The Hounding of Noam Pianko

Last month, the historian Noam Pianko, a professor at the University of Washington and the director of its Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, was compelled to resign as president of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). His offense was having attended a private Zoom meeting in March, at the invitation of academic colleagues, to discuss a scholarly paper relating to his field of American Jewish history.

Both the AJS committee forcing Pianko’s resignation and he in accepting and agreeing to it affirmed their theoretical commitment to academic freedom. “However,” he wrote in his explanatory note,

I have now come to understand that although I violated no AJS policy, my role as president of AJS necessitated a different set of obligations and standards than other members of the organization. Accepting this meeting invitation was a mistake.