Professor Donald Hindley of the Politics Department is leaving Brandeis University after 52 years. Hindley is currently on a one-year terminal sabbatical, after which his retirement will become official. He states that he is the longest continuously serving Brandeis professor.

Hindley was the chairman of the Politics Department for several years, and a member of several faculty committees. Hindley has received several grants to study international politics, including a social sciences research grant, a Rockefeller Foundation grant and a Fulbright travel scholarship.

In a phone interview with The Brandeis Hoot, Hindley said he very much enjoyed his time at Brandeis, stating, “I really, really enjoyed the students.”

He called Brandeis his “home.” Having grown up in England, Hindley said, “It’s really exciting to be at an American Jewish institution,” explaining, “I like to be learning also from people around me.”

Hindley cited changes and growing conservatism within the university (beginning during the former President Jehuda Reinharz’s ’72 administration) as reasons for his departure. He also noted, “by 81, it’s about time to go. Luckily, I’ve remained healthy.”

Hindley’s tenure at Brandeis has been wrought with several controversies, and he has clashed with both Reinharz and current President Fred Lawrence.

In 2007, students from Hindley’s Latin American politics course filed a complaint after Hindley used the word “wetbacks” in class. Hindley was found guilty of harassment. Assistant Provost Richard Silberman came to monitor his class, and Hindley was forced to participate in sensitivity training. The events of 2007 sparked a discussion on free speech in an academic setting. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) placed Brandeis on its “Red Alert” for abusing liberty and free speech. The FIRE case study on the matter asserts that Hindley “was neither granted a formal hearing by Brandeis nor provided with the substance of the accusations against him in writing before a verdict was reached.” It also notes that Hindley felt he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian views.

Hindley stated that as the controversy ensued, “Reinharz and his cohorts denounced me publicly as a racist, tried to get me to resign from Brandeis.” But Hindley also notes that numerous people chose to support him.

“Student responses to Hindley’s situation were sympathetic,” reads a 2007 article from The Hoot. Kenny Fuentes ’08, a student of Hindley’s, was quoted as stating that his studies with Hindley have addressed regions that “are full of racial tensions and harsh realities that Professor Hindley never sugar-coats … He has dedicated his career to educating his students about the rampant racism still prevalent in Latin American societies.”

Fuentes continued, “I am concerned that this situation represents, at best, a misunderstanding, and at worst, a political attack.”

In an email to The Hoot, Hindley wrote, “I have served with every Brandeis president including the founder, Abe Sachar. I felt ‘one of us’—a Brandeisian in a first-class institution founded and funded by Jews as a gift to the United States.”

Last semester, Hindley again found himself in the center of a controversy, again surrounding the topic of free speech on the Brandeis campus. Daniel Mael ’15 leaked the contents of faculty listserv titled “Concerned” on the conservative website Breitbart.com. The listserv was founded in 2002 as a place for faculty to discuss the Iraq War, and then continued to house discussion on current events. The leak revealed emails “on topics ranging from Israeli politics to the decision to rescind Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s invitation to receive an honorary degree at commencement last spring,” wrote News Editor Emily Belowich in an October 2014 edition of The Hoot.

Many of the remarks were found to be controversial. Mael deemed a series of comments from Hindley and other faculty members as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Hindley received a great deal of negative attention as a result of the leak.

In response to the situation, Lawrence wrote in a letter to the faculty, “While we maintain our staunch support of freedom of expression and academic inquiry, some remarks by an extremely small cohort of Brandeis faculty members are abhorrent.”

Hindley expressed his feelings of disillusionment with some of his colleagues but hopes to be remembered for his impact on students.

“Each year, I get quite a few emails from students who were very grateful, very friendly,” Hindley said. He said he prized the opportunity to teach about Latin America and Southeast Asia, “and [love] them … and [be] really enthusiastic about them.” Hindley talks of a father and daughter who both took his courses. The chance to interact with students and to watch them grow, said Hindley, “has kept me thrilled and alive and interested.”

In an email to The Hoot, Chair of the Politics Department Professor Daniel Kryder wrote, “[Hindley] has lived in and conducted research in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Indonesia and Thailand, among other places, and he has always sought to foster understanding of these relatively unknown polities among our students. For our department, his retirement marks a changing of the guard, and we wish him a fulfilling and enjoyable next chapter.”