silence Susan O'Malley by branding her a terrorist, which is the exact opposite of a free debate." Translation: O'Malley wishes to silence her critic by accusing him of trying to silence her; she doesn't like his criticism, and rather than respond to him, she's trying to shut him down--and make him pay.
Also speaking to IHE, KC Johnson notes that the CUNY union now stands at an ethical crossroads; how it responds to O'Malley's suit will say a great deal about whether it's really committed to the academic freedom of its members. That will, in turn, reveal whether what the union really wants to do is use academic freedom to promote some views while suppressing others. Noting that in the past, "PSC president Barbara Bowen has suggested that academic freedom protected" a CUNY professor's right to label religious people "moral retards," Johnson now asks a pointed question: "Will she now similarly apply her flexible definition of the concept, and rebuke O'Malley's attempt to silence Karkhanis?"
I don't want to make light of the sharpness of Karkhanis' characterization of O'Malley. But I do want to stress that the First Amendment makes lots and lots of room for sharp characterizations; libel law in turn makes particularly large allowances for public figures, on the understanding that in a free society, a lot of flak is going to be directed their way.
There's more on the developing case at Inside Higher Ed, at Cliopatria, and at the new blog, Free Speech at CUNY.
Meanwhile, if you are inclined to more abstract considerations, you might wish to meditate on the broader question of how it is that we have lost our ability to comprehend and tolerate satire. In the comments at IHE, "Frizbane Manley" reproduces remarks he once delivered to young academics:
I'm leading up to my advice to young faculty members. You young folks in graduate school and in your first positions as assistant professors, however you structure your careers, do not, under any circumstances, write parody or satire. Eschew irony! Take my word for it, you will be writing in an environment in which sarcasm, biting wit, and paradox will confuse your colleagues, anger your chair and dean, and infuriate your president. And the legislators who vote on bills providing financial support for your university ... well, du-uuh. Were Jonathan Swift your colleague, 'A Modest Proposal' and 'Gulliver's Travels' would forever block his progress toward promotion and tenure.
It's not that these academics and legislators object to satire and irony, per se; it's simply that they donâ€™t understand it ... they are forced to take it at face value ... the curse of the intellectually challenged.
One is reminded of a scene in the Steve Martin classic, Roxanne. Martin, in his guise as local fire chief, is walking a naked Daryl Hannah home after she has been locked out of her house. A hedge is between them, for propriety's sake. "Nobody had a coat?" Hannah/Roxanne asks. "You said you didn't want a coat," Martin replies. "Why would I not want a coat?" Roxanne repeats. "You said you didn't want a coat," Martin repeats. "I was being ironic," Roxanne says, to which Martin responds, "Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a, a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was getting tired of being stared at."

http://www.erinoconnor.org/

THE PATRIOT draws friendly FIRE!

2007-11-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

From our very good friends at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

CUNY Professor Sued For Libel
by Luke Sheahan
November 2, 2007
As we reported in September, Susan O’Malley, a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Kingsboro Community College, had threatened to bring a libel lawsuit against CUNY Emeritus Professor Sharad Karkhanis. The suit has now been filed to the tune of two million dollars. Karkhanis has been an outspoken critic of O’Malley. He claimed in The Patriot Returns, his online newsletter for members of the CUNY community, that O’Malley was trying to “bring in all her indicted, convicted, and freed-on-bail terrorist friends” to the university. This accusation followed O’Malley’s defense of Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist and former member of the radical Weather Underground, and Mohammed Yousry, a CUNY adjunct professor convicted in the Lynne Stewart case. Karkhanis reported that she even suggested that her institution should hire Yousry.

O’Malley has held various leadership positions within the CUNY government, including head of the faculty senate. For all intents and purposes, therefore, she is a public figure. Criticism of public figures has a long history of enjoying First Amendment protection. As CUNY Professor KC Johnson explains at the History News Network,
Karkhanis’ rhetoric, obviously, can be over-the-top. That said, at all points in the last decade, O’Malley has been a public official, repeatedly running for union and University-wide offices on slates that Karkhanis (and lots of other CUNY profs) have opposed. Mockery in election campaigns has long been recognized as protected under the First Amendment.
A spokesman for the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty union, claimed in an Inside Higher Ed article that the organization is a “strong defender of free speech,” but suggested that accusing someone of terrorist ties in a post-9/11 world may meet the legal standards for libel. This is a dubious argument if I’ve ever heard one, as KC Johnson notes,
If describing the case exactly as the plaintiff has in her filing while hinting that in “a post-9/11 world” some forms of political satire might enjoy less protection than before the terrorist attacks represents the CUNY faculty union’s position as a “strong defender of free speech,” I’d hate to see the PSC’s approach when it doesn’t defend free speech.
Candace De Russy has covered this ridiculous case at Phi Beta Cons here, and Brooklyn College Professor Mitchell Langbert has some interesting insights at his blog, here and here.

In certain cases, like this one, FIRE draws on our Legal Network to help people find appropriate legal representation, and we are pleased that we have been able to help Professor Karkhanis thus far.

Academic Freedom at CUNY: Ad Hoc or Ad Hominem?

2007-11-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

At the same time that her attorney was preparing a $2,000,000 defamation suit against Emeritus Professor Karkhanis, "Sue" O'Malley was mounting the virtual barricades once more. The former chair of the University Faculty Senate, former ex-officio member of CUNY's Board of Trustees, and present Professional Staff Congress Community College Officer was a signatory no. 177 to an online petition by the "Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University"

http://defend.university.googlepages.com/home

This group, organized by O'Malley's AAUP comrade-in-arms Joan Scott, is concerned with the presence and pressure of outside groups who have become embroiled in on-campus curricular and personnel issues. In response, Scott, O'Malley and such other CUNY luminaries as Anthony Alessandrini (Kingsborough), Bonnie Anderson (Brooklyn College), Sandi Cooper (College of Staten Island), and Timothy Shortell (Brooklyn College) have observed that:

"The suppression of free speech undermines academic freedom and subverts the norms of academic life. It poses a serious threat to institutions of higher education in the United States. The university should be a place where different interpretations can be explored and competing ideas exchanged. Academic freedom means not only the right to pursue a variety of interpretations, but the maintenance of standards of truth and acceptability by one’s peers."

In response, they pledge:

"to vigorously promote our views in the media and through the Internet, and to explain the importance of academic freedom to a sustainable and vibrant democracy"

And well they should!

One does wonder, however, why Susan O'Malley is so adamant about standing up for free speech in the face of criticisms by "groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel," while also attempting to silence Sharad Karkhanis for circulating statements made by her concerning Mohammed Yousry. Might it be that this erstwhile professor of English has taken to heart Ralph Waldo Emerson's comments about foolish consistency and little minds? Or perhaps there is a more substantive difference between ad hoc and ad hominem instances of academic freedom?

Clarifications and/or explanations would be most appreciated.

Brutus

PSC: It's OK To Restrict Speech "In a Post-9/11 World"

2007-11-02T14:23:00.001-07:00

From Inside Higher Ed:

Dorothee Benz, a spokeswoman for the Professional Staff Congress, said via e-mail that the union “is not a party to Susan O’Malley’s lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis. We are unfamiliar with its details and cannot judge its legal merits.”

As to the newsletter and its author’s rights, she said: “The PSC is a strong defender of free speech, and we defend Karkhanis’s right to free speech. The PSC itself has been a frequent target of Karkhanis’s vitriol, and much of what he has said about us is inaccurate and repugnant, but we have never questioned his right to free speech.”

Benz added, however: “Free speech, however, has limits, as any first year law student knows. O’Malley’s case concerns one of those limits, where the right to free speech comes up against the harm caused by libelous statements. Whether accusing someone of aiding and training terrorists, in a post-9/11 world, rises to meet the legal standards that define libel is up to the courts to decide.”

Read the whole story here.

New York Sun on O'Malley's "Very, Very Silly" Lawsuit

2007-11-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

Annie Karni reports,

A former head of the faculty senate at the City University of New York is suing an emeritus professor for $2 million for accusing her of recruiting terrorists to teach at the university and campaigning for administrative positions to avoid teaching classes herself.

Susan O'Malley is accusing professor Sharad Karkhanis of libel and defamation for writing in a widely distributed anti-union newsletter that she was "obsessed" with finding jobs for terrorists at the university. Mr. Karkhanis, a former professor of political science at Kingsborough Community College, wrote that Ms. O'Malley was "recruiting naïve, innocent members of the KCC faculty into her Queda-Camp to infiltrate college and departmental Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission — to recruit terrorists in CUNY."

Mr. Karkhanis made the claim last spring after Ms. O'Malley, a professor of English at the Brooklyn college and an officer of the faculty union, proposed to rehire Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic-language translator convicted of supporting terrorist activities. He was fired from York College.

"Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted, and freed-on-bail terrorist friends" to the university, Mr. Karkhanis wrote in the newsletter, the Patriot Returns.

Mr. Karkhanis also criticized Ms. O'Malley for defending the right of an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, Susan Rosenberg, to teach at the school after press reports showed that she was a member of a radical group, the Weather Underground, and had served 16 years in prison for keeping explosives in her apartment. The Patriot Returns is a newsletter that has been distributed since 1992 to about 13,000 faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees at CUNY, and is available online. A lawyer for Ms. O'Malley, Joseph Carasso, said in a letter to Mr. Karkhanis that the statements were made with actual malice and intended to "inflict harm through their falsehood."
Mr. Karkhanis said he viewed the lawsuit, which was filed in state Supreme Court last month, as an attempt to infringe on his freedom of speech. He said he would rather serve time in jail than retract his statements.
The professor defended his use of the phrase "Queda-Camp," saying it was meant as satire, and he said it is his right to criticize a leader at CUNY.

"She's a public figure, and I have a right to say that, based on the evidence I have and the pattern I've seen of this woman," Mr. Karkhanis said. "Why would someone try to assist the terrorist people when you have good Americans who are looking for the job?"

A professor of business and economics at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, said Mr. Karkhanis was acting within his rights. "Sharad is an extremely influential force," Mr. Langbert said. "The union, an ingrown left-wing group, has every motivation to try to silence him. Getting him embroiled in a lawsuit like this would be advantageous to the union leadership."

A spokeswoman for the Professional Staff Congress, Dorothee Benz, said yesterday that the union had nothing to do with the lawsuit.

Ms. O'Malley, reached at her home in Brooklyn, said she did not want to discuss the case. "It's all very, very silly," she said.

No trial date has been set.

PhiBetaCons on the O'Malley Suit

2007-11-02T14:17:00.001-07:00

From Candace DeRussy:

A former head of the faculty senate at the City University of New York, Kingsboro Community College Professor Susan O’Malley, has filed a $ 2 million libel suit against her most biting critic, Emeritus Professor Sharad Karkhanis. The latter has accused her of recruiting terrorists to teach at the university and campaigning for administrative positions to avoid teaching classes herself.

Karkhanis made the accusation after O'Malley proposed to rehire Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic-language translator convicted of supporting terrorist activities. He was fired from York College.

Karkhanis also criticized O'Malley for defending the right of an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, Susan Rosenberg, to teach at the school. Rosenberg was a member of a radical group, the Weather Underground, and had served 16 years in prison for keeping explosives in her apartment.

A professor of business and economics at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, maintains Karkhanis was acting within his rights. "Sharad is an extremely influential force," Langbert comments in The New York Sun. "The union, an ingrown left-wing group, has every motivation to try to silence him. Getting him embroiled in a lawsuit like this would be advantageous to the union leadership."

Robert KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College cites the defamation suit as yet another example of the academic left’s lack of commitment to free speech.

Contact Judge Judy?

2007-11-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

From Brooklyn College professor Mitchell Langbert:

Susan O'Malley, a former officer of the Professional Staff Congress and part of the inside clique that dominates CUNY's university faculty senate and the Professional Staff Congress, has filed a law suit that aims to suppress Karkhanis's speech and academic freedom. Karkhanis is the editor of a newsletter, Patriot Returns, that has been critical of O'Malley and of the PSC leadership.

On October 23 I contacted PSC president Barbara Bowen with the following question:

"Dear President Bowen: I am working on a blog about the O'Malley v. Karkhanis law suit. I was wondering if you would care to comment on it. In particular, what is the role of "collegiality" in O'Malley's decision to sue; and do you believe that law suits are an integral part of collegiality?"

"Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D."

However, President Bowen has not responded.

According to the Sun, O'Malley has described her own case as "very silly". I hope O'Malley's attorney is aware that "silly" or frivolous law suits are wrong.

I have contacted the American Association University Professors' interim general secretary Ernst Benjamin with the following inquiry:

>"Dear General Secretary Benjamin:

"Has the AAUP taken a position on Susan O'Malley's lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis, a retired King's County Community College professor? (KCCC is a division of the City University of New York.) The New York Sun ran an article today about the case, which I have copied below. I understand that the Professional Staff Congress contributes to the AAUP. As well, Susan O'Malley is a former Professional Staff Congress officer. Moreover, Karkhanis has been critical of the PSC as well as of O'Malley in his newsletter, Patriot Returns. In addition, O'Malley is near retirement and is not likely to have suffered any financial or any other damage whatsoever from anything Karkhanis has said. There would seem to be little reason for this law suit other than to suppress Karkhanis's speech and academic freedom and to serve the personal interests of the Professional Staff Congress's leadership, notably Barbara Bowen and Steve London, who would benefit financially from the case if Karkhanis's speech is suppressed and he is no longer able financially or legally to criticize them, enabling their reelection to union office.

"My question is whether the AAUP would be willing to intervene or voice an opinion in this matter since the law suit seems to serve no important civil purpose and seems to be primarily a pretext to suppress Karkhanis's speech and academic freedom on behalf of the PSC leadership?

"Thanks for your thoughts. I am putting this inquiry and your response up on my blog."

Perhaps, given O'Malley's statement to the Sun that the case is silly * or frivolous anyway, she her attorney would be well advised to remove the matter to a more appropriate venue: Judge Judy. The venerable judge's entourage of deadbeats and back-rent-complainants would be suitably complemented with Professor O'Malley's claims.

* "Ms. O'Malley, reached at her home in Brooklyn, said she did not want to discuss the case. "It's all very, very silly," she said."

Free Speech, PSC-Style

2007-11-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

From Brooklyn professor KC Johnson:

Most CUNY professors are familiar with The Patriot Returns. Published by professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis, TPR is an on-line newsletter that has directed barbs at the extremist leadership of the CUNY union (the Professional Staff Congress) and the largely ineffectual leadership of the CUNY University Faculty Senate. TPR played a key role in last year’s union election, where a new slate headed by Kingsborough professor Rina Yarnisch almost upset incumbent Barbara Bowen, falling 53%-47%. Yarnisch, who was just overwhelmingly reelected KCC chapter chair, is widely expected to challenge Bowen again in two years.

Until last year, the PSC and UFS seemed to be interchangeable, since UFS chair Susan O’Malley was also a member of the PSC executive committee. (I should note that I have my own past with O’Malley, a Kingsborough Community College professor; in 2003, in her capacity as UFS chair, she released a statement criticizing the Board of Trustees’ decision to grant me tenure, erroneously asserting that I had applied for "early tenure" and noting that I hadn’t published anything since arriving at Brooklyn. She was, at the time, only one book and eight scholarly articles short.)

O’Malley has been a regular target of TPR criticism. The newsletter dubbed her as the "Queen of Released Time" for her uncanny ability to spend term after term without ever entering the classroom. (Regular professors at Kingsborough have a 5-4 teaching load.) TPR has mocked O’Malley’s defense of Timothy Shortell’s unsuccessful bid to become chairman of the Brooklyn Sociology Department. The newsletter has criticized O’Malley’s penchant for multiple officeholding. It has ridiculed her record of non-accomplishment in elected positions. TPR opposed O’Malley’s decision to ban from the UFS forum CUNY professors who had used the forum to criticize her policies as UFS chair. Karkhanis has contended that O’Malley’s public positions have harmed CUNY’s image. And TPR celebrated O’Malley’s crushing defeat in last spring’s KCC union elections.

Earlier this year, TPR set its sights on O’Malley’s defense of Mohammed Yousry (a former CUNY adjunct convicted in the Lynne Stewart case) and Susan Rosenberg (a former CUNY adjunct convicted in a Weathermen robbery/murder from the early 1970s).
Karkhanis blasted O’Malley’s "PERSONAL AGENDA of finding jobs for Yousry, Rosenberg and other terrorists," and suggested that "her major goal is to establish a Training Camp to recruit and train, at Kingsborough, people like herself -- misguided, misdirected, misinformed." He made the comment after O’Malley, incredibly, suggested that KCC might hire Yousry (who was, by that point, a convicted felon).

Karkhanis’ rhetoric, obviously, can be over-the-top. That said, at all points in the last decade, O’Malley has been a public official, repeatedly running for union and University-wide offices on slates that Karkhanis (and lots of other CUNY profs) have opposed. Mockery in election campaigns has long been recognized as protected under the First Amendment.

Perhaps most important, Karkhanis could hardly have picked a more fitting target for satire. O’Malley’s positions, which represent almost a caricature of the failed policies of the 1970s and 1980s at CUNY, would have been disastrous for the institution and for CUNY faculty.

O’Malley, however, sees it differently. Today’s New York Sun reports that she has filed a $2 million libel and defamation lawsuit against Karkhanis. Her attorney asserted that Karkhanis’ statements were made with actual malice and intended to "inflict harm through their falsehood."

The lawsuit, of course, defines frivolous: unless O’Malley is going to claim that Yousry and Rosenberg were not convicted terrorists, Karkhanis’ statements about her urging CUNY colleges to hire terrorists were factually true. Rosenberg was a member of a terrorist organization; Yousry was accused and convicted of aiding a convicted terrorist. So what would motivate such a suit?

PSC president Barbara Bowen has suggested that "academic freedom" protected Shortell’s assertion (in a non-academic blog) that all religious people were "moral retards." Will she now similarly apply her flexible definition of the concept, and rebuke O’Malley’s attempt to silence Karkhanis?

An Electoral Agenda?

2007-11-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

From Brooklyn College professor Mitchell Langbert:

Today's New York Sun carries an article about Sue O'Malley's law suit against Sharad Karkhanis. O'Malley had been an elected officer of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents CUNY faculty and is a crony of the Barbara Bowen/Steve London group that is up for reelection in a few years.

The Professional Staff Congress, led by Barbara Bowen, who made a speech at the Manhattan Institute a few years ago in which she vehemently insisted that Aristotle was a misogynist, has every reason to aim to silence Karkhanis. Karkhanis's widely read newsletter Patriot Returns has a circulation of 17,000 readers and has exposed incompetence among the PSC leadership. Given O'Malley's insider status, my speculation in the Sun article below that O'Malley is suing to help the PSC stands to reason although admittedly I have no direct evidence.

The PSC denies that it has anything to do with the law suit, much as they avoided disclosing that they had given a donation in honor of now-convicted terrorist Sami al Arian.

If O'Malley is suing Karkhanis to further the PSC leadership's reelection bid, as I claim, then we would expect the PSC leadership to remain hypocritically silent about O'Malley's aim to suppress Karkhanis's speech, even as the PSC leadership apologizes for terrorists like al-Arian.

Collegiality, PSC-Style

2007-11-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

From Mitchell Langbert, regarding Brooklyn College PSC leader David Arnow:

The Emerson Inn and Spa is more collegial than the Professional Staff Congress.

My wife and I having just returned from a lovely dinner with my in laws, who are visiting us and staying at the Emerson Inn and Spa in Mount Pleasant, New York, received an e-mail fromProfessor David Arnow, whom I do not know and I have never previously contacted. Professor Arnow wrote:

>"You bloggeth:

>"> Dear President Bowen: I am working on a blog about the O'Malley v. Karkhanis law suit. I was wondering if you would care to comment on it. In particular, what is the role of "collegiality" in O'Malley's decision to sue; and do you believe that law suits are an integral part of collegiality?"

>"My first question for you is: Have you stopped molesting small children yet?

>"And my second question is: Supposed I posed this question everywhere. Would you sue? Or would you take it in the collegial, satirical sense that it was perhaps intended?"

I had not heard of Arnow before, but have since done a web search and learned that he is my colleague at Brooklyn College.

A number of years ago, my ex-wife, Enid Wolfe Langbert, who is an attorney who has been involved in commercial litigation and published a book entitled "The Bill of Rights--the Right to a Fair Trial", was thinking of writing a book that she thought of calling "The Bleak House Syndrome". The idea of the bleak house syndrome is similar to Pareto's law, i.e., 20 percent of inputs are responsible for 80 percent of outputs. The bleak house syndrome is that two percent of the population is responsible for ninety percent of the litigation and that a certain psychological pattern is associated with litigation. Subsequently, I studied a bit about the economics of litigation in graduate school and learned that rational players do not litigate unless the benefits of litigation outweigh the sum of the two sides' trial costs since it makes more sense to settle a dispute otherwise.

Moreover, transactions costs are relevant. One management aim is to reduce the costs of doing business. Managers aim to reduce the costs of transactions such as attorney costs as far as possible. Ouchi, in his book Theory Z, has argued that high-trust personnel systems, which the Japanese firms exemplified in the 1980s, are more cost effective than bureaucratic or regulated ones.

Collegiality has a similar justification. Academics argue that they are best qualified to evaluate each other and so can do so more efficiently than outsiders. Part of this argument must hinge on academics' ability to resolve disputes without intervention from outsiders. If outsiders and the court system are best able to resolve disputes among academics, then the system of collegiality need not exist. Indeed, there are far cheaper methods available for dispute resolution even in bureaucratic firms. These include mediation, arbitration, interpersonal skills training and supervision. Hence, academics' resort to litigation suggests that collegial processes have failed. Susan O'Malley's law suit is an excellent argument for the Academic Bill of Rights.

I responded to Professor Arnow simply as follows:

"Tell me, Dave. Do you think that suing is the collegial course?"

Professor Arnow responded as follows:

>"Defenders of Karkhanis just don't have the moral high ground to invoke 'collegiality'.

>"As for law suits: for all its faults, the U.S. system of law towers over that of any other country I know. Law suits that redress wrongs are part of that system. If there really is a wrong, it ought to be redressed, shouldn't it? How would you right a wrong? Fisticuffs?

>"I don't know the details of Libel law, but I know that it is happily fairly limited, compared say to the U.K., and so the absurd lies you spin for the Sun are protected-- as they should be. Still, repeated false public accusations of specific criminal acts might satisfy the definition of libel. Your buddy may have crossed the line. Not to worry, I'm sure that the people you and he work for have very deep pockets.

>"Now, answer the questions that I posed below. Don't try to wriggle out of them:

>>" My first question for you is: Have you stopped molesting small children yet?
>>
>>" And my second question is: Supposed I posed this question everywhere. Would you sue? Or would you take it in the collegial, satirical sense that it was perhaps intended?"

My obvious answer is no, unless there is some significant economic reason for me to sue. I do not suffer from the "bleak house syndrome". However, if I am financially damaged, then a law suit would be logical. Very few private firms see employees sue each other. An employee who sues a fellow employee would be viewed as odd in most firms, and would certainly damage their career. Employees in private industry have sufficient interpersonal skills to resolve workplace disputes without costly litigation. This seems not to be the case with the associates of the Professional Staff Congress.

Professor Arnow feels that anyone who is associated with Sharad Karkhanis doesn't "have the moral high ground to invoke 'collegiality'". This suggests to me defamation of Professor Karkhanis's reputation.

I have always puzzled over the claims of academics (with reference to KC Johnson, for example) that "collegiality", defined as interpersonal skills, ought to be a criterion for personnel and tenure decisions. Arnow's e-mail suggests that some senior professors at Brooklyn College lack these, so requiring them for tenure in special cases is at best tenuous and certainly hypocritical.

Arnow goes on to make the less-than-collegial claim that my comments to the Sun yesterday are "absurd lies" that I "spin for the Sun".

He also makes the rather odd statement "I'm sure that the people you and he (Karkhanis) work for have very deep pockets." This statement is especially odd because Karkhanis, Arnow and I work(ed) for the City University of New York, the same employer. Is Arnow suggesting that Brooklyn College will finance Karkhanis's lawsuit? I am having trouble with this. Does Arnow believe I'm paid by one of George Soros's institutes?

My response to Arnow was as follows:

> "I'm going to put your e-mail on my blog. (1) Who are you? (2) What is the moral high ground to which you're referring? Do you have an ethical model or standard? If so, please clarify.

>"(3) Your belief that engaging in litigation as part of the collegial process is based on what definition of collegiality? Please define collegiality.

>"(4)Any concept of collegiality would involve methods of resolving conflicts. For instance, if you know about labor relations you know that arbitration has been favored by the United States Supreme Court over civil litigation in the context of labor disputes. In recent years, even more flexible approaches of resolving conflicts, such as living agreements, have been part of labor relations in some plants. The concept of collegiality involves shared governance. Such a definition would imply dispute resolution methods that are less formal than arbitration and are based on trust and shared values, i;.e., are more like living agreements. Are you claiming that civil litigation is included in the definition of collegiality? If so, do you think than an intensified degree of government regulation might be valuable to reduce conflict costs? Litigation is among the most costly methods of dispute resolution. Less expensive ones would include face to face meetings, mediation, arbitration, collective bargaining, grievances and the like.

>"If collegiality is so inflexible and inept as to require the legal system as a preferred dispute resolution method, should government look for lower cost dispute resolution methods than litigation, as it has done in the labor context, to regulate academics? In that case, you seem to be suggesting that the Academic Bill of Rights would be a wise improvement over current academic collegial processes, which are high cost. Please do tell. Are you arguing for the Academic Bill of Rights?"

David Arnow's collegial response to me was:

>"You can put my email anywhere you like, but the gibberish above) again evades my questions about whether you've stopped molesting small children and I am not going to waste any more time writing to you. I'm adding you to my spam filter."

Yes, the Professional Staff Congress is collegial. Collegial indeed.