CLINTON, N.Y. – Several faculty members at Hamilton College are protesting the school’s decision to hire a visiting professor who was convicted of possessing explosives as a former leftist radical in the 1980s.
Susan Rosenberg, who served 16 years in federal prison, will teach a one-month course in the spring called “Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change.”
“If you’re going to bring Susan Rosenberg here and say her minimal credentials are sufficient to teach a course on activism, why not bring in David Duke on race or O.J. Simpson on the sociology of sports?” said history professor Robert Paquette.
However, the college said in a statement Wednesday that Rosenberg “offers a unique perspective as a writer.”
“As long as public safety and the rights of others are not compromised, the college does not normally put limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot,” the statement said.
Rosenberg was convicted in 1984 of weapons possession and sentenced to 58 years in prison. Prosecutors said she had more than 600 pounds of explosives that she and another defendant had planned to use in “non-lethal” bombings.
Rosenberg also was indicted in a Brink’s armored car robbery in 1981 that left a guard and two police officers dead. The charges were eventually dropped.
While in prison, Rosenberg earned a master’s degree in creative writing and counseled prisoners who had AIDS. Her sentence was commuted by President Clinton in 2001.
The professor who brought Rosenberg to Hamilton said she is a model of how people can transform themselves.
“I think she is an exemplar of rehabilitation,” said Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, professor of comparative literature. “Her story is about how you can make something productive out of something that was really awful.”
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