Dr. Terri Ginsberg holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU and has lectured and published widely on the political aesthetics of Holocaust film, cinema of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, German cinema, and GLBTQ film. She has taught at many colleges and universities including Dartmouth, Rutgers SUNY-Purchase, Brooklyn College, and Ithaca College. She has also been active in Jews Against the Occupation (JATO) and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Her current book project concerns censorship and "dumbing down" in the U.S. academy.
-- Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
What this bio blurb does not say is that Terri Ginsberg, unlike most academics who only research justice, is fighting back and not letting go.
HERE is Ginsberg's web site about her legal battles with North Carolina State University (NCSU).
And HERE is the Appellate Brief that was filed on June 24th on behalf of Ginsberg against the University of North Carolina Board of Governors.
The evidence and the legal arguments supporting that evidence are pointed and strong. No judge worthy of the position could reasonably deny the request for a jury trial.
NCSU admitted during deposition hearings that it suppressed Ginsberg's speech critical of Zionism and supportive of the Palestinian liberation struggle while she was under its employ as a visiting professor, and that it chose not to interview or hire Ginsberg for a tenure-track position because of her scholarship focusing on Palestine/Israel, the Middle East, and the “Jewish.”
A jury should therefore be permitted to decide whether NCSU's reason for its sudden change of heart in denying Ginsberg the tenure-track position was because of its hostility to her views on "Jewish/Israel," or because she is "overqualified" and no longer an expert in European film, which NCSU claims are the actual reasons for her non-hire.
In Canada, public opinion has turned against Israel's Zionism; despite the best efforts of the country's at-best-ill-informed politicians. Ginsberg is part of a leading edge of resilient academics turning US public opinion on the Israel problem. Genocidal occupation is not morally acceptable -- pass it on.
This is not true that critiques against Zionism are accepted in Canada. I was harassed and put on suspension while teaching a course on Islamophobia which included a critique of Zionism in on reading one read. Altogether any scholar in North America--Canada and US--who critiques Israel or anti-Islamic sentiment, is up for harassment of all orders.
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