Hamilton College Hires Radical
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CLINTON – Hamilton College is coming under fire by some of its faculty for hiring a former radical who was convicted of possessing explosives and linked to a bank robbery in which three people died.
Susan Rosenberg, who served 16 years in federal prison, will teach a one-month course this coming spring called “Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity, and Change.”
Since her 58-year prison sentence was commuted in 2001 by President Clinton, Rosenberg has worked as a writer and an activist for human rights, prisoner rights, and AIDS.
“If you’re going to bring Susan Rosenberg here and say her minimal credentials are sufficient to teach a course on activism, why not bring in David Duke on race or O.J. Simpson on the sociology of sports?” asked history professor Robert Paquette.
However, the professor who brought Rosenberg to Hamilton said she is a model of how people can transform themselves.
“I think she is an exemplar of rehabilitation,” Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, professor of comparative literature, told The Post-Standard of Syracuse. “Her story is about how you can make something productive out of something that was really awful.”
Rosenberg, who teaches literature at John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hamilton College officials issued a prepared statement that noted Rosenberg “is an award-winning writer, an activist and a teacher who offers a unique perspective as a writer.”
“As long as public safety and the rights of others are not compromised, the college does not normally put limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot,” the statement said.
The college’s Dean of Faculty Office was not involved in Rosenberg’s hiring and did not know about her past, Associate Dean of Faculty Kirk Pillow told The Observer-Dispatch of Utica. While criminal record checks are done for staff members with access to student dorms, they are not done on faculty, Mr. Pillow said. Still, college officials said they plan to tighten oversight of the hiring of temporary instructors.
Rosenberg was invited to teach at Hamilton as part of a visiting professor’s program with The Kirkland Project, an on-campus organization that focuses on issues of social justice. College spokeswoman Vige Barrie said the program is supported with general operating funds, but she did not know how much Rosenberg was being paid.
For temporary part-time adjunct hires, the department or program typically does the hiring without necessarily presenting the candidates to the dean’s office, Barrie said.
Rosenberg was convicted in 1984 of weapons possession and sentenced to 58 years in prison. Prosecutors said she had more than 600 pounds of explosives that she and another defendant planned to use in “nonlethal” bombings.
She also was indicted in a Brink’s armored car robbery carried out in 1981 by a gang of radicals known as the “Family.” A Brink’s guard and two Nyack police officers were killed in a shootout. Rosenberg denied involvement in the robbery, and the charges were eventually dropped.
While in prison, Rosenberg earned a master’s degree in creative writing and helped fellow prisoners who had AIDS. Since her release, Rosenberg also has worked as an AIDS and prison activist and served as director of publications and communications at the American Jewish World Service. She has won several writing awards.
The appointment of Rosenberg is the latest in a string of stories that have brought Hamilton into the national spotlight.
Three years ago, a visiting professor of French quit after revelations that she was trying to clone a baby with the help of a group that believed in extraterrestrials.
In 2002, President Eugene Tobin resigned after admitting he had plagiarized passages in some speeches.