Friday, April 10, 2009

Academic Repression at Bowdoin College

URPE reports on a case at Bowdoin College where longtime URPE member and 29 year member of the economics department, Jonathan Goldstein, is under investigation for alleged academic misconduct in his research. Reports are now surfacing on the details, which some are comparing to the case of Ward Churchill, although this is a lower key case, with Goldstein's position substantially superior to that of Churchill's. Nevertheless, he has an angry dean out to get him for exposing Bowdoin's to potential incoming students Bowdoin's recent tilt toward athletics and away from academics. The paper he wrote has not been published, and the errors are very minor and would be corrected prior to any publication that the investigative committee are focusing on to charge misconduct. This is simply arbitrary academic repression.

One can access the details through several sources. Inside Higher Education (IHE) has a pretty detailed account at http://www.insidehighered.com/news, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has a column up that its VP has just published in the Boston Globe at http://www.thefire.org. For anyone wishing to protest what is happening there, the email address for Bowdoin's president, Barry Mills, is bmills@bowdoin.edu.

1 comment:

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

BTW, he is Jonathan P. Goldstein, just to distinguish him from a Rabbi of the same first and last name who was in the news yesterday.

I have heard from him that the allegation that he disrupted an admissions meeting are a lie by the administration there. Apparently some parents of potential students have stepped forward to tell the administration this.