Duringthe winter of 1995 I was fortunate enough to take what I'm sure will prove to be one of the best classes of my Dartmouth career. Each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I watched the interchange between two dynamic professors, Shalom Goldman and Alan Tansman. Together they developed the course, "Memory and Catastrophe -- Japanese and Jewish Responses to the Second World War" (Asian Studies 71/Comparative Literature 64), an exploration of two cultures' reactions to one event -- with a little light, and sometimes ribald, Jewish humor thrown in.
This spring, Alan Tansman was given tenure, and I applaud the administration on a decision well made. This spring, Shalom Goldman was denied tenure. This decision warrants an immediate redress. While I cannot speak for the rest of Professor Goldman's students, I do not doubt that they would stand with me and support a call for a review of the decision to deny him tenure. He is too good a teacher to be lost by Dartmouth.
Of course students do not know exactly why Professor Goldman has been denied tenure; this is a matter of private record. But given that Goldman is such a fine classroom teacher and has made such laudable contributions to the Dartmouth community, whatever the reason is, it is insufficient. In addition to his engaging teaching style, his credentials support my thesis.
In the spring of 1990, Professor Goldman organized his first conference at Dartmouth. Titled, "Hebrew and the Bible," it was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and co-sponsored by the History, Religion and Asian Studies Departments. This gave it the honor of being one of the first interdisciplinary conferences at the College. Three years later, Professor Goldman's book, inspired by the conference of the same title, was published.
In 1991, after the notorious Mein Kampf issue of the Dartmouth Review and the subsequent Rally Against Hate, Professor Goldman organized his second conference. This time the point was to "look at religious traditions and what they say about the 'other.'" Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars and clergy-people came to speak about "Tolerance, Intolerance and the Text."
The Memory and Catastrophe course I took was inspired by this conference. As a knowledgeable Jewish student, I walked into Memory and Catastrophe thinking I knew a lot about the Holocaust. On the second day of class, Professor Goldman gave me, and every other student, our first lesson. "This is about demystifying the event," he said. "There is nothing holy about mass murder. It's repelling. But the repellent isn't sacred." Then he quoted Barbara Tuckman, who, when asked if the Holocaust should be taught in all schools, replied wryly, "No, I don't think that's so important. I think everyone should know the Constitution first."
In addition to teaching Asian Studies courses, Comparative Literature courses and Hebrew courses, Professor Goldman has taught in the Alumni College and is trying to establish a Jewish Studies Foreign Study Program in Israel. The problem is, in order to have an FSP, a discipline needs two tenured professors. Quite an obstacle since Jewish Studies has neither an official department nor a tenured professor. So in the meantime, Professor Goldman has been working with Professor Barry Scherr of the Linguistics department on the Jewish Studies Committee and has helped to establish a formal relationship with both the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, allowing a number of Dartmouth students to study there.
This year, Professor Goldman taught the first Jewish Studies courses at Dartmouth, "The History and Culture of the Jews." (Asian Studies 10.1 and 10.2) If he stays he will be teaching Yiddish Literature in the fall of 1996. For me, this alone is a good enough reason to ask him to stay.
Since Professor Goldman came to Dartmouth in 1988 as a visiting professor, returning the following year to fill a regular appointment for which there was a national search, he has been "well liked and respected among students and a wonderful and much-needed asset for the Dartmouth Jewish community," as Rachel Wasserstrom '95, put it. Perhaps this is why the 1994 Student Assembly Course Guide featured him as one of the 13 most popular professors on campus.
Professor Goldman taught at Yale under a fellowship in the summer of 1992 and at Brown as a visiting professor in the fall of 1992. He has accepted a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to teach at Princeton this summer.
The other Ivies obviously recognize Professor Goldman's worth. If we allow him to leave, it will be our loss -- a loss for the students of Dartmouth as well as the wider community.
Shalom Goldman's wide-ranging interests and services to Dartmouth demonstrate that Jewish Studies is not parochial or exclusive. He should be granted Promotion Without Tenure, an exception that would allow him to stay on at Dartmouth for two more years and then be reconsidered for tenure.
Thursday and Friday there will be a table set up in the Hop from noon to 2:00 p.m. Come sign a petition to request that Shalom Goldman be given Promotion Without Tenure.
