Some professors are planning to craft a new invitation to Carter to give a lecture without having to debate an opponent.
Last week, the former president told the Globe he declined an invitation to Brandeis because of the string attached. President Jehuda Reinharz, at a trustee’s suggestion, invited Carter to campus to debate “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” with a vehement critic of the book, Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School. Carter said Dershowitz knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.
Several dozen Brandeis professors have been trading e-mails on what could be done, according to two professors on the e-mail list of left-leaning faculty.
Patricia Johnston, a professor of classics, said she and many colleagues have offered to chip in perhaps $100 each to pay for whatever travel and security costs a Carter visit would entail.
“Who is Alan Dershowitz?” Johnston said. Carter “is the former president of the United States, who has done so much to further the cause of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. It’s an insult to suggest that he should have to defend himself that way.”
She said she envisioned Carter giving a traditional speech and taking audience questions.
Carter’s spokeswoman did not return a call yesterday.
Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon said the university is and always was open to Carter coming to campus.
“Jimmy Carter is welcome to speak on the Brandeis campus,” he said.
While Reinharz has not invited Carter to speak solo, Nealon said the administration would work with faculty who wanted to set up a visit. He indicated that money would probably not be an obstacle.
“I think the administration would be willing to figure out how to pay for it,” he said.
Carter told the Globe last week that he would give the talk for free, if the university sent a plane to pick him up from Georgia, where he lives.
The saga began about a month ago when the chairman of the faculty senate, Harry Mairson, wrote to Carter asking whether the former president would be interested in speaking about his new book, which has raised passions on both sides of the debate over Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians.
Carter called his friend and former adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, a Brandeis trustee, to ask whether he should take up the offer. But Eizenstat advised Carter against accepting the invitation of an individual professor without knowing the professor’s agenda.
Eizenstat proposed the debate to Reinharz instead, because it “would make this a real academic exercise,” he told the Globe last week. “The president of the university is not in the business of inviting someone, even a former president, for a book tour.”
Since the Globe reported last week that Carter felt unwelcome on the Waltham campus, people have argued over whether he is unwilling to answer for his views, or whether Brandeis, which was founded by the American Jewish community, can’t tolerate criticism of Israel.
The latter is a view that some professors hope they can dispel by reviving the Carter visit.
Faculty members will probably set up a committee to craft an invitation, and to discuss security, space and cost if Carter accepts, said David Gil, professor of social policy.
The main organizer of the effort, according to other professors, is Gordon Fellman, a sociologist who is chairman of Brandeis’s program in peace, conflict, and coexistence studies.
In an e-mail yesterday, Fellman wrote: “Some faculty are talking about trying to figure out how to invite Carter here. No plan of action yet.”
He could not be reached for further comment.
Gil, who lived in Israel for many years, has his own suggestion: Brandeis should choose Carter’s book next year as the work that all incoming freshmen read over the summer and discuss it during orientation. Carter could visit to talk with them about it.
Gil also has decided to assign the book in his spring seminar.
Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.
