Ilan Pappe dismisses Digernes’ Objectivity-Defense: “We Are All Political”

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http://www.israelwhat.com/?p=3330

NTNU dean Torbjørn Digernes has come under some criticism for NTNU’s seminar series on the Palestine-Israel conflict, where both the organizing committee and the speakers are well known for being outspoken critics of Israel. Among the critics are these students, pointing out among other: Not surprisingly we find that the manner in which the topic is presented is rooted in the traditional arguments of the left-of-centre, and the strongest opponents of the state of
Israel. Neither is the choice of speakers an arbitrary decision. Here we find strong critics of the state of Israel, both from Norway and abroad.

Another critic of the seminar series is this NTNU academic, who writes: Dean Torbjørn Digernes has claimed that “NTNU has an importent role to play in this conflict”, but is it really the task of NTNU to take sides in such a sensitive and difficult situation? For if NTNU is to have an opinon on this matter, then we ought also to do something about, for instance, the genocide in Sudan, North-Korea’s suppression of its own population and Iran’s attempts at becoming a nuclear power.

The list of noble causes is long, but it is my opinion that NTNU should stick with its primary objective, that is to be a university which opens its doors for cooperation with all academics, be they from Isarel, China, Russia, North-Korea or Iran.

In a recent post on the website of The Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), Emily Tall notes that: “These names and those of
several Norwegian anti-Israeli lecturers leave little doubt about the
pro-Palestinian thrust of the series”.

Dean Torbjørn Digernes replies to the criticism with a letter on his Dean’s Page, where he states: “if a researcher is to maintain his credibility as a researcher, it is required that she clearly differentiates between acting as a citizen – entitled to her opinons on the basis of her personal values and political beliefs -and on resentations based on scientific requirements for documentation and totality. In other words, Digernes relies upon the professional ethos of the speakers. As it happens Ilan Pappe, one of the most controversial guest speakers at the seminar, outrightly dismisses any such notion of objectivity.

In An interview with Ilan Pappe by Baudowiin Loos on June 16th 2008, we find the following: Unlike other new historians, Pappe makes no secret of his political, or ideological agenda. “We are all political”, he argues. “There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what’s happened. I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings” Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about
facts “We try to convince as many people as we can that our
interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because
of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers”

During his visit to Oslo in June 2009, Israeli historian and Naqba-nestor Benny Morris emphasized exactly this aspect of Pappe’s historical perspective. As there were no Norwegian journalists present to cover that event (a two-day seminar on the refugee crisis in the Middle East, see here and here, video recordings here and here), Torbjørn Digernes might be excused for not being aware of it. Now that
he is, he might want to elaborate on how it can be scholarly legitimate to invite only adherents of the Palestinian narrative to a seminar series on the Palestine-Israel conflict under the condition that they present their findings in a balanced manner, when the most prominent guest speaker to that seminar series openly professes that he is not objective.

Ilan Pappe dismisses Digernes’ Objectivity-Defense: “We Are All Political”

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Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is not-for-profit [501 (C) (3)], grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest, fact-based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines, and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.

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