Sunday, May 01, 2005

Academic witch hunt at Southern Illinois University

As I've been reporting here, there's been an academic witch-hunt taking place at Chicago's DePaul University against Professor Thomas Klocek. On the opposite end of Illinois, in Carbondale, there is another professor, Jonathan Bean, who is being forced to defend himself against a witch hunt led by his Southern Illinois University colleagues.

His "crime?" Assigning as optional reading for his history class a FrontPageMag.com article about the early 1970s killing spree that became known as the Zebra Killings. The class subject was “Civil Rights and Civil Disorder.” Required readings included writings from Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, and Rosa Parks.

Click here for the entire article by Thomas Ryan, Academic Witch-Hunt. It's also from FrontPageMag.

Most of the victims of the Zebra Killings were black, the murderers were members of a radical offshoot of the Nation of Islam. Of course, many will argue that the Nation of Islam is a radical group itself, but who am I to label them?

For some reason the article doesn't quite say it, but it's clear that this sole Republican professor on the SIU history faculty is being threatened with having his job taken away from him. Maybe his opponents are hoping he will to the "honorable" thing and resign.

Early last month Professor Bean received Southern's "Outstanding Teacher Award.” So he's doing some good there in Carbondale.

But the drive to dump Bean began just two days later after he received that award. According to the FrontPageMag article author, Thomas Ryan, the purge against Bean is being led by SIU history professor Robbie Lieberman, daughter of communist folksingers. The apple hasn't fallen far from this rotten tree, Robbie is a hard leftist too.

Oh, is it too late in this post to mention that Professor Bean is being called a racist?

Who's supporting Bean? Well, according to Ryan, a lot of SIU students, and incredibly enough, the ACLU.

Hey, ACLU, are you interested at all in the Klocek case?

I'll be keeping an eye on this story too.

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