Who Said This Is a Purely Domestic Jewish “Word Salad” Dispute Underlain by Neo-Con Anti-Woke Politics? - Part 1

The incident that forms the basis of this “write-up,” in local Ghanaian speak or parlance, occurred last November, 2025, at Hofstra University, a privately owned and operated tertiary academy in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, that was once a fledgling subsidiary or adjunct of the globally renowned and highly respected New York University (NYU), an elite but community-oriented and socially responsible academy which two of the three sisters of this author attended and graduated from. One of them from the School or College of Dental Hygiene, with an Associate’s Degree in Dental Hygiene; and the other, with a Baccalaureate Degree from the globally renowned Stern School of Business. I have my own City College “Trenches Story” of a vindictive ass-kicking rejection letter from NYU’s Department of English in the late summer of 1990, where I had intended to study for a Master of Arts Degree in English Language and Literature. It had to do with the Gaza-like Academic Battles at the City College of The City University of New York, which would be told in due course and time.

But what especially piqued the avid interest and the attention of Yours Truly is two-fold: one, the fact that Hofstra University is just about a half-mile or a metaphorical and an idiomatic stone’s throw from Nassau Community College of The State University of New York (NCC of SUNY), where this author taught English and Journalism for more than two decades, until he was vindictively and strategically and - I guess one could also aptly say - villainously and ruinously stampeded out just under three years ago. Stampeded or literally run out, because the traumatic aftereffects of the systematically orchestrated campaign of “Sanhedrin Harassment” that forced Yours Truly to sign up for Early Retirement is strikingly reflected in last November’s complaint of patently pedestrian case of what appears to have been a self-inflicted harassment that was reportedly filed against Professor Richard Himelfarb, a Hofstra University Political Science Professor by the Head/Chairman of the aforementioned university’s Jewish Studies Department/Program (See “Hofstra Professor Facing Possible Termination Over Discrimination Claim for Saying ‘Word Salad’” New York Post 8/22/ 26).

You see, Yours Truly tends to be a little uneasy about the terminology of “harassment” in the workplace, because it is almost invariably laced with the lurid connotation of sexual molestation, especially where the parties involved in a conflict are gender-assigned opposites, not necessarily in terms of sexuality in the traditional understanding of the term. Even so, Yours Truly found the situation under present discussion to be uncannily akin to that of Mr. Jason Arday, the Cambridge University, UK, Professor of the Sociology of Education, who allegedly took his own life after being virulently accused of the heinous academic crime of “Plagiarism,” to be certain, one of the most academically and professionally damning charges of epistemic and pedagogical dishonesty of the most horrific magnitude.

No wonder then that the 41-year-old Ghanaian-descended widely hailed “academic superstar” who had earlier on in life had been clinically diagnosed as being autistic and intellectually and physically challenged with a multiplicity of human frailties and infirmities, faced with perhaps the most deadly academic sin, short of homicide, would literally take his own life. The Professor Jason Arday, described by the British media as an astronomically rising star, would also be flagrantly and stereotypically be implicitly be racially scapegoated as “The Youngest Black Professor at Cambridge” - one wonders who the youngest White Professor at Cambridge is, and why he or she has not become the focus of searing media spotlight vis-a-vis the stereotypical question of whether s/he is a “Natural” or the “Real McCoy.” And by the way, Elijah McCoy, the genius American inventor, was actually an African-descended Black Man!

For whatever it may be worth, Yours Truly finds striking similarities between the Jason Arday Story and the Hofstra University academic fracas or to-do, if also because in the latter instance, Professor Santiago Slabodsky, described as the current holder or perhaps even the very first holder of the Robert and Florence Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, is also academically invested with a rising-star status, once the curious inquisitor delves deeply and more meticulously into the matter. You see, what is rather characteristically disingenuous here is the fact that the plaintiff, to wit, Professor Santiago Slabodsky, is making an issue that is unarguably about academic and professional competence and/or incompetence, or the abject lack thereof, seem like a gratuitous act of ethno-racial impugnation of the complainant’s and nationality.

You see, Professor Slabodsky, we are informed by the New York Post, is of Argentinian origin. It “characteristically disingenuous” because in recent years, as well as presently, and even as we speak and Yours Truly writes, some members of the Jewish Community throughout the United States, but especially in the New York City Cosmopolis, have been known to cheaply and obscenely resort to tagging their genuine professional and ideological opponents and disputants by using what might be aptly termed as the “Antisemitism Card” or “Bugbear.”

You see, Dear Reader, the issue at the center of the Hofstra University Harassment Charge filed against Professor Himelfarb by his colleague, Professor Slabodsky, had to do with the critical question of whether two courses proposed by the Chairperson of the Jewish Studies Program, namely, “One on ‘Conspiracy Theories,’ and another tying religion to ‘revolutionary movements in Latin America,” should be taught in the Jewish Studies Department or Program, instead of the Political Science Department where, traditionally, such course would be taught. Now, as a specialist and a Retired Professor of African American Studies, in addition to having been a Professor of English and Journalism at a couple of colleges, including Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, and Mercy College, presently renamed Mercy University, Dobbs Ferry, New York, Yours Truly has practical experience in how courses are proposed and approved by legitimately established college curriculum committees before being implemented or being run as a part of the already established courses in the college or the university catalog/-logue, having also served as a member of the Departmental Curriculum Committee at Nassau Community College of The State University of New York.

So, it well appears to me that it was during one of the meetings or the conferences of the College-Wide Curriculum Committee at Hofstra University when the argument that resulted in the official complaint of discrimination and harassment by Professor Slabodsky against Professor Himelfarb arose. The routine at such Course-Creation Curriculum Committee Meetings will be for the Proposer or the Creator of any course or set of courses to adequately detail the contents of what such a course or courses as are being proposed will entail. This is to ensure that any prospective student who signs up for the course or set of courses will get the maximum benefit of what a graduate of the course or courses under discussion promises or proposes to teach. This protocol is categorically mandated by the New York State Board of (Higher) Education, as well as the relevant Accreditation Board of American Colleges and Universities, as a means of ensuring that the highest level of academic standards are upheld.

Now, this is also where it gets a bit tricky sometimes, especially where a course or the set of courses being proposed are so thematically and pedagogically fluid as could be easily offered by another department or several other departments with extensive experience in offering or teaching such a course or set of courses. This is what is commonly known as the Curricular-Turf Wars. It is also about academic and professional survival. Now, it well appears that having expressly failed to convince the Curriculum Committee at Hofstra University, where Yours Truly has several of his old friends and former colleagues at Nassau Community College teaching as Adjunct-Professors or Part-Time Lecturers, an imperiously self-assured “Named-Chair Professor” or, in this particular context or instance, the Holder of the University’s Robert and Florence Kaufman Chair in Jewish Studies, who also happens or happened to be the substantive Chair of the Jewish Studies Department/Program, decided that rather than eat the proverbial Humble Pie, by going back to the metaphorical drawing board, thereby significantly improving on the quality of his set of two course proposals, possibly with the more expert and capable assistance of some of the same referees and critics of his failed or rejected proposals, decided to take the cheapest and the most counterproductive, if also the most dangerous and professionally ruinous approach, by applying or using the “Race” and the and the “Antisemitism” cards. Or even better yet, apply the levers of raw intimidation to bulldoze his way towards the desired goal, not necessarily the most epistemically rewarding goal or endgame.

Yours Truly has often maintained time and time again, ad nauseam, that, for the most part, the seismic and the phenomenal rise in the bitter cries and the delirious complaints of Antisemitism are almost invariably the doings of apparently pathologically paranoid and self-infatuated gratuitously Crusading Zionist Jews like Hofstra University’s Professor Santiago Slabodsky. We had a couple of them in my old department and campus at SUNY-Nassau Community College. They often confuse administrative strong-arming to a competitive level playing field. I mean, didn’t the entire Global Community witness a morally unignorable example of immitigably barbaric and downright degenerate behavior of the Argentinian National Team at the 2026 World Cup, right here in the United States, Mexico and Canada?

And, of course, the even more horrific and bestial vandalism of the Argentine Soccer Fans, in the wake of the latter country’s most well-deserving loss to the Sovereign Democratic Kingdom of Spain. Which is absolutely in no way to suggest that riotously rampant incidents of harassment and racism do not exist right here in the United States of America. The odious MAGA example is too flagrantly and decantly barbaric to ignore. Nonetheless, our sober and most humble contention here is that in this particular instance, Professor Santiago Slabodsky is luridly and pathetically engaged in the sort of Shadow-Boxing verging methodically on the Theater of the Absurd.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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