3/9/07: On Wednesday, February 27, a
article appeared on a right wing blog accusing Dr. Julio Pino, associate
professor at Kent
State University,
of hosting a “jihadist” website. With NO evidence, or even any
pretense of proof, a popular and prolific scholar has been vilified in the
press, demands have been made for his firing, and his life has been threatened!
Within 24 hours, this
“story” had been picked up by not only scores of right wing blogs,
but was posted as a “news article” on the Drudge Report. Then Fox
news “reported” this on its website and Bill O’Reilly did a fascist
rant on his program March 1, under the title, “Worse than Ward
Churchill.”
This has to stop!
Dr. Julio Pino is an
associate professor of History at Kent
State University
in Ohio. Born
in Cuba
and a convert to Islam, he is no stranger to controversy. He has always been a
strong advocate for the oppressed around the world, both in his scholarship and
in his activism. Whenever there was a protest in support of the Palestinian
people, or to defend an immigrant facing deportation, Dr. Pino was there. The
day the US launched its
immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq
in 2003, he marched with students throughout the streets of Kent to
protest. He wrote a public statement in support of Ward Churchill, and is a
signer to the Call of The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime. For all
this, he is listed on the infamous discoverthenetwork.org, along with other “dangerous
academics” like Howard Zinn, Cornell West, Mark Crispin Miller and Michael Eric
Dyson.
Dr. Pino has received support
from everyone in his department, and many of his students (past and present)
have emailed him to express their support. Kent State University issued a press release on
March 1, stating that they have investigated the issue and found that:
There is no evidence that
this Web site is authored by Pino – that is not his picture as author of
the site; that no university servers or other resources have been used to
create or maintain the site; and there have been no complaints registered about
Pino’s classroom conduct or demeanor, by students or other instructors.
But that has not put a stop
to this inquisition. The local CBS affiliate aired a segment last week that
interviewed one student in the ROTC complaining about Dr. Pino. The local Clear
Channel radio station has aired raving DJ’s calling for Pino’s firing and telling
alumni to pull their money out of Kent
State. And on ONE DAY
last week, Kent State received 15,000 phone calls about
Dr. Pino, most of them very nasty and many were very threatening!
Kent State
is not an “elite” university, but is known around the world as the
place where, on May 4 1970, the Ohio National Guard murdered 4 students in cold
blood for protesting Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. In
the year 2007, with so much as stake in the world, we cannot allow a professor
to be another casualty, this time of a war on critical thinking and dissent.