Peter Kirstein notes on his blog about an important development in a recent case: “Columbia College in Chicago is offering two sections of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict course in their fall 2014 semester offerings. Instructor Iymen Chehade has been in the middle of a major academic freedom case concerning a prior reduction of sections of this class. It is to the credit of Columbia College that they have shown the flexibility and the commitment to academic freedom to restore the offering of two and not merely one section of this heavily enrolled course.”

Read more about the case in the Chicago Reader, and a statement by Guy Davidi, the co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, the Oscar-nominated documentary that sparked one student complaint last fall about bias after Chehade showed it in his class about Israel and Palestine, which was shortly followed by one out of two sections of the class being cancelled for Spring 2014. The Illinois AAUP’s Committee A (of which I am a member) issued a report about the case, along with a response from Columbia College (which denied that the complaint had any role in cancellation of the section).