Jack Koplovitz, Clarkson University:
“ENEMIES ARE POUNCING ON OUR CO-RELIGIONIST’S WRITING”

It seems to me that there is a new front with whom we must deal in terms of elevating the accuracy and quality of the Arab-Israeli conflict narrative on campus.It appears that for reasons other than academic, historical and intellectual ones, delegitimization of the existence, history and reality of Jewish people and the rights of Jews and the State of Israel to exist is now a legitimate academic topic, especially by scholars of Jewish origin.

As I am not a scholar in this area, I ask do other ethnicities suffer from this kind of self-rejection to the right of self-definition and self-determination? It is one thing to reject the teachings of one’s heritage and one’s religion; it is another to reject the legitimacy of its existence and call for its end without offering any constructive alternatives. I understand people leaving their religions of origin, saying so. What I don’t understand is how people can say they are integral members of the group and then seek to undermine the very underpinnings of history, legitimacy and rights of the group which they claim to be a member in good standing.

What is a shameful and even dangerous, is that the s as fuel for their prescriptive means to eliminating Judaism and Israel. Is this what we as academics what to fuel on campus?

One can criticize government policies and one’s religious and ethnic histories and remain part of a healthy discussion within the boundaries of that group’s norms, but one must declare oneself as no longer a member of that group when one leaves the groups and seeks to fuel the enemies of the group. Furthermore, the definitions of Zionism have been corrupted in the post-Holocaust era and been defined by the enemies of Israel to be used against it. Zionism has always been a progressive, egalitarian, humanitarian concept and has been corrupted by the United Nations, anti-Semites and enemies of Israel, progressivism, egalitarianism and humanitarianism.

Amnon Rubenstein: Freedom of Expression Belongs To Professors and Students Alike

According to a recent report in Ha’aretz, students at Tel Aviv University are complaining bitterly about leftist professors. The students are said to be hurt by the professors’ positions, “but are afraid to express contrary views, lest this harm their grades.”

So wrote Prof. Nira Hativa, head of the university’s center for advancement of teaching. She added that in many end-of-year feedback forms, students complained about professors who “attack the state of Israel, the IDF, the Zionist movement and even worse than that.”

She also added that the complaints allege that “Leftist professors, as distinct from rightist ones, feel absolutely free to express their political views, even when there is no relevance whatsoever to the subject they teach.”

The head of the university’s student union tells of similar student complaints, and the talkbacks to this news item – whatever their credibility – also told about students who are afraid to argue with such professors.

THIS NEWS item did not surprise me. A small group of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel faculty members has turned Tel Aviv University into a podium from which to broadcast their political propaganda.

Two notable instances: a group of 30 professors signed a pro-Iranian petition last year warning against Israeli and American designs and “adventurism” against the Islamic Republic, without even mentioning its president’s threat to wipe Israel off the map and his Holocaust-denying outbursts.

The second example was a conference held by the Tel Aviv Law School in which the subject was the alleged mistreatment of “political prisoners” (i.e. convicted Palestinian terrorists) that invited, as guest speaker, a released prisoner sentenced to 27 years in jail for throwing a bomb into a Jewish civilian bus.

This is not academic freedom. This is using academic podiums to deliver Israel-bashing propaganda.

When I taught at Columbia University, I could see how TAU guest professors would stoke the flames of anti-Israel rhetoric; one of them insisted that the university show the film Jenin, Jenin, which charges Israel with perpetrating a famously imaginary massacre.

The usual defense of these TAU excesses is that all professors are entitled to academic freedom. This is inherently true in principle. Academic freedom, a special niche of the freedom of speech principle enshrined in Israeli law, should incorporate marginal and iconoclastic views. This is especially true in a society like Israel which suffers from a constant state of emergency and stress.

But academic freedom, like all human rights, is not unlimited. Austrian and German courts rightly decided that Holocaust denial is not protected speech; Jean Paul Sartre went further, believing that all anti-Semitic expressions are unprotected by the right to freedom of speech.

A call to boycott Israel, such as was made by a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University’s political science department, is certainly unprotected, in a similar way to the Supreme Court’s ruling that a party which seeks the destruction of Israel cannot run in the Knesset elections.

But there is one further point: academics cannot seek shelter behind their much-touted freedom, while denying the students’ right to express their own opinions. If what is alleged in Ha’aretz is true, then these TAU professors are violating the law.

Article 5 of the Student’s Rights Law states this explicitly: “Every student has the freedom to express his views and opinions as to the contents of the syllabus and the values incorporated therein.”

In other words, the students, too, have a measure of academic freedom. If the allegations made by the students – probably mainly in TAU’s social sciences departments – are true, the university is violating the students’ lawful rights.

The writer is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a former education minister and Knesset member, as well as the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law.

www.amnonrubinstein.org.

Ben Dror Yemini: Academics Behaving Badly

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259010971584&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

A huge stream of capital flows to Western academic institutions. It paves the way and inflames the next generation of Islamic radicals and academics who supply them with insights and justifications. This capital also greases the most important university chairs, and the prestigious Ivy League institutions. Tell me who your sponsor is, and I will tell you what your next study will say.

Naïveté, and sometimes ignorance, sometimes feigned innocence, together and separately, cause blindness to reign. The academic world would roll its eyes. We? Can money influence us? We are saints. Pure and free of any blemish.

Reality is a bit different. Money talks in academia. This works in all directions. University chairs funded by pro-Israeli bodies will sing an appropriate tune. And university chairs whose funds come from Iran or Saudi Arabia (ostensibly rivals, but in fact allies) – will also sing accordingly.

But there is a difference. The “pro-Israel” funds, inasmuch as they exist, are but a fraction of the huge capital that flows to the West; capital that indeed influences academic programs, directly and indirectly.

TWO YEARS ago, John Esposito published the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, according to which only 7 percent of Muslims around the world belong to the radical stream. In fact, the book states, nine out of 10 Muslims are moderate.

There is no doubt that this is wonderful news. An absolute majority of moderates. In comparison with the believers of other religions, the outcome will yet be that the Muslims are the most moderate on Earth.

Middle East affairs expert Dr. Martin Kramer exposed the amazing misleading statements in the book in his post “Dr. Esposito and the 7% solution.” For example, it makes no mention of an important poll that found that most of the Muslims in the world think that the 9/11 terror attacks were not carried out by Arabs. They were carried out, many Muslims believe, by the Mossad or the CIA, in order to defame Islam.

More importantly, who stands behind the renown researcher Esposito? It is none other than Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who donated $20 million to Esposito’s research foundation. And together they concoct for us an academic false presentation of Muslims, claiming that they are actually much more moderate than members of other religions. The money is Saudi. The result is an academic study by a prestigious university in the United States.

It does not have to be so. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, refused to receive a donation from bin Talal after the 9/11 attacks because the prince argued that they were the outcome of US policy in the Middle East.

Esposito, on the other hand, received the money and, of course, blamed US policy in the Middle East as the cause for the attacks. Al-Qaida and Hamas do not need a propaganda department. Esposito and his colleagues do the work.

In Britain, dozens of “centers of Islamic studies” were set up in universities, in order to make Muslim students more moderate. But there is a problem. A report by Prof. Anthony Glees “Extremism fear over Islam studies donations” found that the Saudis poured GBP 233 million into these centers. The result was the radicalization of young Muslims in the UK. Here too, billionaire bin Talal is in the background. He donated GBP 8 million to an Islamic center in Oxford. A poll conducted in Britain revealed that one third of Muslim students justify murder in the name of religion. You will find no mention of this in Esposito’s book. No chance.

The money has no influence, they will claim. This is what we will also be told by the professors being supported by an Iranian foundation, which wants to spread the religion of peace and love around the world. And also, of course, the wonders of the Iranian revolution and its great president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The writer is an Israeli journalist and a regular columnist at Maariv.

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