The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a US newspaper of an Israeli professor’s call to boycott Israel.

Both groups have been alerting the universities’ external donors, mostly US Jews, to what they describe as “subversive” professors as a way to bring pressure to bear on university administrations to sanction faculty staff who are critical of Israeli policies.

“I have no hesitation in calling this a McCarthyite campaign,” said David Newman, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, in Israel’s southern city of Beersheva. “What they are doing is very dangerous.”

Last month, in what appeared to be a new tactic, IsraCampus placed a full-page advertisement in an official diary issued to students at Haifa University, urging them to visit its website to see a “rogues’ gallery” of 100 Israeli scholars the group deems an “academic fifth column”.

“The goal is to transform our students into spies in the classroom to gather information and intimidate us,” a senior Israeli lecturer said. “It’s a model of ‘policing’ faculty staff that has been very successful in stifling academic freedom in the US.”

Both Israel Academia Monitor, established in 2004, and the later IsraCampus, model themselves on Campus Watch, a US organisation founded by Daniel Pipes, an academic closely identified with the US neoconservative movement.

Campus Watch has been widely accused of intimidating US scholars who have expressed views critical of US and Israeli policies in the Middle East. The organisation’s goal, according to critics, is to pressure US universities to avoid hiring left-wing lecturers or awarding them tenure.

The advertisement placed by IsraCampus, and seen by Haifa University students as they returned from their summer break, warned that a number of their professors “openly support terrorist attacks against Jews, initiate an international boycott of Israel, exploit their status in the classroom for anti-Israeli incitement and anti-Zionist brainwashing, collaborate with known anti-Semites … who publicly call for Israel’s destruction”.

Publication of the advert was supported by the head of Haifa’s student union, Felix Koritney: “Students who study here need to know who their lecturers are, and if there are lecturers who oppose the state of Israel it is important to publish their names.”

In a statement, Haifa University officials also defended the advertisement – after receiving a complaint from a student who called the advertisement incitement – justifying it on the grounds of “freedom of speech”.

IsraCampus is associated with Steven Plaut, an economics professor at Haifa University, who was reported to have paid for the advertisement. On the group’s site and on his personal blog, Mr Plaut has lambasted many Israeli left-wing academics.

IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor have targeted professors for criticising the occupation, joining protests against Israel’s separation wall, signing petitions or attending conferences critical of Israel, defending the UN report of Judge Richard Goldstone on last winter’s attack on Gaza, or calling for a boycott of Israel.

Both groups have focused their efforts on the staff at Ben Gurion and Haifa universities, two regional campuses that have attracted more outspoken dissidents.

Ilan Pappe, a former history professor at Haifa University and the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, admitted he abandoned his academic career in Israel and relocated to the UK after a campaign of vilification.

But, according to Mr Newman, Ben Gurion University had become the groups’ “public enemy No 1” after publication by Neve Gordon, a colleague of Mr Newman, of an article in the Los Angeles Times calling for a boycott of Israel.

Despite having tenure, observers say, Mr Gordon has come under increasing pressure from the university to resign his position as chair of the university’s politics department over his published views.

Rivka Carmi, president of Ben Gurion University, issued a statement shortly after Mr Gordon’s article was printed, condemning his opinions as “morally repugnant” and warning that he was “welcome to search for a personal and professional home elsewhere”.

Dana Barnett, founder of Israel Academia Monitor, has launched a petition demanding that Mr Gordon be sacked from his position as chair, that his courses be treated as elective rather than compulsory for his students, and that he be denied travel and research funding.

Mr Newman said decisions about hiring and retaining staff at Ben Gurion were still being taken on academic grounds but that the monitoring groups were seeking to change that by calling for donor boycotts of universities seen to be harbouring anti-Zionist professors.

Yaakov Dayan, the Israeli consul in Los Angeles, sent a letter to Ben Gurion University after publication of Mr Gordon’s article, warning that private benefactors “were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your institution”.

Although the universities are chiefly backed by government money, external donations account for about five per cent of their funding. With universities struggling with large debts, donations can be seen as leverage over the universities.

Mr Newman said the monitoring groups hoped to redirect donations to right-wing academic institutions and think tanks, such as the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, whose founding president is the US neoconservative scholar Martin Kramer, and Ariel College, located in a West Bank settlement near Nablus.

On his website, Mr Plaut credited IsraCampus with forcing Tel Aviv University last week to investigate claims by one of its professors, Nira Hativa, that some right-wing students were afraid to speak out in class because of fears that they would be penalised by their lecturers.

Under questioning from the Haaretz newspaper, Ms Hativa admitted that her allegations were based only on “intuition and personal impressions”.

Both IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor have been incensed by the support offered to Mr Gordon’s call for a boycott of Israel by a small number of Israeli academics.

One such professor, Anat Matar, who teaches philosophy at Tel Aviv University, said the atmosphere both within the universities and more widely in Israeli society was changing rapidly and becoming increasingly “intolerant” of dissent. “We’ve become a little more fascistic as a society,” she said.

Mr Plaut has been at the centre of a libel battle with Mr Gordon since 2002 after he called him a “Judenrat wannabe” – a reference to Jewish collaborators with the Nazis.

Last week, the Times blasted California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo for downgrading a scheduled Pollan lecture because it received pressure from David E. Wood, a university donor who happens to be chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co.

“Agribusiness gets plenty of opportunities to preach its point of view at agriculture schools such as Cal Poly, where the likes of Monsanto and Cargill fund research,” the Times wrote, calling the 800-acre Harris Ranch, near Coalinga, whose “smell assaults passersby long before the panorama of thousands of cattle packed atop layers of their own manure,”–”Cowschwitz.” Ouch.

And agribusiness has the University of Wisconsin-Madison to deal with.

The land grant, ag-based university, in the middle of dairyland, clearly doesn’t remember its roots. It gave Pollan’s In Defense of Food, another anti-agbiz screed according to industry, free to all incoming freshmen as part of its common book read program where everyone reads the same book, Go Big Read, in August.

“I have not seen the students this excited about something in years,” Irwin Goodman, horticulture professor and vice dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences told the Associated Press as the James Beard Award-winning book was discussed in French and political science classes and included in an exhibit on the history of food.

Protesting farmers who came to hear Pollan speak at the university’s 17,000-seat Kohl Center in September wearing matching green T-shirts which said “In Defense of Farming: Eat Food. Be Healthy. Thank Farmers.” were clearly outnumbered. So were bumper stickers reading No Food; No Farms and Don’t Criticize Farmers With Your Mouth Full in the parking lot.

Students get all their facts from writers like Pollan, the farmers, who were bussed in by Madison-based feed company Vita Plus, told the Capital Times. They have never visited a farm for first-hand knowledge of food production and don’t know what they’re talking about.

But efforts to open farms to the public are not always successful.

This month United Egg Producers’ “Opening the Barn Doors” media tour at Morning Fresh Farms in northern Colorado, for example, only confirmed the size of today’s egg farm that make humane conditions impossible (36 barns; 23,000 birds each, 23 million dozen eggs a year) and raised further questions about environmental blight by showing the press wearing white HazMat suits to enter the barns. (See: You want us to eat WHAT?)

Last month the American Egg Board rolled out a kid-focused “The Good Egg” campaign which includes sponsorship of Sesame Street, a Cookie Monster product placement and a feel good virtual tour to soften public opinion about egg farms. But nowhere does the campaign address the daily grinding up of newborn males even as they hatch at the hatcheries which supply egg farms to provide the industry with only females–a practice that United Egg Producers confirms is routine. Does the Cookie Monster know about that?

Nor can all that crowding and all those chemicals be good for you, Pollan has written and many studies suggest.

But agribusiness is also combating last year’s American Institute for Cancer Research and World Cancer Research Fund study that found the link between processed meats and colon cancer so strong, the organizations advised consumers to change their eating habits.

Trent Loos, an outspoken columnist with the agbiz weekly, Feedstuffs, says nitrosamines, found in processed or cured meat and widely believed carcinogenic, may actually be good for you, preventing and treating “cardiovascular and other diseases associated with nitric oxide insufficiency in the diet.”

“Nitric oxide is an important signaling molecule in the human body to regulate numerous physiological functions including blood flow to tissues and organs,” write Loos of research conducted by Dr. Nathan Bryan at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Texas, Houston. “The regular intake of nitrite-containing food appears to ensure that blood and tissue levels of nitrite and nitric oxide pools in the body are maintained at adequate levels.”

Some of the ag press has even picked up the theory–but don’t expect a Pollan book called In Defense of Nitrites anytime soon.

There’s nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn’t cure.
– Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE.
– Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/PR)

Several Emerson Middle School parents, activists, and teachers recently contacted me. They informed me LAPU/Parent (counter)Revolution has an “organizer” going door-to-door gathering signatures to privatize their school, this despite the fact Emerson isn’t on LAUSD Superintendent Cortines’ current privatization list. I asked them to describe the “organizer,” expecting LAPU/PR to have committed one of their most experienced employees, Shirley Ford or Mary Najara, to a project so ideologically important to chief privatizer Ben Austin.

The person gathering signatures they described, while initially unexpected, made complete sense in the context of the class character and demographics of where the canvassing is occurring. We’ll get back to this shortly.

Anyone over the age of 30 should recall phrases including “school choice” were the clarion call of segregationists and southern dixiecrats. It’s no small irony that one of Ben Austin’s Georgetown University Law School predecessors, Milton Korman, argued on the Jim Crow side of Brown vs. Board of Education. While the context of modern white flight isn’t directly comparable to that of the segregationists, its character and motivations are the same. Let’s look at the subtle, insidious racism that fuels the charter/voucher movement.

It’s one thing to discuss the racism charter schools and voucher advocates like Alliance, Bright Star, and Green Dot represent in the abstract. It’s quite another to demonstrate it in practice. For help with this, let’s turn to an Emerson parent who is an ardent Green Dot/LAPU/PR supporter. This parent, posting anonymously as helpemerson on the LAPU/PR Emerson privatization message board, forgets they’re posting in a public forum and lets the code words fly:

I think the Green Dot priorities would be great at Emerson. The kids need more work on their character and decorum and what it means to be a good citizen.¹

Character? Decorum? No, that wasn’t a Sarah Palin speech. It is however, very representative of the language employed by affluent white parents at Los Angeles schools where children of color have been or are currently bused in. In the wealthy white world of Beverly Hills, Westwood, and Franklin Canyon, phrases like “those people,” and questions like “when will they stop bussing?” top the list of code words overheard by social justice minded parents and teachers at schools like Emerson and Mark Twain.² These racist code words employed by westside parents like helpemerson including “character” and “decorum” fit right in with the bigoted westside phrases like “culture of failure” exposed in Carolyn Jacobson’s brilliant article “The Revolution of Separate, but Equal.”

This brings us back to the beginning of our essay, in which we were discussing LAPU/PR’s choice of organizers for their westside offensive. The description people provided of the LAPU/PR petition bearer went as follows: young, thin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and female. They were describing one of LAPU/PR’s newer employees, Nayla Wren. Is it pure coincidence Green Dot would prefer their blonde, blue eyed employee to canvas the affluent, predominantly white westside neighborhoods over their most experienced and seasoned “organizers,” who just happen to be women of color? Probably no more coincidence than the fact that all of Green Dot’s top executives are wealthy white males. Probably no more coincidence than Ben Austin calling 77% white Warner Avenue Elementary wonderful, and 11% white Emerson Middle School failing.³ Green Dot’s pandering to white flight and westside elitism is part and parcel the type of racism and segregation discussed in Jonathan Kozol’s seminal works “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” and “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” One of the reasons Green Dot/LAPU/PR protested, but couldn’t refute⁴ Carolyn Jacobson’s article exposing westside racism, is that when the covers are pulled off the country club elitism of Steve Barr, Marshall Tuck, Antony Ressler, Ben Austin, and Marco Petruzzi, things get ugly.

Let’s be clear, the so called academic apologists for the racism and segregation inherent in charter schools and voucher programs include The Heritage Foundation, The Hoover Institution, The Cato Institute, and other far right think tanks.⁵ While these extreme right organizations are completely unconcerned with racial egalitarianism or class equality, they try to make a case that markets magically fix society’s systemic problems. These racist Milton Friedman cum Ayn Rand fantasies are adopted wholesale (with slight rewording) by the DLC/DFER crowd and presented as “innovation” and “reform.” No wonder Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter are on the same side as Ben Austin and Arne Duncan. Let’s also bear in mind the critics of charter schools and vouchers include left luminaries like Donaldo Macedo, Jonathan Kozol, and Henry Giroux. This is why Ben Austin and Gabe Rose’s specious comparisons of those opposing school privatization and vouchers to right wing health care town hall disrupters⁶ are absurd on their face! Privatization and neoliberalism is the right wing position in the education reform debate, and the charter/voucher crowd represent reactionary ideas like segregation, competition, and union busting with great adeptness.

To those who would claim the motley assortment of business types, lawyers, and political hacks that comprise the pro-privatization camp have good intentions, but just misguided ways of executing them; and claim the reason extreme right forces happen to agree with the DLC/DFER on charters/vouchers is it’s just a manifestation of bipartisan concern for children, it’s reckoning time. Even if the wealthy white males on the leading edge of school privatization were really in it for their concern about society instead the money (exposed in Kozol’s “The Big Enchilada“), then they’d still be exhibiting precisely what Paulo Freire describes as “the false generosity of paternalism.”⁷

What’s more, it isn’t mere coincidence that LAUSD’s sole African American board member, Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, vehemently opposed the corporate charter choice resolution. It’s been long recognized in communities of color that the underfunding of inner city schools combined with privatization represented by charter/voucher advocates is another way to perpetuate the grip of the white supremacist overclass. Let’s look at how progressive African American writers view the charter/voucher onslaught. Los Angeles Sentinel’s Larry Aubry said of LAUSD VP Yolie Flores Aguilar’s corporate charter choice resolution:

The Public School Choice Resolution continues pattern of indifference to the plight of Black students-that is not acceptable. Parents, teachers, school boards and concerned others must work hard, and together, to guarantee a quality education for these much maligned but immeasurably deserving children.⁸

Black Agenda Radio’s Glen Ford said of charter/voucher privatization:

“Outsourcing of public education only occurs in overwhelmingly Black and brown school districts, places where, like in Los Angeles, public property and public responsibility to students is put on the private auction block.⁹

Black Agenda Report’s managing editor Bruce A. Dixon’s recent article should be read in its entirety, but this quote is especially cogent and to the point:

Improving education is not the goal. Privatization is the goal. The targets of school privatization are not supposedly underperforming students and teachers. The target is democracy itself. Private interests are just that – private. Turning public schools over to private interests frustrates even the possibility of democracy. Charter school apologists often claim that greater parental involvement is a hallmark of their model. But to the extent that it is true at all, it’s involvement of a select group of parents, and not open to those of the entire community. Charter schools undermine what is left of community.¹⁰

There’s much more to explore on this topic, but for now this will have to suffice. Lest the poverty pimps and privatization pushers try and play the oldest card of colonialism, divide and conquer, check out the latest progressive statement from the Association of Raza Educators regarding charters/vouchers.

1. Emerson Middle School. I also created a screen capture, since Green Dot/LAPU/PR is famous for redacting reality. The image captures the Emerson LAPU supporter’s racist code words for posterity. For some excellent articles on racist “code words” in general see:
   Is the racist smear campaign working? by Brian Jones
   Deciphering their racist code words by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
2. In the case of Mark Twain, the wealthy white elite of Venice (particularly the exclusive canal neighborhood from which Green Dot’s ruthless CEO Marco Petruzzi hails). It’s worth mentioning Mr. 90210, Ben Austin, lives near Emerson. Cynical much?
3. First exposed by journalist Caroline Grannan we also discuss this in a blog. Could you imagine Eli Broad and Steve Barr sycophants Jason Song and Howard Blume actually doing real reporting like Grannan? Now that the Los Angeles Times is basically a PR department for Broad’s DFER privatization project, we will never see an honest piece out of them again.
4. Note they state the piece is full of “disgusting and divisive lies,” but provide no evidence to the contrary. In other words, since everything in Ms. Jacobson’s article is true, all the country club klan at LAPU/PR can do is smear the messenger.
5. The racist reactionary right wing loves charters, vouchers, and neoliberal phrases like school choice. They have devoted tons of ink to trying to explain how the free market doesn’t perpetuate racism. Their arguments, with minor modification, have been adopted wholesale by the DLC/DFER. Here are a few of their disgusting works:

   The Heritage Foundation
   The Hoover Institution
   The Cato Institute

6. For feeble prose and an example of these ridiculous comparisons by the right wing privatizers trying to paint the left as right wing on this issue.
7. Paulo Freire “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” p. 54. If you claim to be on the left and haven’t read Freire, you’re fooling yourself.
8. Blacks Not Part of Public School Choice Plan.
9. Outsource It! Privatize It! LA School Reform in the Age of Obama. An astute comment following Ford’s cogent article asks ‘Isn’t this just institutionalization of the “Bell Curve?”‘ Seems like a lot of folks see right through the racism of the charter/voucher “movement.”
10. Obama’s Public Education Policy: Privatization, Charters, Mass Firings, Neighborhood Destabilization. Bruce A. Dixon is a real revolutionary. Unlike those right wingers living in the 90210 zip code claiming and using the word without knowing what it really means.

The campaign is especially strong on university campuses where many voices have been raised in support of human rights for the Palestinians.

One such example is the attempt to suppress the Public Interest Research Group, founded by Ralph Nader, at the University of Ottawa for their support for Palestinian human rights.

Similar anti-Palestinian campaigns have occurred at many universities in Canada including the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and York University.

An attack against a student group that was sympathetic to the Palestinians occurred at the University of Western Ontario in 1982. The student group was refused official recognition because of its support for the Palestinians and for sponsoring Palestinian and Arab speakers. After this refusal a complaint was made to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

After a long battle, and with the support of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its General Counsel Alan Borovoy, and a supportive editorial in The Globe & Mail, the Ontario Human Rights Commission compelled the University Students Council at the University of Western Ontario to issue a statement of regret and to ratify the student group. The refusal was deemed discriminatory against Palestinians and persons associated with Palestinians.¹

Despite this successful legal precedent at Western Ontario there have been many attacks against individuals and groups across Canada and the United States because of their support for human rights for Palestinians. Over the last few years there is a concerted attempt to suppress discussion of the Palestinian issue in North America.

There also is a campaign to punish those individuals who have spoken out in support of the Palestinians by cutting funding and by denying them tenure and even getting them terminated from their positions of employment.

Two well-known examples of firings are the campaigns that targeted Jewish professors’ Norman Finkelstein (author of many books on Israel and Zionism including Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict (Verso Press, New York, 1995) and Joel Kovel (author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press: London, 2007)) for their attacks on Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

Another tactic is to smear such individuals who have supported the Palestinians with allegations of anti-Semitism. One such individual was Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. A few complaints from the Jewish community led to the Noble Prize winner being banned from speaking on campus by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Tutu was attacked because of statements he made criticizing Israeli policy toward the Palestinians that some Jewish individuals said were “anti Semitic.”

Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor with the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas said:

As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I’m deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this,…

I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews.

After provoking a strong backlash against the decision, and a campaign lead by Jewish Voice for Peace in support of the Arch Bishop which produced more than 6,000 letters of protest, the University rescinded the ban.

Professor Bill Robinson was also a target of a similar campaign about alleged anti Semitism to get him fired at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Ultimately the University administration defended Robinson’s academic freedom and the right to express his opinions in his global politics class. Robinson, who is Jewish, distributed an email prepared by a pro-Palestinian Jewish activist that compared the Israeli attack on Gaza to the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto. In response to this attack on Professor Robinson, more than 100 UCSB faculty members signed a petition asking the university to dismiss the charges against him. In addition, 16 university department chairs wrote letters to the University authorities asking them to dismiss the case against Robinson.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, one of the founders of Independent Jewish Voices in Britain, also used his position as a Member of Parliament in London, England to criticize Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Members of Kaufman’s family perished at the hands of the Nazis and in the Holocaust. As one of the U.K.’s harshest critics of Israeli policies, Kaufman routinely compared the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews.²

This campaign to silence critics of Israel and to demonize supporters of the Palestinians is most disturbing and a violation of free speech, academic freedom and violation of Palestinian human rights.

It is also a violation of basic democratic rights when a government does it. For example, the recent cuts to the Canadian Arab Federation’s funding by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. The punitive action taken by Minister Kenney is a denial of the fundamental freedoms and rights which are guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Charter guarantees the right of free speech and freedom of conscience and protects the individual and organizations from government sanction.

This campaign is also an attack on the numerous dissenting Jews who support human rights for the Palestinians.

Canadian Jewish groups like Not in Our Name (NION) and Jewish Independent Voices (Canada) and their support for the Palestinians and their criticism of the “Jewish State” are simply ignored. For political purposes, they simply do not exist.

The mainstream media also rarely covers these alternative Jewish perspectives. However, there are rare exceptions and sometimes views critical of Zionism are published in the mainstream North American press. Here is one notable example:

“It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with “the concept of a racial state — the Hitlerian concept.” For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to “push the hand of God”; and Marxist Jews — my grandparents among them — tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered.

Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else’s. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel’s actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse.

The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.”³)

Most of the rest of the World has a much more critical view of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and supports the right of Palestinians to self determination.

For example in one vote at the United Nations, held on December 19, 2006 on the Israeli Palestinian issue, the tally was 176 to five in favor of the Palestinians.

The countries that supported Israel were the United States, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia.

Five countries abstained. They were: Australia, Canada, Central African Republic, Nauru and Vanuatu.

The entire rest of the World voted in favor of the right of Palestinians to self-determination. However, to read the mainstream North American press you almost never hear of these one-sided votes.

All human beings are entitled to basic human rights. However, the well documented human rights violations of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis, by respected organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The International Red Cross, the United Nations, and even by Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and by many Israeli journalists, are attacked and buried under a barrage of criticism that they are biased, are unfair for singling out the Jewish State or are even anti-Semitic.

My own record as a lawyer representing refugee claims for Palestinians from the Occupied Territories made against Israel, is 28 positives to one negative or a 96.5% success rate.

However, in the eyes of the supporters of Israel this does not mean that there are serious human rights problems in the Occupied Territories.

Israel can do no wrong. It is the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada that is “anti-Semitic” and the Jewish members of the IRB who rendered positive decisions on Palestinian refugee claims made against Israel are “self-hating Jews.”

A Palestinian is simply an inhabitant or citizen of Palestine. There are Jewish, Christian, Muslim and non-believers who are Palestinian. The indigenous Palestinian Jews were opposed to the European Jewish settlers who were flooding into Palestine with the support of Great Britain. A Palestinian is simply a national designation like that of being Canadian or American.

There is no racial, ethnic or religious criteria for being a Palestinian. Only by right of birth, naturalization and descent that one becomes a Palestinian, just like in most other countries.

The Jewish State’s citizenship and Immigration process are unique in the World. To qualify as a “Jew” in “the Jewish state” one must meet a racial or ethnic criteria or in the alternative, a religious criterion.

The Jewish Law of Return grants almost immediate citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the World. Palestinians who were born in the country and forcibly expelled are, for the most part, forbidden to return.

The Zionist state of Israel defines itself as “Jewish” and structures itself to advance the interests of Jews at the expense of non-Jews and especially against the indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian population.

In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was departing for the Paris Peace Conference.

The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. The signatories included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey; Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H. Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy’s Jesse I. Straus; New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco. Part of the petition read:

…we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World’s Peace Conference to establish. Whether the Jews be regarded as a “race” or as a “religion,” it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases.

There is much controversy over what is Zionism and how to define the “Jewish State.” As Akiva Orr writes,

The Zionist movement and its State- ISRAEL, do not represent the Jewish people. They never did.

They represent a particular trend within the Jewish people, namely- the nationalist trend. To find out whether Israel is a Jewish State or a Zionist State one need only ask any religious Orthodox Jew anywhere. His answer will be unambiguous: a Jewish State must be ruled by Jewish religious law- “ Halakha”. Israel is not ruled by “Halakha” laws, but by secular laws. Therefore Israel is not a Jewish State. The fact that it provides refuge to Jews does not make it a Jewish State . . . Zionism and Judaism are different entities. They have contradictory qualities.⁴

The argument is often made that criticism of Israel, or more appropriately the self described “Jewish State,” the meaning of which is not defined, is anti-Semitic. The fact that many Jews have criticized Israel and Zionism is deemed irrelevant. These Jewish critics are attacked as “self-hating Jews.”

There is no rational basis for the argument that criticism of the State of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism is anti-Semitic. The logic for this view is obviously flawed.

For example it makes no sense to accuse an individual who criticizes Apartheid South Africa’s racist policies toward the blacks as evidence of racism toward Whites.

Or that criticism of the Nazi policy toward the Jews should not be allowed because it is evidence of racism against Germans.

Similarly, if you criticize American policy toward the Iraq war and torture at Abu Ghraib Prison or the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized discrimination against blacks in the southern states, then you are racist against Americans. This argument is obviously absurd and should not even need a response.

To quote one American Jewish academic on the comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the racist Jim Crow laws in the United States: “I grew up as a white girl in the Jim Crow South and I have spent my adult life in the study of racism; what I see when I go to Palestine is Jim Crow on steroids.”⁵

It is a basic right to evaluate and to criticize a political ideology or political movement and to review and even criticize a state’s policies.

The argument should be evaluated on the merits and the truthfulness of the facts presented. It is also a right to present alternative facts and to have a debate.

However, when one side wants to avoid debate, divert the discussion or suppress the topic and launches personal attacks against their opponents, it is almost a certain proof that they are hiding some uncomfortable truths.

Dr. Joel Beinin in an article, “Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace,” published in the San Francisco Chronicle, on February 4, 2007, discussed the campaign to silence critics of Israeli policy.

Beinin is a professor of History at Stanford University and is Jewish. He is active with Jewish Voice for Peace. Here is what Beinin had to say about the campaign to attack critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

“Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts.

An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace.

We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.”

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as the massacres, rapes and illegal confiscation of Palestinian property, is well documented by Israeli historians. These include Simcha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987); Benny Morris, The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947-1949, (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1987); Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins, (Olive Branch Press: New York, 1993); and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (Oneworld Publications: Oxford, 2006).

There are many more Israeli authorities that confirm the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1947-1949 and again in 1967. In fact it is still going on today in what some Israelis call the “slow motion ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians.⁶

If the Palestinians, or their supporters, complain about the well-documented facts surrounding the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, losing their property to which they had legal title to, losing their personal belongings and even their bank accounts, having 531 villages destroyed, losing their country and their right to a citizenship, and then not being allowed to return to their homes in contravention of international law; or complain about discriminatory policies of the Jewish National Fund or the discrimination involved in the Jewish Law of Return; or complain about the house demolitions, the more than 600 Israeli military check points in the West Bank, the 42 years of military Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the program of targeted assassinations, the well-documented cases of torture; and the imprisonment of more than 11,000 Palestinians including women and children, many held without charge under what is called Administrative Detention, or the recent slaughter in Gaza, that these complaints and to expose these facts is anti-Semitic!

The view that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, or its actions, is pure and simple racism against Palestinians. The Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have many legitimate reasons to criticize the policies and actions of “the Jewish State.” A state that aggressively, and repeatedly, attacks its neighbours and is slowly but systematically ethnically cleansing its non-Jewish population is not above criticism.

No state is above criticism. You should be very afraid of a political ideology that you must accept without question.

There is also much to criticize in the Arab world but it would be absurd to say that one cannot criticize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women or its human rights record, because it is racist against Arabs or is anti-Muslim. A person who made such an argument would be laughed at. No one would take them or the argument seriously.

Yet this allegation of anti-Semitism is a frequent smear tactic that has been used against individuals who have publicly supported Palestinian human rights.

These individuals include former US President Jimmy Carter, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, Arnold Toynbee, George Orwell and many, many others who have expressed public support for the Palestinians. Most of the strongest critics of Zionism and Israel’s policies are Jewish.

The only Jewish member of Lloyd George’s cabinet when Great Britain first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, Sir Edwin Montagu, was adamantly opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-Semitic. Montagu argued that Zionism and anti-Semitism were based on the same premise, namely that Jews and non-Jews could not co-exist.

Ironically, people like me who want Jews to remain in our society, be an important part of our community and be safe from discrimination and racism are diametrically opposed to the Zionist goal of ingathering all of the Jews to Palestine.

Zionists want to “save the Jews” because they are not safe in the diaspora and face the threat of persecution due to the intractable anti-Semitism that exists in non-Jewish societies. To quote one Zionist commentator,

The Law [of Return] and the Clause and, for that matter Zionism and the Jewish State are necessary so long as the threat to our people continues; so long, in other words, as Diaspora exists…..So the Law of Return continues to be necessary for Jewish survival, to serve its essential function in Zionist theory and practice. The Law defines Israel’s Zionist mission, our state as protector and refuge for threatened Diaspora Jewry.⁷

Without the history of Christian anti-Semitism that has existed in Europe and the centuries of persecution of the European Jewish community political Zionism would be considered a deranged and absurd political philosophy. Without anti-Semitism, Zionism has no legitimacy.

Sir Edwin Montagu was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine the safety of Jews in other countries. It appears that this fear was realized in that the safety of the Arab Jewish community was undermined, to a large extent deliberately, so that they would be forced to immigrate to Palestine to strengthen the Jewish presence there.

Montagu’s opposition to Zionism and the Balfour Declaration was supported by the leading representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry at the time, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in particular, by three prominent British Jews Claude Montefiore, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.

Many Jews are anti-Zionist and opposed the settlement of Jews in Palestine.

In fact, historically Zionism was not supported by the majority of Jews. In the process of creating the state of Israel the political Zionists destroyed Palestine and ethnically cleansed more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages in order to create a demographic Jewish majority in their newly created “Jewish state.”

There is a very respected and honored Jewish tradition of opposition to injustice and human rights violations. There is no monolithic position for Jews when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian issue.

My article “Jewish Criticism of Zionism” which lists more than 160 Jewish critics of Zionism. This article lists many prominent Jewish intellectuals that are extremely critical of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians. There is a long distinguished line of Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

This list includes Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Isaac Asimov, I.F. Stone, Norton Mezvinsky, Alfred Lilienthal, Silvain Levi, Eric Rouleau, Tony Judt, Sara Roy, Ronnie Kasrils, Eric Hobsbawn, Saul Landau, Noam Chomsky, Hans Kohen, Eric Fromm, Bruno Kreisky, Pierre Mendes France, Richard Falk, Harold Pinter (the Nobel prize winner for Literature), Philip Roth, Michael Selzer, Don Peretz, Immanuel Wallerstein, Rabbi Michael Lerner, actor Ed Asner and many other leading Jewish intellectuals and religious figures.

Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century and wrote on many topics. He expressed his views about Zionism in a number of pieces. One example is found in the second volume of his autobiography In Joy Still Felt. There he tells of having dinner in 1959 with some friends and his wife. Asimov wrote:

As usual, I found myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist and of not particularly valuing my Jewish heritage…. I just think it is more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.

Asimov also commented on Zionism in a chapter titled “Anti-Semitism” in I. Asimov, his third autobiographical volume.

There, Asimov discussed how he was distressed by the capability of the historically oppressed (such as the Jews) to in turn become oppressors if given the chance.

Asimov wrote: “Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye.”

Tens of thousands of religious Jews today are adamantly opposed to Zionism including the orthodox Neturei Karta and the Satmar sects. Rabbi Yisroel Weiss is the international spokesman for Neturei Karta. Hundreds of thousands of religious Jews in Israel reject the secular political movement of Zionism which created “the Jewish State.”

There is an important book written by Dr. Yakov M. Rabkin, a professor of History at the University of Montreal. It is titled A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, (Zed Books: London, 2006). This book examines Jewish religious opposition to Zionism and details the long history of religious opposition to Zionism as a political movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Rabkin describes present day Jewish religious anti-Zionism as follows:

… the rejection of Zionism in the name of the Torah, in the name of Jewish tradition. Such rejection is all the more significant in that it can in no way be described as anti-Semitic, recent attempts to conflate any expression of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism notwithstanding.

At first glance this seems to be a paradox.

After all, the public almost automatically associates Jews and Israel. The press continues to refer to “the Jewish State.” Israeli politicians often speak “in the name of the Jewish people.”

Yet the Zionist movement and the creation of the State of Israel has caused one of the greatest schisms in Jewish history.

An overwhelming majority of those who defend and interpret the traditions of Judaism have, from the beginning, opposed what was to become a vision for a new society, a new concept of being Jewish, a program of massive immigration to the Holy land and the use of force to establish political hegemony there.⁸

Israel’s founders were in fact atheists who wanted to transform Judaism from being a religion into a secular national movement based on race or ethnicity. This explains why Jewish religious leaders were strongly opposed to secular Zionism. Theodore Herzl was seen as an anti-Semite due to his hostility to religious Jews.

In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other prominent American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with the express intent of combating Zionism.

Included in the Council’s leadership were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J. Rosenwald, the former chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who became president of the Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its executive director; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times; and Sidney Wallach of the American Jewish Committee.

An example of their views on Zionism is Palestine, a pamphlet published by the American Council for Judaism, 1944, p.7 [American Council for Judaism Records (1942-1968), American Jewish Archives. Cincinnati, OH] which stated as follows: “… the concept of a theocratic state is long past. It is an anachronism. The concept of a racial state — the Hitlerian concept — is repugnant to the civilized world, as witness the fearful global war in which we are involved.”

The American Council for Judaism was founded to expressly oppose Zionism.

It was created in response to a 1942 Zionist Conference in the US, which proposed the formation of a Jewish army in Palestine before the state was founded.

The Council send letters to various governments and officials expressing their objection to such a notion as a ‘religious’ state, especially since they believed that: “that Jewish nationalism tends to confuse our fellowman about our place and function in society and diverts our own attention from our historic role to live as a religious community wherever we may dwell.”⁹

Membership in the Council grew to more than 15,000. Its members were highly articulate and greatly angered the Zionist leadership, who wanted the American Jewish community to present a united front on the Palestine question.

The book Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism 1942-1948, by Thomas A. Kolsky, (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1990) is a history of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism during the period just before the creation of the “Jewish State.”

After Israel’s spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the American Council for Judaism.

Anti-Zionist Jewish author Alfred Lilienthal has suggested that “Zionist infiltration” succeeded in “neutralizing” the Council. A separate organization was subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ).

The new group, which was based in New York, continued the original anti-Zionist tradition of the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger served as president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report until shortly before his death in 1996.

The American Council for Judaism is still in existence but has softened its strict anti-Zionist position but today it is non-Zionist and highly critical of the “Jewish State’s” policies toward the Palestinians.

Their publications frequently carry anti-Zionist Jewish criticism. Allan C. Brownfeld is the Editor of Issues, their quarterly newsletter and also editor of their Special Interest Report. Stephen L. Naman is President of the Council.

Adam Shatz, the literary editor of The Nation magazine, has edited a book titled Prophet’s Outcast. The book contains essays written by 24 prominent Jewish scholars and intellectuals which are very critical of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.¹⁰

Another important book is The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent, edited by Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. It contains articles very critical of Israel’s policies, written by 27 prominent Israelis.

The Forward was written by a prominent Israeli author and journalist Tom Segev. The Introduction is written by Anthony Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who worked at The New York Times between 1969 and 2001. Lewis is now the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University.

There are many Israeli critics of Zionism and anti-Zionist Jews in Israel where the conflict with the Palestinians is most apparent. These include Avraham Burg, former head of the World Jewish Agency and former Speaker of the Knesset; Shulamit Aloni, a former Minister of Education; Yossi Sarid a former Knesset member and past leader of Meretz; Uri Avnery former Knesset member and leader of Gush Shalom; the late Israel Shahak former Chair of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights; former General and Knessett Member Mattityahu Peled; Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem; Jeff Halper head of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Felica Langer, a well known human rights lawyer; Michael Warschawski, co-founder of the Alternative Information Center; University of Oxford historian Avi Shalim; Eitan Bronstein Chair of Zochrot, which means “Remember,” and works to remind Israelis about the Nakba or Palestinian catastrophe; the late linguist and journalist Tanya Reinhart; New Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe; Uri Davis, author of Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, 1987); Tikva Honig-Parnass, editor of Between the Lines; and journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, A.B. Yehoshua, Yitzhak Laor, Akiva Eldar, Meron Rapoport, B. Michael, and Gideon Spiro to name only a few of the many Israelis who are anti-Zionist, non-Zionist or extremely critical of Zionism and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

There was an interesting book review published in Haaretz, on February 29, 2008, written by Tom Segev. It was a review of a book titled, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (published by Resling in Hebrew). It is authored by Israeli historian Shlomo Zand (also spelled Sand). Prof. Zand teaches history at Tel Aviv University. The book became a best seller in Israel. Segev writes:

… in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened — hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It’s all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

This information and arguments have been around for a long time but it is interesting to see them published in one of Israel’s leading daily newspapers and presented in a book written by an Israeli historian. Here is how Segev summarizes the arguments in Zand’s book:

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, “And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.”

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.

The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers.

According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.¹¹

It is somewhat ironic that issues and subjects that relate to the Palestinians and Zionism that are virtually taboo in North America are openly discussed in Israel.

These same subjects are much more openly discussed in Europe and in the rest of the World.¹²

Here is what noted financier, George Soros, writing in the New York Review of Books, on April 12, 2007, had to say on this the lack of debate in the United States on the Palestinian issue:

The current policy is not even questioned in the United States. While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about Israeli policy is much more open and vigorous than in the United States. This is all the more remarkable because Palestine is the issue that more than any other currently divides the United States from Europe.

The Jerusalem Post wrote:

… For an example of the type of discussion that goes on in Israel is the following statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: “For sixty years there has been discrimination against Arabs in Israel. This discrimination is deep-seated and intolerable.” Olmert made this statement while addressing a meeting of the Knesset committee that was investigating the lack of integration of Arab citizens in public service.¹³

Another example is the current Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (from the right-wing Likud Party) who called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. He urged the founding of a “true partnership” between the two sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of “the special needs and unique character of each of the sides.”

The Speaker was reported to say all this in an address to be delivered at the president’s residence in Jerusalem on August 3rd, 2009. Quoting from Rivlin’s prepared speech which was released to the media:

The establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians (in large part due to the shortsightedness of the Palestinian leadership). Many of Israel’s Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line – a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.

Many of them,” Rivlin says, “encounter racism and arrogance from Israel’s Jews; the inequality in the allocation of state funds also does not contribute to any extra love.¹⁴

Can you ever imagine a top American or Canadian politician making statements like these, or a leading Canadian or American newspaper publishing an article like this one? If they did make statements like these what would be the reaction?

However, Rivlin still tried to focus the blame on the Palestinian leadership for the problems and does not fully acknowledge Israel’s part in the expulsions. These expulsions and massacres started before the official declaration of Israel’s Independence on May 14, 1948. According to Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe, there were expulsions of the Palestinians from 30 villages after the War had ended in 1949.

Rivlin also does not address the land seizures from Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes but remained in Israel.

These individuals were considered Israeli citizens, but still lost all of their property. These individuals are called “present Absentees,” an Orwellian phrase if there ever was one.

Here is how one Israeli academic, Gabriel Piterberg, describes the phrase and how it relates to Israel: “How the founding myths of Israel dictated conceptual removal of Palestinians, during and after physical removal. The invention of ‘retroactive transfer’ and ‘present absentees’ as the glacial euphemisms of ethnic cleansing.”¹⁵

Nor does Rivlin acknowledge that most of the Zionist leadership wanted all of Palestine without its Arab population and this wish “miraculously” came true. Palestinian leadership, inept as it was, cannot be blamed for everything.

Another important book on this topic is Reframing Anti-Semitism: Alternative Jewish Perspectives published by the Jewish Voice for Peace. It contains articles written by eight Jewish American writers. One of the articles is written by Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkley.

Her article is on the question of whether criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Her answer and article is titled: “No, Its Not Anti-Semitic.”¹⁶

Another book that examines Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israel’s policies is Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon (Grove Press: New York, 2003).

Kushner is an award winning playwright and Solomon a staff writer at The Village Voice and a professor at Baruch College-City of New York. This book contains a collection of 53 prominent American Jewish writers’ critical analysis of Zionism and Israel’s policies. This list includes such distinguished writers as Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Marc Ellis, Naomi Klein (actually a Canadian) and Rabbi Arthur Waskow among many others.

Another important book on Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (Verso: London, 2008). It is edited by four prominent British academics, Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Rosenbaum. This book contains the highly critical writings of 27 Jewish academics and thinkers on the issues of the Occupation, Israel and Zionism.

There are a number of other anthologies and collections of writings from anti-Zionist Jews. These include Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer, (The MacMillian Company: London, 1970); Zionism: The dream and the reality: A Jewish Critique, Gary V. Smith ed. (Barnes & Noble Books: New York, 1974); Jewish Critics of Zionism and The Stifling and Smearing of a Dissenter, by Moshe Menuhin, (Association of Arab University Graduates, 1976); Judaism or Zionism, EAFORD & AJAZ (American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism) eds., (Zed Books: London, 1986); The End of Zionism and the Liberation of the Jewish People, Eibie Weizfeld ed. (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 1989); Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jews against the occupation, edited by Seth Faber (Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005).

Faber’s book contains a series of interviews with leading American dissident Jews’ Noam Chomsky, Steve Quester, Joel Kovel, Norton Mezvinsky, Ora Wise, Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Adam Shapiro, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi David Weiss, and includes a speech and an essay by Marc Ellis.

Mordecai Richler, the late esteemed Canadian author, wrote an article entitled “Israel marks 50th anniversary out of favor with many Jews,” Toronto Star, February 15, 1998. Many other Canadian Jews are opposed to Zionism or are critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Many Canadian Jews were against the war on Gaza. These dissenters include academics and writers Judy Rebick, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Rick Salutin, Bernard Avishai, Howard Skutel, Yakov Rabkin, Klaus Herrmann, Janet Weinroth, Judith Weisman, Michael Neumann, Alan Sears, Gabor Mate, Judy and Larry Haiven, Michael Mandel, Ursula Franklin, Abbie Bakan, Mordecai Briemberg, Eibie Weizfeld, Zalman Amit, Rabbi Reuben Slonim, pianist Anton Kuerti, Ralph Benmergui broadcaster and producer and Judy Deutsch head of Science for Peace to name but a few.

The Jewish Outlook Society, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, publishes Outlook. They describe their magazine as, “An Independent, secular Jewish publication with a socialist-humanist perspective.” Carl Rosenberg is the Editor and Sylvia Friedman is the Managing Editor. Harold Berson is in charge of circulation. They have over 40 Jewish individuals, primarily living in Canada, who serve in various capacities with the organization and their publication.

Outlook takes a critical view of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and frequently publishes Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives.

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) (Canada) currently has more than 100 members. Dylan Penner, Sid Shniad and Diana Ralph serves as coordinators for IJV. The Steering Committee is composed of 24 Canadian Jewish activists including Fabienne Presentey, Sandra Ruch, Andy Leher and Harry Shannon. The IJV is a member-led organization, with chapters in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax.

Here is what Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) said, in their February 19, 2009 Press Release, about Stephen Harper Conservative government’s position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Minister Jason Kenney’s cutting off funding for English Second Language training programs run by the Canadian Arab Federation:

We believe that Mr. Kenny [sic] and his Conservative government is threatening CAF’s funding because CAF stands for justice for Palestinian people and because it expresses principled criticism of oppressive Israeli policies.

As Jews, we affirm that criticizing Israeli policies is NOT anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism refers to hostility and/or prejudice against Jews. Like any other government, Israel has obligations under international law.

To responsibly raise critical concerns about the discriminatory, illegal, and brutal policies of another government is an ethical imperative, which our government should support.

However, the Conservative government has gone further than any previous Canadian administration in endorsing illegal and brutal Israeli assaults on Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged complete allegiance with Israel and labels as “anti-Semitic” any criticism of Israeli actions (including the Gaza massacre, house demolitions, use of illegal phosphorous and DIME weapons against civilians, etc.).

As Jews, we believe this is a dishonest smoke-screen, a ploy to discredit principled calls for humanity, justice, and compliance with international law.

There are hundreds, and probably thousands, of Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians who have published articles or written books on the subject. Yet many Zionists, and their supporters, claim that there is a monolithic Jewish position in support of Zionism, Israel and the occupation of Palestinian land.

This claim of near universal Jewish support for the Zionist state and its actions toward the Palestinians is so far from the truth that it is laughable.

One has only to open your eyes and review the written record to see that there is no Jewish consensus on these issues and a great deal of criticism and outright opposition to Zionism exists in Jewish intellectual and religious circles, both in the past and today.

Israel’s supporters shamelessly use the argument that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic no matter what Israel does. This argument is almost entirely false and politically motivated. Not to tell the truth, or to suppress discussion, about what is going on in Palestine is racist and a crime against the Palestinian people and a crime of silence and indifference not unlike the one committed against Jews in the Second World War.

To quote George Soros on the use of anti-Semitism, a tactic he described “the most insidious argument,” to silence the political debate on Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

… Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC’s influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it.

But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies: that the critics of Israel’s policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism.

The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.

Billionaire George Soros can hardly be considered a leftist. He is also Jewish.

Here is what Ben Ehrenreich, the author of the novel The Suitors, wrote in the Los Angeles Times on the issue of criticism of Zionism being anti-Semitic.

Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an “epidemic” more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel’s apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can’t be said.

It’s not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, “turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground.

Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.”³

There is clearly a wide range of opinion on Zionism that exists within the Jewish community. This fact needs to be recognized. We also need to reject specious arguments and reject false allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. We need to fight for freedom of speech, academic freedom, critical inquiry and democratic debate, at all universities and colleges, in the media, in the halls of political power and all across North America. Individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves questions about Zionism and the Palestinians based on open debate, the facts and informed opinion not on suppression of debate, intimidation and censorship.

1. See “The Palestinian Question at the University: The Case of Western Ontario,” American-Arab Affairs, Summer 1987, pp. 87-98.
2. See for example, “We Cannot Allow These Murders to Go Unpunished: We can demand these homicidal Israeli soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes,” by Gerald Kaufman, The Independent, April 12, 2006.
3. “Zionism is the problem: The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace,” by Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009.
4. See Occupation Magazine, 25 July, 2009.
5. “A Jewish state — or Jewish values?,” by Tema Okun, Mondoweiss, 21 July, 2009).
6. For example, see “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” By Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, 7 October 2003.
7. “Hands off the Law of Return!,” David Turner, Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2007.
8. Yakov M. Rabkin, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism (Zed Books: London 2006), p. 2.
9. America Council for Judaism, Series A. Correspondence, Subseries 1: General, 1942-1953.
10. Ed Corrigan, “Jewish Criticism of Zionism,” Middle East Policy, Winter 1990-91.
11. “An Invention Called ‘The Jewish People,’” By Tom Segev, Ha’aretz, February 29, 2008.
12. For example see, “New Israeli Scholars Face up to Israel’s Origins,” by Eric Rouleau and “Are the Jews an Invented People?” by Eric Rouleau, Le Monde diplomatique, 10 May, 2008; and “A crisis in Judaism: For many Jews today, Israel is not a normal state – it is a cause or ideal, and therein lies the problem,” Brian Klug, Guardian, 15 January, 2009; “Israel’s war crimes,” Richard Falk, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, 3 March 2009; “Israel’s Lies,” Henry Siegman, London Review of Books, 29 January, 2009.
13. See “PM slams ‘discrimination’ against Arabs,” By Elie Leshem and Jpost.com Staff, Jerusalem Post, Nov 12, 2008.
14. See “Knesset Speaker: Establishment of Israel caused Arabs real trauma,” Haaretz Service, Haaretz, 3 August 2009.
15. See “Erasures,” Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review, July-August 2001.
16. Edward C. Corrigan, “Book Review of Reframing Anti-Semitism: Alternative Jewish Perspectives,” Middle East Policy Council, Volume XIII, Spring 2006, Number 1.

On July 7, Denver Chief Judge Larry Naves vacated—threw out—the verdict and issued a ruling that gave CU everything they wanted. Professor Churchill is not to be reinstated, and he is not entitled to lost earnings or a financial settlement. This ruling by Naves is as ludicrous as it is utterly baseless; it represents a decision to crudely step in to ensure that CU prevails, in spite of the truth.

Background to a Witch-hunt

This case began in early 2005 when Ward Churchill became the target of a highly orchestrated, nationwide right-wing political witch-hunt after an essay he’d written shortly after 9/11 came to light. The attack on Churchill became the focal point of a major assault on critical thinking and dissenting scholars in academia that continues to this day. A chilling message spread to faculty across campuses to “watch out!”—criticism of past or present U.S. crimes could threaten your reputation, your job, even your career.

Faculty, students and others stepped out to oppose the demand for Churchill to be fired, seeing it as a key battlefront in the growing push by powerful right wing forces to use this controversy to bring sweeping changes to university life, and intimidate and silence other progressive and radical scholars. University faculty wrote letters and op-ed pieces for newspapers and magazines, and circulated statements signed by hundreds and hundreds of professors in support of Churchill. A full page ad appeared in the New York Review of Books signed by many well known public intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Richard Falk, Derrick Bell, Rashid Khalidi, Mahmood Mamdani, Irene Gendzier, and others calling on CU to stop their push to fire him.

The university first tried to fire Churchill for the content of his essay, but then decided it would be wiser to switch gears and go after him another way. They combined several mainly old complaints about aspects of Churchill’s scholarship, and even solicited another; formed a faculty committee to investigate headed by a former prosecutor known at the time to be biased against Churchill, and used the committee’s findings of alleged research misconduct to fire him.

The verdict confirmed Churchill’s contention that this investigation of his scholarship, under a microscope, should not have taken place, and was for the sole purpose of finding a pretext to fire him for his scholarship and political views. Prominent scholars—such as Noam Chomsky and Stanley Fish—have made the point that no researcher’s work could stand up to this kind of scrutiny.

“Quasi-judicial Immunity”

The court ruling, in large part lifted word-for-word from the motion by CU’s attorneys, accepts CU’s claim that the Regents hold “quasi-judicial immunity,” as a matter of law. In essence this means that the school’s governing board can do practically anything, including fire faculty members for speech they find offensive, and the faculty have no remedy, as long as the university’s formal procedures are followed in firing them. (Find all of the court papers here.)

By making this ruling after the verdict has been reached, Naves is openly granting “quasi-judicial immunity” to a body whose members are known to have publicly denounced the “litigant” before trial; admitted being subjected to pressure to get rid of Churchill; and were found to have taken unconstitutional action in order to punish the exercise of First Amendment-protected speech. What does it mean for a powerful body to be given this kind of immunity for highly political decisions over the lives and careers of university faculty and scholars, including tenured faculty? This, and some of the points that follow, are taken from a letter opposing the ruling that is being circulated in the academic community by the Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia network.

Brian Leiter, philosopher and legal scholar, currently John Wilson Professor of Law at the U. of Chicago, described the decision as having “possibly catastrophic implications” in his on-line Report (Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports), titled: “Attention State University Faculty in Colorado: You Have Almost No Remedy if the Regents Violate your First Amendment Rights.” But the impact of this ruling, if it is allowed to stand, will be felt by faculty far beyond Colorado.

The judge provides numerous different, conflicting arguments for his decision, no doubt hoping to make it unlikely to be overturned on appeal. That’s why, having first thrown out the jury’s verdict, Naves then goes on to invoke it. He claims that the jury’s $1 damage award compels him to deny reinstatement. “If I am required to enter an order that is ‘consistent with the jury’s findings,’ I cannot order a remedy that ‘disregards the jury’s implicit finding’ that Professor Churchill has suffered no actual damages that an award of reinstatement would prospectively remedy.” This argument is completely baseless. The jury’s verdict that Churchill was fired in violation of his protected speech—which can only rightfully be remedied by returning him to his job—is in no way mitigated by the amount of the damage award. The argument that the amount of damages determines whether a constitutional violation should be remedied is absurd.

As it turns out, the judge’s attempt to interpret the jury’s findings is also contradicted by one of the jurors, who has written an affidavit filed with Churchill’s response to the ruling. In it, the juror explains, “It was difficult for us to put a value on Churchill’s emotional distress, and in the end, we listened to Churchill’s testimony that the case was not about the money and hoped that the Judge would give him his job back or give him some compensation.”

In search of yet another argument for overturning the meaning of the verdict, the ruling claims: “The jury determined only that the University did not prove that a majority of the Regents would have voted to dismiss Professor Churchill in the absence of his political speech. That is a very different question than whether Professor Churchill engaged in academic misconduct…” The judge argues that despite the verdict, Churchill committed such serious academic misconduct that it would be wrong and harmful to the university to reinstate him. As Churchill’s attorney David Lane’s Reconsideration motion puts it, how can there be no evidence of academic misconduct serious enough to justify Churchill’s firing, but there is sufficient academic misconduct in the court’s mind to deny reinstatement?

At trial, the jurors heard testimony by experts in American Indian Studies and Indian Law highly critical of the findings of the faculty investigative committee, as well as by witnesses for the university, and that was a critical part of the basis for their conclusions. Again, as the juror’s affidavit states:

A majority of the Jurors thought that the academic misconduct charges were not valid. We felt that the procedures afforded to Churchill by the University of Colorado, before his termination, were biased. In fact, during our deliberations, we listed every witness that testified at trial, and determined that the majority of the University of Colorado’s witnesses were biased and dishonest.

Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School professor and frequent national media commentator, called the refusal to reinstate Churchill “bizarre.” He blasted Naves’ final argument that puts the blame for refusing reinstatement on Ward Churchill’s statements showing “hostility to the university”:

The university opposed the reinstatement on the ground that, if he returned, the relationship ‘would not be an amicable one.’ That was obvious from the jury verdict. However, that is like using the bias as a defense. First, the University is found to have improperly terminated Churchill due to its hatred for his views but then successfully blocks reinstatement due to its hatred of his views.

There is a great deal at stake for academia and for society overall right now in upholding and defending this verdict, and deepening its lessons. An ugly, high-stakes public witch-hunt by dangerous, reactionary, and powerful forces, aimed at spreading a repressive chill over the universities, has been dragged into the light, and dealt a setback. But these forces, far from retreating, are regrouping, and trying to turn the meaning of this verdict on its head. This absurd, twisted and clearly unjust decision by Denver Chief Judge Naves only contributes to those objectives, and it must be opposed. And at the same time, the debate we called for in that article is needed more than ever, with those within and outside academia who, in spite of the verdict, are still taken in by a distorted view of what the case is about.

As the fall term approaches, faculty and students, and everyone concerned with the defense of the unfettered search for the truth, intellectual ferment, and dissent, need to step forward on campuses around the country and develop plans for how to call out, build opposition to, and to delegitimize, this ruling, calling meetings and rallies, writing letters to newspapers and to CU and the Colorado court, taking out ads, and more. And broader segments of society need to join with them.

The challenge to administrators, faculty, and especially students is to stand up to this assault. And broader segments of society must join with them. We must continue to defend those like Ward Churchill when they are singled out for attack, and, more generally, defend the ability of professors to hold dissenting and radical views. It is vitally important that the new generation of students step forward to defend an unfettered search for the truth, intellectual ferment, and dissent. One way or another, this struggle over the university and intellectual life will have profound repercussions on what U.S. society will be like, and on the prospects for bringing a whole new society into being.

At the same time, however, the noxious weeds of the new McCarthyism have begun to bear bitter fruit around the country. Reports are coming in, not just about the better-known cases of harassment and firing of Norman Finkelstein (denied tenure at DePaul and banned from a speaking engagement at Clark College) or Joel Kovel (recently fired from his position as the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College). Many readers will know the horrific case of Sami al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor jailed for five years without basis or charges for the suspicion of ties to terrorism.

Fewer people will know the names of four other targets of the Right’s attack: Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, William Robinson, Nagesh Rao, and Loretta Capeheart. All four face harassment, threats, or potential removal from their jobs at their universities because they have criticized Israel, defended multiculturalism, and stood up as organized employees in defense of their rights as workers.

This rash of cases comes, not coincidentally, during an upsurge in college activism, from counter-recruitment demonstrations to the student occupation at New School, from the struggle for gay civil rights to the demand to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. University campuses have always been spaces for young activists and critical scholars to demand change.

This is why the Right is still holding on by its teeth to the flag of academic freedom. In a recent attack on me in the Wall Street Journal (whose editors clearly know who benefits from policing the academy), right-wing attack dog David Horowitz condemned the recent protest of his lecture at the University of Texas. Horowitz railed against me and other protesters as “little fascists.” He claimed, in a bit of over-the-top self-aggrandizing melodrama, that because of his fear of people like me, he traveled with a bodyguard named Floyd. (The only physical assault Horowitz ever “faced,” so to speak, involved a cream pie.)

In his lecture, he spouted offensive nonsense: for example, that racism and sexism are not barriers to achievement, that renowned critical race scholars Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson are “buffoons” and third-rate intellects, that gender is entirely biological (and therefore so is women’s inferiority at math), that Sami al-Arian is a terrorist, that support for Palestine is anti-Semitic, and so on.

He also used the podium to attack me as an alleged indoctrinator of students. I rose during discussion to make the point that my activism is separate from my teaching and that he should respect students (about whom he is ostensibly so concerned) enough to know that they can think for themselves. This intervention was met with a diatribe, along with the accusation that my appearing so reasonable is a consequence of my skill at manipulation and deceit.

The protest and Horowitz’s column have garnered opprobrium from both hard conservatives and liberals, who argue that confronting Horowitz and those of his ilk is a futile violation of decorum and the affront to the principle of free speech. If Joe McCarthy rose from the dead chanting “I have here a list”—or in Horowitz’s case, three books and an Internet hit list—would they shout him down before or after he ruined hundreds of people’s lives and careers?

Those targeted by Horowitz, it seems, are expected to listen politely to his lies and distortions. However, left unchecked, the chilling climate that Horowitz and others have wrought results in real damage to the lives and careers of talented scholars and conscientious teachers.

His state-by-state campaign for his Orwellian-named “Academic Bill of Rights” has prompted numbers of universities—most recently the College of DuPage—to adopt vaguely-worded and potentially repressive codes of conduct that could be deployed arbitrarily against faculty who teach from their own philosophical perspective or bring political matters into classrooms, even when relevant. AAUP President Cary Nelson called the decision “a disaster for education in a democratic society.”

Why, as the ground shifts under the Right and the country moves to the Left, are we seeing this proliferation of attacks on academic freedom? It could be that the Right sees the campuses as places where they can retrench. And, because state budgets are in crisis, administrators of state universities see expendable targets in area studies (women’s studies, labor studies, Middle-Eastern Studies, Latin-American Studies, African-American studies, and the like), roundly condemned by Horowitz as non-scholarly indoctrination factories. In reality, these are the programs fought for and won during the 1960s and 1970s that opened up universities to the voices of the marginalized.

The coming to fruition of a decades-long assault on academic freedom (in the name of academic freedom) is the context for the repression faced by critical and activist faculty today. Faculty who have spoken out against cuts in area studies, in defense of minorities and activists on campus, or as part of their union or other organization are particularly at risk today, as are critics of the state of Israel.

Opposition to scholars who expose and critique the treatment of Palestinians by Israel has been front and center in the cases against Professors Margo Ramlal-Nankoe and William Robinson.

Margo Ramlal-Nankoe is an assistant professor seeking tenure in Ithaca College’s Sociology Department. Her tenure process became became a struggle when a small number of influential faculty and administrators began campaigning against her. She became a target of their negative campaign because she spoke out against sexual harassment within her department and challenged students and community members to think critically about US and Israeli policy in the Middle East. Ithaca College’s Board of Trustees has denied Professor Ramlal-Nankoe tenure and she is scheduled to be fired on May 12th.

A tenured professor in her department revealed racism behind their decision as well: “We had little or no expectations of her; she is after all a woman of color,” he wrote to the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee at Ithaca College in 2005.

Despite the campaign being waged against her, Professor Ramlal-Nankoe’s tenure review file is full of glowing letters from her students and colleagues. The Chair of the Sociology Tenure and Promotion Committee summarized the content of the numerous letters of support Professor Ramlal-Nankoe received from her students: “Most students tell us that working with Dr. Ramlal-Nankoe has transformed their views, their life, and/or their plans for the future.” The letters of support Professor Ramlal-Nankoe received from her peers also note her excellence. A typical faculty letter states that Professor Ramlal-Nankoe provides a, “superior example of pedagogy and of the teaching of traditional sociology.”

With the evidence of such support, Professor Ramlal-Nankoe has concluded, “I believe the underlying basis for the violations against me stem from a discriminatory bias towards me, especially in regards to my political views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Violations of human rights and the subjected condition of the population in this area of the Middle East have long been a matter of concern in my teachings and other work. Faculty reactions to my involvement in activist organizations, such as Students for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine and Ithaca Finger Lakes Interfaith Committee for a Just Peace in the Israel/Palestine Conflict, have been extremely negative and problematic, both inside and outside of the Sociology Department.”

Professor Ramlal-Nankoe’s supporters have established a Facebook page for her case. Please write in protest to President@ithaca.edu.

Professor William I. Robinson, a tenured Sociology and Global Studies full professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been attacked by the Anti-Defamation League and two of his former students. In January of this year, he forwarded an email condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The email was an optional read for students.

Within a week, the ADL wrote him a letter charging him without basis with anti-Semitism and sundry violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct. The Academic Senate Charges Officer then notified him that two of the students in the class to which he circulated the email had filed complaints against him. Acting for all intents like a co-complainant of the students, the Officer fabricated additional charges not raised by the students.

The complaints rest upon the assumptions are that any critique of Israel is evidence of anti-Semitism and that the Israeli-Palestinian issue should not be discussed in a class on globalization. These are nonsensical; a critique of Israel does not impugn Jewish people or Judaism, and of course the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a matter of concern for everyone interested in economic and political globalization. Proceeding with these charges serves only to sanction politically motivated attacks on academic freedom, including the freedom to criticize Israel. This case alongside others may chill those who wish to present controversial and critical subjects.

The charges have reached the Committee on Committees, which is now in the process of convening a committee to assess the complaints.

The campaign for Professor Robinson urges readers to 1) email the UCSB Chancellor and responsible authorities on campus to register your protest, and 2) sign the petition. Information and links are here. Contact the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB at cdaf.ucsb@gmail.com.

Multicultural curriculum and diversity are at issue in the case of Nagesh Rao, an assistant professor and post-colonial scholar of English at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), a public liberal arts institution. The English department’s personnel committee rejected his tenure application and recommended that he be denied reappointment. Those close to the case believe that there are multiple political factors involved in dismissing a fine teacher and researcher who was meeting all stated requirements for promotion.

Since arriving at TCNJ four years ago, Professor Rao, who has a Ph.D. from Brown University, has taught courses that exposed students to world literatures and postcolonial studies. His students have consistently appreciated his classes for exposing them to knowledges that they would not otherwise have encountered. He is much respected and loved by his students for challenging them to think in new and different ways.

Similarly, Professor Rao’s publication record has matched or exceeded the output of previous, successful applicants for tenure in his department. He arrived at TCNJ with an established record of publication and has since published two articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited a book of interviews with the late Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and developed a promising book proposal. His review letter the previous year praised his accomplishments and put him on track towards tenure if he published another article in the following year. He did so. Yet, the English Department’s Personnel Committee voted unanimously to deny tenure to Professor Rao.

The background for this decision is a dispute inside of the English department over the status of a multicultural literature course in the curriculum. Professor Rao chaired a group of faculty defending the course in a deeply divided department. The TCNJ student body is significantly diverse, but this diversity is not represented fully in the curriculum. Also troubling is the fact that Professor Rao is one of the few people of color on the Department of English faculty, and the only South Asian in a state with a significant South Asian population. The fate of the multicultural literature course, along with his career, hangs in the balance of this politically-charged dispute.

Professor Rao seeks the appointment of a new, independent, and transparent committee to review his case. There is a petition in support of Professor Rao. For more information.

If conservative administrators can’t get away with openly firing critics of Israel and defenders of multiculturalism, they have another tactic at their disposal. Some university leaders are attacking outspoken faculty on the grounds that university employees have no free speech rights when it comes to criticizing their own institutions.

This approach epitomizes Northeastern Illinois University’s harassment of justice studies Professor Loretta Capeheart, who has been targeted by her administration for her outspokenness for workers’ rights in a 2004 faculty strike, her activism against the Iraq war, her defense of student protesters, and her arguments for increased representation of minority scholars at NEIU. In retaliation, she was denied merited awards and an appointment to chair of her department—a position to which she was elected. NEIU Vice President Melvin Terrell publicly defamed Professor Capeheart, accusing her, without grounds, of stalking a student.

Professor Capeheart is suing Terrell for defamation, alongside NEIU’s President and Provost for retaliation and violation of her constitutional right to free speech. Incredibly, the administrators’ response argues that Professor Capeheart, as a state employee, may not sue the University or its officials, contravene their positions, question their conduct, or speak as a faculty member on matters of public concern.

Unfortunately, the administration has frightening legal precedent, according to the AAUP. The Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos held that state employees are not afforded first amendment protection if they are speaking on subjects relevant to their professional duties. When UC Irvine professor Juan Hong angered University administrators by opposing the replacement of tenure-track faculty by term lecturers, he was denied a merit salary increase. The Court ruled against Hong, citing Garcetti.

In March, the U.S. District Court Judge of the Northern Illinois District agreed to hear Loretta’s case, despite the university’s arguments that it was “futile” for her to claim any right to free speech. She awaits this hearing.

Supporters of Professor Capeheart ask that readers sign the petition supporting her. Please include your email in your signature comments for updates on the case.

From the 1964 free speech movement to today’s anti-occupation organizations, campuses have always been places where struggles for justice break out. This potential might explain why, losing ground in politics and the economy, the Right seeks to maintain its grip on outspoken faculty and students. David Horowitz, Laura Ingraham, the Association of College Trustees and Alumni, and the like have played their assigned roles in fostering a new McCarthyism that has given rise to a series of witch-hunts against both prominent and emerging critical scholars and activists.

We cannot allow Zionism, racism, the attack on area studies and multiculturalism, or the violation of labor rights on our campuses to stand. We must call to account the administrations of Ithaca College, UCSB, The College of New Jersey, and Northeastern Illinois University. Professors Ramlal-Nankoe, Robinson, Rao, and Capeheart need your support. Their cases represent only a few of the many breaches of academic freedom coming to light in this moment. And we must fight on each and every one.

One thing I kind of admired or respected was that, even though the world may disagree with what Ward Churchill said, even though it was very painful to people, I do respect that he can stand up for what he believes in… He never issued an apology because he doesn’t feel one was needed.

– Juror Bethany Newill, at the Denver Post, 4/4/09.

On April 2, a jury in Denver rendered its verdict in the case of Ward Churchill. The jury agreed with former University of Colorado (CU) professor Ward Churchill—and the many distinguished scholars in his field of Native American studies who testified on his behalf—that he was fired in July, 2007 not for faulty scholarship but in retaliation for a controversial essay he wrote after 9/11. There’s been extensive and continuing coverage in the major media of the decision’s impact. And this is an indication of the significance and great stakes for the battle to defend dissent and critical thinking in academia, and ultimately in society. The essence of the case from the very beginning was the political persecution by a major university of a controversial professor, scholar, and activist—that’s what the jury confirmed. The jury’s verdict is a significant setback for forces hell-bent on suppressing and stifling dissent and critical thinking on campuses.

The jury also awarded $1 in damages. Five out of the six jurors argued to pay Ward Churchill more in damages, but the jury as a whole could not agree. A juror who spoke to the press later explained their decision: “…it wasn’t a slap in his face or anything like that when we didn’t give him any money. It’s just that David Lane (Churchill’s attorney) kept saying this wasn’t about the money, and in the end, we took his word for that.”¹ Professor Churchill said: “What was asked for—and what was delivered—was justice.”

Witch-hunt on Trial

There were two elements the jury had to determine in rendering its verdict: did the majority of the Board of Regents of CU fire Professor Churchill principally because of his post-9/11 essay? And even if they did, was Churchill correct that he would not have been fired for other reasons—that is the alleged research misconduct?

Ward Churchill was a tenured professor of American Indian Studies and Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at CU-Boulder (2002-2005). In January 2005, his invitation to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York suddenly became the target of right wing forces, the governors of New York and Colorado, and radio and TV figures like Bill O’Reilly, because of a sharply worded essay Churchill had written three years earlier, right after 9/11. This essay was critical of the U.S. role in the world and included a formulation about how those people who worked as functionaries for the large corporations with offices in the World Trade Center were “little Eichmanns”—a reference to the functionaries of the Nazi regime.

The speech was cancelled, and numerous politicians, including the governor of Colorado, called for Churchill to be fired. After first launching an investigation of all of Churchill’s writings to find a reason to fire him, the university changed gears, put together a collection of mainly old complaints about aspects of his large body of work, and formed a faculty committee (IC) to investigate. In July 2007, Churchill was fired by the university Regents, who pointed to the IC’s findings of “serious research misconduct,” though the IC had only recommended suspension.

Among the “heavy-hitters” behind Professor Churchill’s firing who were called as witnesses was former Republican governor Bill Owens. Juror Bethany Newill described the testimony this way: “We’d seen depositions of previous testimony, and we found that a lot of them contradicted themselves.” In speaking of Governor Owens she said: “He had gone on the Bill O’Reilly show and mentioned threatening the budget” [that he might cut CU’s state funding if they didn’t get rid of Churchill]; “On the stand, he said that wasn’t what he was doing, but that was clearly what I saw.”

There was remarkable testimony by Betsy Hoffman, who’d been president of the University of Colorado from 2000 until resigning in March of 2005, shortly after the controversy broke out. One observer at the trial described Dr. Hoffman’s testimony where she described a conversation she had “with the Governor [Owens] where she said he told her to fire Ward Churchill ‘tomorrow,’ that his tone was ‘threatening,’ and that if she didn’t he would ‘unleash his plan.’”²

Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, asked Dr. Hoffman about the comparison of the treatment of Professor Churchill to neo-McCarthyism that she’d made in a speech to a faculty committee less than a week before resigning:

“She said that the list of the 101 Worst Professors in the Country by David Horowitz³ was an example of this type of targeting, and pointed out that list included Mr. Churchill and some ‘very highly regarded academics, like Derrick Bell, who were espousing controversial left-wing views.’

“Dr. Hoffman… began researching where some of the criticism of Mr. Churchill was coming from. She found a website for ACTA, an organization the Colorado Chapter of which Governor Owens and Senator Hank Brown had been founding members. The organization encouraged members to ‘take a very active role in reducing the left-wing bias in universities.’ Once ACTA became involved in an ‘all out assault’ on CU and Mr. Churchill during February 2005, Dr. Hoffman assumed that the action was part of the ‘plan’ ‘unleashed’ by Governor Owens….

“Mr. Lane asked if she saw a link between the 9/11 essay becoming publicized and ACTA working in concert with the right-wing media to paint Mr. Churchill as an example of ‘what’s wrong with academia in this country’ and Dr. Hoffman indicated that this was her impression at the time… ‘It was an all-out assault on Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado, and me,’ she testified.”² (emphasis added)

The jury concluded political motivations were principal among the majority of Regents in the decision to fire Churchill. The question remained; would Professor Churchill have been fired for research misconduct anyway?

Experts in American Indian Studies and Indian Law Testify

Many scholars, experts in Professor Churchill’s field of American Indian Studies testified on his behalf, disagreeing with most of the IC’s findings and conclusions. Professor Eric Cheyfitz, Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University, had only met Churchill in 2007, but was familiar with his scholarship and held it in high regard. He said his reaction to the IC report, as elaborated in his extensive recent essay, “Framing Ward Churchill: The Political Construction of Research Misconduct,”⁴ was that the charges were “fundamentally baseless and motivated by the political circumstances surrounding the 9/11 essay.” He then went on to challenge each of the committee’s findings.

Dr. Barbara Alice Mann, an eminent historian, teacher and writer at the University of Toledo, is a Native American and author of nine books. Her latest, The Gift of Disease, includes a chapter on the 1837 smallpox epidemic that destroyed the Mandan Indians of the Great Plains. Dr. Mann’s testimony contradicted the IC’s report—saying there was indeed a “reasonable basis” for Churchill’s claim that the smallpox epidemic was a result of blankets taken from an infirmary in St. Louis, and the claim that army doctors at Fort Clark told the infected Indians to scatter.

This is just a glimpse of how fundamentally flawed, how politically motivated, and how damaging to historical scholarship and the search for the truth this whole investigation was. Research by Revolution reveals that in November of 2006, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter at CU-Boulder had written the university, saying out of Churchill’s more than twenty books and hundreds of articles, chapters, speeches, and electronic communications, the committee investigating Churchill’s work studied six pages of his writings. The IC offered no evidence that they were even familiar with the bulk of Churchill’s work, yet they made claims from a tiny sample of evidence that he “deliberately” engaged in research misconduct; that there was a “pattern” of such misconduct, and that he “has repeatedly plagiarized, as well as fabricated and falsified information to support his views on American Indian history.” Nevertheless, their findings have been used to destroy Churchill’s reputation as a scholar, and to delegitimize basic verdicts about the genocide of the native peoples.

After weeks spent listening to testimony about Churchill’s scholarship, juror Newill concluded: “I definitely saw where [the university] was coming from on a few of them,” but in other instances, “I thought they had really weak arguments. To me, it just seemed like the charges were trumped up. And even if all of those things were true, we didn’t feel that was the reason for termination.”²

In a New York Times essay on April 5, 2009, Stanley Fish, a highly recognized professor in the U.S., wrote that the accusations that the committee investigated “are the kind scholars regularly hurl at their polemical opponents. It’s part of the game. But in most cases, after you’ve trashed the guy’s work in a book or a review, you don’t get to fire him.” Fish then observed, like many other scholars, “…if the standards for dismissal adopted by the Churchill committee were generally in force, hardly any of us professors would have jobs.” He added, “There is… a disconnect in the report between its often nuanced considerations of the questions raised in and by Churchill’s work, and the conclusion, announced in a parody of a judicial verdict, that he has committed crimes worthy of dismissal, if not of flogging.”⁵

The battle to defeat the political persecution of Ward Churchill is far from over. CU has a month to appeal the verdict; and it is up to the judge to decide whether CU will be ordered to pay Churchill’s attorneys’ fees, to award Churchill his lost wages, and to require the university to give Churchill his job back, which has been at the heart of his demands from the beginning. CU officials are expressing strong opposition to his returning to campus.

Beyond that, there is also a great deal at stake for academia and for society overall right now in upholding and defending this verdict, and deepening its lessons. An ugly, high-stakes public witch-hunt by dangerous, reactionary, and powerful forces, aimed at spreading a repressive chill over the universities, has been dragged into the light, and dealt a setback. But these forces, far from retreating, are regrouping, and trying to turn the meaning of this verdict on its head.

To them, Professor Churchill remains the “poster-boy for academic irresponsibility in both substance and style,” as the Chairman of the conservative National Association of Scholars put it in “NAS Regrets Ward Churchill Verdict.” John Leo, senior fellow at the ruling class think tank the Manhattan Institute, calls Churchill’s scholarship “hideous and embarrassing,” blaming the university for hiring, “for diversity reasons, an unprepared, erratic, ideologue with no sense of fairness and no academic credentials…” And Ann Neal, president of ACTA, says “shock, hurt, and even anger are surely natural reactions to the recent jury determination,” but promises that “ACTA is here to help” all those trustees strongly motivated to respond.

With stakes so high, a robust debate is called for with those within and outside academia that have accepted these twisted distortions, now discredited by the Denver verdict. Roger W. Bowen, who was head of the AAUP when the Churchill attack was in full swing, practically brags in the Wall Street Journal that he did nothing in response to requests for assistance from “his [Churchill’s] loyal spouse, Natsu Taylor Saito.” Bowen says, “When Churchill invokes ‘academic freedom’ as a protection for scholarly fraud, he dishonors a noble tradition that appropriately defends honest scholars who bravely challenge conventional wisdom.”⁶ What is this other than continuing to cling to the same distortions coming from the likes of academic hit man David Horowitz; ACTA; William Bennett and company.

In a supplement to Revolution Issue #81, “Warning: The Nazification of the American University” we wrote that powerful, right wing forces in this country have set out to transform university administrations into instruments of coercive enforcement and control over faculty and students—intimidating, threatening, and “cleaning house” of dissident thinkers when called on to do so, while leaving scholars under attack to fend for themselves. These right wing forces attacking the university are “out to turn the university into a zone of uncontested indoctrination, where severe limits would be placed on permissible discourse—in terms of professors speaking out, writing, or encouraging engagement over controversial issues in the classroom, etc.; and in terms of restricting and gutting programs like African American studies, women’s studies, etc., that challenge and refute the official narratives and explanations of U.S. history and present-day inequality and global lopsidedness.”

And further: “The overall objective of this attack on dissent and critical thinking is to change the university as we have known it: in its internal life and functioning and in its effects on society. If this reactionary program wins out, the university will be turning out students who will have had little, if any, opportunity to think critically, into a society qualitatively more severely repressive than anything seen in this country’s history.”

The challenge to administrators, faculty, and especially students is to stand up to this assault. And broader segments of society must join with them. We must continue to defend those like Ward Churchill when they are singled out for attack, and, more generally, defend the ability of professors to hold dissenting and radical views. It is vitally important that the new generation of students step forward to defend an unfettered search for the truth, intellectual ferment, and dissent. One way or another, this struggle over the university and intellectual life will have profound repercussions on what U.S. society will be like, and on the prospects for bringing a whole new society into being.

1. Michael Roberts, “Juror Bethany Newill talks about the Ward Churchill trial,” Denver Westword, 4/3/09.
2. From a blog of law school observers of the trial, theracetothebottom.org.
3. Referring to the book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.
4. In Carvalho, Edward J. and David B. Downing, eds., Works and Days: Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University 51/52.26 (Spring/Fall 2008).
5. Stanley Fish, New York Times, 4/5/09.
6. “Freedom, but for Honest Research,” Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2009.

Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organisation monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of Arabs studying in Israel itself.

Despite the fact that most Israeli Arab students in Jordan interviewed by the researchers expressed a preference to attend university in Israel, the numbers heading to Jordan have grown four-fold since 2004.

College-age Arabs, representing nearly one-quarter of their age group in Israel, are heavily under-represented in Israeli higher education, at about eight per cent of the student intake, according to official statistics. Of those Israelis who pass their matriculation exams, three times as many Jews as Arabs are accepted into Israeli universities.

“Our findings should raise serious questions about the hurdles that have been put in the way of Arab students that make them feel they have no choice but to study abroad,” said Yousef Jabareen, a law professor at Haifa University and head of Dirasat.

Typical of the new exodus is Haneen Bader, 23, from the village of Turan in the Lower Galilee, who is in her third year studying Islamic jurisprudence at Jordan University in the capital, Amman.

Dirasat’s researchers were surprised to find that nearly one-third of all Israeli Arab students in Jordan are women. “We live in a patriarchal society and women are still usually expected to remain close to the family home until they marry,” said Dr Jabareen.

But, he added, good travel links between Amman and the Galilee — and a shared language and culture — made regular visits to Jordan a practical and inexpensive option for Israel’s 1.2 million Arab citizens.

Ms Bader said she was the first member of her family to study outside Israel but that, after initial doubts, her parents were won over when they saw the campus. “Now they very much approve of my decision.”

She added that some of her friends thought of Jordanian universities as second-rate. “That comes from ignorance,” she said.

“I prefer to study in Jordan because it is where I can freely speak and read Arabic, and where my traditions and religion are respected.

“Also, it is far more cosmopolitan in Amman. We have students from Turkey, the Middle East, Europe and the US all studying together. Israel seems a very closed, small-minded place in comparison.”

Ms Bader said studying in Jordan had been good for her self-esteem too. “In Israel, Arabs are encouraged to regard themselves as having inferior minds, of being stupid.

“But in Jordan I see that there are Arab teachers with great intellects. The Arabs outside Israel are better than us — and that reminds me that the problem is not with our minds but with our situation.”

Khaled Arar, a professor at Beit Berl College, near Kfar Sava, and a co-author of the Dirasat report, said the trend towards Israeli Arab students attending Jordanian universities had begun on a small scale in 1998, following the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan.

Dirasat estimates that last year alone Israeli Arab students spent more than $80 million on their education in Jordan.

Dr Arar listed several factors responsible for the recent increase in the popularity of Jordanian universities.

Most significant was Israeli universities’ growing reliance on culturally biased psychometric exams. Nearly half of Arab students who passed their matriculation exams failed to win a place in higher education because they failed the psychometric test, compared with just 20 per cent of Jewish applicants.

“The gap in psychometric scores between Jewish and Arab students has remained steady — at more than 100 points out of a total of 800 — since 1982. That alone should have raised suspicions.”

He noted that a decision by Israeli universities to scrap the psychometric test in 2003 to help “weaker” groups was reversed when the admission of Arab students rocketed. A statement from the universities justified the about-turn on the grounds that they had been referring to the weaker parts of the Jewish population.

Dr Arar said Israel had also raised the minimum qualifying age to study many subjects, often to 20 or 21 years old, especially in fields popular with Arab students such as medicine, pharmacy, social work, physiotherapy and speech therapy.

The delay was justified by the university authorities, he said, on the grounds that most Jews are conscripted into the army for three years after finishing school.

Arab youngsters, he added, could rarely afford to wait three or four years to begin their studies: most faced problems finding work and were often ineligible for welfare benefits. Among women, there was also strong family pressure to marry early.

Finally, the use of Hebrew, both in admission interviews and as the language of university tuition, meant many Arab youngsters leaving school, where Arabic was their first language, feared they would be at a strong disadvantage against their Jewish peers.

Areej Dirini, 38 and a divorcee, takes her three children with her as she splits her time between her parents’ home in Nazareth and her studies in Amman.

A mature student completing a masters in graphic design at al Zeitouni university, Ms Dirini said she had spent many years living with her former husband in the Gulf and lacked the confidence to study in Hebrew.

“I’m planning to do a doctorate next but I’m afraid to study in Israel after being out of the country so long,” she said.

Years of demands for the establishment of a university, teaching in Arabic, in Israel’s largest Arab city, Nazareth, said Dr Jabareen, had been blocked by successive governments.

Dr Arar noted that the phenomenon of Arab citizens being forced to study abroad because of problems accessing higher education was not new.

“From the 1960s onwards the Israeli Communist Party offered scholarships to universities in the Soviet bloc because many of the brightest Arab students were denied places in Israel. As a result, many of our current leaders were educated in Eastern Europe.”

Back at the University of Rochester representatives of the occupying students and the university administration signed a Joint Statement of Understanding.

The approximate wording of the statement is:

1. University of Rochester will commit to provide any surplus goods or supplies that could assist the devastated University of Gaza.

2. University of Rochester will commit resources and information to assist fundraising for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

3. University of Rochester will commit to reach out to Palestinian students in order to provide them scholarships to the University of Rochester

4. University of Rochester will commit to organize open forum to discuss why the University invests in weapons manufactures and discuss the process of the University moving toward a more socially responsible, transparent, and democratically controlled investment policy.

I got in touch with three of the organizers/participants via email and recorded the following online exchange. –Ron Jacobs

Ron Jacobs: Please introduce yourself? Are you a student? Do you have a major?

Adriano Contreras: My name is Adriano Contreras. I’m a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where I study both Sociology and Video Production.

Kyle Brown: My name’s Kyle Brown. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Sociology. For the past four years I’ve been working as a residential mental health and drug addiction counselor.

Ryan Acuff: My name is Ryan Acuff, a member of University of Rochester Students for a Democratic Society (UR-SDS). I’m a graduate student in psychology and a part-time instructor at the university.

RJ: Can you tell us what happened at UR on February 6th?

Adriano: Well, Students for a Democratic Society at UR (SDS-UR) handed their administration four demands the day before they planned to occupy the Goergen Building. The sit-in, inspired by 20 other universities in the UK, took a stand against the Israeli siege on Gaza. SDS invited other activists groups, community members and allies to participate in the sit-in.

I don’t think anyone would have thought that 9 hours later everything would be over. There was a whole schedule planned for the first evening of the occupation. There was a discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, SDS’s demands, and we were to have guest speakers. The administration however, realized the seriousness of the occupiers and sent the Dean of Student Affairs to be their negotiator multiple times that day.

Ryan and Kyle can better explain more of what happened that day, I spent most of that time blogging from inside the occupation.

Ryan: On February 6th, we took direct action for peace and in solidarity with the Palestinians by peacefully occupying a building at the University of Rochester. Beginning at 3:00pm, UR-SDS claimed and occupied the adjacent atrium and auditorium of Goergen Hall (the Biomedical Engineering Building) and declared them a liberated community space—an autonomous zone democratically run by the occupiers until our demands were met. The action was organized by University Rochester Students for a Democratic Society (UR-SDS) but U of R post-docs, faculty members, and staff also occupied along with numerous community members. We came to raise awareness about the dire situation in Palestine and the United States role in the conflict. In addition, we were there to occupy this space until our demands of the administration for divestment, humanitarian aid, educational aid, and scholarships for Palestinian students were met. Also, (let me clarify) despite what the administration said, we did not “reserve” the auditorium and the online calendar still says that it remains unreserved at that time.

Kyle: (LIke Ryan and Adriano said) SDS at UR organized an occupation of Goergen Atrium and Auditorium on campus in solidarity with Gaza. Beforehand, they had presented the administration with an official letter demanding that UR divest from corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and to provide direct aid to the people of Gaza. This wasn’t an occupation like the illegal sit-down strikes of 1930’s because the campus administration allowed SDS to reserve the building in the interest of “peaceful dialogue”. They also provided the Dean of Student Affairs for negotiation of the demands.

As the day went on, the Dean informed the organizers that UR students would be punished if not out of the building by midnight. So we decided to call for as many campus and community members to mobilize around that time as possible to put as much pressure on the Dean as possible to deliver on our demands.

The Dean agreed to negotiate at 10pm and we had maybe 75 people in the building for support. Through the negotiations, the Dean agreed to the following plan of action: that the administration organize a public forum with UR investors, SDS and the community on the university’s investment policy and its investment in Israel; that UR commit resources and provide any needed information for a campus-wide fund drive for Palestine; that UR work to assess needs in Gaza and donate surplus supplies to universities, such as computers and books; and that UR commit to reaching out to Palestinians with international student scholarships.

Feb 6th was a day of education, debate and mobilization. It was a concrete show of solidarity with the people of Gaza and protest against Israel’s occupation. It was a concrete demonstration of real democratic decision-making and flexibility.

RJ: What particular event spurred you to get personally involved in this issue and the occupation?

Ryan: (For me) the unspeakable events of the recent US-Israeli war on Gaza were very difficult for me witness. Especially knowing how complicit the United States was in the massacres. On January 23rd a message about a series of student occupations of English universities in solidarity with Palestine was floated on the northeast SDS listerv. On Saturday January 24th UR-SDS called an emergency meeting to discuss bringing the occupation movement across the Atlantic. Our discussions bore out a resolve to do the same in the United States.

Kyle: After September 11th, I was already organizing against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Israel began using Bush’s “war on terror” rhetoric to extend it’s occupation of Palestine. I became dedicated to ending the occupation of Palestine when I attended a national demonstration in DC in solidarity with the Al Aqsa Intifada. It was amazing to be marching in the streets with Arabs and Muslims chanting “Free Free Palestine!” Through and after that demonstration, I started exploring US funding for Israel and came to the understanding that Israel plays a crucial role as watch dog in the Middle East for US imperialism. I’ve been an anti-imperialist ever since, so when I heard that UR was organizing an occupation on campus I dove into organizing head first.

Adriano: I’ve been involved with the Campus Antiwar Network, a national democratic student anti-war organization, for over 2 years now. When I began my activism it was really all about figuring out the political reasons for why being in Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong, aside from the moral gut feelings I had. The answers I found were imperialism, geopolitics, and profit. With that understanding I became firmly anti-war.

The chapter of CAN at my school had done an educational meeting around the issue of Palestine a week or so prior to Israel’s assault. While home in New York City, I participated in two demonstrations that were overwhelmingly Arab. Unlike anti-war demonstrations which have remained largely free of an Arab presence, the demonstrations around Gaza filled the streets with people whom after 9/11 feared to speak out against the wave of anti-Arab sentiment.

When we returned from Christmas break the political landscape of the anti-war movement had begun to shift. Israel’s true colors were shown clearly to the entire world. Despite its claims to the right of self-defense, the slaughter of over 1300 Palestinians was unjustifiable and people took notice. I took part in the national demonstration on January 10 and it was an amazing experience. CAN and the Muslim Students Association marched together for the first time ever. The people most directly affected by the so-called “War on Terror” were out in big numbers.

Organizing at school had taken on a different character. People wanted to talk and organize around Palestine, even though we had things organized already around the occupation of Afghanistan. When I spoke with Ryan Acuff about SDS’s plans at UR, he mentioned the sit-in. The CAN chapter at RIT got on board with it.

RJ: Is this part of a larger movement? Would you call it a coordinated movement or spontaneous?

Ryan: Our occupation is part of the larger occupation that began on January 13th in London when students from the School of Oriental and Asians Studies occupied a building on campus. This exploded into an occupation movement that has swept over 20 schools in England and Scotland and has now begun in the United States. Oh yeah, and all the occupations have been spontaneous in that each one ha has inspired the others, but none coordinated by a higher body.

Adriano:What is happening in the UK is spreading like wildfire. There have been 23 university occupations so far and some of them are still occupied. Certain demands have been won and its really a testament to the power of organized struggle and protest. The UR occupation was inspired by the UK. Globally, I think it’s something that’ll catch on. Like I said, the world has now seen Israel’s true colors. The siege, the blockade, and the history of oppression have exposed the ideology of the Israeli state.

In the United States, we’re going to begin to see more occupations of this nature. We’ll see similar campaigns to the ones that ended South African apartheid. Presently, South African dockworkers are refusing to import Israeli goods. Already a national call has been put out by the Campus Antiwar Network to figure out and propose a plan of action that includes the help of SDS UR members and students from the UK.

Kyle: There are a number of events that set the stage for the UR action. First, the election of Obama has given ordinary people across the country hope that things can change after eight long years living under the Bush regime. The urgency for change has never been felt more strongly as we are spiraling into the worst recession/depression since the 1930’s. After Obama was elected, the Republic Windows and Doors workers in Chicago won severance pay and health insurance owed to them by occupying their factory when their bosses announced the plant was closing. Not too long after, students at the New School of Social Research in NYC occupied a building to prevent it from closing and directly noted inspiration from the Republic workers. Israel invaded Gaza over the holiday and sparked a series of campus occupations in Britain. The demands of the UR students almost exactly mirror the demands of the Britain students. So I think there is a real context to what we did. I see the UR action as the next stage in the anti-war movement–a new movement of occupations in this country and internationally.

I think this also needs to be viewed in the context of the broader antiwar movement. This has the potential to breath new life into the antiwar movement and set the stage for the national antiwar demonstration called in DC for March 21st which is the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

RJ: What is the intention of the movement?

Kyle: Simply put, we want justice for the people of Palestine. The US funds Israel’s occupation of Palestine with billions of dollars in addition to direct military aid. This means that the US government is directly responsible for bombs dropped on schools, bulldozers razing communities, and F16s terrorizing Gaza. It’s amazing to learn that so many institutions of higher learning–both UR and RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) invest and research for corporations that directly profit from the occupation of Palestine. Our intention is to end the occupation of Palestine by standing in solidarity with the people of Gaza and building a movement capable of forcing the US government from divesting from Israel.

Ryan: Although many of the schools have slightly different demands, the movement seeks to take direct action to express our solidarity with the people of Gaza, highlight our countries’ and universities’ complicity in the atrocities in the Gaza strip, and make our universities’ relationship to Gaza one of supporting people and peace, not war. Members of UR-SDS also hope our action will help inspire other occupations or sit-ins in the United States, given that our culpability as Americans is dramatically larger than even the British in blocking peace and supporting oppression of the Palestinians.

Adriano: The movement has taken on boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The demands of the UK and UR occupations represent that. The effectiveness however of the movement will largely depend on how well coordinated it is on a national level. Locally we can act, make demands, and win but if we remain isolated it’ll be harder for these actions to catch on. The movement needs to be a player on the national scene in order to tackle organizations like AIPAC but also get to the root of the problem, which is United State tax dollars invested in imperialism in the Middle East. The movement has to bring to light the fact that Israel is the US’s proxy in that region. Why else would it have the second largest fleet of F16s, the highest amount of our foreign aid, and nuclear weaponry?

RJ: What has been the response of other members of the campus community? What about alumni?

Kyle: Adriano and Ryan are on the campuses (I’ll take the next question though!)

Adriano:At RIT, we’ve had a significantly larger attendance at our meetings around Palestine. It hasn’t completely translated into activism, but people are searching for answers and perspectives from the Palestinian side. So there is a potential to mobilize people around this.

Ryan: The response from other members of the campus community has been mostly positive. People seem excited to have these kinds of actions at the University of Rochester. Although the U of R has a history of activism its been a few years since students have taken direct action for a cause. Given that we have a large Jewish population on campus, there are some members of the community that see any support of the Palestinians or condemnation of Israeli state policy as a direct threat to their identity as a Jew. The best we can do in these cases is continue the dialogue to clear up misunderstandings. All alumni I’ve communicated with have been extremely excited about our actions. We’ve even had graduates from 1970s send us e-mails of support.

RJ: In the broader sense, what kind of impact do you see (or hope to see) the movement against the Israeli occupation of the Territories on university and college campuses having on the US and British public?

Ryan: We hope these actions on college campuses help open the discussions on the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict and help the voices of the Palestinians be heard. One of the only ways the horrific polices of the U.S. in Israel-Palestine can continue is if people don’t know the extent the U.S. suppressing peace and democracy. We hope if the student create enough of stir, then we can create a climate where Obama will have to fulfill his promises of change and actually bring an expedient end to the occupation and facilitate peace and justice in Palestine.

Kyle: Consciousness is shifting around the question of Palestine. I was amazed to learn that over 40% of people in the US were against Israel’s latest attack on Gaza. This is amazing given how pro-Israel the US mainstream media has been. There is never a voice for Palestinians. The only question US reporters would ask Palestinians during Israel’s latest invasion was, “Do you blame Hamas for this?”
That being said, it seems like people are aching to take up this issue but up until this point have been under confident that anything can be done. The amazing thing about our action is that we won in just 9 hours an agreement for a plan of action from the Dean that provides concrete organizing for the movement in weeks ahead. This is giving confidence to community members and fellow activists across the country that we can fight and win.

I think people are also nervous about being labeled an anti-Semite when organizing and taking a stand against Zionism. We have to education people on the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It is helpful just to point out that there are anti-Zionist Jews organizing in Israel today. We can and should fight against racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism all at the same time.

Adriano: If the movement grows, if it is coordinated, we could expose university investments and fight for socially responsible endowments. The struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine could potentially expose the “war on terror” on a big scale. The possibilities are numerous especially in this period of economic crises and endless war. On the flip-side Obama has brought hope to many and promises of change. If we educate ourselves, take action, and push Obama for more than what he’s promised than we can expect some serious victories.

RJ: Similar actions at campuses around other issues like sweatshops have received a certain amount of positive press when they were undertaken, only to have the administration and trustees negate the agreements that were made. How does a group prevent this, while simultaneously keeping interest in the issue alive on campus and in the surrounding community?

Adriano: This was brought up during the occupation by some people and the answer was unanimous… we’d occupy again. For UR, the biggest employer in Rochester, NY, it’s crucial for them to maintain a favorable reputation. They won’t completely brush off our demands because they know what we’re willing to do now to have our voices heard. During the occupation there was a huge effort made to contact local press and media outlets.

Maintaining interest in the issue has much to do with winning something along the way. The victory at UR was just a first step to get the administration to comply with our demands. If people invest time and energy into organizing and never win anything it becomes demoralizing. If we win, people build confidence and it give activism a whole new meaning.

Kyle: We won the agreement/plan of action through mobilization of students and community members. The agreement was signed in person and in front of all the participants of the occupation because we demanded that the negotiations happen in the auditorium in front of everyone. The agreement should continue to be publicized as far and wide as possible, not only on UR campus but throughout the community and onto every campus across the country. This will play a key role in holding the administration accountable.

We need to continue galvanizing new students and community members with educational panel discussions and teach-ins where we can learn the history of Zionism, the history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, campus complicity, the politics of the Palestinian resistance and the role of US imperialism in it all. And we need groups like SDS, CAN, and all activists organizing to hold the Dean accountable to what he agreed but also to push it further. If the administration negates the agreement in anyway, we occupy with more numbers and we stay until they meet our demands.

Ryan: We hope these actions on college campuses help open the discussions on the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict and help the voices of the Palestinians be heard. One of the only ways the horrific polices of the U.S. in Israel-Palestine can continue is if people don’t know the extend the U.S. suppressing peace and democracy. (Specifically) our big follow up event we have planned is an open forum on the universities investment policies and a discussion of the process of moving towards more socially responsible, transparent, and Democratic investment policy. The more people we can bring into the process the more authoritarian institutions will begin to break down. The more we work to empower and inform people on these issues and the more they will start demanding more power and reform of the institution. We are also planning an editorial in investment for the next issue of the Campus Times along with an open forum to discuss the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In addition, if the university breaks the agreements or simply refuses to move forward we are prepared to take direct action again, this time will more people and in a more dramatic fashion. Justice will be served.

RJ: Since it appears that one of the goals of these actions is to make connections between college investments and the occupation of Palestine (and to make people consider their own complicity, let’s take that a step further: do you think people make the connection between US tax dollars and Israel’s occupation?

Adriano: Right now especially, people are making these connections! Bailout for the banks, none for the working class. $3 billion per year for Israel and no money for universal healthcare coverage. Unemployment is rising and wages have less buying power. If people haven’t made the connection between tax dollars and Israel, they will. It is only a matter of time before people realize the hypocrisy of the system. However not everyone will come to these conclusions alone. We need to be there alongside those people to get them organized to fight back and win the divestment campaigns and reforms we need.

Kyle: I don’t think people make the connection yet. This is a connection the movement will have to make clear. Over three billion dollars in government money goes to fund Israel every year. What could $3 billion a year do for the 47 million people without health insurance in this country? What could $3 billion a year do for our schools that are crumbling under the weight of budget deficits from state to state across this country? What about the workers at Kodak that have lost their jobs as Kodak has laid off more than 50% of their Rochester workforce in the past 30 years (UR has now become the largest employer in Rochester)? It should be our job to make the connections and reach beyond our campuses to win solidarity in the community and labor movement.

Ryan: I think people are beginning to see this connection. UR-SDS pointed this out in our editorial in the campus paper last week. The more people can see we individually our complicit in these atrocities, the more willing people are going to be to take action.

RJ: I know there is a national conference going on around this issue. What do you see as the goals of that conference?

Ryan: Currently there is national conference call organized by the Campus Anti-war Network planned for next Monday to discuss spreading the occupation movement across the U.S. I believe the goals are for other schools to learn about our actions and possibly enact something similar at their school. People are feeling that the time has come to escalate our actions.

Kyle: (Like Ryan said) There is a national conference call this Monday. We will be giving a report on the UR action. Also, someone will be giving a report from the New School occupation. Hopefully, we can get someone on from the occupations in Britain. We want students to organize on every campus across the US. But there must also be coordination between these campuses because it’s going to take a coordinated, democratic, nationwide movement to win divestment from Israel. Hopefully the call will inspire students. Students should “think big” and organize to win concrete gains. (If you are talking about another conference, let me know! I should be there!) (I was referring to the conference call-Ron)

RJ: Anything else?

Adriano: I run a website called The Sitch. Its a site for activist news, political commentary and analysis. On there you’ll find coverage of the UR occupation, as it happened, including videos and images.

Kyle: Yes. The immigrant rights movement in 2006 took up the slogan “Yes we can!” Obama adopted this for his presidential campaign in 2008. Coming out of the UR action, I was thinking to myself: “Yes we did.” It feels great to finally win something. I want people across the country to feel the same way so we can raise our hopes even higher and fight for more!

Ryan: Thanks for your interest in our action. We hope to spread the word far and wide to help inspire similar actions for peace and Palestine and fight oppression in all forms.

Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch’s role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad.

A Spanish judge began investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza under the country’s “universal jurisdiction” laws this month, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is considering a Palestinian group’s petition to indict Israeli commanders.

Meanwhile, the furore — by highlighting the close ties between the army and Israeli universities — is adding weight to a growing campaign in Europe and the US to impose an academic boycott on Israel, say activists.

Tel Aviv University’s decision to hire Col Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law prompted protests from staff after the local media published details of the military planning for the Gaza offensive.

More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the operation, the majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured.

According to critics quoted by the Haaretz newspaper, Col Sharvit-Baruch and her staff manipulated standard interpretations of international law to expand the scope of army operations to include civilian targets.

Leading the protest is Haim Ganz, a law professor who has called the colonel’s approach to international law “devious jurisprudence that permits mass killing.” In a letter to the university, Prof Ganz said he was lodging “a moral protest against a state of affairs where somebody who authorised these actions is teaching the law of war.”

Last week Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, threatened to cut government funding for the law faculty should Col Sharvit-Baruch’s appointment not proceed. The university’s president, Zvi Galil, phoned the cabinet secretary to reassure the government, saying Prof Ganz’s opinions were not shared by most staff.

Other academics have rallied in support of Col Sharvit-Baruch, accusing her critics of waging a McCarthyite campaign against her.

According to the Israeli media, she personally approved the first wave of air strikes in Gaza that targeted a police graduation ceremony, killing at least 40 cadets.

Although police forces have civilian status in international law, and are therefore protected from military reprisal, Col Sharvit-Baruch is reported to have revised her opinion of the attack’s legality during the many months of planning.

In addition, she is said to have “relaxed” the rules of engagement, approved widespread house demolitions and the uprooting of farmland, and sanctioned the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus over the densely populated enclave.

She also offered legal justification for the targeting of buildings in which civilians were known to be located as long as they had been warned first to leave. Schools, mosques and a university were among the many civilian buildings shelled by the Israeli army during the 22-day operation.

Her decisions have been widely criticised by international human rights organisations as well as by international law experts in Israel.

The professor Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called her interpretation of the rules of war “flexible.” Regarding the strike against the police cadets, he said: “If you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates [the cadets] from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted [into the Israeli army] in two years.”

Col Sharvit-Baruch’s predecessor, Daniel Reisner, noted that her staff had stretched the accepted meanings of international law. The army’s operating principle, he added, was: “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it.”

Orna Ben-Naftali, the dean of law at the College of Management in Rishon Letzion, said the army’s conduct in Gaza had made international law “bankrupt”. “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head.”

But despite the protest at Tel Aviv University, most academic staff in Israel supported Col Sharvit-Baruch’s appointment, said Daphna Golan, a programme director at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University. “I think even Prof Ganz has been frightened into silence by the backlash.”

The episode, she said, highlighted the intimate relations between the army and universities in Israel, as well as the dependence of the universities on army funding.

She noted that there were many special programmes designed to favour army and security personnel by putting them on a fast track to degrees.

“Most of the professors in the country’s Middle East departments — the ‘experts on Arabs’ who shape the perceptions of the next generation — are recruited from the army or the security services,” she added.

Omar Barghouti, a co-ordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said Col Sharvit-Baruch’s employment was a further indication of the “organic ties” between Israeli institutions and the army.

“This just adds one more soldier to an already very long list of war criminals roaming around freely in Israeli universities, teaching hate, racism and warmongering, with impunity,” he said.

He noted that calls for an academic boycott were growing in the wake of the Gaza offensive.

Al-Quds University, with campuses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, severed its contacts with Israeli universities last week. It had been the last Palestinian university to maintain such ties.

At the same time, a group of US professors announced that they were campaigning for an academic boycott of Israel — the first time such a call has been heard in the US.

Mr Barghouti said an “unprecedented” groundswell of popular opinion was behind new campaigns in countries such as Australia, Spain, Sweden, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

On both sides of my family tree there were fools and sages, cynics and dreamers, the myopic and the far-seeing, the generous and the greedy. I grew up in a middle class Jewish neighborhood in Queens. On weekends we were far more likely to spend time with my father’s rather large extended Sicilian family than with my mother’s rather small Jewish family. My friends went to shul and studied for their bar mitzvahs. I went to my best friend’s bar mitzvah, and once I went to a Christmas Mass with one of my Italian aunts. I liked the bar mitzvah because I got to drink a little wine. I didn’t like the Mass so much because I didn’t understand the words, and I soon got tired of all the sitting and standing. But I liked my Aunt Sadie’s face when she prayed.

I think I was in junior high school when I learned the phrase “hybrid vigor.” It stuck because I imagined it applied to me. I felt privileged being what I was, able to look on both sides of the prism of truth. Occasionally, a friend, a relative, or someone just met, would tell me I would have to choose at some point between the religion of my father and that of my mother. But somehow that meant choosing between father and mother, and I never figured I could, for I knew them both to be decent people. If they found their own pathways to God, they managed to teach me by example that there were different ways up the mountain. By example they taught me to lead an honorable life, to be fair, to be just.

Though they argued often and loudly, I came to understand that their arguments, their volubility with words, were expressions of the dramatic nature of their characters. I never doubted the love between them. They argued because it was the way they danced, the way they sang to one another. They never argued about religion. Maybe they figured they could each ascend their own way up the mountain–so long as they were within calling distance of each other.

I was in my early teens before I understood much about the Shoah. We were in Miami Beach, in the famous Wolfies Restaurant on Lincoln Road, when an older man my mother knew slightly as a business associate of her father, joined us briefly at our table. He wore a short-sleeved “Florida” shirt, and I couldn’t help noticing the numbers tatooed on his forearm. Afterwards I asked my mother about it and she said she was glad I hadn’t asked while the man was sitting with us. Then she explained.

I had already learned about World War II, of course. I knew about World War I and the Civil War and the Revolution and I’d heard of the “Thirty Years’ War” and the “Hundred Years War.” Like it or not, I found myself smack-dab in the middle of the Cold War, liable to be emulsified by Russian missiles at any second. I was beginning to wonder if the history of humankind was nothing but the story of a long war punctuated by all-too-brief periods of tranquility.

The Russians were the enemy, but in those years, the years of a famously mumbling president (we’ve had a few since!), Interstate-building and the early, svelte Elvis, the Germans were the enemy, too. At least in my neighborhood. My best friend grew livid over my association with a German kid who lived three or four streets away. “I hate his guts,” he told me, “I hate his rotten guts.” He could never tell me why. It was nothing personal. It would be years before I understood he was mimicking the fear and loathing he’d learned at home.

I was sixteen when I experienced prejudice directly. I had fallen in love with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Polish-Jewish girl whose family forbade her from seeing me until her grandmother explained that it was all right since my mother was Jewish and that meant I was, too. I didn’t accept this formulation and I still don’t. I still wasn’t going to choose between father and mother, but if it meant I could go out with Susan, that was fine with me.

My family moved to Florida soon after, and by age eighteen the femme fatale was a dyed-in-the wool upper-class WASP, and this time it was her father who couldn’t stand my swarthy (good?) looks and my funny, hard-to-pronounce, operatic last name. So, by my late teens I was catching it from both ends of the ballpark. And all I wanted was a little nookie.

Prejudice…It cuts all ways…

The quality of mercy blesses him that gives and him that receives. But prejudice is a blade we hold in our bare hands. It cuts the giver and his object.

Somewhere along here, as I was experiencing all this pain that came out of loving, I decided that the only way I could win at this game was by not giving in; not becoming like the small-minded people who couldn’t see the love in me, the youthful reaching-out, the sense of wonder, the apprehension of beauty and grace in all its manifold forms.

I was reading a lot. I read Allan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny and a couple of other books on the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I understood the wretched Treaty of Versailles, the shame and humiliation of the Germans after “the war to end all wars.” I learned from William Shrier that a nation could go insane, that a people, just like a person, could suffer from megalomania and paranoia. I knew from the parents of my German friend that there were good Germans (my friend’s parents, less privileged, with heavy accents, were always hospitable and friendly). I knew from the books that many good Germans had tried to speak out to stop the Nazi juggernaut; but they’d been quashed, silenced, or killed; their lives destroyed, their writing and work discredited. Good guys don’t always win: it’s one of the painful lessons we learn from our childhood and from history.

I used to wonder if I would have had the courage to cry out against the madness, to take on mother and father, wife and brother, friend, son, sister, daughter to express myself forthrightly; to stake my claim in humanity, reason and justice. I wrestled with the angel of doubt. It was one thing to be the oppressed people–the Jews, the Roma, the Blacks. They had their life and death challenges, their cauldrons of fire, dens filled with lions. But to be a dissenter in the oppressors’ clan, the “weak link” in the chain of unity–the united front, the united-we-stand determination to root out evil or build a state or empire–that presented me with inestimable psychological challenges: nuances of identity and identification little different from a religious calling.

These challenges first came to the fore during the Vietnam War.

At fourteen I’d composed a song on my saxophone. The lyrics went something like this: “Our forefathers built a nation, / Strong in every way– / A wonderful country that maintains peace / It’s name the U.S.A….”

Gentle reader, I will spare you the rest. The point is, I was a true believer.

Then, in 1965, a special assembly was held at the University of Florida. I was nineteen, still bearing my sophomoric infatuation with my Waspish girlfriend whose family couldn’t stand me (they never even knew I was half Jewish! That would have been the coup de grace!) and suddenly Lyndon Baines Johnson was trying to whip me into righteous fury against people I’d never met, people who had done me no personal harm. There was the president of the university, and the deans, and a couple of other V.I.P.’s up there on stage trying to impress upon me and every other student–especially the males–just how important this Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was and how it was going to change our lives, so we’d better start thinking seriously about R.O.T.C., our duty, our country, freedom and democracy.

But I was still reading books. Books by Black authors like Richard Wright, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansbury, Amiri Baraka. I read books by the pacifist German author Herman Hesse, and books by the dissident, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. I read the dystopic visions of Orwell and Aldous Huxley. And I was listening to the speeches of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. That awful period that began for me with that surreal assembly did not end until 1975, with the fall of Saigon, the abandonment of our imperial ambitions in that small part of Asia, the loss of some 60,000 Americans and over two million Vietnamese. I read magazines like Ramparts and alternative publications like The Great Speckled Bird and the Boston Phoenix. Later I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and I wept for the genocide of those free and reverent nomads. And when I put all the reading together and all the listening together–what the people who were telling me to go and kill other people were saying … well, it just didn’t jive.

In the course of that terrible decade I taught in public schools in California and Massachusetts, and taught at the University of Florida as an Instructor for three years. There was no way to keep the war out of the classroom. Not if one believed in dialogue and dialectic as the foundation of democracy. My students wanted to talk and write about their deepest thoughts and feelings. I encouraged them. My approach was heuristic. When they asked me my thoughts, I expressed myself as clearly as I could. I graded them on the clarity of their expression–my job as their teacher. If they reached conclusions different from mine, that was their prerogative. One of my best students was the daughter of a military man. She reached different conclusions. Yet she aced my course. Her arguments were clear and cogent, and if I believed she was wrong, I could only hope that in time she would see the light.

This liberal approach earned me the enmity of some colleagues and administrators. Liberal, as in “liberal education,” was not yet a dirty word, but it was rapidly becoming one with Nixon and his “silent majority.” I learned that reason and clarity are, like certain customs in Hamlet’s day, “more honored in the breach than the observance.” I also learned that I would not buckle under. It cost me. It probably cost me a couple of good jobs–academic positions I had earned my rights to, and viscerally wanted. If I had kept quiet, “toned it down,” “put my energies elsewhere,” perhaps I would have remained in academia. My college roommate, also outspoken, wound up in Canada, where he’s a respected social critic today. Never underestimate the power of luck in our lives. I think it was Mencken who said that.

Towards the end of his life, the great nonagenarian Jewish painter, Marc Chagall, was asked why he had spoken out so vigorously on the social and political issues of his day. He shrugged and said, “We have to live with ourselves.”

Sometime during that terrible and terribly exciting decade, my feelings about the Jewish people began to change. I had been proud of the Jews for standing shoulder to shoulder with Blacks during the early Civil Rights Movement. They had lent financial and moral support and had put their bodies and careers on the line. Some Black leaders now say there was too much support, too much guidance–and maybe it’s so. But Blacks had suffered the apartheid of the post-Civil War period for a hundred years and I don’t think the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s could have gotten off the ground without the support of an inside group that had made and was making it.

I was proud of my half-Jewish heritage then. I have come to believe that there are no people anywhere who cannot take pride in their background–if they know the best of their stories. The Tower of Babel was never completed simply because people did not know how to tell other people their best stories.

But a strange thing happened around 1967 with the Six-Day War. My mother and I were visiting relatives in New York at that time, and suddenly, people who had never been political, could talk of nothing else. They said Israel was being threatened as it had not been threatened at any time since its founding. It was incumbent on all Jews to support Israel. The dialogue was changing.

Reform Judaism had been an honorable term in my childhood. Slowly, like the word “liberal,” the word “reform” became pejorative.

A great many Jews who had put themselves out trying to reform and improve the US system seemed almost embarrassed by their former efforts as they now fixated upon Israel. As a resurgent, recrudescent Israel, attached more and more firmly to America’s globalist ambitions, won war after war, employing first-rate technology against left-over technology, triumphalism reared its ugly head again–even as it had in King David’s time–as Jews began to believe God was on their side, victory was inevitable, the Promised Land would be restored, the Temple rebuilt.

A dreamy shepherd boy named David helps the warrior Saul establish a kingdom. David builds a small empire, taking another man’s wife in the process, alienating his son Absalom. Upon David’s death, another son, Solomon, later judged the wisest of men, arranges the death of his brother, Adonijah, extends the empire, tightens the reins of rule. When he dies, the northern tribes seek redress of grievances, to which the son of Solomon responds, “My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” The northern tribes judiciously rebel against this tyranny, and the empire dissolves into the two warring states of Israel and Judah, led respectively by Jereboam and Rehoboam.

History would be a great antidote to mythology if the two weren’t so inextricably entwined. Men will die and kill for their myths and their dying and killing make history, with its own awful imperatives lasting through generations.

With Israel’s easy victory in the Six-Day War, a new clan of military heroes arose–Moyshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon among them–new myths were created, old truths laid aside. Jewish popular psychology began to change, noticeable to me at the most personal level, within my family and among my friends.

Every new plateau of awareness reveals new vistas of ignorance, new mountains to climb. The struggle for awareness is eternal. I guess that’s why God has to live forever. God, as the Abrahamic religions envision God, is the only one capable of perfect awareness. But if God needed six days to create the earth, I guess it could take all of eternity to realize perfection.

The rest of us struggle with our personal histories within the matrix of tribal and world history. It’s a confusing mishmash of memory and amnesia, legend, truth, half-truth, religious verities and fabrications. It is not so much that humans do not learn the lessons of history, as that they learn them incompletely—or simply learn the wrong lessons.

Judaism offers a time-honored way to confront the confusion. At its best, it is a religion of core values (The Ten Commandments) that accepts change with Job-like patience, and perseveres, like Job, in its quest for understanding and justice. It has been an evolving religion from the beginning. From Abraham’s time it surrendered iconography and human sacrifice. The Old Testament is an anthology amended by various editors over a period of hundreds of years. Some five hundred years after the fall of the House of David, the Torah is given its final form. Samaritans break from the mainstream of Judaism, and Persian influence brings in the angels, the figure of Satan, final judgment and the resurrection of the dead. A Jewish reformer from Nazareth changes Judaism by forcing it to dig in its heels and define itself in the light of a Christianizing Roman Empire. Judaism is Hellenized, Socratic dialogue metamorphosing into Talmud and Midrash. Fourteen hundred years after Rehoboam, the Babylonian Talmud replaces the Palestinian Talmud. Sects like the Karaites emerge and decline. Kabbalah and Hassidism emerge and remain. False messiahs like Sabbatai Zevi come and go.

It is a river: like any long-lasting tradition, full of rapids and shallows; deep, clear water and stagnant pools. Parmenides said one could not step into the same river twice. Rivers either dry up, or they flow, changing their course, taking the renewing rains, making their beds as they find their own direction. “All the rivers flow into the sea,” Solomon tells us, “yet the sea is not full.” We can always learn; the sea can never be full.

Modern Judaism has been defined by two events: Zionism and the Shoah. Both are the results of eighteenth and nineteenth century nationalist movements. Zionism emerges from the failure of Reform Judaism, the “science of Judaism,” to find a welcoming home in the Western European democracies and, more especially, the Russian empire. Furthermore, the nationalisms of our modern age have been spurred forward and justified by a misunderstanding (often deliberate) of Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859). Where Darwin had spoken of “natural selection” as a means of adaptation to environment, imperialist apologists (like Herbert Spencer in England and William Graham Sumner in the U.S.), heard “survival of the fittest”–the right to conquer and subdue. Darwin himself revisited the question of human survival and adaptation, specifically addressing the moral dimensions of the struggle in his less well-attended-to Descent of Man (1871), the book he considered more important.* (See David Loye’s Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love, iUniverse, 2000). In Descent, Darwin emphasized the moral dimension of human choice, our capacity for compassion, empathy and understanding; the divine role we have in shaping our destinies. Growing a longer tail might do very well in helping lizards adapt to new environments, but for the human species, a finely-tuned aesthetic sensibility is apt to work much better.

Regrettably, Darwin’s later considerations were lost in the hoopla over Origin. So we have Judaism attaching itself, perhaps understandably, to the jingoism of 19th Century Robber Barons and European expansionism. Within this industrially and scientifically fermenting age, we have the collapsing Ottoman Empire and a Germany that has reunited after 200 years of dissolution following the Treaty of Westphalia. Buttressing nationalism, also spurred on by mis-reading Darwin, is the misguided “scientific” theory of eugenics, championed in the US by health enthusiasts like Kellogg, and later finding a place in the frenetic writings of a little corporal and failed painter in defeated Germany.

A manic alchemist could not have concocted a more sinister, combustible brew.

The manifold lessons of the Shoah, the physical suffering, the mental anguish of betrayal, the guilt of survival, the sense of emasculation and impotence, the searing, indelible memories, have been encapsulated in a poignant phrase: Never again! That phrase, in all the languages of the world, is the birthright and obligation of every Jewish child and every Jewish sympathizer, inextinguishable as the light of the Maccabees, a new covenant Jews have made to one another.

It is a vital, vibrant phrase. …But how can it possibly encapsulate all that the Shoah has to teach?

There is another lesson of Shoah, too often neglected. Perhaps some think that it undercuts the first message, but I think, instead, it makes for a more compelling, even more obligatory vision: that is, that any people, no matter how highly educated and “civilized,” have the seeds of destruction within them; any people, losing their way in the wilderness, are liable to lash out at others in an atavistic, barbaric fashion.

Never again must the Jews allow what happened to them to happen to them. And, just as compellingly, never again must Jews allow anyone to perpetrate such malice and violence against another.

Much of the story of Judaism since the Six-Day War and the Occupation is now about the lessons of the Shoah. Zionists loudly proclaim the first part of the message, using it to justify an ever expanding occupation and expropriation of lands. Jews from Brooklyn and New Jersey arrive in occupied Palestine, thumping on Bibles like Southern tent-revivalists, pointing to obscure passages as though they were ancient deeds and land titles. Behind them, they marshal the powers of the I.D.F. and the American military-industrial complex. They can also point to any number of Biblical passages that depict Yahweh as a jealous God who will wipe out every man, woman, child, goat, sheep, cat, dog and goldfish who defies Him.

Never again! they shout, and they shout down those who have learned other lessons. In Leviticus I read, “If a stranger sojourn with you in your land, ye shall not vex him. The stranger who dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And, a little later, “If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.” And, most conclusively, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Hasn’t it always been about strangers and sojourners and neighbors and brothers? Once outside of Paradise, the first great sin is fratricide. Then, Ishmael is sent packing by his half-brother Isaac; Joseph is sold into bondage by his jealous brothers; Esau is duped out of his inheritance by his brother.

Do we not live in strange times? Zionists have jumped into bed with Christian fundamentalists who believe in their heart of hearts that these same Zionists must be restored to the land of Israel so that they can die in hellfire when Christ returns to earth to save the believing Christians who are ferried up (naked!) to heaven in a rapture. Is there any more fantastic alliance in the Bible? Only the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin could stretch our credulity more!

And these same Zionists claim that anyone who would gently remind them of the other lessons of the Shoah, and, indeed, of the humane face of Judaism–these same modern-day Zealots abhor their gentle admonishers as nothing but self-hating, anti-Semitic Jews!

So the fratricidal war of the Semites continues. Jew against Jew, Jew against Arab, Semite against Semite. Zionists and their fundamentalist Christian allies are wedded to a vision of apocalypse that may very well turn the 21st century into humankind’s bloodiest yet–if not it’s last!

The handwriting is on the wall, and we are at a defining crossroads.

In the history of any long-enduring people, there is much to take pride in, and more than a little to look on with shame. The human story is fluid, unfinished, evolving.

Are there 18 million Jews in the world? Then there must be 18 million versions of what Judaism is. Or, in Clintonese, it all depends on what is is.

Dialogue and dialectic have been fundamental to the Jewish tradition since the Talmud and the Midrash. There is no longer a Sanhedrin to tell Jews what to think and to condemn heterodoxy. Thinking, liberal Jews have been silenced by the rhetoric of the right, cowed by extremists into supporting policies that demean and dehumanize the other brother, as well as the self. Judaism, like all religions, like the story of humankind, is still unfolding, the human spirit still evolving. We can look back three thousand years to the House of David, but can we also look forward three thousand years to the House of Peace? Or does our imagination and groping for truth only move backward?

Perhaps the words of Albert Einstein may guide us on our way: “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable, superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

If we perceive the present time as the pivot upon which eternity rests, we gain a sense of the weight and immediacy of the moment. Every moment of our lives we are destined to choose, and we had best, like Einstein, approach the crossroads with humility. No one can say he has his finger on the pulse of a religion because no one can have his finger on the pulse of a river. We are in it and of it, and we may be carried away blindly or try to get our bearings and understand where we’re going and how best we may captain the frail vessels of our intelligence.

So here I am, a half-Jew of the diaspora, wondering if there is a role for people like me in Judaism, and, if not, why not, and if so, what? I have to speak out and protest because, as the Talmud teaches: “If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” A hybrid can’t help thinking about wholeness and reconciliation. Diaspora Jews are, in a way, the “other brother,” the one who went wandering. They took their questioning attitudes with them. Abraham didn’t question God’s dictum to sacrifice his son, but Job, broken and tortured, finally did question God’s judgment. Out of the Whirlwind, God says, basically, Never mind, you couldn’t possibly understand! (The ending a later amendment of the original, more Promethean tale.) But timing, as always, is crucial. Job gets his just deserts only after the turmoil and after the questioning!

This spirit of questioning and challenging–both the eternal verities, and the verities of the Zeitgeist—I take to be the crucial, life-saving, life-affirming core legacies of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. “Iron sharpeneth iron…” Solomon wrote. “so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” The wise man counsels his friend not to drive when drunk, not to steal the wife of another man, not to hitch his wagon to a seemingly invulnerable military-industrial complex wedded to Westernity (Westernization and modernity). Perhaps as great a legacy is the striving after justice–justice forged by the layering of doubt, and hope, and hard-won wisdom.

I may be like Esau, the hairy, “matted” brother who came out first, with his brother’s hand on his heel. Tricked out of his inheritance, Esau plots murderous revenge on his brother, who flees when he hears of it. Jacob goes into the wilderness, pines for Rachel, suffers and sweats at the hands of Laban, and, after fourteen years, returns to the land of his father. He has learned much. Fearful of retaliation, Jacob sends Esau propitiatory gifts. Esau, too, has learned much. He has prospered. He has gathered four hundred men to his tent. A hunter and military man, he has the power to swoop down on Jacob, his wives and his children. Instead, he embraces him, he welcomes him home.

It is the embrace of reconciliation grown out of suffering and new-found acknowledgment of their heritage. It is the acknowledgment of mutual suffering, reparations, acceptance and forgiveness.

After a while, Esau travels on, perhaps to greener pastures, perhaps merely to fulfill the wanderlust of his spirit. Perhaps to impart the counsel of his years. Perhaps he met the descendants of Ishmael on his way and they embraced each other, too. (I like to imagine one of his offspring found his way to Sicily, where he married a zesty woman with Greek blood.)

For my money, it’s one of the gems of the Bible, one of the stories they might have told at the Tower of Babel to keep from splitting into fractious tribes. If they had got their stories right, they might have built something worth building.

In a sense, we are all hybrids, composed of many strains of race, creed and culture. There are many stories of violence, ignorance and betrayal. We can cling to them, cling to that vision of what we have been.

Or, we can acknowledge, evolve, reconcile, and move forward.

While the extent of the damage to the Islamic University, which was hit in six separate airstrikes, is still unknown, recent reports indicate that at least two major buildings were targeted, a science laboratory and the Ladies’ Building, where female students attended classes. There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.

Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the elected Palestinian government, which Israel has targeted in its continuing attacks in Gaza. Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has emphasized the educational significance of the university, which far exceeds its cultural or political symbolism.

Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas — with the approval of Israeli authorities — the Islamic University is the first and most important institution of higher education in Gaza, serving more than 20,000 students, 60 percent of whom are women. It comprises 10 faculties — education, religion, art, commerce, Shariah law, science, engineering, information technology, medicine, and nursing — and awards a variety of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Taking into account that Palestinian universities have been regionalized because Palestinian students from Gaza are barred by Israel from studying either in the West Bank or abroad, the educational significance of the Islamic University becomes even more apparent.

Those restrictions became international news last summer when Israel refused to grant exit permits to seven carefully vetted students from Gaza who had been awarded Fulbright fellowships by the State Department to study in the United States. After top State Department officials intervened, the students’ scholarships were restored — though Israel allowed only four of the seven to leave, even after appeals by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “It is a welcome victory — for the students,” opined The New York Times, and “for Israel, which should want to see more of Gaza’s young people follow a path of hope and education rather than hopelessness and martyrdom; and for the United States, whose image in the Middle East badly needs burnishing.”

Notwithstanding the importance of the Islamic University, Israel has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the targeted buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets. … One of the structures struck housed explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s research-and-development program, as well as places that served as storage facilities for the organization. The development of these weapons took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”

Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defense corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become major projects at universities worldwide — a fact that does not justify bombing them.

By launching an attack on Gaza, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas — only the Israeli tactics are much more lethal. How should academics respond to this assault on an institution of higher education? Regardless of one’s stand on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities, anyone so concerned about academic freedom as to put one’s name on a petition should be no less outraged when Israel bombs a Palestinian university. The question, then, is whether the university presidents and professors who signed the various petitions denouncing efforts to boycott Israel will speak out against the destruction of the Islamic University.

* This article originally appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Reposted with author permission.

To accomplish more and enhance personal security, individual humans in a state of nature (i.e., alone in the wild) choose to enter into social contracts for mutual benefit; increased safety is achieved by diminishing personal freedom. This exchange is considered fair when the diminution of personal freedom is equitable and not so extreme as to enslave anyone. The social contract includes economic aspects, for the division of labor, self-defense, trade, property and marital rights, and for the general well-being and continuity of the society.

The only legitimate power, or “sovereign”, over such a society is the “general will” of its people. How the general will (the consensus) of the society is determined is a matter of detail, which depends on the: size, historical placement, geophysical setting and culture of the population in question. The general will is a legislating power that devises the laws — the “rules of the game.”

Government is the application of the laws, to regulate the interactions among the individuals of the society. Government derives its authority from the sovereign, which is the general will of the people; and “government” is objectified by the physical and bureaucratic structures constructed to enact the laws.

Note the flow of Rousseau’s logic: population choosing to socialize -> “general will” or equivalently popular consensus -> power legitimizing government -> sovereign of society -> legislating function -> laws -> government is structure constructed to enact the laws -> the individual’s compliance with laws is simultaneously an assertion of participation in sovereignty.

“The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole.”

Rousseau’s book inspired revolutionaries and political reformers widely. Its influence can be seen in the Declaration Of Independence (1776), the Constitution Of The United States Of America (1787), the Bill Of Rights (1789), the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man And Of The Citizen (1789), the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights (1948), and in the political awareness of participants in revolutions since those of North America and France in the 18th century.

* * * *

Today, in popular consciousness, the social contract is assumed to be the obligation of government to protect its subject population physically and economically, and to mount rescue and recovery actions in response to emergencies, in exchange for popular support of government through taxation and compliance to the laws.

Most people are workers; to them an important part of their social contract is the presumed agreement with their employers that an equitable exchange of work and money will be assured by compliance with labor law, and monitoring by government regulators. Employers look to government enforcement of regulations against labor actions that are deemed fatal to the conduct of business. This is a matter of judgment, which has been badly skewed by money-power against labor in the United States.

Workers look to government enforcement of regulations against exploitation by excessive hours, under-paid and unpaid work, arbitrary and retaliatory dismissals, harassment, unsafe working conditions; and fiscal mismanagement, irresponsibility and malfeasance — by employers and financial institutions — regarding the employee’s paycheck: pay, taxes, savings, pensions and health insurance.

The social contract between a people and their government always included some regulation of labor-capital relations, for non-communist countries, but this aspect expanded significantly in response to the Great Depression (1929-1953) and in the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after World War II (>1945). Of course, labor-capital relations became a matter of government planning in countries transformed by communist revolutions after 1917.

In the United States, the expansion of the labor-capital regulatory function of the social contract is remembered as the New Deal introduced by the Roosevelt Administration (1933-1945). Its initial phase (1933-1938) was Keynesian economics applied to the expansion of civil infrastructure, and its second phase (1939-1945) was Keynesian economics applied to the expansion of military power. During the Truman Administration (1945-1952) the second phase of the New Deal was adopted as the permanent war economy of the “national security state,” which the United States has become.

In 1953, the US economy returned to its 1929 pre-crash level and the Republicans returned to power as the Eisenhower Administration. While capitalists had always opposed the expansion of labor’s rights and publicly-funded benefits, and government’s protection of them, labor’s New Deal gains remained secure during the Post-War Boom (1948-1971), the period of greatest general prosperity in the United States; and worker protections and benefits were even enhanced by the efflorescence of social, civil rights and environmental legislation during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.

The fiscal weight of the Vietnam War, combined with the cost of US social programs, a continuing reluctance to raise taxes and refrain from deficit spending, and a loss of confidence in the US dollar by resurgent European and Asian economies, suddenly sank the US Post-War Boom in 1971. The immediate results were: 1) collapse of the Bretton Woods system (negotiated in 1944) to regulate monetary relations between major industrial states; 2) a sharp recession in the US; and 3) many capitalists lost confidence in US president Richard Nixon because of his drastic, unilateral and impulsive shift in US monetary policy, the “Nixon Shock” that precipitated the economic collapse.

Resentment by the Big Money over the Nixon Shock is probably the reason Nixon’s impeachment and removal proceeded to finality without opposition. The Big Money also decided it was time to invest in a long-term coordinated assault on the social contract, to eliminate all the labor and related social gains introduced since the New Deal — the neo-liberal agenda.

* * * *

The neoliberal agenda is the stated orthodoxy of capitalism, and is advanced in the US by people who describe themselves as politically “conservative”. Ayn Rand (1905-1982) is the literary and philosophical deity of laissez-faire capitalism, and inspiration to later avatars of the cult like Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the US, from 1987 to 2006).

Out of politeness, or as a necessary matter of deception, the actual credo of capitalism is rarely stated because it is: pure greed, get something for nothing, take everything you can get. If you understand fraud, plunder, piracy, enslavement, theft and rape, then you understand the objectivism of capitalism.

We could state the kernel of neoliberal philosophy (never was such an elegant word more brutally misused) with a libertarian cast, as “I don’t want to be taxed by obligations because of what I have, nor restrained by barriers to my grasping for what I want. I don’t want to pay for the expense of government beyond what is needed to protect my horde and enable my take. I don’t want government to enrich people economically beneath me, racially darker, or culturally different.”

If you wish to optimize your selfishness as an economic predator chewing through a prey population with naïve conceptions of its socializing contract, then you need verbal and procedural mechanisms of obfuscation to cloak your naked intent from public view.

Simply put, thieves lie. Lying is the sound of theft, and its literature. Lies are the noise of theft in progress. When you detect lies, you should immediately ask “what is being stolen?” How much better the US would be today if more people had vigorously applied this principle to the speech of George W. Bush.

Recognizing that lies are the sound and scripture of theft, and that “conservatism”, “libertarianism”, “neoliberalism”, “free market ideology,” and other related labels all tag the same camouflaging verbiage shielding pure predatory greed, we can cut through the crap to the objective reality by ignoring all the noise. Every word uttered by capitalist touts is a lie, including “a”, “and” and “the”.

The great and continuing crime of capitalism is the physical and social degradation of the world. The physical degradation exhibits itself as pollution, environmental damage and global warming; the social degradation exhibits itself as the atomization of society, impoverishment, hunger, disease and war. Capitalism does not create wealth; it robs the common good to increase the monetized accumulation of its select perpetrators.

Neoliberalism’s most successful US champion was Ronald Reagan, president during 1981-1988. During careers as a radio announcer in the 1930s, a B-movie actor from the late 1930s to early 1960s, and a public relations spokesman for the General Electric Corporation in the 1950s (where Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was also employed by PR!) Reagan honed his smooth delivery of folksy palaver that later shaped his exquisitely effective psycho-political ICBMs encasing warheads of neo-liberal ideology launched to explode throughout the national consciousness. Reagan’s facility with vocalizing scripted text and maintaining the continuity of his delivery despite lapses of memory or unexpected interruptions gave many the impression he possessed a much deeper intellect than was actually the case. He was the gold standard of neo-liberal touts, as compared to the brass of Rush Limbaugh, the lead (Pb) of Sarah Palin, and the hydrogen sulfide of George W. Bush.

The “Reaganomics” of 1981 combined a tight money policy (imposed by Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker) to control inflation, with reduction of government spending (except for the military where it increased), and reductions of taxes and regulations. Noam Chomsky characterized such economic policies as “bribing the rich.” Despite ignoring the deep recession of 1980-1982 during his first year in office, Reagan managed to bob-and-weave his way out of public disapproval with a subsequent and significant increase in corporate (not income) taxes and a loosening of the money supply for a lowering of interest rates, and so economic recovery before Election Day 1984. The economic gods smiled on Reagan’s second term, and his administration blithely continued slaughtering uppity Central American peasants, shredding the social fabric, grinding down labor unions, and chewing up the environment.

With Alan Greenspan fresh on the job as Federal Reserve chairman, world stock markets crashed in October 1987, the fall in New York on the 19th was almost 23 percent. The US economy absorbed the shock well and trading activity soon recovered, but this jolt initiated a crisis in the tottering US savings-and-loan industry that led to the recession of 1990-1992. Reagan’s second term ended untarnished by recession, but his vice-president and successor, George H. W. Bush was doomed. Bill Clinton, “it’s the economy, stupid!,” became president in January 1993.

* * * *

The George H. W. Bush Administration (1989-1992) had been more concerned to foist neo-liberalism on the emerging post-communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, to redefine NATO as a military tool of American imperial power beyond Europe, and to exert control over Middle East oil, than it was about the misery felt by American workers during the 1990-1992 recession. One would have thought this collapse of Reaganomics, which lifted the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton back into power, would have initiated a reinvigoration of the social contract.

Ah, but Clinton learned that “it’s the economy, stupid!” was a double-edged taunt, that a presidential political career depended on placating the demands not just of the workers who suffered the effects of the economy, but of the capitalists who affected the parameters of that economy: employers, their financiers, and the buyers of deficit-spending bonds. Clinton’s ascendancy may have been buoyed by popular aspirations, but he had financed it with corporate backing. One foot was in the social contract, another in neoliberalism. Could he serve both? No. Neoliberalism is intolerant; there can be no human considerations standing before its imperatives of profitability.

Throughout the history of the republic, there had been presidents with at least several toes on the side of labor and the social contract, for how else could any of the existing labor rights and social gains have been won? The possibility of an American president having both feet in the social contract, like Eugene V. Debs, had been killed in the 1920s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have given us the New Deal, but he was looking over his shoulder at the shadow of Debs, and Roosevelt’s purpose was to save capitalism. The Rooseveltian accommodation between labor and capital — New Deal capitalism — was supported until the Reagan Revolution overturned it. Neoliberalism insisted the US president be its exclusive agent, fully engaged in the undoing of the social contract.

Clinton’s innovation for career success was: 1) to champion the neo-liberal policies of his Republican political opponents so as to vacuum enough corporate backing away from them to stay in power; and 2) to apply his social contract rhetoric to retain popular support despite these actions. In essence, the innovation was expediency; it was called “triangulation.”

Republicans have more difficulty in adopting the triangulation strategy because they are already one hundred percent neoliberal, and voicing any social contract rhetoric is seen as a weakening of their stances. As considerations of the social contract were squeezed out, triangulation moved the popular images of Democrats and Republicans into convergence. The two major parties came to exhibit similar organizational “personas” on the substantial issues of government: the economy, monetary policy, the military, and management of the empire (also called foreign policy).

To enliven the political theater necessary for individuals to attract attention from both the public and potential corporate backers, and to differentiate themselves from their rivals, politicians will seek to splash out on trivial or emotion “social issues” that usually entwine race, religion, sex and death. Affirmative action, abortion and gay marriage are examples. (I suppose that marriage is much too important to ever be gay, and must remain dour.) The convergence of both major political parties to servitude of neo-liberalism has increasingly discouraged the public, and the distancing they feel from their supposed representatives has produced support for third party and independent campaigns that champion the social contract.

The presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 each presented the public with a pair of neo-liberal (major) party candidates who were fairly similar on matters of policy, and only significantly different along parameters of political theater. It is no wonder the outcome in 2000 was a statistical tie, which was called in favor of the deepest prejudices of neoliberalism.

The eight years of the George W. Bush Administration (2001-2008) have taken the US from the relative prosperity and stability of the Clinton Administration to a military quagmire, financial ruin and political disgrace. Blood, treasure and honor have all been lost, and in vast proportions. How could we have expected otherwise, when the entire motivation was the destruction of the social contract to facilitate looting by plutocracy, and the only appeals made to the public by George W. Bush and his would-be successor were to its vilest prejudices and ugliest forms of selfishness?

Today, we await the inauguration of President-elect Barack Hussein Obama on January 20, 2009.

[On November 11th I received the following item, which I have not been able to confirm:

“Enjoy a funny election postscript from a source in Washington D.C. It is widely reported that a large group of people were tossing rolls of packing tape over the fence at the White House last night -- there were NO arrests --- and the Secret Service agents were reported to be laughing too hard to do much about it.”

Perhaps apocryphal, certainly indicative.]

* * * *

Why was Barack Obama elected president? Because the American people want to share in the benefits of the American Empire.

Let us characterize votes for Obama, McCain and Baldwin (Democratic, Republican and Constitution Parties, respectively) as votes in favor of the American Empire; votes for Nader, Barr and McKinney (Independent, Libertarian Party and Green Party, respectively) as anti-imperial; and votes for Nader and McKinney as purely social contract votes. We find that the electorate split 98.93 percent pro-empire, 1.07 percent anti-empire (these add to 100 percent); and that only 0.67 percent of the voters (1 out of every 150 people) expressed an unqualified endorsement for restoring the social contract, and an absolute rejection of neo-liberalism.

We each have a personal socialist and a personal neoliberal within us; the proportions of each vary widely among individuals. Our personal socialist is that part of our consciousness that welcomes sharing and sacrifice in exchange for the company of like-minded people. Our personal neoliberal is the pure Freudian id that wants what it wants, and exults in the success of the hunt like a cat proudly tossing its kill, and feeling the thrill of warm blood spurting against its tongue as it sinks its fangs into the fresh limp flesh of its victim.

Nobody likes being taken for a fool or treated like a waste product by a remote juggernaut of exploitation. People want to feel secure that they can sell their labor with dignity and be assured of steady work and good wages with adequate buying-power to support families in decent circumstances. Obama was elected because a majority of the voters saw him as their best chance of restoring the social contract to achieve this end throughout the country.

Working people also want to satisfy their personal neo-liberalism, with fattening 401k portfolios and rising real estate values, which they dream will fund the comfort, leisure, travel, hobbies, luxury purchases and health care of their retirement years, and their financial legacies for their children. Obama was elected because a majority of the voters saw him as their best chance of protecting them as savers and small investors, and of assuring them equal access to profit-making participation in the financial markets, which would now be well regulated to eliminate “insiderism”, and to ensure financial security.

While there is an obvious racial-equality symbolism in Obama striding triumphantly into the most exclusive of white men’s clubs, the White House, there may be an even wider resonance with the popular imagination, for the inclusion of us, the suckers excluded from neoliberalism’s prosperity club. Obama was elected because the voters are fed up with having to pay heavily to maintain the high profits of the crony capitalist elite that destroyed the financial industry and savaged people’s accounts and assets and futures.

Those of us in the 0.67 percent and the 1.07 percent understand that Obama is 98-plus percent mortgaged to American capitalism and its empire. We do not expect him to be an agent of revolutionary change. However, he could reprise the Rooseveltian bolstering of the social contract. Seventy-six years after the dawn of the New Deal, Obama faces the challenge of initiating his national administration from the rim of a freshly opened, deep economic chasm of such horrendous grandeur that history might record the following period as the Grand Canyon of Depressions. Like Roosevelt, Obama could realize that the press of dire economic circumstances combined with his party’s prodigious electoral success have given him all the power he needs to revamp the rules of American capitalism sufficiently to placate the masses, and to command capitalist cooperation in this effort because they would be sold on Obama’s reassurances to shield them from truly revolutionary reforms. Obama was elected because 98-plus percent of everybody wants the game to continue so they can have a turn and a chance of winning.

What we, the one percenters, can hope for is that Obama “succeeds” — within the limited scope we realize political success is confined to — by repairing, conserving and expanding the social contract. We can pressure, cajole and remind the Obama Administration to consider the impact of its proposals and decisions on the social contract: “does this include everyone?,” “is this a rip-off of the many for the few?,” “will most people accept this as fair?,” “will this raise up the fortunes of workers?” Using this line of reasoning, we will have more leverage to influence policy than by attempting to impose one percenter specifics on major areas of government oversight (e.g., energy, economic and monetary policies, foreign policy), since our voices are muted to at most 1/98th the volume of the pay-per-access capitalist channels.

It is even possible that one percenter perspectives on pressing issues of little public interest (sadly), like the imperial wars for land and oil and against Islam from Palestine to Pakistan, will be carried along by our discussion of the domestic social contract, and tinge Obama Administration awareness. (Illogically optimistic.)

* * * *

Let’s imagine a possible inaugural address by Barack Obama. It begins with gracious salutations, and then to the first substantive declarations.

“The greatness of America is in the unity of its people. It is by sharing both the burdens and the rewards of American life that we enable each other to succeed, both as individuals and as a people.

“When we allow ourselves to see divisions among us, we divert our national strength into frictions that can lead to bitter conflicts, based on race, or economic class, or region, or differences of social orientation. America would have no future if we allowed intolerance to dominate our thinking.

“But, I know that is not the case, and the proof is in the fact that I am standing here, before you, today. I know that my success is based on the love, care, teaching, good will, decency and tolerance offered by family, friends, teachers, and many other Americans going back generations, who contributed to make this country what it is, which allowed me to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, taken care of when ill; to have economic opportunities, and to be able to raise my family with a sense of security. I am immeasurably grateful.

“When you recognize such gratitude, you become aware of your responsibility to the future. The torch has been passed to us, to create the reality of America, everyday, by the care of our families, by our work, by the way we treat each other. All of this creates the America that our children are born into, and that must sustain them. We repay our gratitude for the America we were given, by continuing it, maintaining it, continuously recreating it, and improving it, so we can pass it on to the following generation with pride.

“It is impossible to experience this gratitude if you are unable to include the entire spectrum of people across this nation as being part of your idea of America. Who are the real Americans? All of them. Which of them are important for your well-being? All of them. Which of them are you concerned about in times of adversity? All of them. Which of them are you willing to share the burdens of sustaining America with, and which of them are you willing to share the rewards of prosperity with? All of them.

“My administration will face many specific national problems, and make many detailed decisions. However, there will only be one guiding principle to my choices of action, and it is this: is this in the best interests of the nation?, is this for the greater good of all Americans? This is my social contract with you.

“Each of us must make the honest effort to work for the betterment of ourselves, our families and our communities; and each or us must accept every other American as an indivisible part of our personal community. It is our unity that uplifts us, protects us, and inspires us. Dare to be grateful and embrace the entire nation, and in return it will embrace you.

“Given the circumstances our nation finds itself in today, I can guarantee you that many changes will be made. I am not going to ask for your patience or tolerance with these decisions, because that places you in a passive role. Instead, I will adhere to our social contract, and ask for your energy to be applied in the many ways you create America daily, because it is you, the people of the United States, who are the real agents of change. This country is the sum of how you engage with each other.”

* * * *

What can we expect? Probably more than Bill Clinton, probably less than Franklin Roosevelt.

My WAGs follow (G in WAGs = guess).

WAG 1: Obama will last through two terms, and will be young enough and popular enough to win a Senate seat again.

WAG 2: Joe Biden will run in eight years, and probably pick a female VP, perhaps black, but most definitely a governor or senator.

WAG 3: But, not Hillary Clinton who will challenge him unsuccessfully, looking more weathered and less appealing (speaking politically) with each election cycle. Bill is unlikely to age as an enviable marital asset, and Hillary will eventually get hooked off the presidential contenders’ stage, leaving tears of rage and claw marks.

WAG 4: Republicans will try cloning the cell samples taken from Ronald Reagan and locked in a cryogenic safe at an undisclosed location, in a desperate effort to grow a winning candidate for 2016.

What should we one percenters do? What we know is right, and what gives our lives meaning. So, enjoy life (it beats the alternative).

“A la batalla!”

I called out to our youngest daughter, Gillian, as she set off down the road to meet the bus that she should be gracious. Don’t gloat I said. She said yeah right, after what they’ve put me through at school, this is going to be fun.

She was second in her class, academically, throughout seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth grades; her grades made her automatically eligible to apply for admission to the National Junior Honor Society.

However, she is not a member, and has never been; the handful of teachers sitting on the NJHS selections committee at Elk Lake School District in Dimock, PA voted down her application, twice, after which she never applied again.

The reason her membership was disallowed was this: after the U.S. invasion of Iraq she and her sisters decided, in protest, not to stand for the pledge to the flag.

Hilary was in eighth grade and Heather in tenth at the time, and both had been named members of the NJHS, in their turn, before the issue of the Iraq war and their protest to it came up.

To not stand for the pledge was a dramatic, traumatic decision which affected all of them significantly. Many teachers were outraged. Fellow students were often abusive.

Hilary and Heather were already up in the high school at the time, so there were two of them to face the music together. And, for a while, two or three of their classmates sat too, in solidarity, but one by one, under pressure from the faculty, the administration, their peers, and their parents, all but Hilary and Heather were forced back to their feet.

Gillian was twelve and in the sixth grade. She waged her protest all alone in the elementary school. She was sent to the hall. She was sent to the office. She was browbeaten and bullied, and still she stood (or sat) her ground.

It was in the fall of 2004, when she was in eighth grade, that Gillian received the letter stating that she was eligible for membership in the National Junior Honor Society. She completed the paperwork, obtained the necessary references, and submitted her application. In due course she learned that Elk Lake’s board of selections had voted to deny her application for membership.

Being of a curious nature, I spoke with a few of her teachers, most of whom did not sit on the board of selections. According to her French teacher, Kathleen Host, Gillian was “…an excellent student, helpful, with a good attitude”; her earth science teacher, James Eastman, said that she was “…among the best students in the school, period”; and Timothy Woolcock, her ecology teacher, said that she “…does well (and her) academics speak for themselves.” Even the school superintendent, Dr. William Bush, said, “She is an exemplary student. She works very hard.”

Her geometry teacher, George Delano, said that he knew it was because she wouldn’t stand for the pledge that she had not been admitted to the NJHS; her civics teacher, Fred Hein, said that although Gillian was exercising her constitutional rights by refusing to stand, that was the reason she was rejected; Mr. Eastman said that he did not approve of the NJHS, that “It has turned into a popularity contest for students among teachers.”

I also spoke with her geography teacher, Michael Cutri, who headed the selections board. From him I learned that Gillian had met all of the membership criteria–based on scholarship, leadership, service, character and citizenship–except citizenship. “Gillian is a superb student,” he said. “She fell short only in the area of citizenship. She doesn’t stand for the pledge of allegiance.”

“So Gillian was denied because she is a bad citizen,” I said. He replied, “Yes.” So much for sarcasm.

Now she is a senior. The 2008 election is over, Barack Obama has won, and I can’t blame the child for wanting to enjoy the moment.

I watched her reach the end of the dirt road, turn the corner, and start up the hill to Brooks Road. I looked down the valley at the scattered houses of my nearest neighbors. I heard the school bus reach the top of the hill and begin its descent.

I pondered the concept of good grace in victory, briefly. I let out an experimental yell. It felt really good. I yelled again; I think I whooped. With great difficulty I managed to lift my great-great-grandmother’s dinner bell high enough off the porch to set it ringing: that bell hasn’t been rung in over forty years; there must be some significance in that.

The noise woke Heather, who has volunteered tirelessly for many weeks for the Obama campaign, while simultaneously attending college classes and working almost full time. She yelled out her window for me to be quiet, so of course I rang the bell again. By then the bus had collected Gillian and was on its way across the flat.

Hilary emailed from her dorm at Mansfield University, “Even before Obama won but it was obvious that he was going to, people were outside my window screaming ‘Obama!! Go Obama!!’ I think pretty much the majority of the students wanted him to win. :) It is really exciting!! Yay!”

Author of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, along with Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and other books, Finkelstein was hailed by a leading authority of Holocaust studies, the late Raul Hilberg, for his “acuity of vision and analytical power” and by prominent Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim as “as a very able, very erudite and original scholar.”

In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University because of an intimidation campaign spearheaded by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, whose book The Case for Israel was pilloried by Finkelstein as blatant plagiarism of an earlier work Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial, which was long ago exposed as a hoax.

In our hour-long phone interview on Sept. 14th, Finkelstein discussed a broad range of topics, including Gaza, the paralysis gripping the Arab world, and the reach and the limits of the Israeli lobby. He reflected on his teaching career (“I’ll almost certainly never teach again”), his pursuit of self- improvement, and the “battery of humorless lawyers” who vet his printed works, which frequently combine painstaking research with searing polemics. He also talked about his raging battles with Alan Dershowitz, who once mangled Finkelstein’s words to claim that he called his mother, a Holocaust survivor, a Nazi collaborator. Finally, acknowledging the consequences of his intellectual activism (“You speak out, you pay a price”), Finkelstein spoke about the meaning and impact of his scholarship.

Below is an edited transcript of our interview, presented as four parts.

Part One: Gaza, Diplomacy, and Arab Paralysis

Levesque-Alam: I wanted to start off talking about developments in the Gaza Strip. Taking a cursory glance at [Egyptian weekly] al-Ahram last week, it was clear that the subject on everyone’s mind, aside from the humanitarian cost being paid by residents in Gaza, is whether there is any real overarching Israeli policy or plan here. What do you think Israel is really hoping to achieve with its siege of Gaza?

Norman Finkelstein: After Salvador Allende was elected, the US said it was going to make the Chilean economy scream. The U.S tormented Nicaragua to unseat the Sandinistas. You tell the people that if you keep reelecting this government we’re going to keep strangling you, while if you elect our government we will allow you a marginal existence but still better than before.

Levesque-Alam: In that vein, there appear to be two related observations. Once, again turning to Al-Ahram, there was an analysis by Khalid Amayreh, saying that “the very legitimacy of the PA now depends on the continuation of the talks, regardless of whether progress is made or not. Needless to say, this posture is more than good news for Israel since it allows the Jewish state to keep on building settlements in the West Bank and create more irreversible facts in East Jerusalem, all under the rubric of the peace process.”

My question is, number one, do you see Fatah as fulfilling any role other than peace talks for the sake of peace talks, and two, do you think facts are being created on the ground in such a way that the two-state solution is not even a viable option anymore?

Finkelstein: I don’t get involved in internal Palestinian politics. Those are choices Palestinians have to make. This much, however, can be said. You cannot win from diplomacy what you haven’t won on the battlefield. I don’t necessarily mean an exchange of lethal weapons; mobilizing public opinion is also a potent force. A good versus a bad diplomat will make some difference. Abba Eban made some difference; I don’t want to discount it. But negotiations are the most trivial aspect of politics. What counts in politics is your ability to organize, mobilize, and bring to bear superior force — and again force doesn’t necessarily mean lethal force; there is also the force of public opinion. The so-called Palestinian leadership has not invested anytime in trying to organize its constituency either in the Occupied Territories or abroad. Nothing is going to change without such organization — it’s just silliness; for the Palestinian leadership, lucrative silliness.

Levesque-Alam: Do you see any parallels with Hezbollah and Lebanon and the way that–

Finkelstein: The comparison is striking. Hezbollah organized. Hezbollah prepared. Hezbollah analyzed and understood its enemy. Its judgment was not 100% accurate, but certainly that’s where it invested its energy, with very impressive results. When you read detailed accounts of the 2006 Lebanon war, you realize just how astonishing was its defeat of the Israeli military. Hezbollah fired about 5,000 missiles altogether at Israel or in Lebanon (anti-tank missiles); Israel delivered or fired 162,000 weapons at Lebanon (about 4,800 per day). Israel fielded about 30,000 troops; Hezbollah’s fighters numbered about 2,000 and there were about 4,000 village militia. Israel never even faced the crack Hezbollah forces which were stationed on the Litani waiting for an Israeli invasion that never happened.

Levesque-Alam: On a related note, there was an article by journalist Jonathan Cook, where he was describing some ways in which the Israeli government encourages the creation of collaborators among the Palestinians. He says that in view of the occupation and the siege and the scarcity of medical supplies and nutritional supplies, that Israel obviously denies a broad swath of Palestinians the chance to do more than subsist. And he says, “According to the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, the Shin Bet [Israeli internal secret police] is exploiting the distress of these families to pressure them to agree to collaborate in return for an exit permit.”

Finkelstein: Although the pressure to collaborate did not (to my knowledge) in the past reach to life-and-death issues, Israel has always resorted to similar tactics. If you won a scholarship to study abroad, the Shin Bet would ask you whether you would be willing to spy for them. If you said “no,” they would deny you an exit permit and you couldn’t study abroad. This is what happened to my close friend Musa Abu Hashhash after he won a scholarship in the 1980s to Manchester University in England. He had to turn down the scholarship.

Levesque-Alam: The breaking of the Gaza siege was one of the most recent striking examples of resistance by, really, a handful of activists. But it also set into sharp relief the official impotence of the Arab regimes and the surrounding Arab world to affect change all this time, where, you know, here this handful of activists is able to make at least a symbolic gesture.

To what do you attribute this sort of ongoing paralysis? Is this really a continuation of policy by the Arab regimes to just provide lip-service to the Palestinians without taking concrete action?

Finkelstein: Why should one expect more from the Saudis? The Arab regimes are completely in thrall to the United States. They would of course prefer to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict in terms of the international consensus. The Arab League has repeatedly put forth perfectly reasonable proposals to end the conflict in line with the whole of the international community. But they are not going to do more than express a preference. They’re unpopular, corrupt, and therefore dependent on the United States.

Part Two: The Israel Lobby’s Limits, the Relevance of Zionism, and Jewish-Muslim Relations

Levesque-Alam: Turning to more domestic reflections on Israel and the role of Zionism–the publication of the Walt/Mearsheimer book on the pro-Israeli lobby really gave that kind of critique of Israel and the lobby an official or “prestigious” face, and some people have said more political space has opened up to discuss the subject.

But on the other hand, at the latest AIPAC convention, there were 300 congressmen and 3 presidential candidates onhand to pay their respects, if you will, to this lobbying arm. Do you think political space has really opened up to discuss this subject without one being smeared as an anti-Semitic?

Finkelstein: You have to make a distinction between the popular level and the electoral level. At the popular level it’s quite a big difference now as compared to say a decade ago in terms of the ability to criticize Israeli policy and to reach people. It’s not difficult at all now on the popular level. If you have public meetings and so forth there’s a very receptive, or potentially receptive, audience out there. Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine Peace not Apartheid showed this. The Israel lobby called him an anti-Semite, Holocaust-denier, supporter of Nazis and supporter of terrorism. His book still wound up at the top of the bestseller list. But the electoral level is not just about votes, it’s crucially also about money; those with lots of money get a better hearing. At the electoral level it remains quite difficult. We haven’t yet been able to translate popular feeling into an electoral mandate. That’s not unusual. You have in the United States, for example, overwhelming popular support for gun control. But at the electoral level, because of a well-organized lobby, you’re not able to translate the popular feeling into an electoral mandate. That’s also true of health care and myriad other issues.

Levesque-Alam: Some Muslims, in my view, anyway, have what I would categorize as a somewhat unhealthy obsession over the power and mystique of the Israeli lobby. But there does seem to me to be a valid concern that if these lobbying arms are pushing for certain policies, say, war in Iran, and this actually takes place, don’t you think it would create a kind of dynamic where America becomes so entrenched in wars in the Muslim world, that Israel ultimately is seen as an indispensable outpost, and through a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, becomes a great ally or unique ally whose role is considered indispensable?

Finkelstein: There is much misunderstanding about the scope and reach of the Israeli lobby. In my opinion, the Israel lobby has a significant impact on U.S. policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict. U.S. elites do not derive any advantage from the occupation; they would be perfectly happy if tomorrow Israel announced that it accepts the international consensus and will withdraw to the June 1967 borders. The reason U.S. elites don’t press harder for such a settlement is the lobby.

But when we come to broad regional issues such as Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, it’s not the lobby that’s the driving force. It’s U.S. policy. You can say U.S. policy is misguided and you can say that once U.S. policy has been decided, the lobby plays a useful role in drumming up public support. But the notion that somehow Cheney and Rumsfeld were duped or coerced by the lobby into waging a war in Iraq contrary to the U.S. “national interest” is neither on its face credible nor supported by the available documentary record.

Levesque-Alam: In an interview I did with you about four years ago for Left Hook, I asked you about your description of Zionism as a response to and a reciprocation of Gentile anti-Semitism. And I asked you about the sustainability and appeal of Zionism, and you said, “it’s an interesting question that would require a subtle answer,” and you went on to catalogue some positives like the revival and preservation of the Hebrew language and then of course some of the negatives.

Given that you’ve been working on a new book on American Zionism, do you have new insights about the viability of Zionism and the future trajectory or trajectories that are available?

Finkelstein: If we are serious about trying to resolve the conflict, we should not get sidetracked by abstract ideological questions. We should take Zionism as an ideology out of the debate. Rather, we should focus on political issues. The right question is not, “Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist.” The questions should be, “Do you support the demolition of homes and torture?” “Do you support Jewish-only roads and Jewish-only settlements?” “Do you support a political settlement embraced by the entire world apart from the U.S., Israel and some South Sea atolls?”

Levesque-Alam: From a “pragmatic” Israeli viewpoint, or at least what would be considered pragmatic by Israeli leaders, given that the country’s leadership places so many eggs in one basket, basically onboard with the American “war on terror”, what kind of long-term options does Israel have to create a secure Jewish existence and a lasting peace with neighbors? Does this basically involve adhering to international law and the international consensus, or are there specifics beyond that?

Finkelstein: The possibility exists for a reasonable settlement with the Palestinians along the June 1967 borders and a “just resolution” of the refugee question. But if Israel continues to conceive itself as, and play the part of, an outpost of the U.S. in the Arab-Muslim world, even if the Israel-Palestine conflict were resolved, it’s not going to change anything fundamental, because Israel will still be on a collision course with forces in the Arab-Muslim world seeking genuine independence.

Levesque-Alam: From a personal perspective, it’s been hard for me not to notice that in the U.S. context, those leading the pack of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim invective, more often than not, seem to be Jewish academics and Jewish scholars. And proponents of the Clash thesis, or intense advocates of American war aims, or those called neoconservatives, are more often than not Jewish intellectuals.

This represents an historical reversal where before the creation of Israel, many Jewish academics took a sympathetic view of Islam and had fresh in their minds the experience of Western anti-Semitism and intolerance. But now many are lined up behind Western arguments and justifications for war and occupation that ring eerily familiar.

In your experience, has there been any ongoing debate in the American Jewish community–

Finkelstein: I don’t have any meaningful experience in the American Jewish community …

Levesque-Alam: Do you think there’s a debate between American Jewish academics?

Finkelstein: Like all intellectuals, Jewish intellectuals gravitate toward power and privilege. You don’t have to read Professor Chomsky to know this. Just read Julien Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals. The foreign policy of the two major political parties doesn’t significantly differ. So it is not surprising that Jewish publicists would be prominent all along the mainstream political spectrum. Jewish publicists were also prominent during the McCarthy era and Cold War debates. When Commentary magazine joined the anti-communist witch-hunt and lined up with the U.S. during the Cold War, was it because of Israel? The fact that Israel is a “Jewish” state is perhaps a supplementary (bonus) factor for Jewish intellectuals, but it’s obviously not the primary one. It might also be noted that Jews such as Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Howard Zinn and Naomi Klein are also prominent in the marginal left supporting Palestinian rights.

Levesque-Alam: Do you think anything can be done from a Muslim perspective, Muslims in the United States, to encourage alliances and friendships between progressive Jewish and progressive Muslim voices?

Finkelstein: The new generation of Arabs and Muslims in the United States is smart, committed and reasonable. I am very optimistic on this score. Maybe the older generation is still given to conspiracy theories but not the folks I meet on college campuses. They are an impressive bunch. I recently went on speaking tour in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). Ten universities in different cities in five days. When it was over I told them I’d never go on another FOSIS tour. “Why?,” they wondered. “Because you’re too efficient!” (I was exhausted.)

Part Three: On Teaching, Not Being a Movie Star, and Humorless Lawyers

Levesque-Alam: Turning to more personal matters, since DePaul University had denied you tenure last year, when pressure was brought to bear by Dershowitz and like-minded forces, what’s preoccupied you? Given the high marks you received from students at DePaul, do you have any plans to teach anywhere else?

Finkelstein: I’ll almost certainly never teach again. This chapter in my life is over. The first course I taught at the college level was in 1974. I started teaching consistently at the college level in 1988. Because I never had a regular position, I had very heavy teaching loads. Altogether I probably had about 7,000 students. It was a good run, but now it’s over, and I don’t know what’s next. If tomorrow a brick were to fall on my head, I still had a good life and so I have no right to complain. I did what I wanted with my life. I can’t carry on like a child. I knew what I did would have consequences; if it didn’t have consequences, everyone would do it. You speak out, you pay a price.

Levesque-Alam: I noticed on your website a rather prominent logo for the film American Radical in which you’re the main feature. Can you tell me about that film, is it still slated to come out in 2008?

Finkelstein: It’s still going to take some time. The filmmakers are decent and competent. I am not convinced that my life is of significant enough interest that it can hold an audience for an hour. The fate of the film is important to the filmmakers and I respect this. But my life is what I’ve done, what I’ve sought to accomplish, whether or not I’ve stayed true to my principles and the memory of my late parents’ martyrdom. My struggle each day is to make myself a better person. I have tried to learn from the example of Gandhi: the recognition of being a very flawed person, constantly committing blunders, yet still continuing along the path of Truth — he called it Truth, but truth was for him a much bigger category than the conventional one; it denoted conscience, purity of motive, and so forth. I struggle to make myself worthy of the support I get from people and worthy of the expectations that people have invested in me. I desperately want to be a better person, not a bigger star.

Levesque-Alam: In the context of what you mentioned, of flaws and mistakes, do you think that among them might be the tone–some people have said that even despite the outstanding scholarship, maybe the tone is too abrasive–do you think that if you could, you would go back in time and take a take a different tone and stylistic approach in some of your scholarly work?

Finkelstein: There’s some misapprehension about my modus operandi. Some people think the words flow uninterruptedly from my brain to the computer screen to the printed page. That’s not how it works. Many, many people scrutinize my manuscripts: editors, friends, comrades, experts. In recent years, all of my manuscripts have also been carefully vetted by a battery of usually humorless libel lawyers. Probably 80% of the time when something in my manuscript is flagged, and someone says, “Too much!” or “Take this out!” it goes. I’m not Shakespeare. I am not committed to every period and comma.

It’s also hard to get the right balance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having passion and even vitriol when the circumstances warrant it. Professor Chomsky’s most memorable phrase is when he described Jeanne Kirkpatrick as the Reagan’s administration’s “chief sadist in residence” (Turning the Tide). I am not at heart an academic. I have little interest in academia. I never attended an academic conference, never delivered an academic paper. I don’t write primarily for academic journals. I became an academic because of a happy intersection. I like to teach and to do rigorous scholarship. By coincidence, those are also the main criteria for an academic career. So I found myself in the ivory tower. But teaching and scholarship were not for me means in order to succeed in the academic world, it was just a coincidence.

Part Four: Alan Dershowitz, Bar Mitzvahs, and Accomplishments

Levesque-Alam: My final question here: the other way you reach out is through your website. I noticed you take a sort of remarkable position, where you host e-mails of the most vitriolic and hateful elements who attack you. How are you able to put up with that kind of attack? I mean in one film clip, I believe you said that your mother was worried that you’ve become maybe too consumed, in a sense, by the issues you’re passionate about.

Do you find it hard to strike a balance or maintain a level of calm in the face of the kind of attacks — for instance, in one case, Alan Dershowitz chopped up a quote to claim you called your mother a Nazi collaborator. How do you deal with that kind of stuff?

Finkelstein: Knowing my late mother, if I didn’t take the first train to Cambridge and throttle Dershowitz — I’m being quite literal here — if I didn’t throttle him, she probably would have never spoken to me again.

My mother was very solicitous about my health and safety. She was a Jewish mother. But what Dershowitz said crossed the line. It’s hard to fathom the magnitude of that slander: to say that somebody who passed through the Nazi holocaust, and every single member of her family was exterminated, and her entire life, from the day she was “liberated” till her death, she grieved over the loss of her family — that now some sick sack of shit would come along, after her death and when she is no longer around to defend herself, and proclaim that my mother collaborated–or I believe she collaborated — with the murderers of her family…

So it did require immense self-control — or maybe you want to call it cowardice — for me to do nothing about it.

Dershowitz got very bad PR when he threatened a libel suit against the University of California press for publishing my book Beyond Chutzpah. He was trying to get a rise out of me so I would sue him for libel. Then he could say, “You see! Who’s suing whom for libel now?” He was trying to push me into a corner or provoke me sufficiently that I would, like a panther — which is how the Black Panther [Party] got its name — you keep pushing it back and back and back, and it retreats and retreats and retreats, and finally when it’s in a corner, it leaps out at you.

Levesque-Alam: Does the battle with Dershowitz, on an intellectual or political level, continue even now?

Finkelstein: There’s no “intellectual” battle with Dershowitz. On his part there’s no summoning of facts or elegant use of logic. It’s just bar mitzvah speeches. He doesn’t know anything, I doubt if he’s read more than a half-dozen books on the topic. I don’t entirely fault him. You can’t defend high profile spousal murderers like O.J. Simpson, high profile sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein, and high profile mass murderers like Radovan Karadzic, yet still have time left over to do serious scholarship. What he does is entertainment; it’s a circus. He’s like Hitchens. No one really cares about the facts Hitchens brings to bear. He could be making one case today and the opposite case tomorrow. Would anybody notice? They’re just interested in the rococo tapestry he weaves around the facts. You don’t walk away saying, “I’ve learned X, Y or Z from Hitchens,” you walk away saying, “Wasn’t that a witty line? Wasn’t that a clever repartee?”

It’s the same thing with Dershowitz — of course, Dershowitz is not witty or clever. You don’t learn anything and you don’t expect to. I live near Coney Island. It’s like the popular sideshow “Shoot the freak.” I haven’t read a journal of intellectual opinion in years. Gandhi’s collected works come to 90 volumes. Most of it consists of letters, quite a few on diet. There’s more moral seriousness in one Gandhi letter to an anonymous correspondent on treating constipation than nearly the whole of our intellectual life.

Levesque-Alam: But do you get the sense that there’s some ongoing — okay if not an intellectual, but verbal?

Finkelstein: Everybody is terrified of Dershowitz because he wields a lot of power and is a very vindictive little man. I wasn’t afraid and, I think, did a pretty solid job of demonstrating he is a preposterous charlatan. So he got his revenge by driving me out of academia, although — in his mind — not enough to compensate for the damage I did to his name.

Levesque-Alam: A genuinely last question here, you just referenced the work that you have done in the fields you have investigated. Do you take a fundamentally positive or negative view of the change that’s possible through scholarship, specifically your scholarship? Do you think a generation or two down the line, people will be able to look back to your work and say, “This was a seminal moment,” or “This was a crucial moment for helping augur in something new, something different, something better,” to the debate and to the perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Finkelstein: In a generation I will be completely forgotten. That’s fine; not everyone can write for eternity. Most people can derive sufficient satisfaction from the knowledge of being a link in the chain. So I take the best from what preceded me, work this material over trying to improve it a little, and then it’s passed on to the next generation. I’m a link in the chain, another rung in Jacob’s ladder “that keeps going higher and higher.”

Who lives through eternity? Parents have children, the children remember their parents, their children remember their grandparents. How many great grandchildren remember great grandparents? Few of us manage to get what we secretly aspire. We fear death and we want eternity, through children or through books. But at the very best we live for a couple of generations. I recently read an interview with Woody Allen. He said he still wakes up nights dreading death. Life, he said, is a “meaningless little flicker.” In itself, he’s probably right. The only thing that gives life meaning is being part of something bigger than yourself. When you feel part of the bigger cause, you can even conceive yourself sacrificing life for it. “Who is able to deny that all that is pure and good in the world persists because of the silent death of thousands of unknown heroes and heroines!” (Gandhi)

I don’t think much about how I will be remembered. More people than you would guess are interested in a factual, rational presentation of arguments, and don’t need, and don’t want, to be persuaded by verbal pyrotechnics. How else can you account for Chomsky’s impact? Many people actually do want to figure out how the pieces fit together. Who is right and who’s wrong? Who’s telling the truth and who isn’t? Who is on the side of justice, and who is on the side of injustice? Not the verbal sallies, not the clever one-liners, not the witty repartees–but just the facts.

A sufficient number of people have found what I do useful enough that I think I can say I’ve lived a meaningful life.

As a child, I would wonder how televisions, computers and washing machines actually worked. I took this fascination to the Islamic University of Gaza, the only Gazan university offering a degree in electrical engineering. There, I developed an ECG monitoring system that enables patients’ hearts to be monitored at home through a personal computer and an Internet link. I won the university prize for distinguished projects for my innovation. I long dreamed of the other advances I might make after an education at the University of Connecticut, where I was scheduled to study this fall for a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

Now, my dream has been stolen from me. I am devastated; my parents heartbroken. Though Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still controls our borders and determines who and what enters or exits. Since a 2006 election that brought a Hamas majority to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Israel has steadily diminished access into and out of Gaza. Many Palestinians reportedly died in the past year because they could not leave to obtain medical care they desperately needed. Food, fuel and medicine are scarce. Hundreds of students like me, with scholarships to study abroad, are being arbitrarily denied the right to leave Gaza to fulfill our educational aspirations.

A few weeks ago when I went to the Erez Checkpoint between Gaza and Israel, I was told by the Israeli official that I could not leave unless I collaborated with the Israeli occupation. I refused. My conscience and my people’s right to freedom and equal rights mean more to me than even the finest education.

U.S. officials came to my aid. They held special visa interviews along the Israeli-Gaza border for me and two other Fulbright scholars in a similar position. The U.S. granted my visa. Once again I could imagine taking my seat in a lecture hall in America. I packed my bags, bought souvenirs for my future friends in America and bade farewell to my family.

Then came a phone call that changed everything. My American visa had been revoked based on secret evidence provided by Israel. I cannot see the evidence and so have no opportunity to contest it.

What carrot did an Israeli security official dangle before another Gazan’s eyes, or what torture tactics did he use to manufacture information he could use against me? However it happened, and for whatever reason, the outcome is the same. Despite my abhorrence of violence, I am being penalized.

What troubles me most, however, is not my own personal plight, but the effect this experience has had on my talented younger brother.

After watching what I have endured as an innocent and politically unaffiliated student, he has concluded that he will no longer pursue the educational dream outside of Gaza he once held. His horizons are closing.

As an older brother from a family that places deep value on education, it pains me to see his own ambitions falter, even temporarily, because of the injustice I am facing.

I wonder what hopelessness all children in Gaza suffer when they learn that Gaza’s best students are confined by Israel to the cramped Gaza Strip? And how are they to succeed when this week their parents discover local stores are empty of study essentials such as pencils, pens and notebooks because of the economic blockade of our small parcel of land?

There are hundreds of Palestinian students in Gaza hoping for a miracle in the next few days so that we can pursue scholarships that may offer a once-in-a-lifetime escape from ignorance and poverty. We are determined not to be rendered a dependent people lacking advanced education.

And yet the silence of the world suggests that Israel will succeed in keeping us within the limiting confines of Gaza. Perhaps American students will think of me and my fellow Palestinian students as the academic year begins. We long for a similar opportunity.

I am a scientist dedicated to advancing the well-being of the Palestinian people. Yet despite playing by the educational rules and excelling in the academic arena, I am being hurt by an Israeli government that has bottled Palestinians up in Gaza rather than allowing them to pursue opportunities abroad. Hundreds of students in Gaza have been accepted to foreign universities but are nonetheless prevented from attending by Israel.

After Hamas won elections supported by the Bush administration, Israel put financial restrictions on Gaza and then imposed a devastating embargo in June 2007. While Israel claims it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip, this is belied by Israel’s control over our land exits, airspace and seaport. Our economy has been pulverized by the embargo and by Israeli military airstrikes. We are encaged here — 1.5 million people collectively punished for the results of a democratic election whose results Israel rejects.

My dream of a first-rate American education in a Ph.D. program may well be over. Financially, I do not have the means to pursue an education without the help of a scholarship. Unemployment here is 45 percent. A Fulbright scholarship is an extraordinary lifeline extended by the United States.

I have spent my life learning or teaching others. I have been a model student and example of high academic achievement for younger Palestinian students. Such students, including two of my own younger brothers, will surely grow doubts about the worth of pursuing higher education when they see Fulbright scholars being denied entry to the United States on grounds obviously trumped up by the Israeli government.

The Great Salt Lake and unusual Utah environment were particularly enticing to me. Having never been to the Dead Sea, because Israeli travel restrictions make the short trip practically impossible, I looked forward to learning about a salt lake thousands of miles away.

It’s the water contamination in Gaza, however, that draws me to Utah and the expertise of the university’s professors. Israel’s settlers, illegally occupying our land in the Gaza Strip, used a disproportionate amount of water until their departure in 2005. But most of the salinity in our water supply is, in fact, a consequence of Israel’s confining a million refugees to this narrow strip of land. Additionally, Israel’s cutting of our electrical supply leads to waste water not being properly treated. Through a Ph.D. at the University of Utah, I hoped to expand my expertise and help solve Gaza’s acute water pollution. My individual loss, however, is part and parcel of Israel’s decision to keep Gaza impoverished and ill-educated.

My people long for their freedom, and our young people champ at the bit when limited to a spit of land 25 miles long and six miles wide. Education and travel provide our students with tremendous opportunities to learn and return to contribute to the well-being of the Palestinian people. A remarkable program is now faltering on account of Israeli policies.

The quest for atomic arms and chemical/biological warfare agents led physicists, engineers, biologists, chemists and physicians ever-deeper into the dark heart of a secretive and far-flung U.S. weapons complex. Indeed, many of these dubious programs were hidden in plain sight at prestigious American universities and corporate laboratories.

This trend accelerated during the Cold War when many psychologists and social scientists became witting and unwitting partners in the CIA and Army’s illegal and ethically-challenged MKULTRA program.

Under the cover of “national security,” CIA and Army researchers sought to create magic bullets they hoped would provide Cold Warriors a leg up over their Soviet rivals in the development of “mind control” technologies.

While that quixotic mission ended in failure, other discoveries in behavioral psychology and psychiatry–such as illicit experiments in sensory deprivation and conditioning–led to the development of today’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques (torture) at Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and the CIA’s transnational network of secret prisons.

Recent articles in Antifascist Calling have explored the militarization of biological, cognitive, and information sciences as constituent elements of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” We now turn to Pentagon schemes to militarize the social sciences, both as a tactical necessity under battlefield conditions and as a strategic instrument to further military/media psychological operations (PSYOPS), particularly within societies under threat of imperialist attack.

While the utilization of social scientists as reliable, off-the-shelf intelligence assets is not a new phenomenon, various “dirty tricks” offices of the CIA freely employed the services of media and social science operatives either during the run-up to U.S.-sponsored coups (Congo [1961], Brazil [1964], Indonesia [1965], Greece [1967], Chile [1973]) or as embedded counterinsurgency specialists (Vietnam [1950-1973] ), what is new are current plans by the Department of Defense to formalize these ad hoc relationships within specific programs under a Pentagon command structure.

Unlike the complicitous relationships amongst physical scientists as state-sponsored weaponeers, chained to research funding by the DoD or by giant multinational corporate grifters, these plans have been met by widespread–and growing opposition–amongst social scientists themselves. This is certainly a healthy–and welcome–development.

But as anthropologist David H. Price points out, similar funding trends now threaten to undermine and subvert the sensitive work–and academic freedom–of social scientists. Price avers,

As non-directed independent funding for American social scientists decreases, there are steady increases in new directed funding programs such as the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, the National Security Education Program, Intelligence Community Scholars Program; these programs leave our universities increasingly ready to produce knowledge and scholars aligned with the ideological assumptions of the Defense Department. (”Inside the Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness,” CounterPunch, June 24, 2008)

The latest move towards militarizing academia came April 14, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the formation of the Minerva Research Institute.

The Minerva Research Institute: Counterinsurgency with a Human Face

The Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon is funding a $50 million initiative that would fund social science research deemed vital to “national security.”

The Minerva Research Initiative is a scheme to help the military “unravel questions” about how terrorists are recruited, translate and analyze captured Iraqi documents, the allure for Afghans of a resurgent Taliban, the collation of open-source documents that pertain to Chinese military policy, or what makes Iraqi insurgents tick.

But the program as described by the Post, would have immediate ramifications for societies already designated enemies of the American corporatist empire such as Venezuela, other socialist outposts of alternative development such as Cuba, not to mention geopolitical rivals Russia, China and Iran.

The danger of course, is to transform anthropologists under the watchful eye of Pentagon commissars into counterinsurgency “mission specialists.” Many knowledgeable observers fear that social science as conceived by the Minerva Research Institute, will become yet another front in the “war on terror.”

Such fears are hardly misplaced. During the 1960s for example, Project Camelot, an Army-sponsored program “to study political change and unrest in Latin America, was canceled abruptly after the program was revealed in the Chilean press,” the Post reports.

However, as Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett describe in their definitive history, Thy Will Be Done: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995) Project Camelot was conceived first and foremost as a counterinsurgency program in oil-rich Latin American nations:

The social sciences were the brains, what a computerized guidance system is to a deadly missile. In July 1964, the U.S. Army gave the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) at American University in Washington, D.C., the largest single grant ever awarded a social science project. The project’s targets for “field research” in Latin America were Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Colombia. …

Project Camelot was to be a broad sweep for local data collection, including everything from the language, social structure, and history of peoples to labor strikes, peasants’ seizure of haciendas, and violence. Anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, sociologists, and economists would be joined by political scientists, mathematicians, and the military to produce a deliberate political objective of social control. (p. 479)

As Price points out, “because of the narrowness of scope and assumptions about the causes of problems facing America, Gates’ Minerva plan … will inevitably fund scholars willing to think in the narrow ways already acceptable to the Defense Department.”

While the DoD has largely abandoned the demonizing and shallow rhetoric of the Bush regime, (”they hate us because of our freedoms”) will subtler, yet potentially more lethal approaches that propose to “get inside people’s heads,” solve the real world problems created by the systemic economic/ideological biases of our corporate masters? I think not.

In other words, will a cultural knowledge skill-set, particularly during a period characterized by economic melt-down and preemptive wars of imperial conquest and resource extraction, do anything to actually ameliorate the “root causes” of terrorism?

Will rampant poverty, exploitation, repression in the form of the “political genocide” of left alternatives, state-sponsored religious fundamentalism, often in concert with Western intelligence agencies, not to mention the environmental crises brought on by widespread habitat destruction for profit, be mitigated by such schemes? Or will universities, already dependent on DoD and corporate research dollars become ideologically-biased outposts tied ever-closer to the military-industrial-surveillance complex?

As the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) point out,

The US university system is already highly militarized, that is, many universities take in a large proportion of their research funding from military sources. This is problematic…

The fields so supported are distorted by focus on issues of utility to warmaking. Whole fields of study hypertrophy and others shrink or are never developed as researchers are drawn from one field into the other, Pentagon-desired ones. Nuclear and other weapons research related areas grow, at the expense of environmental research, for example. Moreover, theory, methodology, and research goals in such fields as physics, computer science, and engineering after decades of military funding now operate on assumptions that knowledge about force is paramount. …

The University becomes an instrument rather than a critic of war-making, and spaces for critical discussion of militarism within the university shrink. (”Some Concerns about the Minerva Consortia Project,” Network of Concerned Anthropologists, May 28, 2008)

Unfortunately, this process is well-underway.

Militarizing the “Cultural Front”

The Human Terrain System (HTS) is a project administered by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The unit is commanded by Col. Steve Fondacero, who says the project’s purpose is to “non-kinetically neutralize enemies” through knowledge of “what’s going on culturally.”

HTS units are currently comprised of five-person teams of social scientists and intelligence specialists deployed to forward-operating combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to a 2007 article in In These Times (ITT), “The ‘human terrain’ is defined as the social, ethnographic, cultural, economic and political characteristics of the people who live in the region occupied by the brigade, a force of 3,000 to 5,000 troops under the command of a colonel.”

Fondacero told ITT investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein last year “he isn’t at liberty to talk about [the program] in detail, lest the enemy learn about successful programs and target them accordingly.”

Two HTS specialists have been killed this year. Nicole Suveges was killed in June in Sadr City, Iraq while Michael Bhatia was killed in May in Afghanistan. Suveges was a social scientist and Army reservist previously deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina where she was assigned to the Combined Joint Psychological Operations Task Force. Bhatia was a political scientist who was a research fellow at Brown University’s The Watson Institute for International Studies.

While their deaths are tragic, what broader ethical issues are raised by embedding anthropologists or other social scientists in military units where the mission involves extracting cultural knowledge from local sources as a tactical modality for their subjugation?

As George Mason University anthropology professor Hugh Gusterson writes,

We engage in what one anthropologist has called “deep hanging out” with people, passing the time with them, often day after day for months, painstakingly earning their trust and getting them to tell us about their worlds. What distinguishes anthropology from espionage … is that we seek the consent of our subjects, and we follow an injunction to do no harm to those we study. According to the anthropological code of ethics, our obligations to those we study trump all others–to colleagues, funders, and nation. (It’s for this reason that Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, famously condemned four colleagues for using anthropological research as cover for spying during World War I.) (”The U.S. military’s quest to weaponize culture,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 20 June 2008)

The HTS program is administered by corporate giants intimately connected to the military-industrial-surveillance complex. The scandal-plagued, British defense firm BAE Systems is the prime contractor currently administering HTS, while CACI International and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) are subcontractors handling recruitment. Newsweek reported that BAE Systems “was handed” the contract “without a bidding process.”

According to Washington Technology’s Top 100 List of “Federal Prime Contractors: 2008,” No. 12 BAE Systems Inc., derived $2,019,931,520 of its earnings from defense and civilian federal government contracts; No. 5 Science Applications International Corp., earned $4,919,829,998 from similar sources; and No. 17 CACI International Inc., received $1,337,472,153 for work related to the Defense Department. While the $40 million price tag for the entire program is a mere pittance compared to other DoD projects, it raises serious issues as to the independence of social scientists recruited to the program.

As Roberto Gonzalez and David Price wrote in a 2007 piece for CounterPunch, SAIC “has begun describing anthropology as a counter-insurgency related field in its job advertisements.” As a job description it doesn’t get any more explicit!

Problems have plagued the program since its inception. Newsweek reported,

Of 19 Human Terrain members operating in five teams in Iraq, fewer than a handful can be described loosely as Middle East experts, and only three speak Arabic. The rest are social scientists or former GIs who… are transposing research skills from their unrelated fields at home. …

Recruitment appears to have been mishandled from the start, with administrators offering positions to even marginally qualified applicants. The pool of academics across the country who speak Arabic and focus on Iraq, or even more broadly on the Middle East, is not large to begin with. … Several team members say they were accepted after brief phone interviews and that their language skills were never tested. As a result, instead of top regional experts, the anthropologists sent to Iraq include a Latin America specialist and an authority on Native Americans. One is writing his Ph.D. dissertation on America’s goth, punk and rave subcultures. (Dan Ephron and Silvia Spring, “A Gun in One Hand, A Pen in the Other,” Newsweek, April 21, 2008)

But more problematic than the poor administration of the program by the Army and outsourced contractors, is the nature of HTS and the proposed Minerva Research Initiative itself.

As the NCA document, Assistant Under Secretary of Defense John Wilcox, has described Human Terrain Mapping, a constitute element of the program, as one that “enables the entire kill chain across the Global War on Terror.” Indeed, in a 2006 article in Military Review, Pentagon analysts describe HTS as “a CORDS for the 21st Century.” Such analogies are troubling to say the least.

The Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) was the operational element of the CIA’s Phoenix Program during the Vietnam war. Launched in 1967, Phoenix was a high-tech computer operation aimed at “neutralizing”–through assassination, kidnapping and systematic torture–the civilian infrastructure that supported the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

From its inception, the program was rife with corruption. Those who failed to pay bribes to South Vietnamese military personnel assigned to CORDS, found themselves at the tender mercies of CIA-Phoenix operatives. More than 25,000 people were murdered. CORDS, among other things, in a eerie echo of today’s “war on terror” ran interrogation centers that were little more than dungeons where “suspects” were cruelly tortured and then “disappeared.” (For more on CORDS see: Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, New York: The William Morrow Company, 1990)

More disturbing still, are recent developments. In keeping with the “global war on terror” paradigm that opposition = subversion = terrorism, the Network of Concerned Anthropologists reported that at a November 30 panel discussion which featured three of their members during the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, “witnesses saw two U.S. Army personnel affiliated with the human terrain program writing down the names and institutional affiliations of anthropologists who had signed copies of the NCA pledge circulating during the panel.”

In a subsequent letter to HTS commander Colonel Fondacero, Hugh Gusterson wrote:

I’m writing to you in the hope you might shed light on an incident that concerns me. A former US intelligence officer who now works with the Network of Concerned Anthropologists saw Laurie Adler of TRADOC and Jessica Lawrence of the US army writing down the names and institutional affiliations of anthropologists who had signed the pledge of non-participation in counter-insurgency work as the pledge was passed around a session at the meetings. This raises a number of questions:

Whose orders were Adler and Lawrence following when they engaged in this behavior? How many names of signatories to the pledge has the US military collected How and where are those named being stored? Who will have access to these names? What is the US military’s purpose in collecting the names of people who have signed the pledge?

Surveillance of ethical social scientists who have taken a stand against militarizing their discipline is a clear harbinger of what awaits those who heed the Pentagon’s siren song. With annual salaries exceeding $300,000 according to Newsweek, will anthropologists and social scientists become the academic equivalent of the armed gangs of mercenaries already employed by dozens of private military contractors?

Social scientists, as David Price forcefully argues “cannot ignore the political context in which their knowledge will be used.” Minerva and the Human Terrain System, like earlier counterinsurgency programs funded by the Defense Department and the CIA seek to increase of the efficiency of the Bush Doctrine across “the entire kill chain,” not question it.

At the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting on Nov. 13, 2007, I moved “that this faculty commits itself to fostering a civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas.” Expressing the fear that voting down so self-evidently reasonable a proposition would be embarrassing, my colleagues voted massively (74-27) to “table” the motion — that is, to end discussion of it and to avoid a vote. They did so because the motion had arisen in the context of what many of my more silent colleagues regard as the widespread censorship of dissent about Israel-Palestine on campus and in the nearby bookstores that are an essential part of the intellectual life of the University. Moreover, as I showed on this page last November, the vote unambiguously violated Robert’s Rules of Order, the standard of parliamentary procedure in Faculty meetings. The fervor of their conviction blinded 74 Ph.D.’s to the fact that they were proving my point.

The massive displacement of people that resulted from Israel’s founding 60 years ago is the object of willful forgetting in American foreign policy and of baffling ignorance by the American public in general. How else could we justify the massive and ongoing theft of the Palestinians’ native land since the mid-20th century — subsidized annually with upwards of three billion dollars from the U.S. government — while we correctly enforce the right of Jewish refugees to recover European properties from which they were displaced in the mid-20th century? If we do not recognize the equality of Palestinian and Jewish rights, how can we avow the equality of the rights belonging to Tibetans and Han Chinese, Sahrawis and Moroccans, Africans and Americo-Liberians, women and men, blacks and whites, gays and straights?

However, on no other issue at Harvard have I ever heard of the disinvitation of even one invited speaker, much less three. In 2002, Harvard’s Department of English invited Tom Paulin — Oxford professor and one of the finest living British poets — to speak, but promptly disinvited him after then-University President Lawrence H. Summers expressed disapproval of Paulin’s criticisms of Israel. Though the Department later voted to reverse the disinvitation, Paulin has never come to campus. In 2005, DePaul historian Norman G. Finkelstein, who has both sharply criticized Israeli military conduct and accused Harvard Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz of plagiarism, had been invited to speak at Harvard Book Store but was abruptly disinvited without explanation. While Finkelstein cannot prove that Dershowitz was responsible for the disinvitation, the Dershowitz modus operandi is evident in the hundreds of pages of threatening legal correspondence which document Dershowitz’s campaign to stop publication of Finkelstein’s book at University of California Press (UCP) and had evidently succeeded at doing so at the New Press. Dershowitz even wrote — using Harvard Law School letterhead — to ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the book’s publication.

Some have opined that, with the passing of the Summers administration in 2006, these threats to free speech about Israel have ended. However, in 2007, long after Summers’ departure, Martin A. Nowak — Professor of Mathematics and Biology and Director of Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) — invited Rutgers biologist Robert L. Trivers to speak on the occasion of his receipt of the prestigious Crafoord Prize in biosciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Hours before the scheduled speech and party, according to Trivers, Nowak abruptly rescinded the invitation and said that he was doing so under the orders of someone he would not identify. Also according to Trivers, Jeffrey Epstein later admitted ordering the cancellation and said that he had done so under pressure from Dershowitz. Epstein, a legal client of Dershowitz, had donated the funds used to establish PED, which, according to other sources, depends for its future effectiveness on further funding from him.

Dershowitz, who is also a Faculty Affiliate of PED, had complained of a letter to the Wall Street Journal in which Trivers described Israel’s attacks on Lebanese civilians during the 2006 invasion as “butchery.” He also called Dershowitz a “Nazi-like apologist” for justifying it, and told Dershowitz to “look forward to a visit” from him if his public justifications continued. Trivers denied any intent to threaten or harm Dershowitz physically. In 2008, it was a professor from outside of PED who ultimately invited Trivers anew. Notwithstanding Dershowitz’ dramatic claim to have posted his karate-expert secretary at his office door to protect him, Trivers delivered a brilliant and well-attended speech, which took him nowhere near Dershowitz or his office. That Trivers was disinvited in the first place remains an unwashed disgrace to Harvard, unprecedented since the McCarthy era with regard to any issue other than Israel-Palestine.

Two of the three major local bookstores have participated in this censorship process. I have mentioned Harvard Book Store’s disinvitation of Finkelstein. In 2002, Hillel Stavis, owner of the now-defunct Wordsworth bookstore in Harvard Square, played a prominent role in a highly damaging donor boycott of public radio station WBUR, on the grounds that it allegedly broadcast pro-Palestinian points of view too freely. Following my December 2007 lecture at Harvard Law School about the context of my FAS motion, in which I referred to Stavis as having “led” the boycott, he screamed at me from the audience and threatened to sue me.

Dean of FAS Michael D. Smith invited Dershowitz to the Dec. 11 Faculty meeting to contest these reports. Dershowitz said that he “was unaware of any attempt in his 44 years at Harvard to prevent speech, comments, or arguments about the issue of Palestine.” Yet, in order to state his disagreement with it, he acknowledged that Paulin had indeed been disinvited. Dershowitz also acknowledged alleging to the Harvard University Police that Trivers had threatened him, implying that his allegation may have led other University officials to disinvite him. While also claiming that Finkelstein had threatened him, Dershowitz flatly denied that Finkelstein had ever been disinvited–a claim that Finkelstein disputes. Most readers will wonder whether so many people are actually threatening Dershowitz, or whether the mere accusation has not become a conveniently hands-free way for Dershowitz to keep some people off campus.

I am happy that Dershowitz was able to speak for himself at the Dec. 11 FAS meeting. However, it should be noted that his involvement in the discussion — beyond his distribution of flyers at the meetings and his multiple Crimson articles — arose from an uneven application of the rules. On the one hand, I was required to jump through every possible procedural hoop in order to raise these incidents for discussion in the FAS meeting, and it cost me significant time, effort, and social capital to secure my undeniable right as a Faculty member to do so. For example, before acknowledging a full month later that they had erred in allowing the “tabling” of my Nov. 13 motion, officials told me repeatedly that they had been right, that I should take my discussion elsewhere, and that my proposal to resume discussion and to take a vote by secret ballot was “strange.” On the other hand, the rules were stretched to allow Dershowitz, a Law School professor, to speak at an FAS meeting. According to the Rules of Faculty Procedure, “The Dean of the Faculty…may invite [non-FAS professors] to attend as observers [emphasis mine],” but neither the term “observers” nor any other passage in the Rules suggests the right to speak.

Finally, my colleagues and I hold the strong suspicion that a recent tenure case was terminated because of the candidate’s non-academic writings about the Israel-Palestine issue. Faculty rules forbid me to disclose any further details. Despite the brevity with which this case must be treated, the potential for political bias in tenure decisions is the most serious and frightening of threats to free speech and to Harvard’s reputation for excellence. Every one of the dozen junior faculty members who have privately expressed support for my motion have also expressed fear of doing so publicly.

For some people, such disinvitations, compromises to the tenure process, donor boycotts and threats thereof, legal threats, appeals for state governors to intervene in the peer review and publication process, and one-sided bending of the rules are themselves merely instances of “free speech” — mechanisms in what Dershowitz calls “the marketplace of ideas.” For others, they are bold threats to the process of scholarship, debate, and the free dissemination of information. They also result in the loss of career opportunities to which scholars are rightfully entitled. One Faculty member who asked not to be named here spoke of “a campaign of intimidation,” saying, “If you are perceived as being ‘anti-Israeli,’ …[and] you’re up for some honor or some position, you might not get it,” or you might, through “behind-the-scenes retribution,” lose what you already have. Another colleague wrote, “we are not able to have reasoned debates about Israel without someone yelling anti-Semitism.”

Some have interpreted my apparent lack of fear and my recent success in publishing these ideas in The Crimson as proof that there is neither censorship nor fear of criticizing Israel on campus and in the US generally. They should know, first, that both The New York Times and the Boston Globe have repeatedly refused to publish my editorials on this issue. Moreover, I am afraid. Much of a professor’s global effectiveness depends on the personal esteem and cooperation of deans, administrators, and fellow professors. Even my annual salary increases are determined by officials who appear to feel threatened by my bringing up this issue. Furthermore, I have received a stream of insulting and threatening emails calling me, among other things, an “anti-Semite,” a “pussy,” and a “mentally inferior black jew-hater.” Some called for my dismissal. It is difficult to stand up while everyone else is sitting down. One risks the hammer.

In the Dec. 11 faculty meeting, Dean of the Extension School Michael Shinagel and I re-introduced the motion with an amendment acknowledging the ideals and the gaps in the 1990 legislation. Incredibly, many express the faith that this legislation, which had been formulated to balance the rights of speakers at Harvard against those of disruptive protesters, had all along been sufficient to guarantee free speech generally on campus. The scope of the legislation, however, was far removed from the phenomena of disinvitation, politically biased tenure deliberations, and donor boycotts. Moreover, the laissez-faire principle of the earlier legislation had done nothing to remedy situations in which the most popular, most confidently-voiced, best-financed, and best-administratively-supported positions are allowed to drown out all others.

Opponents labored to poke holes in the motion because it arose in the context of an issue close to home. The circus of amendments and motions — amid universal uncertainty about the applicable rules of procedure — prompted me to withdraw the motion altogether. My only hope was that those who are tempted in the future to disinvite a speaker or torpedo a tenure case over politics will at least think twice. In the end, however, most of my colleagues literally groaned in collective denial, convinced that their defeat of our motion disproved that there had been ever been any problem in the first place. Only one concrete proposal apparently survived the abortive free-speech debate of fall 2007. At my suggestion, Dean Smith recommended to University President Drew Faust the establishment of a University-wide Committee on Free Speech, consistent with the unfulfilled recommendation of the 1990 legislation. Six months later, there is still no Committee.

Harvard has known me for 31 years. I was promoted from within, by two separate departments, an outcome of the closest examination of scholarship, citizenship, and collegiality known in the academic world. Moreover, I am the faculty co-chair of one of the largest University-wide associations of faculty and administrators. Yet those who feel chastened by my complaint now comfort themselves by whispering the self-serving rumor that I am “not a team player.” The kind of team player who would comfort such detractors might have felt at home in Dixie, Nazi Germany, or the Bush White House, but he or she does not deserve tenure in the Acropolis of world education. Tenure affords and demands a finer moral compass. We must act on the wisdom that justice withers when intended for just us. And “free speech” is nothing but the self-congratulation of the moneyed and the mighty when the university does not fulfill its unique calling to defend this principle for all.

This article was originally published in The Harvard Crimson.

Bloch had refused “to enforce anti-discrimination protections for federal workers contradict[ing] Bush Administration policy to uphold former President Clinton’s executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation,” the Washington Blade had reported.

The letter to the president was signed by gay House members Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), along with Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and George Miller (D-Calif.).

On Tuesday, May 6, McClathchy Newspapers reported that “FBI agents … searched the office and [Virginia] home of … Bloch … as part of an investigation into whether he obstructed an inquiry into allegations of his own misconduct.”

Since his appointment the relatively unknown Bloch has been wielding a heavy hand and been the source of a series of controversies.

Who is Scott Bloch and how did he wind up as head of the Office of Special Counsel?

Up from Kansas

After graduating from the Law School at the University of Kansas, Scott Bloch was a partner in a Kansas law firm specializing in civil rights law, employment law and legal ethics.

He came to the special counsel’s office after a stint as deputy director of the Justice Department’s Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives. The Washington Blade pointed out that he is “a devout Catholic and staunch social conservative” who revealed on a Senate disclosure form that he had been the former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a right wing California-based think tank that vigorously opposes the gay rights movement.

Scott Bloch was born in New York City, where his father Walter wrote for Broadway and television programs, the Lawrence Journal-World — the hometown newspaper of the University of Kansas — pointed out in an April 2002 profile.

At age 3, Bloch moved to Los Angeles where his father contributed to such popular television programs as “Gilligan’s Island,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Bonanza,” and “The Flintstones.”

Bloch’s grandfather, Albert, a man of Jewish descent, was a noted abstract expressionist painter. Albert Bloch was “the only American member of ‘Der Blaue Reiter,’ (The Blue Rider), Germany’s most important group of artists in the 20th century,” Dan Hayes wrote in a January 1997 article.

An American Art Review piece by University of Kansas Art Professor David Cateforis pointed out that Albert Bloch’s paintings had religious themes, with striking renderings of biblical figures, including Jesus Christ and showed strong Christian leanings throughout his painting career.

Albert Bloch became head of the department of drawing and painting at KU, where he taught from 1923 to 1947, and worked in Lawrence until his death in 1961.

At some point, Bloch’s father changed his last name to Black for “professional reasons.” The Washington Blade speculated that the change may have “occurred in the 1950s, during the height of the Hollywood ‘red scare.’” By that time Sen. McCarthy’s investigations had spread to Hollywood’s film industry, and “anti-Semitism, as well as prejudice against perceived membership in liberal and ‘leftist’ groups, became a factor that prompted some writers and film industry workers to change their names to hide their Jewish ancestry.”

At age seventeen, Scott changed his name back to Bloch.

Converting Catholics in Kansas?

While at the University of Kansas, Bloch enrolled in the experimental Integrated Humanities Program — a controversial curriculum established in 1971 to counter the anti-war and women’s movements and a growing demand for greater multiculturalism on campus. Organized by three conservative English Department Professors, Dennis Quinn, John Senior, and Franklyn Nelick, the program was geared toward teaching the classics, and had a strong Catholic bent.

In a telephone interview, Professor Quinn insisted that the project “was apolitical,” although he admitted that “we talked about everything under the sun.” Some critics of the program “alleged that we were making Roman Catholics out of everyone,” Prof. Quinn said. “We talked about religions, but we had no specific point of view.”

(Disclosure: Nearly forty years ago, I was enrolled at the University of Kansas in Professor Quinn’s “Seventeenth Century Minor Poets,” a class that was not part of the IHP.)

The IHP ended in 1979 amidst charges of proselytizing and “cult-like” behavior. Professor Quinn, who has kept in contact with Bloch over the years, told me he believed “that sometime during the program he [Bloch] converted [from Judaism] to Catholicism,” a development which “didn’t surprise” him.

Although he hadn’t heard about Bloch’s earliest ttravails in the Special Counsel’s office, Professor Quinn allowed that Bloch is “brash, not in an offensive way, but he wasn’t afraid to say what he thought. And, he had strong views. He may,” the professor added, “be just a little imprudent.”

According to the Washington Blade, when assumed the Office, he hired at least two religious conservatives “and offered the No. 2 post at the OSC to a college professor from Wyoming who helped form an anti-gay campus group,” who turned him down.

On Tuesday, May 6, McClatchy Newspapers reported that “Agents are looking into whether Bloch deleted his agency’s computer files to hinder an outside investigation of his treatment of employees, the officials said.”