The dean of the College of Liberal Arts is warning the college’s directors and chairs that the uproar in the History Department over a professor’s use of an Internet article is polarizing the campus and could result in its self-destruction if faculty members do not exercise restraint.

While Dean Shirley Clay Scott declined to comment to the Daily Egyptian, in the e-mail she said intended to quell faculty disruption within the college because faculty members were taking sides without the full disclosure of facts.

“It would be wise and helpful to be critical of our own actions and careful to know the full facts as we make judgments about the actions of others,” Scott said in the e-mail. “And we need to be careful in our discussions. It is a time to curb rhetorical flourish rather than to indulge it.”

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Recently, eight history faculty members came out in a letter to the editor and a paid advertisement in the DE to distance themselves from professor Jonathan Bean’s use of an article they called “racist propaganda.”

Bean’s use of an article titled “Remembering the Zebra Killings,” written by James Lubinskas, sparked a debate about the boundaries academic responsibility.

The article goes into detail about a series of murders that took place in the San Francisco Bay area known to police as the Zebra Killings. The murders were unique because white people were targeted in every case.

Bean downloaded the article from frontpagemagazine.com, which contained a link to the European American Issues Forum, and faculty members say Bean removed the link to hide the article’s anti-Semitic and racist bias. But Bean said it was simply a matter of trying to fit it onto two pages. He apologized to the faculty for “damage done” and then removed the article from his class sections.

Since the issue became public, it has divided faculty members and accusations have flown from both sides. Some faculty members have said this is not an issue of academic freedom but of responsibility to both Bean’s students and teaching assistants. Others assert that Bean’s basic right to academic freedom has been violated by this group of professors.

“On a college campus, we should act by the highest standards of inquiry into the facts, and we should strive for reasoned discourse,” Scott wrote. “And it seems to me that, in a world more ideal than any I have lived in, we should try to act with great civility toward one another.”

Chancellor Walter Wendler, who said he went through a similar situation over comments he made that related homosexuality to sin in August, said the complexities of free speech in the university setting are always being debated.

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“There is heavy academic responsibility wherever there is free speech involved,” Wendler said.

Despite declining to comment, Scott did say she was following due process and due diligence to solve the issue. In the e-mail, Scott said moral disagreements should not prevent faculty from discussing the issue.

“No one would ask that philosophical disagreements or disagreements about ethical matters be ignored or that personal or academic principles be sacrificed in the name of harmony or collegiality,” Scott wrote in the e-mail. “Nor do I think we can easily put issues of great importance ‘behind us.'”

Reporter Moustafa Ayad can be reached at [email protected]