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2005-01-26 | ||||||||
American neo-conservatives and followers of President George W. Bush pride themselves on taking no prisoners in their ideological quests. Now they seem to have set their sights on a new target: the stifling of academic freedom in the United States. Then why does Noam Chomsky still have a job, you liar?
Youssef Ibrahim's lips fell off. The most hunted species on that campus consists of professors of Arab and Iranian origin, or anyone who dares to open a debate on Middle East policies that do not conform with the Bush neo-conservatives' thinking. That is a flat glaring lie as you know full well. Since anyone can remember, Columbia University has been the headquarters of intellectual freedom and excellence.
The charges are manifestly fanciful. Dan Miron, a pro-Israel professor, told The New York Times in an article on January 18 that for five years "dozens of Jewish students" have told him of "rude" and "snotty" treatment by colleagues and professors of Arab and Iranian origin. "They're making that constant breathing noise and they know it drives us crazy." "These students didn't look like disturbed people who would invent these things," Miron told the newspaper. Rude and snotty? Dear, oh dear! Being a graduate of Columbia myself, I can assure Miron that, as an Arab-American, I found myself from day one the target of serious intimidation by legions of Jewish professors, students and administrators at the university. I simply assumed this to be a part of academic and intellectual sparring, indeed freedom.
What are the allegations against the three professors being hunted? According to The New York Times, one involves a sidewalk encounter between Lindsay Shrier, who has since graduated, and her professor, George Saliba, an American of Palestinian origin, during which she says he told her that because she had green eyes she was not a Semite and could not claim ancestral ties to Israel. Saliba denies the charge.
The third centres on Professor Hamid Dabashi, an American-Iranian academic who is accused of cancelling a class to answer his "moral duty" to attend a Palestinian rally but who seems targeted chiefly for his "published" political viewpoints, according to The New York Times story by reporter N.R. Kleinfield. Kleinfield reports that an assistant professor in the medical school sent an e-mail message to Massad, saying: "Go back to Arab land where Jew hating is condoned. Get the hell out of America. You are a disgrace and a pathetic typical Arab liar." What about Arab hating? Hate-mongering is unacceptable no matter who is doing it, so it is particularly obscene for Columbia to condone it among its professors.
Indeed, Massad, said he, like the other two, has been swamped with hate mail, insulted as a "camel jockey" and "Islamic Fascist". He said students who are not registered in his course show up to attend his lectures in order to heckle him. The truth is that Massad is being targeted for other reasons. Jewish students have taken to refer to his courses as "Israel-Is-Racist". Well it so happens that Israel is indeed a racist state.
This is the new age of neo-conservatives obliterating not only all views contrary to their policies, but purging all intellectuals who hold different views. The vile campaign is having some of its intended effects. Massad is already losing his academic purpose. He has chosen not to teach his most controversial course, "Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies", in the coming semester because The winners may be zealots, but the American intellect pays the price of censorship. "I've been teaching for 33 years and I've always thought we all knew what appropriate faculty deportment was," said Andrew J. Nathan, a political science professor who thinks the students' charges are dubious. "Now it is not clear to everyone that the classroom is where the faculty is in full control. I teach a course called Introduction to Human Rights. We had a whole week on the torture memos of the Bush administration. "Now I'm starting to wonder whether there's somebody in my class of 143 students who might grieve against me 
that I indoctrinated them, that they went through emotional suffering by hearing about these things."
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Posted by:Korora |
#2 This is what I was talking about, Mr Sylwester. I attended Columbia in the 80s--it was not much different then. Harvard the same, UC the same. |
Posted by: BMN 2005-01-26 11:59:47 AM |
#1 Yep, Tenure. That's why the Administration and faculty of the Law College at the University of Michigan can rig quotas for the student body, but exempt themselves from achieving those same levels of representation within their own ranks. Four legs good, two legs better. |
Posted by: Glereth Glavitch4975 2005-01-26 10:28:30 AM |