Ernest Sternberg: Disruption or Free Speech?

The Israel Ballet Incident at the University at Buffalo
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Is a question-and-answer session with a ballet master, just preceding an on-campus ballet performance, an educational environment similar to a classroom? Or is it a legitimate forum for political expression? As phrased, the question is highly particular and seemingly obscure. But as groups driven by enmity to Israel pursue a campaign to boycott Israeli academics and artists, variations on the question will arise repeatedly on US campuses.

The incident in question occurred on February 23, 2010, before a performance of the Israel Ballet at the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts. Led by a professor known for intense antipathy to Israel, a handful of students, possibly accompanied by off-campus provokers, shouted anti-Israel slogans outside the building. They also handed out a fraudulent program, one that plagiarized material from the Ballet’s official program, but included inflammatory accusations against Israel.

From material in the brochure and an article in the Buffalo Activist, it is easy to infer that the incident was affiliated with the Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which in turn associates itself with the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee.” Two local groups appear to be the instigators. One is the Western New York Peace Center (publisher of the Buffalo Activist), which has a well-documented history of anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic incitement. The other labels itself “Students for Justice in Palestine” and has a Facebook site. Most of the site is taken up by surreptitiously-taken photographs of attendees at an earlier campus lecture in Buffalo by Israeli politician Effie Eitam. Betraying the intent to intimidate, the caption under one picture, showing students and faculty leaving that talk, reads “awww [sic] somebody doesn’t want his picture taken. I’m sure now they will reconsider every speaker they invite.” Both groups were also involved in loud jeering meant to disrupt Eitam’s lecture.

Several of the sloganeers’ behaviors undermine the practices of academic life: the fraudulent program, the disruption through jeering, and the intimidation through web postings. But let us skip these, and concentrate only on a brief incident at the Q&A session preceding the Israel Ballet performance. The session was meant to let the audience learn about ballet in general and the Israel Ballet in particular.

During the session, one demonstrator-provoker would be a more apt word-stood up to make a long-winded accusation about Israel, concluding with the question “are you successful at getting people to forget Israeli war crimes and your apartheid regime?” As she did so, her confederate filmed the scene, later to post it on Youtube. The question is of the “when did you stop beating your wife?” sort. It slurs over the premises that should be in question, the better to use them as a form of attack. It is in effect not a question but a provocation.

The ballet master answered politely, shifting the subject to what he knew, that the Israel Ballet had never received an application from a classically trained Palestinian dancer and that there is a Palestinian dance troupe in Ramallah. When the young woman tried to ask a further question, the auditorium staff escorted her out of the room. Charges against her were later dismissed by campus authorities.

The incident sparked a brief campus debate about free speech. After all, wasn’t it quite appropriate to ask a question during a Q&A session? Not if it’s a classroom setting and the question (or rather, inflammatory assertion disguised as a question) has nothing to do with class content.

The University at Buffalo’s student code of conduct proscribes “Disruption or obstruction of teaching [as well as other university activities].” The undergraduate catalog in a section titled “Obstruction and Disruption in the Classroom” also “recognizes that faculty members are responsible for effective management of the classroom environment to promote conditions that will enhance student learning.” In a chemistry or medieval history class, a student cannot claim a free speech right to expostulate on abortion, or the current president, or weapons of mass destruction.

The question at hand is whether the Q& A session at the ballet is that kind of protected classroom environment.

To answer, let us consider a few thought experiments. An Israeli visiting scientist presents his research results on microbiology at a special campus seminar, but one not connected to a regularly scheduled class, and her talk is followed by a Q&A session. An Israeli performs a recital, after which attendees are given the chance to ask questions. An art exhibit gives viewers the opportunity to ask questions of a visiting Israeli sculptor. In a classics department, a visiting Israel lecturer gives a lunch seminar (it is not a regularly scheduled class) that includes a question period.

If these are not protected classroom environments, then despisers of Israel (or for that matter, the haters of any group) can in effect subvert the educational setting, destroying the despised minority’s right to speak. For American universities, that cannot be an acceptable outcome. At a science lecture, politicized disrupters cannot claim free speech protections under which to launch a tirade against alleged Israeli trade in Palestinians’ body parts (that being one of the innumerable libelous accusations made in internet hate sites against Israelis). Q&A sessions at guest lectures and performance must, like scheduled classes, be seen as protected educational environments.

So, at the Israel Ballet incident in Buffalo, it was indeed appropriate that the anti-Israel provoker’s behavior was subjected to disciplinary proceedings.

For those of us who care about justice and democratic rights in face of the global hostility against Israel, a hostility that impassioned extremists are importing to the campus, this is no small matter. The article in the Western New York Peace Center’s Buffalo Activist illustrates why this is so. To justify the sloganeering, fraud, and disruption at the Israel Ballet, the article gives an incomplete quote from Israel’s minister of culture on the need to mobilize Israelis to respond to some challenge, apparently that of Israel’s bad image in hostile media. And, according to the article, the Israeli Ballet in Buffalo is doing just this: “The ballet is a mobilization of Israeli ‘culture’ and human beings as propaganda.”

Contemplate the quoted sentence for a moment. It is such thinking, after all, that underlies the attempted boycott of Jewish professors, Jewish artists, and Jewish scientists from Israel. Their crime is that they are human beings. Their very existence as Israeli human beings is an unacceptable political offense, one that must be met by obstruction and disruption at every opportunity.

Yes, it is this antisemitic logic, redolent of the Nazi era, that drives the academic boycotters. Of course they disguise their hatred by claiming that they are just innocent peace activists. And they claim free speech rights, even if they are the very same radicals who have no compunction about jeering to drown out speech by Israelis.

We are not fooled. Whether we care just about the welfare of our own university or also broadly about a just resolution of this 80 year war of extermination against Israel, we must make sure that racist provocation has no place in our classrooms, lecture halls, and theaters. When the provokers of hatred try to disrupt again, we must insist that universities enforce their disciplinary policies, to make sure that our students can learn in environments free of political intimidation.


Ernest Sternberg is a professor at the University at Buffalo and serves on the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Ernest Sternberg: Disruption or Free Speech?

The Israel Ballet Incident at the University at Buffalo
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