This week, a professor who had JUST been appointed to head the Jewish Studies department at Queens College in New York resigned from the post. Thomas Bird is NOT Jewish and great controversy had arisen over that fact. A colleague of his was quoted as saying the appointment was "unheard of" and "inappropriate." Robert Siegel talks to that critic of this appointment-- Professor Samuel Heilman who once directed the Jewish Studies at Queens College. He says the head of such a department must be a kind of role model and has a symbolic and emblamatic role to play-- and therefore should be Jewish.
Copyright 1996 NPR
