The online petition for Thomas Klocek now has more than 1,000 signatures. Here’s an excerpt from a news release:
The SPME petition to reinstate Thomas Klocek, the Roman Catholic faculty member who was fired by DePaul University without due process for challenging Muslim students’ assertions of Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi’s treatment of Jews, has already amassed nearly 1000 signatures in three days. The petition, which can be viewed and signed at http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=3 calls for his complete reinstatement without prejudice or penalty.
Morry Fiddler, a professor at DePaul University, writes, ” If I’m not there for a colleague, then who will be there for me?” Other DePaul professors signing the petition to date are Allan Berele, Gary Siegel, Jonathan Cohen and Jerold Friedland.
Bernard Arfin of Stanford University asks, ” What has happened to freedom of speech?”
Simon Levy at Boston University calls the incident, ” A clear violation of academic standards,” while his colleague, Susan Biener Bergman, also at BU, states, ” It seems that at DePaul University, there is a climate of intimidation of anyone having pro-Israel views. What a shame. I thought that academic freedom meant just that.”