The Amateur Orientalist

Long time no blog

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:28:56 GMT

Sorry, oh vast readership, hanging on to my every word, waiting for the next chapter in my suspenseful story about what it's like to pursue a PhD in Comp Lit, but my musings on Derrida and Gayatri Spivak are usually devoted to my coursework.

And also I've got a girlfriend! Her name's Dahna, and I'd upload a pic if I could figure it out.

She was born in the West Bank and has lived pretty much all over the world, but has been in Brooklyn since age 11.

OK, gotta go, peoples! More later.

Yo yo yo

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:51:32 GMT

Crazy day today. I actually haven't slept since last night. Wait that doesn't make sense. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm still wired and on an adrenaline rush (nothing illegal any, any cops out there!) from last night.

OK, where to begin. I got an email from the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice listserve and went to check out some protests against Alan Desrhowitz, who was speaking at Columbia to enormous, worshipful crowds (of course). I mostly just sat back on the periphery and listened to the rally outside - some of the shit people were saying to the protesters was just unbelievably hateful and disgusting - and sat in on the lecture for as long as I could. Anyway, at about the mid-point, this girl (woman? I never know what's worse, not being politically correct, or making women feel old), evidently Arab, gets up to talk about the divestiture thing and of course she's shouted down.

So I will admit that I think that she is kind of cute but really I swear I just wanted to talk to her about the question she didn't get to ask. So I'm talking to her and making a little bit of the usual ass of myself (I admit it) and some jerk comes over and starts cursing at her and calling her all these names or whatever. Typical bully. I chased the racist motherfucker off and I think we both hope we never run into each other again. So I'm talking to her and things seem to be going OK so I ask he if she wants to go to my secret spot (you know what I mean, right Stan and Emily?) to watch the sunset. So this is crazy, she asks me if I want to go out dancing, to this RAVE (who knew they still had those?) way the hell out in Bushwick. And we danced all night. And I don't kiss and tell. And it's now two in the fuckin' afternoon and I am going to bed.

More later. I hope.

Well, I'd rather call it "The New Free Speech Movement" than "The New McCartyism"

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:29:37 GMT

More news from the campus ideological struggle:

---(begin forward)---

And check out <a href="www.campusantiwar.net">Campus Anti-War Net</a> for other updates on the New McCarthyism coming to campuses near you...

Students at Holyoke Need Your Solidarity
Students at Holyoke Community College Need Your Solidarity!

*Holyoke College Republicans Boast of Harassment*
At HCC in Holyoke Massachusetts, students have been organizing since September to build opposition to the US war on Iraq. We have been particularly motivated by the tragic death of Jeff Lucey, HCC student and a friend to many on our campus. Jeff returned from military service in Iraq last year suffering from severe PTSD. When he sought help at the local VA hospital, he was turned away. Jeff committed suicide last year.

This Spring, activists in the Anti War Coalition (AWC) launched a campaign to kick the military recruiters off campus. The AWC voted to join the Campus Anti War Network last month. Student Senate President Angela Greany led a successful effort to pass a resolution calling on the HCC administration to bar recruiters from campus.Now members of the College Republicans are striking back against Angela, the Anti War Committee, and left wing faculty members. The Republicans are trying to get the AWC decertified as a student group. Unable to win their positions politically (we trounced them in a debate in the fall), they have also turned to a disgusting campaign of harassment against Senate President Angela Greaney, that has included physical intimidation, following her around campus, and sexual harassment.

So Angela and the other members of the anti war Coalition are fighting back. We are demanding that the Republicans stop the harassment immediately. We want them to write a public apology to Angela for their sexist and threatening behavior. Finally we ask that they sign on to a pledge agreeing that they will not engage in racist, sexist and homophobic harassment toward ANY student or student group. We are also demanding that the HCC Administration permit Angela to get extensions
in her classes since these events have seriously disrupted her academic semester.

The AWC is circulating a petition with these demands and gathering endorsements from student organizations and faculty members. On Monday April 27, we will be holding a speak-out on campus to publicize our demands and expose the methods that the Right wing has taken on our campus to intimidate activists.

We are asking for your support. The college administration have tacitly supported the Republicans and tried to sweep these incidents under the rug (including telling one faculty member in the AWC who has been targeted by the Republicans that he was "asking for it" .   Please send the college president, Bill Messner, an email expressing your support for our demands and solidarity with Angela and the AWC.

Feel free to use or modify the statement below in your email.
bmessner@hcc.mass.edu   president (bill messner)
jdorazio@hcc.mass.edu   VP Student Development (John D'Orazio)
ihuskey@hcc.mass.edu    Dean of Student Services (Isabel Huskey)

TO: PRESIDENT MESSNER
Since November, College Republicans have engaged in a campaign of harassment against Student Senate President Angela Greany, left wing faculty, and the Anti War Coalition on campus, and have held the Student Government Association (SGA) hostage since November by stacking the membership on a weekly basis. Kevin Orzechowski, Ken Roberts, Mike Malone, Daryl Russell, and Jeff Donnelly among others have engaged in sexual harassment, physical intimidation, and slander against President Greany, resulting in violating her right to safely pursue academic success. As community members, we demand from Kevin Orzechowski, Ken Roberts, Mike Malone, Daryl Russell, and Jeff Donnelly a written public apology to President Greany for their sexist attacks on her. We also demand that they sign a pledge renouncing sexism, homophobia, and racism. We also demand an apology from the campus administration for passively endorsing the behavior of the Republicans by refusing to address the situation. We demand extensions for President Greany in her classes to make up for the disruption to her academic year that these attacks have had.

Scenes From the Cultural Revolution

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:26:36 GMT

The Left has taken over academe. We want it back.

Mike Rosen, Rocky Mountain News columnist
CU is Worth Fighting For
March 4, 2005

In this great Cultural Revolution, the phenomenon of our schools being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.

Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966

_____________________________
I have undertaken the task of organizing conservative students myself and urging them to protest a situation that has become intolerable.

David Horowitz
The Campus Blacklist
April 18, 2003

Students on University campuses were organized into groups of “Red Guards” and were given the chance to challenge those in authority. Students quickly turned their attacks on their closest adversaries, their teachers and university administrators.

Therese Hoffman
The Chinese Cultural Revolution:
Autobiographical Accounts of a National Trauma
2001

_____________________________
Thomas Jefferson knew "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America; David Horowitz knows it also is good for college campuses.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Last Days of Intellectual Oppression
February 23, 2005

Mao came forward with the new slogan: “Rebellion is justified,” which encouraged [students] to assault officials and institutions indiscriminately.”

Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972

_____________________________
It is refreshing that conservative students are increasingly fighting back against academic intolerance. Some conservative students at the University of Texas have begun compiling a "Professor Watch List" to warn students about professors who use their classes for liberal indoctrination.

Phyllis Schlafly
Confronting The Campus Radicals
January 12, 2004

Large numbers of revolutionary young people . . . have become courageous and daring path breakers. Through the media of big-character posters and great debates, they argue things out, expose and criticize thoroughly, and launch resolute attacks on the open and hidden representatives of the bourgeoisie.

Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966

Horowitz's organization has published ads in campus newspapers calling on students to report professors who try to "impose their political opinions" in the classroom.

The Daily Texan
Conservatives gaining ground at UT
March 8, 2004

Mao actively urged young people to confront, denounce, and even punish their teachers and other authority figures in their lives.

Christian Science Monitor
China hums with change
June 10, 2004

_____________________________
Last spring I organized college students to investigate the voter-registration records of university professors at more than a dozen institutions of higher learning. I had them target the social sciences. The students used primary registration to determine party affiliation, although admittedly, it's not always an exact match.

David Horowitz
Closed doors, closed minds
June 20, 2002

The "working groups" organized sessions to expose and to criticize teachers and divided all teachers into four categories: good, fair, those with serious errors, and anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists.

Youqin Wang
Student Attacks Against Teachers:
The Revolution of 1966
July 1996

_____________________________
In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicized student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty . . . were pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college said a teacher received a death threat.

Associated Press
Conservative Students Target Liberal Profs
December 25, 2004

During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards turned to a more spontaneous medium to denounce alleged counterrevolutionaries. They wrote "big character posters" and posted them outside people's houses or schools to publicly expose their alleged crimes.

Irene Leung
Writing and Technology in China
Date unknown

_____________________________
Posters arose recently on the Ball State University campus announcing that history professor Abel Alves was "WANTED." His alleged offenses include indoctrinating freshmen with liberal books, such as Fast Food Nation, and guest lectures by the Humane Society.

Muncie Star Press
Students complain of liberal bias on campus
September 27, 2004

Inspired by personal feuds or sheer exuberance, many of the posters featured puerile attacks against officials and teachers for such allegedly “counter-revolutionary” activities as “luxurious living” or displaying “lordly airs.”

Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972

_____________________________
Santa Rosa Junior College's oak-studded campus is aflame with controversy triggered by the anonymous posting of red stars and a reference to communist indoctrination on 10 faculty office doors.”

The Press Democrat
SRJC uproar over Republican protest
March 2, 2005

A jocular note crept into the turbulence when a group of young people singled out an elderly American Communist sympathizer by the name of Robert Winter, who had taught English for years at the University and was then living in retirement on the campus. The youths pasted a poster on his door written in English: “Bob Winters stinks.”

Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972

I believe that the university should check into [professor] David Gibbs. He is an anti-American communist who hates America and is trying to brainwash young people into thinking America sucks. He needs to go and live in a Third World country to appreciate what he has here. Have him investigated by the FBI. FBI has been contacted.

Student evaluation form
Submitted to the University of Arizona
Spring 2004

The cleansing campaign operated like any inquisition, witchhunt, or similar political movement. The first step was an accusation plausibly lodged against an individual, or suspicion placed upon them by their personal history or associations.”

Andrew G. Walder
Anatomy of an Inquisition
July 1996

_____________________________
“All I know is Dr. Meranto has ONE chance to screw up, which she will, and she is gone. Rest assured, someone IS in her class that I asked to sign up for to watch over her.”

George Culpepper, former chairman
Auraria College Republicans
Comment left on message board
of Metro College student organization
August 12, 2004

The school's party secretary, a man named Chain . . . told me excitedly that the committee had finally rooted out a hidden class enemy, an American spy. I asked who it was. Wrinkling his eyebrows, the secretary said a shocking name: Autumn Leaves, my teacher.

Anchee Min
Red Azalea
February 1994

_____________________________
These professors have overlooked the well-known fact that Marxist ideology failed the test in every country where it was applied. Completely unchastened by the failure of socialism, these individuals still harbor the dream of a Union of American Socialist Republics.

FrontPage Magazine
My Second Marxist Indoctrination
December 3, 2003

Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a come back.

Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966

_____________________________
The Churchill affair is an expression of the degenerate state of American social science and humanities faculties.

David Horowitz
Ward Churchill Is Just The Beginning
February 9, 2005

The learned professors exalted and embodied those traditions of both East and West which the Maoists denounced en bloc as "the rotten old world."

Robert S. Elegant
Mao's Great Revolution
1971

Universities are feudal institutions whose organizational structures are hierarchical and collegial and thus closed to scrutiny and oversight . . . The feudal hierarchies of the university made it relatively easy to create the closed system that is evident today.

David Horowitz
The Campus Blacklist
April 18, 2003

The principal targets of Mao's ire were, on the one hand, party and government officials who he felt had become a “new class” divorced from the masses and, on the other, intellectuals who, in his view, were the repository of bourgeois and even feudal values.

William A. Joseph
China’s Cultural Revolution: A Brief Overview
August 2003

_____________________________
For those on the right, true freedom requires more diversity--which, to them, means more conservatives in faculty ranks. "If the system were fair," says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, "Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere."

Time
Fighting Words 101
March 7, 2005

"We will strike down the reactionary, bourgeois academic savants! . . . We will vigorously establish proletarian intellectual authorities, our own academic savants."

Lin Piao, Deputy Chairman
Communist Party of China
Speech to Red Guards
August 18, 1966

_____________________________
From sponsoring pro-terrorist symposia, to funding and defending pro-terrorist campus organizations, to teaching students that America is an imperialistic oppressor and the terrorists are no threat, America’s universities are playing a sinister and dangerous role in the War on the Terror.

David Horowitz and Ben Johnson
Campus Support for Terrorism
February 7, 2005

They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous!

Mao Tse Tung
Bombard the Headquarters
August 5,1966

Makin' Meatballs

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:25:01 GMT

They're cooking right now. Organic ground beef, an organic egg, Progresso breadcrumbs, salt, fresh rosemary, crushed garlic cloves, fresh thyme, oregano, basil. Yum.

But really, I'm posting an article from <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/junaid03022005.html">Counterpunch</a> about the Columbia controversy.

The Witchhunts Continue
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
By M. JUNAID ALAM

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-Orwell

Rape, massacre, theft, torture, ethnic cleansing: these are not crimes which nations can defend with ease - especially when unearthed by their own historians. Israel recently faced this most troubling predicament. Combing through declassified state archives, Israeli scholars of the past twenty years have discovered their nation was founded upon the mass expulsion and deliberate destruction of the native Palestinian people. (1) Israel, it turned out, was far more Goliath than David. Since this presented somewhat of a public relations problem for a state still engaged in brutalizing Palestinians and stealing their land, a new self-justifying rationale needed to be authored. Enter the "new anti-Semitism." This doctrine turns reality on its head, declaring criticism of Israel's racist behavior to be itself racist – "anti-Semitic." Empathy for Palestinians being beaten, bullied, and bulldozed out of existence, the doctrine goes, is nothing but some disguised expression of Jew-hatred. Goose-stepping Germans and uprooted Palestinians are portrayed as part of the same unbroken line of anti-Semitism, even though those inhabiting concentration camps today – "the largest ever to exist," says Israeli historian Baruch Kimmerling - are the Palestinians themselves. (2) But no matter. Abusing the memory of Holocaust victims to shut down criticism of Israeli crimes – crimes unearthed mostly by Jewish historians - may be obscene, but it is also effective.

Wielding this new ideological weapon, Israel's champions aim to cut down pro-Palestinian voices inside America with the same ruthlessness Israeli soldiers employ to shoot up Palestinian children outside their homes. (3) The latest targets in this well-organized hit are Arab-American professors at Columbia University who teach Middle Eastern studies. The targets have been judiciously selected. Since these particular professors are Arab in an age when bombing and torturing Arabs has virtually become a national sport, they make for easy prey; and since they have added to their original sin of being Arab the even graver sin of speaking the truth about Israel's past – no less in a country which subsidizes Israel's existence - they also make for necessary prey.

In full accordance with "new anti-Semitism" modus operandi, the attacks paint the professors themselves as the attackers. With Orwellian brushstrokes, they are rendered as demons bent on "intimidating" Jewish students at the university. This much is to be expected. Less expected, however, is the almost embarrassing shoddiness of the trumped-up production. The wild charges made against the professors are so poorly substantiated and the political motives of the accusers so painfully transparent, one almost forgets that America's well-financed pro-Israel network has extensive experience in smearing its opponents. (4)

Curiously, the charges of "silencing" and "intimidation" first made waves when it was learned that the accusing students made their case on camera. They appeared in a short film, titled "Columbia Unbecoming", produced by a Boston-based group called the David Project. At this point it is both necessary and prudent to ask: what is the "David Project"?

At its website, the organization describes itself as "a grassroots initiative that promotes a fair and honest understanding of the Middle East conflict." A noble enough endeavor, no doubt. But a few lines later, we come to this: "We train people to be pro-active in their Israel advocacy" Another page offers – for a fee, of course – an intense three-hour ideological session titled "Making the Case for Israel." Searching for a "Making the Case for Palestine" program yields no results. Similarly, a look at the speaker's roster reveals many pro-Israeli speakers, but not a single pro-Palestinian. Perhaps most revealing is the text prefacing their speaker section: "For more information on how to bring our speakers to your synagogue, school, church, or community center, please call" (5) Apparently churches and synagogues are welcome, but mosques need not apply. One wonders why.

The site then goes on to describe what it considers to be a "fair and honest position": "The essence of the Middle East conflict is about Jewish existence and self-determination in the face of a hostile Arab world and radical Islamists." (6) Israel's own recent historians take a rather different view. Commenting on the founding of Israel, Senior Lecturer of Military History in the IDF Aryeh Yitzhaki says, "a generation has passed, and it is now possible to face the ocean of lies in which we were brought up. In almost every conquered village in the War of Independence, acts were committed, which are defined as war crimes, such as indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes." (7) Describing Zionism – the founding ideology of Israel – another Israeli historian, Tom Segev, writes: "'Disappearing' the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence. With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer - or its morality." (8)

Committing war crimes and disappearing people from their homes doesn't quite square well with pious rhetoric about "self-determination." But the folks at the David Project are free to cling to their pro-Israel political line. That they do so while
pretending to be some kind of impartial educational group, however, speaks volumes. So much for "fairness" - and, even more so, "honesty."

Given the clear ideological orientation of the David Project, one is forced to ask the obvious: why would students claiming to be "intimidated" and "silenced" by their professors bypass all university channels, and rush headlong into the arms of a political front group? Looking at the film itself provides us some answers.

In this half-hour production featuring 14 students, only six present firsthand complaints; standing accused are professors Joseph Massad, George Saliba, and Hamid Dabashi. Complaints range from random flyering incidents having nothing to do with professors, to general ideological disagreements with what professors have written, to statements they allegedly made in person. No evidence is presented for any of the charges.

Columbia student Adam Sacarny wrote in the school's newspaper upon seeing the film: "Much like the electoral campaigns, it uses talking points in place of pesky verifiable facts," adding, "The film's case is so shoddy that I fail to see how any critical viewer could leave the theater convinced that [the department] has violated academic integrity standards." (9) Even the generally sympathetic Israeli daily Haaretz admits, "The movie fuses few solid examples of intimidation – only some of which involved professors and the students they were teaching – with generalized complaints of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements and behavior on campus." (10) And despite these students' claims of being "silenced," "intimidated," and "denied"(their own words), not one of them say their grades were affected. (11) Quite "coincidentally," the main target of the film is the untenured professor, Joseph Massad. He is accused of making outlandish comments and exhibiting an extreme intolerance toward pro-Israeli views in class. Yet only one of the students in the film has even taken a course with the professor. Moreover, precisely none of them even majored in the "offending" department of Middle East and Asian
Languages and Cultures. (12) But rest assured. The complaining students have other "qualifications."

One student shuttles back and forth from America to Israel to explain how to adjust the prefatory sales pitch for the film
depending on the audience. (13) Another served in the Israeli military, which, according to events personally witnessed by former New York Times Middle East Bureau chief Chris Hedges, "entice[s] children like mice into a trap and murder[s] them for sport," and which also, according to a CIA study, acquires "data for use in silencing anti-Israel factions in the West" and engages in "sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects, such as character assassination and black propaganda." (14) Another complaining student who was a lead organizer for the film, Ariel Beery, boasts an impressive resume: he served as a spokesman for the Israeli military, is the head of the on-campus Zionist group, and is also an agent and informer for Daniel Pipes' notorious CampusWatch.org website, where students are encouraged to "report"
their professors' political views if they are deemed insufficiently servile to the conservative party line. (15)

But this is not all. None of the targeted professors were even allowed a chance to rebut the charges on the film. The reason for this, according to David Project head Ralph Avi Goldwasser, in comments given to the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post, is that "the film wasn't meant to be a documentary; it was merely an effort to collect students' testimony about classroom incidents." Unsurprisingly, the David Project is simply being dishonest (again), since it turns out that they deliberately ignored the voices of Jewish and non-Jewish students who found such "incidents" to be fabricated and had no problems with the targeted professors. Eric Posner, who describes himself as "a Jew, an Israeli, a Jerusalemite, and an American," reports that "I was approached last year by Ariel Beery who wanted to hear my opinion about MEALAC and Massad, whose class I was enrolled in at the time. When I expressed my profound appreciation for Massad's critical approach and the multiplicity of perspectives that he offers in his classroom, Beery told me that he wouldn't be calling me back for a taped interview." (16)

Posner also took it upon himself to gather some highly illuminating statements from other students who took Professor Massad's classes. Below are four:

"Several individuals who audited this class regularly attempted to disturb the progress of the class. During these disturbances, the auditors often attempted to dominate the class discussion with personal statements unrelated or extremely loosely related to the course material. They were regularly unprepared for the classroom discussion, not having completed the required reading, and for the most part were largely ignorant of the class' subject matter. It was fairly obvious that these individuals had registered for the course for the sole purpose of disrupting the progress of the class. To my amazement, [Massad] allowed each and every student in the class an opportunity to speak, regardless of their familiarity with the class subject matter and required course material."
-John Taplett

"I am Jewish. I am not a Zionist. Joseph Massad is a man who understands the distinction and does not attempt to conflate the two around a vague connection with Israel. Knowing that he is being accused of anti-Semitism is not only a slap in HIS face, it is a slap in the face of every Jew who understands a legacy of oppression and chooses not to become an oppressor."
-Maura Finkelstein

"On the question of religion, he was openly critical of all religions including Islam – his anti-Israeli opinions could not reasonably have been construed as anti-Semitic. Similarly, while being critical of Israeli policy, he did not hesitate to offer critical opinions of Yasser Arafat. In general, he maintained a tone of critical scholarly inquiry."
-Hitesh Manglani

"As for academic discrimination, I am a Jew who wrote a term paper criticizing Palestinian nationalism for its foundation in support for violence, and despite Massad's supposed bias, he gave me an A."
- Benjamin Wheeler (17)

By now the general picture is quite clear. An ideologically motivated clique of Zionist students, possessing no actual evidence
of "intimidation" but infuriated upon hearing their fairy-tale version of Israeli history dismantled, teamed up with a pro-Israel
political front group masquerading as educators to smear a few Arab professors as "anti-Semites" - conveniently excluding the opinion of those "Semites" who fully support their teachers and actually took classes with them.

More damning than the poverty and hollowness of the film, however, is the fact that it was even produced. After all, what kind of "victimized" students are able to summon to their command the financial and technical resources of something like the David Project? Moreover, how do such "victims" procure for themselves a $3 million dollar building on campus, a privilege no other Columbia group enjoys? (18) Claims to victimization – a central feature in the reverse-reality trick known as "the new anti-Semitism" - are also completely discredited by the fact that viciously right-wing tabloids in New York, the Sun and the Daily News, have joined in on the attack against the professors, castigating them as "firebrands" and demanding they be fired. Prominent New York City politicians have also demanded that the professors be "investigated" if not fired outright. (19) Truly remarkable is the "victim" so well-endowed in assets and allies.

I do not mean to suggest, however, that these Zionist students have no understanding of intimidation or persecution - far from it. Indeed, they well know of a place where people are intimidated in extreme ways, often "ordered to urinate and execrate on one other," "beaten and ordered to crawl around;" a place where children are forced to clean their masters' latrines and are then taken into rooms to be beaten senseless, until "they cannot stand up"; where passengers are pulled from cars and then "beaten with rifle butts and helmets"; where pregnant women are prevented from reaching hospitals; where the masters refer to the slaves as a "cancer" requiring "chemotherapy" or "amputation" – where in essence, people
are treated far worse than anything these students claim to have undergone. (20)

The "where" is occupied Palestine, the people being brutalized are Palestinians, and those doing the brutalizing are Zionists. Here is where millions of natives suffer under military occupation imposed by Israeli soldiers - at least 20% of whom "join the army with the preconception that Arab lives are worth less than Jewish lives, " according to Israeli Major General Elazar Stern. (21) Here is where unarmed 13 year-old girls can be shot twice "from close range at [the] head" and then "sprayed with automatic gunfire" afterwards without penalty. (22) Here is where real, actual, tangible "intimidation" and "silencing" takes place. And here is where our whining Zionists at Columbia could go and learn an object lesson in what intimidation is all about – if only they were not preoccupied with endorsing it. It is a resounding indictment of the intellectual and moral poverty of our times that those who support murder, torture, brutality, and racism - while lounging around in plush multi-million dollar offices on an Ivy League campus and starring in pseudo-documentaries, no less - are considered the victims, those speaking on behalf of the suffering are considered criminals, and those actually suffering from the real atrocities taking place are not considered at all. For those concerned with justice, the course of action could not be clearer. Now is a time not for interminable hesitance, but immediate resistance. The extraordinary level of arrogance, cruelty, and hate embodied by the forces promoting this and numerous other right-wing witch-hunts cannot be allowed to prowl about unchecked. For this is merely an extension of the war of bombs and bullets being waged upon the Arabs abroad; it is an attempt to Guantanomize our minds, Abu Ghraib our hearts, and Fallujah our souls - to remove from us every last trace of what is the best in each of us: the instinct to side with the weak and aid the oppressed.

To resist this colonization of our compassion, to re-cultivate our resistance against those who believe in the "compassion" of
colonization – these are the pressing demands of the hour. How vigorously we respond to these demands will determine whether those bruised, beaten children of Palestine will ultimately receive some respite from their inhumane condition, or instead find themselves further abused by the silent whip of indifference. In their eyes we will read either the redemption or indictment of the moral standing of our own country.

M. Junaid Alam, 22, is co-editor of the radical youth journal <a href="http://www.lefthook.org">Left Hook</a>, and a student at Northeastern University. He can be reached at alam@lefthook.org.

Notes

1. The Israeli historians who have gone through some of the state's massive archives of the pre-war and war period of 1947-9 sometimes refer to themselves as 'new historians.' They include Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Pappe, and many others. I would recommended as an introduction The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, which contains a number of 'new historian' essays.

2. Kimmerling is cited by American Jewish historian Norman G. Finkelstein in the Postscript to the German edition of his book, <a href="http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=8"> The Rise and Fall of Palestine</a>. In the
preface to Kimmerling's own 2003 book, Politicide, which argues that Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians as a
political entity, he says his country is experiencing a "recent drift towards fascism." (p. 7)

3. For an account of Israel's pattern of shooting Palestinian children, see the article "Killing children is no longer a big
deal," by Gideon Levy, in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, October 17, 2004.

4. For an account of the treatment meted out to those who defy the Israeli line in the U.S. by America's pro-Israeli lobby, see They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, by Paul Findley, who served as congressman of Illinois for over two decades.

5. The David Project website is located at http://www.davidproject.org. See the "Training" and "Speakers"
pages.

6. See note 5, the website's front-page box titled "Understanding the conflict."

7. Yitzhaki is cited in the Israeli paper, Ha'ir, by Guy Erlich in his May 6, 1992 article, "Not Only Deir Yassin." Deir Yassin was an Arab village whose inhabitants were massacred by Zionist militia in 1948.

8. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp.404-5; cf. pp. 403, 406-7, 508 – as cited in the matchless synopsis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein, titled <a href="http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=10">"An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict."</a>

9. "Shedding light on MEALAC," by Adam Sacarny, November 12, 2004,Columbia Spectator.

10. "The 'Silent Jews' speak out," by Shoshana Kordova, Haaretz, February 9, 2005.

11. About grades not being affected, see: "Non-academic debate," by Uriel Heilman, The Jerusalem Post, December 23, 2004 (updated December 29, 2004).

12. Only one student actually had Massad for class – see <a href="http://lefthook.org/Ground/Schwartz121704.html)">"CAN Fights Zionist Smear Campaign at Columbia Univ.,"</a> by Suzie Schwartz, a Columbia student, Left Hook, December 17, 2004; and none majored in the department – see Eric Posner, as quoted in Independent Press Association (IPA-NY), <a href="http://www.indypressny.org/article.php3?ArticleID=1834">"The Arab answer to the Columbia University question,"</a> by Amal Hageb.

13. See note 10.

14. Chris Hedges' A Gaza Diary, published in Harper's, October 2001; CIA study is titled "Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services," reprinted in Counterspy, May-June 1982 – as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle Updated Edition, 1999, cited on page 11, sourced on page 33, as note 9; one of the accusers in the film was Tomy Schoenfeld - "a student who had served in the Israeli army" – according to "Mideast Tensions are Getting Personal on Campus at Columbia," by N. R. Kleinfield, The New York Times, January 18, 2005.

15. Ariel Beery proudly advertises himself at his personal website, http://www.arielbeery.com, where it is written, "He finished his service in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit where he wrote and translated information packets" on this specific page:
http://www.arielbeery.com/Ariel.html; a host of his "documents" submitted to Campus Watch are kindly made available at the website: http://www.campus-watch.org/docs/author/Ariel+Beery

16. As quoted in IPA piece cited in note 12.

17. All quoted in IPA piece cited in note 12.

18. This is a reference to the Kraft Center - <a href="http://lefthook.org/Ground/Birch012805.html">"Understanding the Attacks on Pro-Palestinian Professors at Columbia,"</a> by Jonah Birch, a Columbia Student, Left Hook, January 28, 2005.

19. Congressman Anthony D. Weiner has called for Massad's firing. The New York City Council and members of the New York City Council have called for an outside investigation against him, egged on of course by the Sun and the Daily News.

20. On urination and execration, beating, and being ordered to crawl around, see "Do not say: 'We did not know, we did not hear'," by Aharon Bachar, in Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, December 3, 1982 – as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle, cited on page 131, sourced on page 176-7. On being forced to clean latrines and then being beaten in rooms, see "Peace Now officers recount atrocities," in Israeli newspaper Al Hamishmar, May 11, 1982 - as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle, cited on page 132, sourced on page 177; on being beaten with rifle butts and helmets, see "Reports of Torture by Israelis Emerge," by Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, August 18, 2001; for pregnant women being stalled at Israeli checkpoints, see Israeli human rights group B'TSelem's website, www.btselem.org, and see note 3; it was Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon who said in an August 30, 2002 interview with Haaretz Friday Magazine that there was a "Palestinian threat" the "characteristics of [which] are invisible, like cancer"; he then goes on to elaborate, "There are all kinds of solutions to cancerous manifestations. Some will say it is necessary to amputate organs. But at the moment, I am applying chemotherapy, yes."

21. "General: 1 in 5 troops behave badly at roadblocks," by Gideon Alon, Haaretz, December 6, 2004.

22. "Gaza girl death officer cleared," BBC News, October 15, 2004. The article notes, "Without revealing their identities, soldiers from the Givati brigade platoon told Israeli television how their officer sprayed Iman al-Hams with automatic gunfire on 5 October" after having "approached her and fired two bullets from close range at her head." The army chose not to believe the platoon, and accepted the awe-inspiring explanation of the commander that "he fired into the ground near the girl after coming under fire in a dangerous area." The BBC adds wryly, "It has not explained why the officer shot into the ground rather than at the source of the fire."

More on my school

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:22:20 GMT

A group at the University has assembled testimony from students refuting the slander in the film <a href="http://lefthook.org/Ground/Birch012805.html"> Columbia Unbecoming</a>. Some of it is copied below; for more, click <a href="http://www.semitism.net/?q=blog/1&PHPSESSID=a64e64f64b79cea5730e79468137d611-"> here</a>.

Leeam Azulay-Yagev: "As a Jewish Israeli 4th year student who has taken several classes in the MEALAC department, I have never experienced or witnessed intimidation or racism of any sort from university professors."

Hitesh Manglani: "On the question of religion, (Professor Massad) was openly critical of all religions including Islam-- his anti-Israeli opinions could not reasonably have been construed as anti-Semitic. Similarly, while being critical of Israeli policy he did not hesitate to offer critical opinions of Yasser Arafat. In general, he maintained a tone of critical scholarly inquiry."

Benjamin Wheeler: "As for academic discrimination, I am a Jew who wrote a term paper criticizing Palestinian nationalism for its foundation in support for violence, and despite Massad's supposed bias, he gave me an A."

Alex Baker "In assigning papers, Prof. Massad made explicitly clear that he welcomed all points of view and interpretations of the material, the point being to let people know that they would not be graded down because of their political views about the conflict. Massad left ample time at the end of each class period for an extended question and answer period, and frequently answered questions during the lecture itself. Even though many of these questions were motivated more by politics than engagement of the material itself (i.e. refuting the material with official Israeli versions of historical accounts, in a class trying to deconstruct the effects of power on culture and history), I remember Massad worked overtime to find the worthy nuggets in every question and offer a useful response."

rubik's

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:20:34 GMT

My friend sent me a link to the <a href="http://dev.rubiks.com"> Rubik's </a> website. Apparently they're like iPods or something now. (WARNING: this will open a noisy Flash animation once you reach the site).

More Columbia nonsense -- I am writing this here to avoid a lengthy listserv discussion. This morning I forwarded a note calling for a meeting to defend the <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/"> embattled Columbia professors</a> I've been writing about. Now, I do believe that these guys are the victims of a McCarthyite witch hunt, but the fact that people continue to believe the story that they are intimidating students speaks not only to the right-wing PR machine but to the naive, fiery rhetoric of the pro-Palestinian left.

Most of the discussion was refreshingly civil -- the list in question was Against War, so there's a general sense of agreement about most issues. And I do admit that the email I sent out was full of college-student-pretending-to-be-third-world-revolutionary posturing -- the dark forces are gathering, we must defend the right of the Palestinains to defend against the racist state of Israel, that sort of thing. I guess I should have revised it, or written my own version.

But it wasn't my email to rewrite. I'm not a member of the group, and I won't be attending the meeting. I'm getting sick of meetings.

And the usual array of arguments -- China is worse, the US decimated our native population much more effectively, Columbia has a right to investigate this -- all fall short. Just because China's (and Russia's, and Indonesia's, and on and on) occupation is brutal, just because our own country (and Canada, and Australia, and on and on) has been so relentlessly shitty to the Indians (or Aborigines), doesn't mean that one country gets a free pass.

The fact is, free speech is under attack, on PBS, in the arts, in universities, and elsewhere. Perhaps I should devote more energy to defending <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200502170007"> Postcards from Buster </a>, or do more work for <a href="http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/index.php"> Students for a Free Tibet</a> (who I have worked with, by the way), but being American, and Jewish, and progressive and a teacher, I feel a special responsibility here. And, in fact, Massad et al are not just being investigated by the University (which goes with the job) but are being tried in the media, under the auspices of extreme right-wing groups.

That said, I wish the left would stop shooting itself in the foot. I mean, we're supposed to be humanists, for Christ's sake.

Dammit!

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:17:40 GMT

I wrote this whole long post and then I accidentally deleted it by closing my browser wondow. Witty eclectic links and everything. Grrr.

Anyway, I wanted to post this article on academic freedom from <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/"> The London Review of Books</a>. I guess you'll have to wait to find out why...

LRB | Vol. 27 No. 4 dated 17 February 2005 | Sara Roy

Intimidation

Sara Roy

In 2002, incoming students at the University of North Carolina were required to read Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells, a translation into English of 35 of the early suras with a commentary and explication. Three students - one Jewish, two Christian - and a UNC alumna argued, with the support of a number of fundamentalist Christian organisations, that this constituted discrimination against them. They sued UNC through the American Family Association, a conservative Christian organisation, and received further support from a committee of the North Carolina state legislature. UNC won the case, but made reading the book optional all the same. There is growing concern that students throughout the US are trying to control what they are taught, immunising themselves against ideas that might challenge or offend them.

An organisation called Students for Academic Freedom, which has branches on 135 campuses (including Brown, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford and Yale), monitors lecturers for 'bias'. Its website features an 'Academic Freedom Abuse Center'. 'Rights abused in a college course (e.g. unfair grading, one-sided lectures, stacked reading lists)'? 'Please report this abuse.' 'Is your professor using the classroom as a platform for political agendas?' If the answer is yes, students are encouraged to place an announcement in their college newspaper.

David Horowitz, a progressive activist turned conservative pundit, and an ally of SAF, runs an online journal, FrontPage Magazine, which claims 1.7 million hits a month. He has devoted considerable attention to the peace studies programme at Ball State University in Indiana. 'There are 250 peace studies programmes in America like the one at Ball State,' Horowitz says. 'They teach students to identify with America's terrorist enemies and to identify America as a Great Satan oppressing the world's poor and causing them to go hungry . . . The question is: how long can a nation at war with ruthless enemies like bin Laden and Zarqawi survive if its educational institutions continue to be suborned in this way?'

Horowitz has written an academic bill of rights, which is informed by the belief that 'the rights of students to not be indoctrinated or otherwise assaulted by political propagandists in the classroom or any educational setting' are insufficiently protected by universities. 'Especially recently,' Horowitz argues, 'with the growing partisan activities of some faculty members and the consequent politicisation of some aspects of the curriculum, that lack of support has become one of the most pressing issues in the academy.'

Echoing, in objective and content, the House of Representatives legislation (HR 3077) calling for the establishment of an advisory board to 'oversee' area studies,* the academic bill of rights lists eight guiding principles. Some of them are perfectly unexceptionable; others allow for significant intrusion into the educational process by those outside the academy. The purpose of the bill appears to be the same as that of HR 3077: to authorise official interference with the content and conduct of university classes.

The provost of Ball State University defended the peace studies programme, but Horowitz has taken his case to the Indiana state legislature, where he hopes to get his bill of rights legally adopted. In a letter to the Indiana state legislature, SAF's national director said that the bill has become 'the education policy of the state of Colorado' and 'has been adopted as model legislation by the Association of Legislative Exchange Commissions, a bipartisan organisation of 2400 state legislators'. It 'also passed the Georgia Senate by a vote of 41 to five and is being introduced in 19 state legislatures'. On 30 October 2003, the House of Representatives introduced a federal version - House Concurrent Resolution 318. It didn't reach the Senate, but is likely to be reintroduced in the current session.

Meanwhile, Columbia University is embroiled in a controversy involving its Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department. The David Project, a pro-Israel group based in Boston, made a documentary called Columbia Unbecoming which presented a series of interviews with student supporters of Israel who said they had been intimidated and harassed by members of the department who are allegedly hostile to the Jewish state. After hearing about the film, Anthony Weiner, a Democratic New York congressman, called on Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, to dismiss Joseph Massad, an assistant professor who is accused in the documentary of anti-semitism, and of verbally abusing Israeli and Jewish students. Massad has long been the target of a campaign of intimidation against academics - Jewish and non-Jewish - who criticise Israel. Deluged by hate mail calling him a 'camel jockey' and 'pathetic typical Arab liar', he has decided not to teach his course on Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies this semester.

Columbia Unbecoming is intended to silence critics of Israel. Campaigns such as the one directed at Massad are interested not so much in individual academics as in university administrations, which may as a result feel pressured to respond in a conciliatory way, as the University of North Carolina did. At Columbia, the response has been dramatic. According to the minutes of a faculty meeting last October, Bollinger - who has been criticised by some faculty members for keeping silent on the matter - asked the provost to 'look into the implications of these charges and into charges that there is a climate of intimidation on campus . . . We will not allow our faculty to be tried and convicted in the press,' he said. 'We will not launch a witch-hunt, but we will deal responsibly with accusations as they arise . . . We also do not allow intimidation of students, or political indoctrination in the classroom.' He went on to say, however, 'that the First Amendment does not apply to the university because it is a private institution. It can choose its policies for how to treat faculty utterances.' On the other hand, the minutes reported that he had 'tried to articulate' the views of the faculty, 'and the position he has taken seems to have support on campus. But this position is not uncontested, and it could be changed.'

Some members of the faculty interpret Bollinger's statements as a threat: the First Amendment, he seems to be saying, is a right that the university could revoke. Columbia supports the First Amendment and freedom of expression, but this doesn't guarantee that an academic would continue to be employed by the university if she expressed views that were thought objectionable, for example, by individual students who might solicit the support of the state. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bollinger said that the 'university has more work to do in enriching the curriculum and adding to the scholarship in the Middle East department'.

The probable re-emergence of HR3077 will no doubt be buoyed by the passage of the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Review Act, which President Bush signed into law on 16 October 2004, compelling the State Department to create a special office to monitor and combat acts of anti-semitism abroad, including 'acts of physical violence against, or harassment of, Jewish people, and acts of violence against, or vandalism of, Jewish community institutions, including schools, synagogues and cemeteries'. The State Department objected to the bill because it gives precedence to the human rights of Jews over other ethnic and religious groups. Among the acts to be monitored are the efforts (or lack of them) of foreign governments to promote 'unbiased' curricula in schools.

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the author of several works on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

An article on academic censorship at Columbia

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:10:46 GMT

I'm going to a meeting later tonight for a group that plans to address this.

Columbia U. Professor, Criticized for Views on Israel, Is Banned From

by BROCK READ | Chronicle of Higher Education | 22 February 2005

The New York City Department of Education will prohibit a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University from appearing in an occasional training program for secondary-school teachers, citing the professor's criticism of Israel.

Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, had spoken this month at one of a series of teacher-development workshops, paid for by the university, about Middle Eastern culture and politics. But last week, after The New York Sun published an article assailing Mr. Khalidi's involvement in the program, Joel I. Klein, the city's schools chancellor, announced that the professor would no longer be allowed to participate.

"Considering his past statements, Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for DOE teachers, and he won't be participating in the future," Jerry Russo, Mr. Klein's press secretary, wrote in an e-mail message to the Sun.

In the past year Mr. Khalidi has participated in two training sessions. Neither generated any controversy.

But Columbia's Middle East Institute has come under heavy fire from politicians and newspapers like the Sun, which have accused the program of promoting pro-Palestinian views, disparaging Israel, and intimidating pro-Israel students.

Last fall Anthony Wiener, a Democratic member of Congress who is now running for mayor of New York, urged Columbia to fire a colleague of Mr. Khalidi's -- Joseph A. Massad, a professor of Arab politics -- for his purportedly heated attacks on Israel. The criticism was alleged to have taken place in class, where Mr. Massad was said to have badgered students (The Chronicle, November 5, 2004).

Mr. Khalidi, in an interview on Monday, criticized Mr. Wiener and the Sun for attacking his institute and the field of Arab studies in general. "I think there's a broad attack on professors of the Middle East, and it's based on calumnies, innuendo, and taking situations out of context," he said.

Mr. Khalidi also blamed the Columbia administration's "supine" response to the controversy, which, he said, has emboldened the institute's critics.

In the wake of the allegations about the Middle East Institute, the university established a committee to look into claims that students were intimidated in class. Hundreds of people, mostly college faculty members, have signed a petition urging Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia's president, to defend Mr. Massad and to condemn the accusations leveled at the Middle East Institute.

Mr. Khalidi was among the petition's signers. "The sooner there's an organized response to these people who have absolutely no scruples about twisting the truth, the better," he said.

Columbia officials have not officially commented on the city schools' decision to ban Mr. Khalidi from the training program. In a statement released after the Middle East Institute came under fire last fall, Mr. Bollinger pledged to uphold the university's policy on freedom of expression but added, "We believe that the principle of academic freedom is not unlimited."

I guess that title is up there.

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:01:43 GMT

Thanks, LiveJournal! I won't go to blogger now, I promise.

I want to add a title

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:52:37 GMT

I want this blog to be called "The Amateur Orientalist," but I can't figure out how to do it. Anyone out there know how to do that? Until that day, you can just refer to this as "The Amateur Orientalist," all you readers out there in blog-land.

This is my new blog

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:49:08 GMT

So my friend suggested I start a blog about all the things that matter to me. A lot of things matter to me. Of course, I can't think of anything now. More soon!