SPME
“Hope for the best and prepare for the worst” might be the official motto of the pro-Israel community. Each summer groups anticipate anti-Israel activity will flare up on America’s campuses and work to prepare campus professionals and students to respond.…
read morePerhaps no cosmology lacks for its devils, evil spirits–personifications of a wrongness so unacceptable that it can be granted no legitimate space if the community is to survive. Indeed, if famed French literary critic, René Girard, is correct, then what…
read moreJust as some people believe alligators are in New York sewers; many Israeli officials and American Jews are convinced American college campuses are aflame with delegitimizers and anti-Semites. Each year I try to disabuse people of this notion and put…
read moreBravo to the University of Michigan for disinviting Alice Walker – and shame on Walker for reportedly spreading false rumors about Michigan’s reasons for doing so. The University of Michigan recently withdrew a speaking invitation to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The…
read moreWhy did the University of Michigan withdraw an invitation to Alice Walker? Walker is an author best known for The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983. That work and others by her are widely taught at many…
read moreThe University of Michigan has disinvited author Alice Walker from giving a speech at the anniversary celebration for the university’s Center for the Education of Women. According to Walker, the invitation was rescinded due to pressure from donors offended by…
read moreThe entire idea of librarians supporting boycotting Israel is an oxymoron. How can people who are dedicated to acquiring, categorizing and disseminating knowledge even consider boycotting an entire nation of people who are so instrumental in creating that same knowledge?…
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This Summer the French National Museum, the Jeu de Paume, once famous for its display of Impressionist paintings, is hosting an astonishing photography exhibit,Phantom House. The work of an Israeli Bedouin woman, Ahlam Shibli, it assembles an eclectic series of…
read moreIn a recent piece published by SPME, I commented on Judith Butler’s letter to the Berkeley Student Senate April 14 calling on students to press the university to divest from companies making military weapons which Israel employs to sustain the…
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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made international headlines when on October 27, 2005, he declared in Persian that Iran would “wipe Israel off the map.” Some commentators in the United States, most notably University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, argued…
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