Gil Troy: Committee for Tyranny in Academe

Others have taken up the issue as I step back into my life after helping to organize a call for sanity at Barnard. It was not heeded - Abu El Haj has her place at Barnard - that she could accomplish. What she cannot accomplish, is a real place in academe. That you have to earn...and she hasn't.

What continues to amuse me is the late (and inaccurate) post-tenure articles (like the New Yorker's latest joke by Jane Kramer who, like Larry Cohen-Esses and Karen Arenson of the New York Times, had their minds made up and spent long periods of my time looking for the right words within the hundreds they ignored, to make THEIR point rather than listen to mine - it is truly a new breed of journalist, these self-modeled, self-proclaimed heroes of truth who justify their own positions rather than the positions of those they interview). There are times I drive to a client far from home, and wonder with all the traffic and delays if living closer to the "center" of Israel wouldn't be better -and then I think of my children and my home and the city where I live. For all that it takes a long time to commute sometimes to several of Israel's "hi-tech centers," I love where I live, the community, the people, the weather, the view.

I pity those, like Larry and Jane and Karen, who are so lost and blind to what is truly important in life. No, Karen and Larry - where I live has nothing to do with my being convinced that Nadia Abu El Haj is not competent and worthy of tenure - rather than attack me, try reading the experts to whom I pointed you. Ah, but they didn't agree with your agenda, did they? As for Jane, well, your ability to twist words is even more flattering - no, dear - I am not anti-Arab. I would guess I have more regular contact with Arabs than you do. Some are amazing people, no doubt kinder and more friendly and willing to discuss today's realities and hear views that differ from yours than you will ever be. And yes, some, like all people, have the ability to push their agenda no matter what the cause. Your ignorance of Israel comes shining through and I pity you for it.

I never said much of what you attributed to me and your ability to conveniently place quotes that were not mine beside my name to add to the suggestion that this is what I feel or that I have a connection with something is, at best, cheap journalism. The fact that I had three articles in a popular Internet site doesn't mean I had anything to do with any of the hundreds and possibily thousands of other article written by other writers (clever of you to abuse English enough to juxtaposition words to give that suggestion). Just as I would never credit you with anything written in the New Yorker other than that which carries your name, I would request the same from you. If my name goes on it, it is mine - if it bears my name because someone like Karen or Larry or Jane "quotes" it - don't believe it - they all chose to ignore dozens of experts, Karen and Jane couldn't be bothered to actually read the horrid book Abu El Haj wrote (agreeing it was dense, but skipping the horribly inaccurate part). And Larry clearly read it with one eye closed, though he graciously did admit it was clearly anti-Israel.

The bottom line in all of this remains - Nadia Abu El Haj has tenure - Karen and Larry and Jane have had another opportunity to push their agenda and I...I live in Israel - far from all of them, far from a culture that excuses inaccuracy and hatred and belittles the murder of an Israeli Druze soldier and supports the terrorist mob that attacked Joseph's Tomb. Each person has their right to believe the Nadias and Janes of the world - like the "Zany Mom" who wrote to me and said, "I just read the Jane Kramer article in the New Yorker and I have to say you and your ilk appall me....You're despicable." (Oh, and judging by your note, you need to get a dictionary, Zany).

Let me assure, Zany and others, I have a life - one blessed beyond imagination. Each time I think I have put this whole pathetic issue behind me, it is stirred up again - most recently by the New Yorker's incredibly late entry (they had planned to publish it before the tenure decision and once they missed that deadline had to scramble and change it to make it seem like they'd planned a post-decision article...sadly, the results show most clearly that their effort failed). Perhaps the article below is an excellent summary and what I have been trying to say since Barnard and Columbia chose to grant tenure and lower the standards of what was once a fine and dignified institution and today remains sullied and politicized.

Though overall, Gil Troy's article is excellent, I was touched by the following sentence: "But academic freedom demands that scholars grant colleagues and students the same latitude they enjoy to think differently. Unfortunately, too many modern academics demand the freedom to pursue their own political agendas without embracing that mutuality freedom requires."

Though I doubt Zany Mom went to Barnard, I did. I put in my years and got my degree. I have been asked every year for years to donate and support my alma mater - but apparently, I am to do it in silence and without giving my opinion. My money, Barnard and Columbia have made it clear, is good enough for them, but my opinion is not needed or wanted - I am, according to Judith Shapiro and many others - an outsider (though she didn't attend Barnard either).

As what I hope is a parting note to this issue - I give you Gil Troy - and an explanation of the outcome of such tenure decisions as Finkelstein and Abu El-Haj. And to American Jewish students - I urge you to look into Israeli universities such as Hebrew University, the Technion, Tel Aviv University and others. They are highly rated universities where you do not have to avoid classes because of the self-proclaimed prejudices of the teachers (as I did in my day with Edward Said, and most recently other Jewish students at Columbia did with Joseph Massad and now you will do with Nadia Abu El-Haj).

Oh, and one final note to Nadia Abu El-Haj herself - no, despite what you told Jane Kramer, I am not a hypocrite and have no interest in inviting you to lunch (dinner or breakfast). You are someone who hates Israel because its soil cannot hide the truth, the deep connection of the Jewish people to this land; and it cannot hide the smple fact that your people do not have such a connection in this land, going back thousands of years. The land, unlike your book, speaks only the truth.

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Committee for Tyranny in Academe [on the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University; incl. Norman Finkelstein, Nadia Abu El-Haj
by Gil Troy
Jerusalem Post
April 8, 2008

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1207649965557&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

So far, 2007-2008 is looking like another bleak academic year for those of us who want the university to be a fair, welcoming and open-minded oasis where the life of the mind can flourish. In Gaza, Hamas police and their henchmen recently beat professors and students at Al Azhar University, who dared to protest a Hamas rally mourning the death of Hamas's founder. In Great Britain, radical academics are threatening to try boycotting Israel again, despite the financial strain it puts on their union which is supposed to improve scholars' working conditions. In California, an independent task force deemed University of California at Irvine a hostile environment for Jews, with the administration cowed by an aggressive and frequently anti-Semitic Muslim Student Union. And in February, in 20 campuses worldwide, activists spent a week perpetuating the historically inaccurate and libelous comparison between Israel's policies and the old South Africa's systematic, racist apartheid regime.

Despite these assaults on academic freedom and integrity, more of my professorial colleagues are outraged by the failure of the anti-Zionist polemicist Norman Finkelstein to get tenure. Many professors are also furious that some Barnard College alumni vainly tried to interfere in the tenure process of Nadia Abu El-Haj, who sloppily and tendentiously caricatures Israeli architecture as a prop for Zionist colonialism.

THESE TWO cases and others inspired the noble-sounding but deeply biased Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University. This fall, leading scholars from Princeton and Columbia started a petition drive against outsiders imposing "political agendas" at the cost of academic freedom. These external forces, the petition argues in its first paragraph, have defamed scholars, pressured administrators and subverted university governance to achieve their aims. Such assaults violate "an important principle of scholarship, the free exchange of ideas, subjecting them to ideological and political tests. These attacks threaten academic freedom and the core mission of institutions of higher education in a democratic society." The second paragraph then reveals the bias. The petitioners claim that "many of the most vociferous campaigns targeting universities and their faculty have been launched by groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel." The petition ends by warning of a new McCarthyism, perpetuating a stereotype of embattled liberal academics, and vowing to defend and explain the "importance of academic freedom to a sustainable and vibrant democracy."

In fact, the 646 scholars who signed will have difficulty explaining academic freedom, considering their petition reflects such a deep misunderstanding of the essential mutuality underpinning academic freedom - and the broader notion of scholarly integrity. Conservative and liberal academics seem to agree that academic freedom is threatened. Yet they ignore that, together, partisans from both extremes risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more "academic freedom" becomes a term fronting a particular political agenda, the more embattled and devalued the concept becomes.

As writers and teachers, professors cherish their academic freedom to think and speak freely. Academic freedom is a politically neutral concept defending professors' rights not to be politically neutral. Scholars should be free to reach politically-charged conclusions without worrying about professional sanctions. But academic freedom demands that scholars grant colleagues and students the same latitude they enjoy to think differently. Unfortunately, too many modern academics demand the freedom to pursue their own political agendas without embracing that mutuality freedom requires.

THE PETITIONERS missed the historian's favorite text - context. They are free to condemn the backlash against the Columbia Middle East Studies professors who intimidated Zionist students, the Norman Finkelstein and Nadia Abu El-Haj tenure controversies, the fights over federal funding to bring Middle East Studies professors hostile to American policy into high schools. But an honest assessment of the background would conclude that these storms did not emerge in a vacuum. Tensions accumulated for years over perceived leftist biases and politically correct intolerance throughout the universities, most especially in Middle East studies.

In the modern university, attacks on George W. Bush are ubiquitous and guaranteed to get cheap and knowing laughs. Yet when critics suggest that academics on the whole veer left, cries of "McCarthyism" fill the air. A petition truly in the spirit of academic freedom would acknowledge the growing tension, both sides' excesses, and challenge everyone in the university to ratchet down the politicking, especially in the classroom.

The petitioners have undermined faith in their political smarts as well as their scholarly integrity. Given the charged context and the many grievances on both sides, their inability to mention even one abuse from anti-Israel or anti-American forces inside or outside the university is shocking. Scholars should be among the first to reject the modern Middle East's mutually exclusive, all-or-nothing narratives. This doctrinaire refusal to acknowledge complexity dismays many students who are subjected to their professors' one-sided perspectives.

Universities need professors to create a new tone in many classrooms. Many of my students understand that their professors will reveal some bias. The students resent professors who present their political bias as the only perspective and disdain any other positions.

Students know how to play the academic game. If they sense professors want parrots, they can squawk back brilliantly. But we do not need a generation of cynical copycats, echoing a party line. We need a generation of eagles, taught by their mentors to soar high, transcending the red-blue gravitational physics weighing down so many discussions today.

This need for independent, creative student thinkers, mentored by tolerant, truly liberal-minded professors, suggests the deeper scandal in spreading such one-sided petitions and such a pinched, my-way-or-the-highway view of academic freedom. These petitioning professors not only unduly politicize the meaning of academic freedom. If they impose the same one-sided views in the classroom that they do in such petitions, they are also regularly committing educational malpractice.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. His next book Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents will be published this spring.