In the Spring of 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. Only this time instead of sorcery it was Zionism; instead of punishing in the name of God's law it was in the name of anti-hate speech and inclusive excellence; instead of young teenage girls leading the hysteria it was college-aged social warriors stampeding 200 professors into sacrificing one of their colleagues, and thereby contributing to a wave of administration-promoted hate-speech at their college.The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards "public shaming" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of our society, so susceptible to media-driven feeding frenzies.
Richard Landes trained as a medieval historian. He specializes in messianic and apocalyptic movements, as well as shame-honor cultures and the impact of literacy on their dynamics. He has recently completed a history of the opening years of the twenty-first century, as a turning point in relations between two millennial movements: global Jihad and post-modern progressivism.
Preface — Richard LandesIntroduction — Asaf RomirowskyAndrew Pessin's Facebook Post during Operation Protective EdgeCondensed TimelinePart I: When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime — Richard Landes1. The Post: On Truth and Metaphor2. The Shameful Dishonesty of It All: An Annotated Chronology from the Perspective of the Victim 3. The People: McCarthyism, New London StylePart II: Studies in Pessinology4. Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency — Ashley Thorne5. "I Was Rude, You Were Evil": Reflections on Academia, Liberalism, and the Betrayal of Andrew Pessin — John Gordon6. The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagues — Fred BaumannPart III: Reflections: Salem on the Thames – Stampeding a Herd of Cats — Richard Landes7. What Connecticut College's Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us8. Reflections on Academia and Freedom: The Case of Connecticut College, Spring 20159. Pessin, Ironic Prophet: The Liberal Emperor's New Clothes of Humanitarian RacismPart IV: Appendix – DocumentsPessin Affair: Dramatis Personae — Online Petition Posted March 18, 2015Bibliography
“Salem on the Thames is a collection of essays, butmost of them, including a very helpful annotated chronology of events, are byLandes, who has also compiled an extensive archive of primary-source documentsat his blog. He and his other contributors dissect each and every way Pessinwas sucker punched, lied to, manipulated, and thrown under the bus.”— Elliot Kaufman, Jewish Review of Books