SPME University of Buffalo Chapter Co-Sponsors “Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus Program” at Buffalo JCC

Report From Ernest Sternberg, Professor of Regional Planning, SPME Chapter Chair
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Last Wednesday at 7pm, the JCC, several synagogues, Buffalo’s Holocaust Resource Center, Hadassah, and the Buffalo SPME chapter co-sponsored a presentation at the JCC on “Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus.” The evening began with a screening of a documentary (by the organization Stand With Us) showing virulent, sometimes violent, anti-Israeli events at California campuses and at Concordia in Montreal. Afterward, Rich Kellman of Channel 2 moderated three speakers, each of whom gave his or her own reflections on anti-Israeli events held. Adrienne Crandall reported on an event at Buffalo State, Dr. Richard Laub on one at D’Youville College, and I on the Finkelstein speech at UB.

In my own remarks on the Finkelstein event, I made clear that the central point was not that Jewish students felt intimidated. UB is tolerant and peaceful; there were no ripples for students as far as I know. Rather, I pointed explored the meanings of the hateful views that Finkelstein presented: in effect that Jews conspired to create a Holocaust literature to make profits and oppress Palestinians; and that Israelis were trying to turn themselves into an Aryan race. I observed that when professors in our English department sponsor and warmly introduce this sort of speaker (and do not later repudiate him, it amounts to professors of literature acceding to the slander of a literature, a literature of suffering no less. I also observed that when UB faculty publish, as three do, in Counterpunch -an electronic journal that gives voice to accusations that Israel was responsible for 9/11 destruction of the WTCs-then they are in effect giving legitimacy to bigoted conspiracy theories. Claims that Israelis want to become Nazis, and similar claims, are not “perspectives,” as our in-house apologists might claim. They are malicious lies. Obtruding on the capacity to see, they become the opposite of perspective; they block perspective. The danger is not the short term one that Jewish students will be offended or intimidated, but rather that, when professors don’t raise their voice, annihilationist bigotry becomes acceptable fare at the university.

You should know that we had an excellent turnout: about 200 I think, filling up the JCC’s auditorium; many had to stand. Questioning continued for about 40 minutes after the presentations ended at 8:30. I found that we have many friends in the Buffalo community.

SPME University of Buffalo Chapter Co-Sponsors “Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus Program” at Buffalo JCC

Report From Ernest Sternberg, Professor of Regional Planning, SPME Chapter Chair
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Ernest Sternberg


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