AFA Urges Hofstra to End Harassment Investigation of Professor
Letter warns the investigation threatens faculty speech and shared governance
Princeton, NJ – The Academic Freedom Alliance today sent a letter to Hofstra University urging it to end its investigation of Professor Richard Himelfarb for alleged harassment arising from comments he made during a faculty meeting.
The dispute arose from a November 2025 meeting during which professors considered whether two courses should be designated as Jewish Studies. Himelfarb and others questioned whether the courses contained sufficient Jewish Studies content. When Professor Santiago Slabodsky defended the proposal, Himelfarb described his explanation as “word salad.”
Slabodsky subsequently filed a complaint alleging national-origin discrimination under Title VII. Hofstra found “reasonable cause” to believe that Slabodsky’s civil rights had been violated and referred the matter to its University Harassment Board, where a hearing is scheduled to begin on August 11.
In the letter, the AFA Academic Committee stated, “There is no conceivable justification for finding ‘reasonable cause’ to believe that harassment occurred where Himelfarb was performing his duty as a faculty member by commenting on the merits of a colleague’s proposal and where the relevant behavior involves two words on a single occasion.”
The letter concludes, “The AFA joins FIRE in urging Hofstra to cease this blatant violation of Himelfarb’s academic freedom by abandoning an investigation into harassment which has no support in the facts.”
Additional Resources:
- The AFA’s Letter to Hofstra University
- FIRE’s letter on the matter
- Coverage of the story in the Chronicle of Higher Education
The Academic Freedom Alliance is a diverse alliance of college and university faculty members who are dedicated to upholding the principles of academic freedom and professorial free speech. These principles are central to the mission of our institutions of higher education for the pursuit of truth and knowledge. The AFA is committed to defending universal principles of academic freedom and will come to the assistance of professors regardless of their individual views. As always, the AFA is not concerned with the substance or merits of a professor’s ideas but with the principle that universities should be places that tolerate controversial ideas and allow free inquiry and debate, not public opinion or political pressure, to separate error from truth.