A Liberal Arts College’s Disgraceful Treatment of a Pro-Israel Professor Has a Lesson to Teach the Academic World as a Whole

In the spring of 2015, Andrew Pessin, a philosophy professor at Connecticut College, became the target of student and faculty activists over a Facebook post in which he compared Hamas to a rabid dog. The ensuing campaign of harassment—which began after he took down the post—eventually drove Pessin and his ailing wife from campus. In the recently published book Salem on the Thames, the historian Richard Landes has collected a number of essays, written mostly by other academics, about the affair. Reviewing the book, Jonathan Marks highlights the most chilling aspects of the events at Connecticut College: