DId Pro-Israel Pressure Lead California University To Scrap Middle East Studies Hire?
(JTA) — A professor at a central California university says pro-Israel groups pressured the school to disband a search committee for a Middle East studies professor.
The search to fill the newly created Edward Said Professorship in Middle East Studies at California State University, Fresno, was in its final stages in April, when it was abruptly scrapped.
Vida Samiian, a linguistics professor at the university, said the search committee folded because pro-Israel groups and individuals objected to the politics and heritage of the four finalists. Samiian, a former dean of the school’s College of Arts and Humanities, resigned in protest.
“By closing the search, the Administration carried out the vicious and discriminatory attacks launched by Israel advocacy groups against the search committee and the four finalists who were of Middle Eastern and Palestinian ethnicity,” Samiian, who for years has been sharply critical of Israel, wrote in an open letter.
But leaders at all of the city’s major Jewish institutions dispute the allegations.
“If it happened, I don’t know anything about it,” said Rabbi Rick Winer, of the Reform Temple Beth Israel, which with 300 member families is Fresno’s largest synagogue.
University President Joseph Castro, denied that outside pressure influenced the decision.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
