(4/9/08) -- Claremont McKenna College history professor Jonathan Petropoulos will resign as director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights effective summer 2008. Dean of Faculty Gregory Hess made the announcement to CMC professors at a meeting on April 8.
The announcement comes amid controversy surrounding an effort by Petropoulos to restitute a Nazi-looted painting to its rightful owner in which his associate, a Munich art dealer, has been investigated for blackmail. The painting was looted in 1938 from the childhood home of Gisela Bermann-Fischer, now a resident of Zurich, shortly after she and her family escaped the Nazi Anschluss.
Sources say that Hess' statement, which will be released to Trustees on April 9, closely resembles a March 7 letter sent to Trustees and tenured and tenure-track faculty....
In other related news, issues of last Friday's The Student Life (TSL), the newspaper published by the Associated Students of Pomona College, apparently disappeared from newstands over the weekend. CMC blogger Stagafling remarked on this, and we've heard that the paper may have been pulled because of the problem-filled Petropoulos article TSL ran in Friday's issue. We had a post on Monday about the TSL article. The article in question was written by TSL news editor Travis Kaya and staff writer Cindy Hernandez.
The newsstands remained empty yesterday, so TSL's staff has made no efforts to replenish the stands. If the issues were pulled, the matter would seem to have degenerated into farce. We can envision a video montage with a goofy but lovable sitcom character (picture Kenneth the NBC page from 30 Rock) running around to a soundtrack of peppy music pulling any issue he can find - from newsstands, dorm rooms, out of the hands of students at tables and benches.
Update, Wednesday Afternoon. Life imitates art. We actually saw it--Kenneth was removing TSL from a lounge in Smith Campus Center:
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