September-October 2000

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Faculty Rally Behind Professor Who Criticized Coach

A pleased but somewhat surprised Murray Sperber says he has received tremendous support from colleagues at Indiana University in the aftermath of his public criticism of IU’s basketball coach, Bob Knight.

Sperber, a professor of English, has found fault with college sports before—his latest book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education, will be published this fall. But faculty have not rallied behind him previously. This time is different, Sperber notes, because the issue is not just sports but freedom of speech and classroom autonomy.

Last spring, Sperber, a perennial Knight critic, appeared on a cable television show and condemned Knight’s conduct in an incident involving the physical abuse of IU player Neil Reed. Videotapes of Knight with his hands around Reed’s neck were shown publicly after the show aired. Shortly thereafter, Sperber began to receive anonymous threats. The decision of IU president Miles Brand to retain Knight prompted additional criticism from Sperber and intensified the threats against the professor. Sperber, concerned about the safety of his students, asked for an unpaid leave of absence from the university for the fall semester. He subsequently received a grant for research.

"I decided to ask for the leave after I received phone calls and e-mail threats to invade my classroom," he says. "I was scheduled to teach first-year English, and many sections are taught by teaching assistants," Sperber explains. "I feel responsible for them and would not jeopardize their well-being."

The AAUP chapter at IU wrote a letter to the Herald-Times in Bloomington upholding Sperber’s right to express his opinions freely. The letter denounces the threats that forced Sperber to cancel classes, calling them an "attack on IU and the freedom of inquiry and expression that is the foundation of scholarship and higher education." It salutes Sperber, a longtime AAUP member, for his "exercise of academic freedom [which] has required considerable courage" and concludes by hoping for "his return to campus in an atmosphere of increased commitment on the part of the university and the community to protect freedom of inquiry and speech."

Sperber reports that the university has backed him throughout the ordeal, offering to place police in his classrooms for the fall and spring semesters. He declined, explaining, "I was a student at Berkeley when police came to classrooms, and I know it doesn’t work." He has since applied for leave for the entire 2000-01 academic year, and a group of faculty members is circulating a petition calling on the university to pay Sperber during his leave in the fall.

Sperber is not sure he will teach again at IU. The spring semester is in the middle of the basketball season, he points out. "If Knight crosses the zero-tolerance line and is dismissed, it will be a media circus," he says, "and some fanatical fans will blame me because he is gone." Reflecting that he may unknowingly have taught his last class at the university, Sperber concludes that his course last semester was a good one on which to end—an advanced writing class he really enjoyed teaching.