A George Mason University law professor has brought national attention to the story of Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin, who received backlash from some who believed he posted an anti-Palestinian post in August on his personal Facebook page.

In two separate postings that appear on the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy blog, a group blog written mostly by law professors, GMU law professor David Bernstein defends Pessin, saying in the first paragrah in the first of his two posts that Pessin is "the only Jewish professor at the college who regularly speaks up on behalf of Israel in an intellectual climate that is often dominated by left-wing and foreign students hostile to Israel."

Bernstein, who told The Day that he is Jewish and pro-Israel, wrote the first post, titled 'The hypocrisy and dishonesty of attacks on Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin', on April 8 and the second, titled '"Equity and Inclusion" at Connecticut College (see important update)', on April 12.

In the most recent of the posts, Bernstein criticizes Connecticut College, and specifically those in charge of organizing various diversity events that are happening on campus over the next three weeks. In the post, he says that a source provided him with a preliminary program of events, which Bernstein said was one-sided in nature and featured many pro-Palestinian speakers.

The college said Monday the programming is still being organized.

"Someone must have complained about the one-sided nature of this programming, because two panels on Israel are in the works, but have, as of last Thursday, neither confirmed date nor confirmed speakers," Bernstein wrote in the April 12 post.

Bernstein lists a series of questions that he sent to one of the organizers, to which he received a response from Pamela Dumas Serfes, vice president for communications.

Conn provided The Day with a copy of Serfes' statement to Bernstein, which says in part, "I understand you have seen a preliminary list of possible diversity and inclusion-related events currently in development here at Connecticut College. I stress preliminary and in development, because in one way or another, the programs are so described on the document itself and/or on the covering email. The email also is explicit about the need to develop additional program ideas."

Later on in the statement, Serfes says, "I trust that should you decide to blog about them, in the interest of fairness, completeness and accuracy, you too will note the preliminary nature of the programs and that the College is seeking additional program ideas and speakers to further diversify the undertaking."

Under the Volokh Conspiracy blog's "editorial independence" section, it says "We're generally libertarian, conservative, centrist, or some mixture of these, though we don't toe any party line, and sometimes disagree even with each other." It continues, "We are not Washington Post employees, and we have sole editorial control over the blog. We are very pleased to be working with the Post people, but please don't ascribe our views to them, or vice versa."

On Aug. 11, 2014, Pessin posted on his Facebook page, saying "I'm sure someone could make a cartoon of this, but one image which essentializes the current situation in Gaza might be this. You've got a rabid pitbull in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape." Later on the post says, "Gaza is in the cage because of its repeated efforts to destroy Israel and Jews."

The Facebook post, which apparently went unnoticed for six months, ignited discussions among students and faculty about intolerance, institutional racism and free speech. One afternoon last month, college President Katherine Bergeron canceled all other events for the day and called for a campus-wide forum to address the Facebook post. Several students and alumni, who were outraged over Pessin's post, penned letters to the editor, which were published by the school's independent, student-run newspaper The College Voice.

The editor in chief of the College Voice was one of several people who started an online petition calling for a public statement from the college administration declaring that it does not condone Pessin's "racism and dehumanization." The petition has received more than 500 signatures.

A student at Conn College, who Bernstein says in his first post is Lamiya Khandaker, apparently noticed Pessin's Facebook post in February and emailed Pessin about it. Pessin said he apologized to the student and deleted the post that day.

Director of Public Relations Deborah MacDonnell said by email that there were four students who initially wrote about this issue in the student newspaper. Khandaker was one of them. She is the Student Government Association's current chair of Diversity and Equity for 2014-15, MacDonnell said.

"According to the Student Government Association bylaws, this chair presents to the SGA issues related to diversity and the concerns of underrepresented students. This position is elected by student peers," she said.

Khandaker and Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, the editor in chief of the College Voice, did not return requests for comment by press time.

Pessin wrote a letter to the editor apologizing for his post. He is currently out on leave, according to MacDonnell.

 Less than a week ago, a group called 'Free Speech' created an online petition titled 'Support Free Speech and Professor Andrew Pessin.' That petition, which has received more than 1,000 signatures, starts "I am writing to you to express my support for Professor Andrew Pessin. Prof. Pessin is being demonized by students with a very specific and incendiary agenda, the destruction of any person who defends the State of Israel."

Speaking by phone Monday, Bernstein said he's never met Pessin and had never heard of the philosophy professor until he "happened upon the link of someone else's story (about what happened) on Facebook."

Bernstein said he decided to write about the situation because "I felt strongly about this," and that the backlash to Pessin's post was unjust. He added that from what he could tell, it seemed Pessin made those comments "in the heat of" the war between Israel and Hamas last summer, and that those comments "seemed most reasonably to be referring to Hamas," rather than Palestinians, generally, which is what many critics of Pessin's post have suggested.

Bernstein said he spent some time researching the situation on his own, and talked to Pessin, who at Bernstein's request, sent some of his earlier Facebook posts so that Bernstein could see more of the context of what he was writing about.

"Maybe he was making a whole host of posts against Palestinians," Bernstein said, explaining his reasoning for asking Pessin for the posts.

But that wasn't the case, according to Bernstein.

"He never said anything hostile about Palestinians," he said, adding that generally Pessin's posts on the subject defended Israel and criticized Hamas.

Though Bernstein's blog posts defend Pessin, he does concede in his first post that he's "not a big fan of animal analogies to humans, and Pessin's was poorly written."

He continues, "And regarding Hamas, it was a bad analogy, because in analogizing Hamas to a rabid pit bull, it was grossly unfair to rabid pit bulls. Rabid pit bulls have no real control over their violent actions. Hamas, whether blowing up schoolbuses, diverting foreign aid meant for destitute Gazans to missiles and foreign bank accounts, killing gay men in the street on the pretext they are collaborators with Israel, or using human shields after launching a war against Israel, is composed of human beings who are fully responsible for their actions."

Bernstein said that he'd heard from several sources, who spoke off the record, that this was an "explicit attempt to silence and shame a lone or one of the few pro-Israel Jewish voices on the campus."

After his first piece, Bernstein said "things started filtering into my inbox" from people, some of whom were students or currently affiliated or had been affiliated with the school, who wanted to defend Pessin, but wanted to talk off the record for fear of being reprimanded.

MacDonnell said that it is the position of the leadership at Conn College that the school fosters an environment that is inclusive of differing viewpoints, and an environment that allows for pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian conversations to occur.

"To give you a broader understanding of how we've approached these issues, we celebrate dialogue that is informed, thoughtful, well-reasoned and respectful of other points of view," MacDonnell said in an email. "We deplore speech that intentionally seeks to demean, disparage or dehumanize, wherever we encounter it. When, from time to time, such speech arises from within our own community, we confront it, and we counter it with reason, information and persuasion, with the expectation that both the speaker and broader community can learn from the experience and that we can continuously improve the content and quality of our discourse."

In January 2014 the school opened its Zachs Hillel House, which was funded by Jewish donors. MacDonnell said that Hillel "has quickly become an important part of campus and community life."

When asked whether any of the donors expressed unhappiness with the way in which the leadership at the school handled the situation with Pessin, MacDonnell said, "We have very good relationships with our donors and have reached out to them to discuss the situation. My understanding is that these individuals were reassured by these conversations and were appreciative of the outreach."

j.bergman@theday.com

Twitter: @JuliaSBergman