Per RCW , the governing body of a public agency shall provide an opportunity at or before every regular meeting at which final action is taken for public comment. If the governing body accepts written testimony, this testimony must be distributed to the governing body.
Below are all comments received by the Faculty Senate office before a regular meeting at which final action is taken.
April 30, 2026, Faculty Senate Meeting
Dear Faculty Senate Members,
Academic freedom is of course important and faculty should be free to present their views on any topic in a variety of forums without interference. 聽That said, in my experience at UW (on faculty here since 2006), it seems pretty clear to me that leadership choices聽within departments or schools or programs are substantially at the discretion of the UW administration. 聽Faculty have input for sure, but the final decisions seem to routinely come from administration.
I don鈥檛 know the reasons behind the UW’s decision to remove Professor Fani from his position as director of the MEC. 聽But in the end, I think it is at their discretion.
I did see posting of Professor Fani鈥檚 list serve messages on 鈥淯S-Israeli War on Iran鈥� and the follow up one 鈥淢ore notes on the Iran War鈥�. 聽I don鈥檛 know to what extent (or not) these messages played a role in the decision to remove him from the director position. 聽To me, some parts of these messages seemed more like rantings than true academic analysis鈥� but so be it, that is the professor鈥檚 right. 聽Where it gets more problematic though was in the second offering where the message veers into classic anti-semitic tropes. 聽Among these the description of 聽Zionism as 鈥渃ancerous, a potentially fatal outgrowth in our planetary body鈥� 聽plays into Nazi-era associations of Jews as vermin or disease and also alludes to tropes about Jewish control of Global policy. 聽 As an independent professor, Fani has a right to say these things without penalty. 聽But as a leader of the MEC, email blasting this type of language to faculty and students in the program seems like a major lapse in judgement to say the least.
I would defer to the University鈥檚 discretion on this and support voting 鈥淣o鈥� on this resolution.
Respectfully,
Jonathan Weinstein, M.D., Ph.D.