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Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Green
(No verified email address)
Phone: 840-3979 |
17 Apr 2005
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It has become obvious during the course of this academic year (2004-05)—if it was not already—that campus advocacy of Zionist ideology and Israeli state interests is shamelessly repressive of open and respectful discourse based on high standards of evidence, argument, and morality. |
Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses
David Green
Champaign, IL
It has become obvious during the course of this academic year (2004-05)—if it was not already—that campus advocacy of Zionist ideology and Israeli state interests is shamelessly repressive of open and respectful discourse based on high standards of evidence, argument, and morality. This repression targets basic 1st Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and press; academic and more general intellectual freedoms; and—most crucially—the political freedom to translate well-documented truths and carefully considered moral judgments into advocacy and activism. Like the struggle in Israel and Palestine, conflict on college campuses has an asymmetrical quality. On one side is a vigilant, proactive, and well-funded campaign by Israeli and Jewish-American organizations in support of the policies of the Israeli government, and the funding of those policies by the U.S. government. On the other side is a campaign to disseminate information regarding the history and reality of the Israel/Palestine conflict that has rightfully been incorporated into the conventional wisdom of scholarship, international law, and the reports of major human rights organizations. But unlike the struggle in the Middle East, supporters of Israel cannot use violence with impunity, and thus—in spite of blatant political intimidation by advocates for Israel—the struggle is a spirited and hopeful one for advocates of Palestinian rights, who have the much greater part of truth and conscience on their side.
Before considering this phenomenon, I would offer a few observations about the larger political context. First, U.S. policies toward the Middle East, including Israel, are driven by American priorities; albeit these priorities have over the past 40 years increasingly coincided with those of Israel, culminating in the current era of Neocon-Likud collaboration. Nevertheless, when there are conflicting interests, such as in the Jonathan Pollard case and the current investigation into AIPAC spying, it becomes clear that the U.S. administration will put its foot down, and that both Israel and American Jewish leaders will comply, if not without disingenuous and face-saving complaint. Second, the power of AIPAC is directed not so much at the policies of the executive branch, which are largely determined by geopolitical and defense industry interests, but at the Congress. No member can be allowed to leave the reservation of long-running American/Israeli rejection of a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict without public punishment, including charges of anti-Semitism and extravagant funding of opposing candidates. Finally, suffice it to say that the mainstream media, for reasons both inherent in the “manufacture of consent” and specific to this problem, make it impossible for the average U.S. citizen to understand the blatant reality of Palestinian victimization. Thus relatively little effort has to be made by Jewish Zionist organizations to shape the views of Americans in general about Israel and Palestine, especially when one considers the strenuous efforts of Christian Zionists to this end.
It is in this context that college campuses have become the primary venue, such as it is, of honest and disruptive discourse about this conflict, and the primary focus of efforts by Zionist organizations to curtail the freedoms that are essential for debate, advocacy, and action by students, faculty, and activists for a just peace. It is only on college campuses that Palestinian rights advocates can be claimed to pose even an imagined threat to the hegemony of Zionist propaganda in mainstream American political culture. During the past year, supporters of the Palestinian cause have been faced with the gamut of organized efforts by Zionist organizations to deny basic freedoms: speech, press, academic, intellectual, and political. As cogently argued by Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, and many others, the primary tactic employed in these efforts is to identify criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. At Harvard, this charge has been notably made by President Lawrence Summers and Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (http://www.hillel.org/Hillel/NewHille.nsf/0/039D27FB094E07B385256C3E00734215?OpenDocument,http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/25437/format/html/displaystory.html). This argument is supported with banal assertions of the “unique” nature of the Nazi holocaust, and by an evolving body of fraudulent scholarship and historical propaganda, including by Dershowitz in The Case for Israel (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=11) in relation to the Zionist movement and the state of Israel.
The origins of the current assault on intellectual freedoms are in the most recent intifada of September 2000, the subsequent and bloody re-occupation of occupied areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the spring of 2002, and the need to challenge a narrative sympathetic to the Palestinians. By the end of 2002, Daniel Pipes’ and Martin Kramer’s Campus Watch was in full cry, posting “dossiers” on Middle East scholars critical of Israel (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=mcneil). Concurrently, the high-minded tone of Israel’s claim to be on the front lines of western progress were articulated in 2003 by Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, with his spurious claim that Jewish students are being silenced on American campuses that have become “hot-houses of anti-Israel opinion.” (http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.24/oped1.html). Since, then, Sharansky has become a favorite of George Bush and Condoleezza Rice.
Efforts by American Zionists to suppress expressions of support for Palestinian rights on college campuses operate at many levels. AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has intensively organized and trained Zionist students as advocates for Israel, with all of the distortion and defamation that that entails (http://www.illinihillel.org/student-groups/illinipac). Campus Watch, a program of Pipes’ Middle East Forum, has targeted professors of Middle Eastern Studies around the country in McCarthyite fashion, and indeed the entire Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
Charles Jacobs of the David Project (and co-founder of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) has produced a propagandistic “documentary,” “Columbia Unbecoming,” accusing professors of that University’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) department of intimidating students on the basis of political disagreement. The fraudulent nature of this film has been exposed by a Columbia graduate student (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer3296.shtml), and in a recent article by Scott Sherman in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050404&s=sherman
). Another student has elaborated on the Orwellian assumption that Columbia is hostile to pro-Israel rather than pro-Palestinian students (http://www.counterpunch.org/robert03262005.html). The climax of this campaign occurred in an astonishing display of racist hatred by Phyllis Chesler and others at an event that was titled, "The Middle East and Academic Integrity on the American Campus." Of the 21 listed speakers, only four work on an American campus (http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1724). In a corollary incident, respected Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi has been prevented from speaking to seminars for New York City public school teachers (http://lefthook.org/Ground/Birch031305.html). Ultimately, as in literally all cases of such lurid accusations of systemic discrimination in college campuses, a report commissioned by President Lee Bollinger has concluded that no such thing occurred (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/03/ad_hoc_grievance_committee_report.html).
During the fall semester of 2004, plans by the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) to hold their annual pro-divestment conference at Duke University were met with a massive e-mail campaign directed calling on President Richard Brodhead to prevent the meeting (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/09/29/415aa16425330?in_archive=1). The President did not cave in to this pressure, and to be fair, Jewish student organizations did not advocate that the conference be banned. Nevertheless, these organizations organized a concert that was clearly racist in its identification of terrorism with Palestinians and Arabs (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/28/4180e2161935a). Meanwhile, the conference of course proceeded peacefully (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/18/4173ae82d81f9?in_archive=1), and not simply as a result of the exorbitant amount of money that was spent on campus security as a result of the campaign to prevent or counter it. Afterwards, the tension created by opposition to this conference reverberated in responses to a student columnist who provoked hysteria by stating that Jews are a privileged group in American society, and by mentioning Norman Finkelstein and his book The Holocaust Industry (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/18/4173b1de57041?in_archive=1).
Three “minor” incidents of the current academic year (2004-05) are also worthy of note. A lecture by Norman Finkelstein at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh was met with an organized effort by Jewish students and community members to arrive early, fill the seats, and prevent those sympathetic to Finkelstein’s argument in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History from gaining seats (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05074/471598.stm). Predictably, the account in the Post-Gazette covered the protest, but not the substance of the talk. Second, Yigal Carmon, founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), has threatened Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan with a lawsuit for critical comments Cole made on his popular blog (http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=4047). Finally, Daniel Pipes has recently settled a lawsuit brought by an Oregon professor who fought back against Pipes’ customary slanders (http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/02/c1.cr.cardsuit.1202.html). The latter incident is also a reminder of Pipes’ effort to prevent Palestinian human rights activist and feminist Hanan Ashrawi from speaking at Colorado College in September 0f 2002 (http://hnn.us/comments/6399.html).
Several more influential organizations are worthy of mention in relation to this campaign. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, former Clinton diplomat Dennis Ross, mythmaker of the “generous offer”), provides a “respectable” Washington think tank image for those who regularly bring their arguments to a more official academic environment, albeit in campus venues that systematically exclude Palestinian voices. At a more vulgar level, David Horowitz’s frontpagemage.com website works to disseminate the latest in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda from himself, Pipes, Chesler, and others to Zionist students, including campus newspaper columnists. Horowitz’s website has its origins in his Center for the Study of Popular Culture, with its far right critique of “political correctness” of (liberal) campus culture.
Within the framework of the venerable B’nai B’rith, the Anti-Defamation League has since the early 1960s provided a “civil rights” cover for equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism (http://www.hillel.org/hillel/newhille.nsf/0/A05BD199E7C0471185256CF60051EAE2?OpenDocument). As an adjunct of the B’nai B’rith, the ADL has institutional access to B’nai B’rith Hillel, the Campus Center for Jewish Life. Hillel also provides a networking environment for Zionist Jewish students, connecting them to organizations like AIPAC, Campus Watch, and the Zionist Organization of America (http://www.hillel.org/hillel/Partner_Agency.nsf/0/1B88983A94CB78E085256A9A0056CC53?OpenDocument); as well as ferrying them to Washington and Israel for indoctrination in “Israel advocacy.”
Local Jewish Federations provide a larger institutional and religious context for campus repression, disseminating Zionist propaganda, demonizing campus advocates for Palestinian rights, and advising alumni to withdraw financial support unless demands to repress criticism of Israel and U.S. support for Israel are met. In conjunction with Hillel through local Federations, the Reform movement (Union for Reform Judaism) advises students on “how to talk to critics of Israel” (Hamerman, http://urj.org/pr/mag/archive/). Students are told not to seriously consider a variety of perspectives, but instead to learn to detect “anti-Semitism” among critics of Israel who may either “deny Israel’s right to exist,” or “hold Israel to a higher standard.” The implication, of course, is that critics of Israel are to be either vilified or dismissed as Jew haters.
It is in this context that I have intensively observed and thoroughly documented events at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus during the past year, with particular attention paid to the actions of the local Jewish Federation and pro-Israel student columnists, which have worked together to create an environment that is verbally intimidating to Muslim students (http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display_any/22672/index.php). The response by the Interim Chancellor, under pressure by local and outside Jewish officials, has been to speak out against either trivial or non-existent anti-Semitism against Jews, but not against blatant racism against Arabs and Muslims. At UIUC, it is also instructive to note the relationship between Jewish Federation and the Program for Jewish Culture and Society on campus, with the resulting effort to legitimize charges of the “new anti-Semitism” (http://www.counterpunch.org/green03192005.html). In this connection, it is important to note increased pressure to hire professors in Israel Studies (http://www.jewishla.org/news/html/1204-ucla.html).
The defamatory behavior of both non-academic organizations and students who claim to be victimized by the “anti-Israel” climate on campus is certainly the primary basis for this campaign of repression against intellectual freedoms in regard to the Israel/Palestine conflict. But my own experience has also brought me to a serious consideration of the role of local “moderate” officials: secular and religious, academic and administrative, employed either by the university or in institutions associated with it. There is a characteristic political posturing among those officials, who claim to be opposed to both Palestinian terrorism and Jewish settlement. But there is never a specific criticism that passes their lips of settlement expansion or settler violence, never a word of genuine compassion for the occupied Palestinians, and a hair-trigger readiness to quickly point the finger at the Arabs when the “peace process” breaks down, as it inevitably will once again in the near future. It is these “moderate” officials who provide a civil façade on campus that allows racism and extremism to flourish in the relationships between outside groups like AIPAC, ZOA, and Campus Watch, and right-wing student groups, whether of a specifically Zionist or more generically neoconservative nature.
On a tactical level for pro-Palestinian campus activists, it is has become apparent to me that the self-assumed exalted and detached status of local Jewish officials makes them particularly sensitive to public criticism, and unwilling or unable to counter it with the kind of overt nastiness that is customary in the more ruthless world of pro-Israel propaganda. This is a reality that can be exploited, especially by critical Jewish activists. Without the institutional facilitation, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and passive consent of “respectable” campus Jewish organizations, the current campaign of repression against intellectual freedoms on campus could not be nearly as active and destructive. Those who pretend to be above the fray should be firmly, politely, and critically called to account for their politics and actions, especially if they purport to represent the local Jewish community, no less Jewish ethics and values.
David Green (davegreen48 (at) yahoo.com) is an employee of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of AWARE, the local Anti-war Anti-racism Effort (www.anti-war.net), and is associated with Not In My Name (www.nimn.org), a Chicago-based group comprised mostly of Jews who are opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
by Trying to read this article
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Apr 2005
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This article doesn't wrap when the window is resized--it's fixed width, and too wide to view on the screen, at least using Netscape. Could someone fix it and then delete my comment? |
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Re: Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
by Wayne Pickette
waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
18 Apr 2005
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Mr. Green has already placed the article with the same name, and when I asked him which kind of connection can be between two issues of this article's title, he failed to provide ANY answer. Now he chose another approach -to attack personally Dave Gehrig. Mr. Green, I think that you behavior looks (softly speaking) improper at ANY point of view, which can be counted. What are other thinking? |
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Re: Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
by David Green
davegreen48 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
18 Apr 2005
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To answer Wayne's rather bizarre question: from Znet: Beyond that, I would suggest a little basic reading and research.
The New York Times Supports Thought Control: The Massad Case
By Edward Herman
The New York Times has never been a very courageous newspaper in times of political hysteria and threats to civil liberties. When Bertrand Russell was denied the right to fill his appointment at CCNY in 1940, following an ugly campaign by a rightwing Catholic faction opposed to his positions on divorce and marriage, the paper not only failed to defend him, its belated editorial called the appointment "impolitic and unwise" and criticized him for not withdrawing when the going got hot ("The Russell Case," April 20, 1940).
Russell pointed out in a published reply something the editors had missed: that there was a serious matter of principle at stake; that a withdrawal would have been "cowardly and selfish" and would have "tacitly assented to the proposition?that substantial groups should be allowed to drive out of public office individuals whose opinions, race or nationality they find repugnant" (April 26, 1940).
During the McCarthy era also the Times failed to stand by its ex-Communist employees who were willing to tell all to the Times officials, but not turn informers. They were fired, and in its news and editorials the paper failed to oppose the witchhunt with vigor and on the basis of principle. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger himself wrote an editorial assailing the use of the Fifth Amendment in appearances before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (August 6, 1948).
We are in another period of escalating attacks on civil liberties, with the Patriot Act, a lawless rightwing administration, open threats to retaliate against judicial failures to follow rightwing dictates, and perpetual aggression to create the justification for repressive policies at home. An important additional factor is the steadily increasing aggressiveness of pro-Zionist forces, both in the United States and elsewhere, who have fought to contain criticism of Israeli policies by any means, including harassment, intimidation, threats, boycotts, claims of "anti-semitism," occasional resort to violence, and other forms of pressure.
While sometimes allegedly based on the need for fairness, balance and truthfulness, these campaigns are completely one-sided and are invariably aimed at suppressing alternative views and inconvenient facts.
Attacks on critics of Israel are of long standing?individuals like Edward Said and Noam Chomsky have been vilified and threatened for years, and both frequently needed police protection at speech venues, at work or at home. The situation has worsened in the Bush-2 era, in good part because of the cultivated hysteria of the "war on terror" and congenial environment provided by Bush, the strengthening of the rightwing media, and the demands imposed by Israeli policies.
On the latter point, it has long been noted that increased Israeli violence and land seizure, which causes greater international hostility to Israel, induces a new protective response by "defenders of Israel." In recent years nobody who criticizes Israeli policies has escaped attack--not attack by intellectual argument, but by ad hominem assault, spam invasions, the use of stolen addresses to embarrass, threats, and campaigns to discredit and silence.
For these attackers the end justifies any means, including, of course, lies (for one episode in the extensive lying career of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, see the letter exchange between him and Noam Chomsky, Boston Globe, May 17, May 25 and June 5, 1973).
The Bush-Sharon era has witnessed the emergence of McCarthyite institutions like Campus Watch and the David Project, designed to police academic Middle East studies for un-Israeli-patriotic thoughts, putting pressure on academics and administrators to intellectually cleanse, and providing targets for vigilantism.
There are even current proposals to legislate for "balance" and "fairness" in Middle East studies both at the state and federal level. These vigilante efforts and attempts to politicize the university pose serious threats to free speech, academic freedom, and the independence of the university. They are also threats to integrity and truth, with the main target criticism of Israeli policy and with the aim of making the official Israeli version of history the sole legitimate narrative.
It is in this context that we must evaluate the Joseph Massad case, Columbia University's handling of that case, and the New York Times' editorial on "Intimidation at Columbia" (April 7, 2005). Massad, who teaches courses in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia, and is critical of Israeli policies in Palestine, has been under assault from pro-Zionist forces, in class and outside, for years, although running an open class, tolerating hostile and often irrelevant questions, many times by outsiders and "auditors," and with a record of having never thrown anybody out of class for harassment (for documents by Massad and others bearing on this record, see the links provided at the end of this article).
In a decent and honest environment, concern about "intimidation" would focus on the intimidation of Joseph Massad, whose life has been been made very stressful and whose freedom to teach and effectiveness as a teacher has been threatened by this campaign of harassment?and Massad and his students are not alone in victimization by this campaign for the hegemony of an official truth.
But in the indecent and post-Orwellian world in which we live, Massad is the intimidator, several students he allegedly treated harshly are the true victims, and justice demands an inquiry on this alleged intimidation and a possible disciplining or firing of this intimidator. Thus, Columbia University's administration, responding to the hegemony campaign in the Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and by other organized groups and individuals, appointed a grievance committee to look into the allegations of intimidation of students by Massad and a colleague who have failed to follow the official narrative.
But this committee had no instruction to consider the intimidation of Massad et al., although both the committee and New York Times acknowledge that he and others have had their classes "infiltrated by hecklers and surreptitious monitors, and they received hate mail and death threats" ("Intimidation at Columbia"). Put otherwise, the admitted systematic intimidation of the faculty, clearly a threat to academic freedom and the possibility of honest teaching and research, is off the agenda for an inquiry into intimidation; claims by several students that are disputed and clearly part of a larger campaign of intimidation involving Campus Watch, David Horowitz and other nationally-based intimidators, must be taken seriously.
The Columbia grievance committee displayed bias by its willingness to accept a one-sided assignment in which only student intimidation was at issue. Their bias was also evident in their handling of the student complaints. The two complaints about Massad were declared "credible" although made belatedly and contested by Massad.
The committee does not state explicitly that Massad's denial in the classroom case was "incredible" and that Massad (and his three student witnesses) lied, so "credible," undefined, appears to mean not disproved and theoretically possible, and the committee's finding is therefore not only asinine and damaging to Massad, it opens a Pandora's box to future accusations of intimidation.
The "most serious" student accusation, which dates back to the Spring of 2002, was that Massad said to a student "If you are going to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom." This statement was confirmed by one student and an outsider allegedly present but unnoticed by others. Massad denied the accusation and was supported by three students.
The committee noted that the accusing student didn't leave the classroom, and expulsion was contrary to Massad's policy (with no such case ever reported). The student failed to complain in 2002 and did not mention the incident in her evaluation sheet for the course. The other student accusation was not in a classroom, the time and place were vague, and the alleged statement by Massad, while harsh was conceivable in the heat of a private argument; but the student and incident were not recollected by Massad.
These incidents might have happened, but they might not, and actual incidents might have been rewritten to serve a political agenda. The grievance committee doesn't even mention these possibilities, nor does it place them in the context of continuous harassment and intimidation from the side of the purported victims that might be considered to reduce their "credibility."
A third demonstration of the grievance committee's bias is its suggestion that the failure of the student victims to complain earlier resulted from a deficient grievance procedure at Columbia. The committee said that it was only a "result of these failures that outside advocacy groups devoted to purposes tangential to those of the University were able to intervene to take up complaints expressed by some students."
But not only is this a fallacy in that there were several routes to complaint at the time these incidents occurred, which the students failed to tap, the committee fails to note the possibility that the absence of earlier complaints might be because the incident or incidents didn't happen or were later inflated in seriousness, constructed or made serious only as part of the escalating attacks on Massad and other dissidents from the official line.
The committee premises the truthfulness of the complainants and ignores their possible role in a larger campaign of suppression---that is, they fail to recognize that the belated complaints may be part of the process by which "advocacy groups devoted to purposes tangential to those of the university" have been able to accomplish their ends.
Turning to the New York Times editorial, although noting in the penultimate paragraph that the accused faculty members had had their classes infiltrated, disrupted, and monitored by outsiders, and had been recipients of hate mail and death threats, the editors do not criticize Columbia for failing to act to prevent these numerous abuses threatening academic freedom, nor do they even hint that any remedy was called for.
This was apparently acceptable intimidation, coincidentally carried out against individuals challenging the official narrative that the New York Times itself has adhered to closely (see my article on the media's treatment of Israel's approved ethnic cleansing: http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/israeleth3.htm). The editors focus on Massad, allegedly "clearly guilty" of ill temper on two occasions, although under continuous provocation over several years. The editors misrepresent the facts even here?the grievance committee called the charges "credible," but didn't explicitly deny the credibility of Massad and his witnesses.
Neither the committee nor editors had the integrity to note that the student charges were old and that they might have been constructed as part of an organized campaign of derogation; or that the methods employed in this campaign have not been scrupulous, and that the incidents might have been edited or entirely fabricated.
In its last paragraph the Times editors contend that the grievance committee's mandate should have extended to the question of "anti-Israel bias" and that Columbia should hire and fire "with more determination and care." In short, the Newspaper of Record tells its readers that universities should police thought to keep out unwarranted bias, which seems to pose a threat in only one direction?the editors have never mentioned the possibility of unwarranted pro-Israeli bias, which for the editors may be inconceivable.
Joseph Massad is in good company. The editors of the New York Times found Bertrand Russell unworthy of an appointment to CCNY based on his politics and a bandwagon of hostile attacks. Sixty four years later they implicitly call for the removal of Joseph Massad based on his politics and an organized campaign of derogation. As Russell pointed out to the editors back in 1940, it is contrary to the fundamental principles of a free society to drive out of their position "individuals whose opinions, race or nationality they find repugnant."
This point remains valid even where done under the cover of alleged "intimidation" by the victim being driven out.
USEFUL LINKS:
--" New York Times Supports McCarthyite Witch Hunt," Juan Cole, Informed Comment, April 8, 2005
--Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report, Ira Katznelson, Chair; Lisa Anderson; Farah Griffin; Jean E. Howard; and Mark Mazower, Columbia University (28 March 2005)
--EI EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Massad's statement to Columbia University's Ad Hoc Grievance Committee (5 April 2005)
--"Columbia Unbecoming" in the clear light of day, Monique Dols (5 November 2004)
-- Joseph Massad responds to the intimidation of Columbia University, Joseph Massad (3 November 2004)
--Columbia Considers Limits on Political Expression at University, Jacob Gershman, The New York Sun (19 April 2004)
--Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel, Joseph Massad (18 August 2003)
--Policing the academy, Joseph Massad (14 April 2003) |
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Re: Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
by beholder
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Apr 2005
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After the reading of your reasons in your last comment I became fully agree with Mike's comment (currently last comment to your previous article with the same name as this one). Though, of course, I don't share his position about 'leftist web', etc.
Israel is NOT the back yard of the USA, not the part of it. Therefore, Zionism in difference with Patriotic Act, and other conservative internal changes, which have been mostly inflicted by current Federal Government, CAN'T influence INTERNAL policies of the USA one or other way, no matter how many irrelevant quotas you have presented and are going to present to show the opposite. Improper theoretical and practical treatment of Muslims is connected with the aggressive plans and actions of current Federal Government and sure not with Israel.
Wayne Pickette is the extremely patient person, I don't have this superb quality. So, the only remedy for me is to stop to pay ANY attention to your articles at all, I think. |
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Re: Zionism vs. Intellectual Freedoms on American College Campuses |
by David Green
davegreen48 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Apr 2005
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I have never claimed that Israel drives U.S. policy. I'm arguing that the Israel Lobby focuses on college campuses. It's hard to believe that anything could be more obvious. To copy and paste from my article above:
Before considering this phenomenon, I would offer a few observations about the larger political context. First, U.S. policies toward the Middle East, including Israel, are driven by American priorities; albeit these priorities have over the past 40 years increasingly coincided with those of Israel, culminating in the current era of Neocon-Likud collaboration. Nevertheless, when there are conflicting interests, such as in the Jonathan Pollard case and the current investigation into AIPAC spying, it becomes clear that the U.S. administration will put its foot down, and that both Israel and American Jewish leaders will comply, if not without disingenuous and face-saving complaint. Second, the power of AIPAC is directed not so much at the policies of the executive branch, which are largely determined by geopolitical and defense industry interests, but at the Congress. No member can be allowed to leave the reservation of long-running American/Israeli rejection of a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict without public punishment, including charges of anti-Semitism and extravagant funding of opposing candidates. Finally, suffice it to say that the mainstream media, for reasons both inherent in the “manufacture of consent” and specific to this problem, make it impossible for the average U.S. citizen to understand the blatant reality of Palestinian victimization. Thus relatively little effort has to be made by Jewish Zionist organizations to shape the views of Americans in general about Israel and Palestine, especially when one considers the strenuous efforts of Christian Zionists to this end.
It is in this context that college campuses have become the primary venue, such as it is, of honest and disruptive discourse about this conflict, and the primary focus of efforts by Zionist organizations to curtail the freedoms that are essential for debate, advocacy, and action by students, faculty, and activists for a just peace. It is only on college campuses that Palestinian rights advocates can be claimed to pose even an imagined threat to the hegemony of Zionist propaganda in mainstream American political culture. During the past year, supporters of the Palestinian cause have been faced with the gamut of organized efforts by Zionist organizations to deny basic freedoms: speech, press, academic, intellectual, and political. As cogently argued by Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, and many others, the primary tactic employed in these efforts is to identify criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. |
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