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TThe University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has sanctioned a professor who withdrew his proposal to write a letter of recommendation to a student who wanted to study in Israel. The Detroit News reported Tuesday night.
John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor in the US Department of Culture, found himself at the center of a fire storm last month, when he told the student, Abigal Ingber, that he could not recommend her to Tel Aviv University for a semester. . In this message, which circulated widely after its publication on social media, Cheney-Lippold wrote that "many university departments have promised a university boycott against Israel to support Palestinians living in Palestine."
The university quickly separated from the professor's remarks, noting that none of his departments support the academic boycott of Israel proposed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS.
And the documents obtained by the New reveal that the institution has gone further: she told Cheney-Lippold that he would not receive a merit increase this academic year and that he would not be allowed to take sabbatical leave scheduled for January. The full professor will also not be allowed to take a sabbatical for the next two years.
The disciplinary measures were communicated to Cheney-Lippold in a very concise letter this month from Elizabeth Cole, Acting Dean of the Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts. "In the future, a student's merit should be your primary guide to determining how and if you should provide a letter of recommendation," Cole wrote. "You should not use student referral requests as a platform to discuss your personal political beliefs."
Cole also reprimanded the professor for discussing the BDS movement in two courses, seeming to suggest that the university was supporting the movement, and for having discussed Ingber, a student, in interviews with the media, according to the daily. New. Cheney-Lippold did not respond to the newspaper's request.
The Michigan professor is just one of many professors who have found a common cause with the BDS movement, observing the academic boycott of Israel mainly through small gestures. But while many scholars have expressed their support for Cheney-Lippold's academic freedom, many others have argued that the professor unfairly applied a political litmus test to a student. Learn more about how the boycott works here.
Brock Read is assistant editor-in-chief at The Chronicle. He leads a team of editors and journalists covering, among other things, trends in politics, research, work and teaching. Follow him on Twitter @bhread, or leave him a line at [email protected].
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