Professor Ilan Benjamin, who with his wife Prof. Tammi Benjamin, co-chair the SPME Chapter at University of California at Santa Cruz has responded to spurious characterizations of SPME and its activities by a student reporter. He wrote to the two student news paper faculty advisors and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs with his justified concerns. The article of concern is linked in Prof. Benjamin’s text.
Dr. Ed Beck, President of SPME was also contacted by the student journalist, Mr. Abizeid, to answer the same question asked of Prof. Benjamin. Dr. Beck responded that similarly that SPME did not consider itself a “Zionist organization,” but an academic organization with people from a wide range of political, ethnic and religious perspectives including non-Zionists. Mr. Abizeid never followed up with an interview prior to his publishing the article.
From: Ilan Benjamin
Date: November 18, 2007 12:43:21 PM PST
To: cwalla@ucsc.edu, cbergeal@ucsc.edu
Cc: Marc Elie Abizeid <mabizeid@ucsc.edu>, molson@ucsc.edu,
swatrous@ucsc.edu, mcginty@ucsc.edu
Subject: CHP cover story
Dear Ms. Bergeal and Ms. Walla,
I would like to bring to your attention the cover story of the current issue of City on a Hill Press entitled “Silencing Debate on the Middle East”, written by Marc Abizeid
(http://cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=854 ). I believe that in writing this article, Mr. Abizeid violated the norms and ethics of journalistic integrity, and I feel that his article is defammatory to
me as a professor at this university, as well as to Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the faculty organization which I head on this campus.
Mr. Abizeid contacted me several weeks ago requesting an interview. He said that he was writing an article “regarding the influence of Zionist organizations such as SPME on US academics”. Mr. Abizeid’s bias against SPME was clear from his initial request, and fearing that I might be misquoted in a face-to-face interview, I only agreed to be interviewed by email (see below). As you will see, the questions Mr. Abizeid posed to me were extremely tendentious and made several negative presuppositions about the efforts of our organization.
Nevertheless, I believe I answered his questions honestly and with integrity, and had he quoted me fully and accurately in his article, I would not be writing to you now.
Unfortunately, Mr. Abizeid not only distorted and misrepresented what I wrote in that interview, he also attributed things to our organization that are simply UNTRUE. For example, he wrote: “SPME
demanded that the organizers of the event reimburse the university for the money used to fund the conference and warned them against punitive actions if they failed to do so”. Our organization NEVER asked that the organizers of the event reimburse the university, nor did we threaten punitive actions if they failed to do so. (In fact, you will see in the email interview below that in my response to Mr. Abizeid’s question of whether we had urged the UCSC administration to take punitive action against certain academics, I wrote: “We have not filed charges against anyone, and we have no interest in seeing anyone punished”).
Moreover, I believe Mr. Abizeid’s willful distortions and misrepresentations themselves reflect his own political agenda and desire to discredit our organization. Therefore, I would like to request that City on the Hill Press, in the name of journalistic integrity, reprint the entire interview which Mr. Abizeid conducted with me by email.
I trust that you will let me know as soon as possible if you will honor my request.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ilan Benjamin
Professor of Chemical Physics
Department of Chemistry
University of California, Santa Cruz
benjamin@chemistry.ucsc.edu
