At the end of my last blog on this topic, I stated that little did I know that the trail of letters from McDermott to Cohen to me was the first act in an ongoing performance. Events from that "first act" did die down, but not before Cohen and I exchanged letters and McDermott delivered a ringing radio performance.
In the aftermath of my January 31, 2005, column discussed in Part I, McDermott went on the radio February 4, 2005, and ridiculed me saying that I was "starved for attention as a child," calling me a "moron", "nutty professor", and "completely and totally clueless."
But more important than his ridicule of me, on that February 4, 2005, radio show McDermott decided to go after my employment by accusing me of not doing my job. And just how would McDermott Jr. know how I performed my duties as a professor? He announced he had engaged in conversation with Cohen about me, that I regularly missed classes and I did not hand out syllabi (among other things, all not true).
Call me crazy, but I find the efforts of an elected official to get a taxpaying citizen fired from their job an unseemly sort of endeavor. What I find just as unseemly, if not more so, is that Cohen, a high ranking State official by virtue of his position as Chancellor of a State-funded institution, apparently saw nothing wrong with such behavior. "Politico Corrupticus Syndrome" was clearly running its full course here.
Remember, freedom of speech (particularly political speech) is an individual right to be protected against the government's suppression. It is not a tool to be used by the government or government officials to suppress unwanted taxpayer/citizen criticism. Cohen and McDermott, both government officials (one as administrative head of a State-funded institution the other elected to office) were attempting to stifle political speech. The Democratic Party should be appalled at this behavior. That is as un-American as one can get. It offends every sense of what America stands for and has fought for.
As an American Hoosier tax paying citizen, on February 4, 2005, I wrote "governmental enforcer" Cohen and told him "Shame on you" for sending an official governmental message to elected Democratic Party partisan McDermott Jr. that somehow attacks on a professor's job by an elected official are okay. Cohen, of course, wrote me back, denied he was any way involved with McDermott Jr's behavior, but did inform me that he considered me an "embarrassment" to him, which just happened to be the exact word that McDermott, Jr. had used on his weekly radio show to describe my relationship to the University.
It was after this little flurry of exchanges that things died down, but only for a bit.
About six months later, "Politico Corrupticus Syndrome" was once again manifesting itself in the halls of academe and the second act in this ongoing performance was underway.
On August 25, 2005, I wrote one of my regular columns regarding the funding of State universities in Indiana (082505.mht). This was but one of many columns I have written and speeches I have given on this topic. In this column, I squarely put the onus on our elected State legislators, particularly John Aguilera and Ralph Ayres (who were both serving on the House Ways and Means Committee, which wrote the bi-annual budget), for not addressing the disparity in higher education funding between the center of the State and NWI. There was nothing unusual about this column. Or so I thought.
But this time was different. Chancellor Cohen, as Chancellor of Purdue Calumet wrote a letter to the editor criticizing my August 25, 2005, column (CohenLtr.mht). It is important to understand here that Howard Cohen did not disagree with me as Howard Cohen, the citizen, he disagreed with me in his official State position as Chancellor Cohen, and as Chancellor Cohen he defended the Northwest Indiana delegation, in particular Aguilera and Ayres, against my "unfair and uninformed" column. (Speaking of "unfair and uniformed" that year Purdue University Calumet lost half a million dollars in State, tax-payer, funding, which it has never recouped. That $500,000, that you and I pay as tax payers, went to other parts of the State. That is $500,000 per year of economic development funds that were lost.)
Even Aguilera recognized that Chancellor Cohen's defense of him was the University defense of him as an elected official when he wrote Cohen on September 1, 2005 (AguileraLtr.mht), saying "I [Aguilera] appreciate your support and the support of the university against the negative attacks of Professor Eisenstein [italics added]." (Note: the September 1, 2005, letter from Aguilera to Cohen is another one of those documents that I recently received via a freedom of information request.) "Politico Corrupticus Syndrome" indeed.
All I could think was: "This is the theater of the absurd. Do the elected officials in NWI really believe that it is the job of State-funded institutions to protect them from citizen and taxpayer criticism? Does Chancellor Cohen really believe that as the administrative head of a State-funded institution he should be providing comfort and aid to elected officials who receive criticism?" Apparently they do.
What is amazing is that the Purdue Board of Trustees did not step in to protect the political neutrality of the institution as required by law. And where were the Republicans as they watched their tax dollars being used for partisan political advantage?
Of course, I responded to Cohen's letter to the editor in my September 8, 2005, column (090805.mht).
This was not the end of my exchanges with Augilera. And it certainly was not the end to the "Politico Corrupticus Syndrome" that had now been firmly rooted into the hallowed halls of PUC.
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