In 1983 a student shared the syllabus from Dube’s summer class with a visiting historian from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. Incensed, the scholar fired off a two-page letter to Stony Brook’s Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Vice Provost, the Provost, and fourteen members of the faculty, accusing Dube of the “sloganeering that is practiced by the anti-Semite.” Before doing so, the historian never broached his concern with Dube or attended any of Dube’s classes, which he had taught at the university since 1977 without any complaint. The allegations against Dube were launched on the visiting historian’s very last day at the school; his moment of outrage, though, generated enough heat to explode Dube’s career and send shockwaves through the campus.
Shortly after it was sent, the complaint escalated into a national controversy. The Long Island chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B‘rith, which had gotten hold of the letter, mounted a publicity and lobbying campaign insisting that Dube’s course and teaching were anti-Semitic and should not be allowed to continue. In 1975 the same ADL chapter had lodged a complaint about the university’s affirmative action policy and successfully pushed Stony Brook to back away from a commitment to matriculate “women, minorities, and low-income applicants” at the new health sciences center. This time, the ADL’s concerns were not met with immediate acquiescence. A faculty committee investigated the summer course and found that “the bounds of academic freedom had not been crossed”; campus administrators concurred.
The Long Island ADL’s regional director, Rabbi Arthur Seltzer, was not pleased with the conclusion. Days after the findings were announced, he ushered the matter directly to Albany. At the state capital, governor Mario Cuomo responded swiftly, issuing a statement. Dube’s teaching was a “justification for genocide” and “intellectually dishonest,” he declared; the faculty support for him was unfathomable. Once Albany had spoken, Stony Brook president Marburger also published a letter declaring the linkage between Zionism, racism, and Nazism “abhorrent,” and calling for circumspection and sensitivity.