In 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. This time instead of sorcery it was Zionism. The affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards ""public shaming"" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of society.
This compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew
Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who was accused
by students and faculty of having "directly condoned the extermination of a
people" based on a deliberate misreading of his 2015 Facebook post on the Israeli-Palestinian
con¿ict.
"Salem on the Thames is a collection of essays, but
most of them, including a very helpful annotated chronology of events, are by
Landes, who has also compiled an extensive archive of primary-source documents
at his blog. He and his other contributors dissect each and every way Pessin
was sucker punched, lied to, manipulated, and thrown under the bus."
- Elliot Kaufman, Jewish Review of Books
