Salem on the Thames

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 conflict.

“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

“Richard Landes’ Salem on the Thames is an exhaustive, meticulously detailed account of an antisemitic vendetta at Connecticut College against Professor Andrew Pessin. If you want to understand how antisemitism disguised as ‘anti-Zionism’ has been permitted to grow and thrive on supposedly progressive college campuses, this case study is a great place to start.”

—David E. Bernstein, University Professor and Executive Director, Liberty & Law Center at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

“Universities and colleges in the United States were once known for stimulating new, cutting-edge ideas and for the unfettered freedom accorded students and faculty to engage in critical debate with one another on any topic within and without the classroom. Salem on the Thames describes how much has changed on American campuses where constraints on what people can say are multiplying. And no topic elicits more inspection than Israel. At a time when clear, analytical thinking is more important than ever for students and for our society, it is receding in exactly the places where we expect it to thrive—in fact, where we, as a country, have poured resources to ensure and protect that it flourish. This is an original and important book for all who care about the academy and about preserving scholarly integrity.”

—Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies, Smith College

“Richard Landes offers a sharply-drawn, no-holds-barred dissection of today’s campus politics at its worst. As a case study of the damage done to academic integrity by the intrusion of anti-Zionism into college life, his book is a must-read.”

—Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University