home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
|
|
Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories June 3, 2005 Gary
Leupp June 2, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Forrest
Hylton Mike
Whitney Brian
Cloughley Mazin
Qumsiyeh Russell
D. Hoffman Norman
Madarasz Norman
Solomon David
Price Website
of the Day
June 1, 2005 James
Petras Justin
Delacour Edward
Jay Epstein Omar
Barghouti / Lisa Taraki Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Jason
Leopold William
S. Lind
May 31, 2005 Sen.
Mike Gravel David
Krieger Tad
Daley Joshua
Frank Richard
Gott Norman
Solomon Tom
Segev Walter
Brasch Diana
Johnstone
May 28 / 30, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Richard
Lichtman Sharon
Smith Paul
Craig Roberts Dave
Lindorff Ramzy
Baroud Brian
Cloughley Fred
Gardner Lee
Sustar Joshua
Frank Justin
E.H. Smith Jackie
Corr Michael
Kimaid Toufic
Haddad Justin
Taylor Amir
Butler Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement
May 27, 2005 Gary
Leupp Daniel
Estulin Kevin
Zeese Robert
Fisk Dave
Zirin Website
of the Day
May 26, 2005 Yuki
Tanaka Ray
McGovern Arthur
Mitzman Jack
Random Britt
Bailey and Brian Tokar Rebecca
Rush Jorge
Mariscal Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
May 25, 2005 Camilo
Mejia Dave
Lindorff William
S. Lind Chris
Floyd Brian
Cloughley Lenni
Brenner Sean
Cain Karl
Shepard John
Ross Website
of the Day
Dave
Zirin Michele
Bollinger Winslow
Wheeler Uri
Avnery Michael
Donnelly Joshua
Frank Stephen
Dunifer Paul
Craig Roberts
May 23, 2005 Esther
Sassaman / Thomas Nagy Mike
Whitney Ramzy
Baroud Michael
Dickinson Walter
Brasch Dick
J. Reavis Maria
Tomchick Norman
Solomon Kevin
Zeese Website
of the Day
May 21 / 22, 2005 David
H. Price Gabriel
García Márquez Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Laith
al-Saud Elaine
Cassel Greg
Moses Fred
Gardner Dave
Lindorff Alan
Maass William
Blum Tom
Crumpacker Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Doug
Giebel Evelyn
J. Pringle Carolyn
Baker Chris
Floyd Frederick
B. Hudson Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement
May 20, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Paul
de Rooij Christopher
Brauchli Mark
Engler Joshua
Frank Robert
Jensen Jeffery
R. Webber
May 19, 2005 Bill
Forman Stan
Goff Neve
Gordon Michael
Dickinson Karyn
Strickler Andrew
Freedman Paul
Craig Roberts
May 18, 2005 Jean
Bricmont Laura
Carlsen Mike
Whitney Joshua
Frank George
Galloway Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Dwight
D. Eisenhower Dave
Lindorff
May 17, 2005 Mickey
Z. Petuuche
Gilbert Paul
Craig Roberts Ramzy
Baroud Robert
Jensen / Pat Youngblood Stan
Cox Dave
Zirin Diana
Barahona Website
of the Day
May 16, 2005 Michael
Gillespie Jason
Leopold Jesse
Muldoon Norman
Solomon Robert
Cray Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Saul
Landau Gary
Leupp JoAnn
Wypijewski Ben
Tripp Brian
J. Foley Tom
Barry Mitchell
Verter Mike
Ferner Dan
Smith Mark
Scaramella Don
Fitz Diane
Farsetta Michael
Dickinson Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner Farrah
Hassen Douglas
Valentine Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
May 13, 2005 Tom
Stephens Patrick
Cockburn Mike
Whitney Chris
Floyd Jenna
Orkin Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Website
of the Day
May 12, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Uri
Avnery Greg
Moses Carolyn
Baker Pat
Williams William
S. Lind Jack
Random Gary
Leupp
May 11, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Kevin
Zeese Christopher
Brauchli Zalman
Amit Robert
Shull Mike
Whitney Dr.
Teresa Whitehurst Norman
Solomon
May 10, 2005 Richard
Drayton Dave
Zirin Jackie
Corr Dave
Lindorff Michael
Donnelly Reza
Fiyouzat Scott
Parkin Stephen
Babcock Alan
Farago Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
May 9, 2005 Louis
Proyect Robert
Fisk Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Sasha
Kramer Andrew
Wimmer Jeffrey
Webber Jeffrey
St. Clair
May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp Saul
Landau Joe
DeRaymond Daniela
Ponce Heather
Williams Gregory
Elich Anis
Memon John
Chuckman Mike
Whitney Ron
Jacobs Colin
Kalmbacher Lance
Selfa Fred
Gardner Ben
Tripp Mickey
Z. Richard
Joseph Dr.
Susan Block Poets'
Basement
May 6, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Erin
Yoshioka Sam
Husseini Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Dan
Bacher P.
Sainath
May 5, 2005 Carles
Mutaner Carl
G. Estabrook Farrah
Hassen Kevin
Zeese Michael
Leonardi Bennett
Ramberg Ray
McGovern Norman
Solomon Nicole
Colson Brian
Concannon, Jr.
May 4, 2005 Colin
Kalmbacher John
Walsh Greg
Moses Ali
Khan Chris
Floyd Linda
S. Heard Dave
Zirin William
S. Lind Gary
Leupp Website
of the Day
May 3, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Brian
Cloughley Ira
Kurzban Seth
Sandronsky Gilad
Atzmon Michael
Donnelly Alex
Sanchez Peter
Linebaugh
May 2, 2005 Ron
Jacobs Stan
Goff Karyn
Strickler Joshua
Frank Kevin
Zeese Vicente
Navarro
April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gabriel
Kolko Jennifer
Loewenstein Lee
Sustar Saul
Landau T.W.
Croft Nikolas
Kozloff William
Blum Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Doug
Giebel Steven
Erlanger Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Kurt
Nimmo Joe
DeRaymond Michael
Dickinson Mickey
Z. Justin
Taylor Poets
Basement Website
of the Weekend
Hot Stories Alexander
Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman
Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
Subscribe Online
|
June 3, 2005 Witch Hunt at ColumbiaTargeting the UniversityBy JOSEPH MASSAD Targeting the university is the latest mission of right-wing forces who have hijacked not only political power and political discourse in the United States but also the very vocabulary that can be used against them. The campaign of the last three years or so to attack US universities as the last bastion where a measure of freedom of thought is still protected is engineered to cancel out such freedom and ensure that scholars will not subvert the received political wisdom of the day. Some of the major tactics in this campaign have been the launching of witch hunts against specific professors, calling for their dismissal from their jobs, and, failing that, smear their reputation; target Middle East Studies as a scholarly field more generally and cut federal funding to it and place it under governmental supervision, and promote apologists for Israel in the guise of scholars as the only adequate scholarly alternative. While shutting down the educational process in favour of religious theories of creationism and the like has been around for a while, the recent attack on scholars who disagree with US foreign policy and the policies of the state of Israel are the main mobilisational issues of the current campaign. What is at stake in this assault is not only academic freedom, but scholarship per se, and specifically scholarship on Palestine and Israel, which is the primary target of the witch-hunters. What makes these anti-scholarship attacks possible and popular is the existence of a major discrepancy, even a radical disconnect, between popular knowledge and media coverage about the Palestine/Israel conundrum and established scholarly knowledge about the topic. It is this disconnect that the witch hunters mobilise against scholarship as proof that it is not media and popular knowledge, which defends Israeli policy and Zionism's axioms, that is ideological, but rather academic scholarship which has largely uncovered unsavory facts about both. Thus when young American students who come from ideologically charged homes, schools, and environments, attend university classes about the subject, they mistake established scholarship as pro- Palestinian propaganda, a conclusion that is propped up by the likes of Campus Watch, the David Project, and the Anti- Defamation League, all three organisations who make it part or all their business to attack scholarly criticisms of Israeli policy. Let me provide a few examples of what I mean. All respected scholars in the field agree that most or all Palestinians who became refugees in 1948 were expelled directly or indirectly by Israel. The debate that exists is about whether all Palestinian refugees were physically expelled by the Israeli army or that the Israeli army expelled the majority while a minority of refugees fled, not as a direct result of physical force but as an indirect consequence of actions taken by the Israeli army and government which might, or might not, have been deliberately intended to expel them. In contrast, media and popular ideological knowledge in the US still insists that the Palestinians fled on their own, or worse, were called upon to do so by Arab leaders (despite Israeli false claims that Arab leaders called on Palestinians to flee, research has shown that they called upon them to remain steadfast in their homeland) while the Zionists begged them to stay! Established scholarship enumerates all the racist laws and institutional racist practices in operation in Israel which discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, granting Jews differential rights and privileges over non-Jews, and rendering Israel a racist state by law. Popular and media knowledge, in contrast, depict Israel as a democratic liberal state that treats all its citizens equally. It is also established in scholarship that Israel discriminates against non-European Jews (the majority of the country's Jewish population) and also against recent Russian Jewish immigrants, and has engaged and continues to engage in a racist discourse about them and in unofficial institutional discrimination against them (witness the most recent case of discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in admissions to Israeli universities). In contrast, popular and media knowledge depicts Israel as a place where all Jews are equal. Scholarly knowledge addresses the question of Israel as a quasi-theological state, where religious law governs major aspects of Jewish life and that only Orthodox Judaism is allowed to have religious authority over Jewish citizens to the exclusion of Reform and Conservative Judaism, let alone other Jewish denominations. In contrast, media and popular knowledge depict Israel as a secular state. These are only a few examples of how scholarly knowledge is drastically different from and contradicts media and popular knowledge about key issues regarding Israeli society and history. Israel's apologists and right-wing witch- hunters aim to establish this popular and media "knowledge", which echo the official positions of the State of Israel and its US lobby, as "scholarly" and dismiss academic scholarship as ideology. It is in this context that many of the organisations and individuals attacking me are under the false impression that what I teach in my classes is a "Palestinian" perspective or narrative. In fact, at the risk of engaging my fanatical critics, whose outrageous claims and inventions should not be given any legitimacy, I do no such thing. In my class on the topic, I teach academic scholarship on Palestine and Israel, which is precisely why the witch- hunters want Columbia to fire me. As academic knowledge is of no interest to these ideologues, they have marshalled all their resources to transform the university into a mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda. They have recently been joined by The New York Times who, in an editorial on 7 April, called on Columbia University to monitor the classroom for "pro-Palestinian" bias. The Times ' editors asserted that the (illegitimate) investigative panel that Columbia University convened as part of its own intimidation of its own professors failed to examine the real allegations of pro-Israel students who are allied with pro-Israeli lobbying groups outside the university. These allegations speak of stridently pro- Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias on the part of several professors. The panel had no mandate to examine the quality and fairness of teaching. That leaves the university to follow up on complaints about politicised courses and a lack of scholarly rigour as part of its effort to upgrade the department. One can only hope that Columbia will proceed with more determination and care than it has heretofore. What the Times ' editors mean is that it is incumbent upon Columbia University to bring scholarly knowledge transmitted in its classrooms in line with Israeli propaganda, which the New York Times itself has never found too difficult to disseminate as objective truth anyway. Indeed, Ethan Bronner, the Times' deputy foreign editor, was quoted in an article on 24 April asserting that as far as United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict are concerned, the newspaper editors "view ourselves as neutral and unbound by such judgements. We cite them, but we do not live by them." If the Times can ignore so casually UN decisions as unbinding, why shouldn't scholars do the same? Indeed why shouldn't Columbia University do the same? The fact that for now at least, Columbia's administration has not taken steps to monitor the politics of scholarship should not reassure us. Aside from his commitment to the pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian line espoused by the New York Times and manifest in many of his own public statements, Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, has spoken about his concern of a lack of "balance" and the presence of "bias" in some classes on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict taught at Columbia, which he intends to rectify. He even expressed concern that Columbia scholars of the Middle East do not seem to explain "the relationship... between the environmental facts of life in the Middle East and Asia, or its diseases, and the culture there?" Columbia may soon hire Middle East scholars who will attempt to answer this important question! The production of academic knowledge in American universities was never separable from the overall social, political, and economic requirements of the American state. Links between the university and state policy and the interests of the private sector have a long history and are structurally built into the research agenda of universities, most importantly through the mechanism of funding. I still remember how as an undergraduate in the US, I was always baffled by political scientists who would ridicule Soviet academic scholarship as lacking "independence" due to its being beholden to an agenda set and funded by the Soviet state, while being proud of their own scholarship and discipline, which was hardly "independent" of US government funding as well as funding from the private sector which most often drove US state interests. Despite these structural limitations, however, there remained an important and crucial space in the university where serious scholarship could be produced and which scholars have utilised to produce their work. This is not to say that scholarship is unbiased. On the contrary, all respectable scholarship about Nazi Germany and the holocaust, to take an important example, is indeed biased against the Nazis, but no one except anti-Semites would dare equate scholarly judgment of Nazi Germany and the holocaust as the "Jewish" perspective or narrative. The same applies to scholarship about South Africa under Apartheid, which is never described as the "Black" perspective or narrative. Feminist scholarship is equally biased against sexism, but is not labelled as "women's" narrative or perspective. Scholarship on Stalin, on US slavery, on British colonialism, on American racism, on institutionalised sexism and discrimination against women, etc, is always biased, and no amount of lobbying from right-wing groups will force academics to teach the Nazi or slavery perspectives in the interest of "balance." It is this scholarly space that the university enshrines which the neo- conservative culture commissars want to close off. To do so, what better place to create consensus than the Palestine/Israel conflict on which there is total US cultural agreement echoed by the mainstream and the right-wing and left-wing press. If Fox news and CNN and ABC news can agree on the "facts" surrounding Israel and its policies, as do the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, and the New York Sun, then surely critical scholarship on this question will find little popular support. In this regard you can have a civil libertarian Zionist like the Village Voice 's Nat Hentoff, liberal Zionist apologists like the Nation magazine, and the New York Sun and the New York Post, join hands to discredit scholars on Palestine and Israel as "dogmatic", "uncompromising," "strident" and the like. Ostensible civil libertarian and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has not only joined the campaign in writing for the press, but also by lecturing at Columbia University against "pro- Palestinian" professors whom he accused of supporting terrorism. Luckily, Dershowitz did not advise Columbia on the types of legal torture that it could mete out to "guilty" professors. This is not to say that there is no disagreement among the members of this unholy alliance. There is. Such disagreement revolves on the division between "good" Arabs and "bad" Arabs. This is not new but harks back to the emergence of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat as the first "good" Arab to be rescued from the lot in the American media. Since then, while the right-wing has had no truck with these divisions, as all Arabs are "bad," as far as it is concerned, the mainstream and the "left" very much dabble in this division. Thus, Arabs who are seen as "moderate" and who are seen as speaking a language that does not challenge all the received wisdom on Israel are considered "good," while those who are seen as exposing the hypocrisy of liberal apologists for Israel are "bad" and are described as "extremists." This is an important strategy for liberal Zionists, as it achieves two important goals: it avoids and pre-empts the accusation of anti-Arab racism while encouraging "moderation" among Arab scholars by offering them much needed public and media praise. Thus, I was recently faulted by the reporter of the left- liberal Nation magazine for daring to call Israel a racist state, even though I base my accurate description of the country on its myriad racist laws that discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, and that grant Jews rights and privileges that are denied to non-Jews. Such laws include the law of return (1950), the law of absentee property (1950), the law of the state's property (1951), the law of citizenship (1952), the status law (1952), the Israel lands administration law (1960), the construction and building law (1965), among others. What the Nation and Nat Hentoff find objectionable in my characterisation of Israel as racist is that it contradicts media and popular knowledge about Israel, which is the only acceptable measure of knowledge of the country in the US media. Herein lies their complicity with the rightwing on rejecting academic scholarship on Israel. The Nation and Hentoff, among others, made sure to contrast me with other "moderate" Arab scholars whom they praise and do not dismiss. By using the popular and media consensus on Palestine/Israel as its entry point for the dismantling of the university and its cardinal principle of academic freedom, the pro-Israel lobbyists were able to find allies in the university administration, among the faculty, and certainly among students. Even though the main target of the witch-hunters is academic scholarship on Palestine and Israel, which they want to delegitimise fully as a scholarly endeavour, in favour of accepting the official Israeli government's representation of itself as academic truth, their efforts have mushroomed into an all out attack on the concept of academic freedom, and the very institution of the University. Their strategy, however, has backfired, as faculty quickly realised that the attack would indeed touch on the very nature of university pedagogy and the production of scholarly knowledge. In this regard, Columbia's faculty and other faculties around the country have begun to mobilise against these enemies of academic freedom. These enemies of academic freedom do not only threaten junior faculty but all classroom settings and all scholarship. In light of the organised power and influence of the witch-hunters, the task before academics is not only to continue to insist on writing and producing scholarship about Palestine and Israel, which will continue to expose the true nature of the Israeli state and its oppressive policies, but to defend the scholarly endeavour itself, which can only be ensured if the institution of the university is maintained as a space where academic freedom is upheld. The university, with all its limitations, is one of the few remaining spaces, if not the only remaining one, where critical intellectuals can still live the life of the mind. What the witch- hunters want us to do is to live the life of servitude to state power, as technocrats and as ideologues. This we refuse to do. Joseph Massad is assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. This article originally appeared
in Al-Ahram.
|
