In response to the Breaking the Silence program scheduled at University of California- Santa Cruz, Professor Tammi Benjamin, wife of SPME Chapter Chair at UCSC Professor Ilan Benjamin, shares the following he wrote the following letter to the UCSC administration. In addition, David Meir-Levi, an SPME member living in Menlo Park, California wrote a letter to the Administration.

Dear Friends,

I thought you might be interested in seeing the attached letter that
Ilan, as head of our faculty group Scholars for Peace in the Middle
East, has written to the heads of the UCSC departments co-sponsoring
the “Breaking the Silence” event (see below), and cc’d to the deans of
their divisions and the UCSC Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor.
He argues that one-sided anti-Israel rhetoric in classrooms and at
university-sponsored events, such as “Breaking the Silence”, creates a
hostile environment for Jewish students and tarnishes UCSC’s reputation
for scholarship and academic integrity.

We believe that the faculty and administration need to be held
accountable for this not only by us, but by all concerned citizens. If
you would like to add your voice to ours regarding this one-sided event
or other incidences of anti-Israel bias on campus, you can write to any
of the following UCSC administrators and professors:

Acting Chancellor George Blumenthal: chancellor@ucsc.edu
Executive Vice Chancellor David Kliger: kliger@ucsc.edu
Dean of Humanities, Prof. Georges Van Den Abbeele: humdean@ucsc.edu
Dean of Social Sciences, Prof. Sheldon Kamieniecki: sk1@ucsc.edu
Prof. Ronnie Lipschutz, co-director, Center for Global International
and Regional Studies (CGIRS): rlipsch@ucsc.edu
Prof. Daniel J. Wirls, Chair Politics: wirls@ucsc.edu
Prof. Gail Hershatter, co-director Cultural Studies: gbhers@ucsc.edu
Prof. Chris Connery, co-director Cultural Studies: cconnery@ucsc.edu
Prof. Paul Lubeck, co-director CGIRS: lubeck@ucsc.edu

Recently we have spoken with colleagues at other California
universities, and they concur that the anti-Israel rhetoric is indeed
getting stronger on their campuses. If we ignore the problem, it will
only get much worse.

All the best,

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Lecturer in Hebrew, UCSC

Letter to UCSC from Ilan Benjamin to UCSC Administration

October 23, 2006

To:

Professor Chris Connery, co-director, Cultural Studies

Professor Gail Hershatter, co-director, Cultural Studies

Professor Paul Lubec, co-director, CGIRS

Professor Ronnie Lipschutz, co-director, CGIRS

Professor Daniel J. Wirls, Chair, Politics

Dear Professors,

Cultural Studies, The Center for Global International and Regional Studies (CGIRS) and the Politics department are co-sponsoring an event about which we have great concern. (See attached). These academic departments are inviting an extremist fringe group of a few ex-Israeli soldiers to give supposed testimonies of crimes against Palestinians. Although presented as an educational event, this event is not educational at all, but is rather unmitigated political propaganda which presents a single anti-Israel perspective in the absence of any context or counterpoint.

Israel is a vibrant democracy, and as is true in every democracy with freedom of expression, extreme elements have the freedom to “testify” to lies and half-truths and to take events out of context. However, for academic units to sponsor this event without giving any thought to a balanced perspective distorts the mission of our University and lacks scholarly integrity. Moreover, the message that the announcement of this event conveys – that Israel’s military actions are wholly criminal and not acts of legitimate self-defense — is shallow, misleading and highly inflammatory.

Over the last few years, there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents on our campus. Just a couple of days ago a student came to us, distraught that somebody on campus who saw her star of David necklace had told her: “Aren’t you ashamed to wear that Jewish star when Israeli soldiers are killing Palestinians babies?” We believe that the one-sided anti-Israel bias of the event you are sponsoring can only serve to worsen the already hostile environment that many Jewish students experience at UCSC.

In July 2006, the US Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on anti-Semitism on American college campuses, which found a direct link between unbalanced anti-Zionist rhetoric in classrooms and at campus events, and hostility towards Jewish students. The USCCR recommended:

“University leadership should ensure that students are protected from actions that could endanger a hostile environment in violation of federal law…[and] that all academic departments maintain academic standards, respect intellectual diversity and ensure that the rights of all students are fully protected.”

We strongly support the academic freedom of all faculty members, but we also believe in the responsibility of both faculty and administrators to guarantee academic integrity.

Therefore, we would appreciate a response to the following question:

How will you ensure that there is a diversity of legitimate scholarly opinion regarding Israel and Zionism in your presentation of these subjects in the classroom and at events which your academic unit co-sponsors?

We are copying this letter to our University leaders, since in the past similar requests we have made to CGIRS and to the Politics department have been ignored. (It is ironic to point out that when we asked CGIRS to simply be listed as a co-sponsor of a talk by a well-known scholar from Boston University who spoke about the danger of radical Islam, we were told that the professor lacked academic credentials. We wonder about the academic credentials of the speakers in the above event.)

Sincerely,

Professor Ilan Benjamin

Department of Chemistry

Head, UCSC Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Enclosures: Announcement of the event

cc: Acting Chancellor Blumenthal

Campus Provost and EVC Kliger

Dean Kamieniecki

Dean Van Den Abbeele

Letter from David Ben Meir to UCSC Faculty and Administration

MEMO to:

Acting Chancellor George Blumenthal
Executive Vice Chancellor David Kliger
Dean of Humanities, Prof. Georges Van Den Abbeele
Dean of Social Sciences, Prof. Sheldon Kamieniecki
Prof. Ronnie Lipschutz, co-director, Center for Global International
and Regional Studies (CGIRS)
Prof. Daniel J. Wirls, Chair Politics
Prof. Gail Hershatter, co-director Cultural Studies
Prof. Chris Connery, co-director Cultural Studies
Prof. Paul Lubeck, co-director CGIRS

From: David Meir-Levi, Menlo Park, CA, 650 566 3811, 650 322 6638 (fx)

Date: 24 October 2006

Re: University plans to sponsor an event that many, including myself, fear will deteriorate into a session of hate-speech regarding Israel

Most honorable Chancelors, Deans, and Professors,

In light of the concerns expressed by some of your faculty regarding the anti-Israel event currently scheduled, I most sincerely encourage you to consider the following with regard to drawing the line between academic freedom and bona fide hate-speech and hate-teach.

Anti-Semitism is a designation coined in mid-19th century Germany to offer a more politically correct term for Jew-hatred. Jew-hatred sounded bad, ugly, uncouth. Anti-Semitism sounded more scientific, civil, ‘gentille’. Few spoke out against this euphemization. So the term gained acceptance, and entered the vocabulary of western civilization. In doing so, it turned a primitive social psychosis into a politically correct social value. European, and especially German, society was then able to integrate this legitimized psychosis in to a political doctrine of hatred, repression, and ultimately genocide.

Happily for western society, especially post-World War II, this euphemization has been recognized for what it is. Most of the West’s mainstream social, political, and intellectual leadership has
distanced itself from anti-Semitism; recognizing that, no matter what faux-veneer of pseudo-acceptability is used, Jew-hatred is still just that: a senseless hatred, symptomatic of a sick mind and a sick society, leading ultimately to injustice, repression, and genocide.

Not so in the Arab world. Mainstream media and school books have for decades promoted the crudest and ugliest of the images, slogans, and canards of Nazi and Medieval Christian Jew-hatred; lending valence and acceptability to the basest of anti-Jewish lies, forgeries, and accusations. Witness, inter alia, the recent series of newspaper articles in Saudi Arabia, describing Jewish blood libel as scientific fact. And even more heinous, the textbooks used in elementary schools in Syria, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which demonize Jews, Zionists, and Israelis. The children of much of the Arab world are educated into an ideology of hatred that de-legitimizes a whole
nation, an entire people. That de-legitimization makes it noble to work toward the destruction of Israel and the butchering of its Jewish inhabitants. Dulce et decorum est…to slaughter the Jews.

Oddly, this Arab version of Jew-hatred has begun to insidiously infect western society with the help of new euphemisms: Anti-Israel, anti-Zionist.

Clearly, one can be anti-Israel without being anti-Jewish. Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism. But it is precisely this truism that is exploited by the purveyors of the new Jew-hatred. They
seek to create a new faux-veneer for the old psychosis. Anti-Jewish hate speech seeks shelter under the mantle of free speech — against Zionism. Palpable and unabashed hate crimes recently perpetrated against Jews and Jewish institutions are defended as expressions of reasonable political critique — against Israel. We are witness to a rerun of the phenomenon of 19th century Germany: find the right euphemism, and the hatred becomes acceptable, even in the most civil
of societies.

Even odder, some academics and liberal leaders have adopted this newly revised edition of Jew-hatred as a cornerstone in their fight for ‘truth, justice and the American way’. These erstwhile defenders of our social and political systems, which for centuries have been defined as having “..malice toward none” (Abraham Lincoln) and equal opportunity of access for all (Thomas Jefferson), have incorporated the new euphemisms of Jew-hatred into their publications, speeches,
and classrooms…much to the bewilderment of many, and to the glee of a hate-driven few.

And perhaps most odd of all, they have done so of their own free will, enthusiastically exploiting their faculty status and academic freedom to proffer anti-Israel propaganda as scholarship and anti-Zionist polemic as education. Their criminal mis-use of their positions of trust among colleagues and students has contributed directly to the creation on many campuses of an atmosphere of hate and distrust toward Israel, Israelis, Jews, and anyone identifying with any of the above.

The response to their abuses has finally surfaced with campuswatch.org, a web-site and email list hosted by world-class scholars, offering rational critique to these pseudo-academic works,
and exposing the bigotry for what it is.

Not unexpectedly, a backlash has arisen. But it is important to note that those lashing back do not do so in terms of a rational response to the critique. Rather they fall back on name-calling, and hide
behind the catch-all shield of free speech – the same free speech that they overtly and vociferously deny to those who seek to engage them in open discussion and uninhibited debate.

This is actually a good sign. In a debate, when does one side sink to the level of name-calling? When does an interlocutor change the dialogue from inquiry to insult? Only when he has no logical rejoinder to his opponent’s critique. Only when there is nothing left in his intellectual arsenal except the primitive, childish, sophomoric rhetoric of the extremist hate-monger whose baseless bigotry has been exposed.

I urge you to consider that support for Jew-hatred masked as anti-Israel critique does our academic institutions no credit. The rational and time-tested campus procedures of balanced and open
dialogue, critique of sources and data, pubic debate, and the maintenance of scholarly integrity by avoiding diatribe and incendiary rhetoric, must never be abandoned. To do so may encourage abuses that undermine our whole university system, and make both our students and our faculties complicit in the kind of hate-speech and hate-preach and hate-teach that characterized pre-war Nazi Germany.

All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

David Meir-Levi
Menlo Park, CA