As they say in Columbia University President’s Lee Bollinger’s neighborhood in Harlem’s Morningside Heights, “You got served….” Columbia’s been served notice by its faculty, students and alumni are mad as hell and are not going to take any more of the blatantly arrogant and smugness of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel teachings of their colleagues in the University’s Middle Eastern Studies Department and from visiting scholars like Oxford Poet Tom Paulin who are calling for the slaughter of “Brooklyn-born Jews on the West Bank.”
Over 300 faculty members, in alliance with students, alumni and the community are leading the charge against Bollinger, his administration and the board of trustees for appointing one an incestuous, biased and patently anti-Israel panel to investigate the charges brought about by the David Project documentary, Columbia Unbecoming, which has the administration on the ropes.
Once fearful, but now empowered and speaking out professors, led by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East’s Vice President and Columbia Chapter Coordinator, Professor Judith Jacobson of the School of Public Health, professors, with help from Profs. Awi Federgruen of the Business School and Neil Shachter of the Medical School and others from every discipline are lining up to tell Bollinger and the administration that their reputations and the reputation of the University is severely tarnished by the incompetence of the administration and the treachery of less than distinguished faculty members who dominate by intimidation and abuse of power under the guise of academic freedom rather than careful analysis of the real issues and truths regarding the difficult and complex situations in the Middle East.
Jacobson, Federgruen, Shachter and others have put aside personal and career concerns to fight for the truth to be known on campus. In a recent editorial column in the New York Post, 2.11.05, Ryan Sager wrote: “These brave professors have now spoken, despite the scorn it may earn them on campus. Other professors, holding their tongues for fear of doing damage to their careers, have an obligation to follow suit. They have to defend academic freedom and diversity because Bollinger won’t.” At first they tried colleagially to work within the academic governance structure, to no reponse and no avail, so they have gone public. SPME’s first tactic is always to work internally to resolve these issues, realizing the problems don’t go away and always get worse if not resolved, in which case they go public, which is where the Bollinger administration and Board of Trustees lack of response has forced this issue.
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is proud that its mission of educating, networking and empowering professors to recapture the campus is bearing fruit at Columbia. But Columbia is only one campus. Yet, sadly, for every Columbia, there are hundreds of campuses where professors engaged in falsification and fabrication of the events in the Middle East leading to well documented anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism with on campus, despite the optimistic signs coming recently from the Middle East. Whether its a conference on “Israel Apartheid” at the University of Toronto or a new anti-Israel divestiture movement, or a patently anti-Israel network of anti-Israel professors growing under the guise of Professors for Peace ( a Yahoogroups.com
listserv) or vapidly anti-Israel web sites recently launched aimed at students and professors called http://www.israel-academia-monitor.com/ the flames of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are blazing on campus despite the cease fire and promises for peace and calm in the region.
Biased and bigoted professors who have bought into the big lie against Israel will find it hard to change their positions as a Sharon government works diligently with the Abbas government to find peace. Biased and bigoted professors will never admit that today’s development might never have come about had not Israel pursued the policies it did and Arafat died. Bigoted and biased professors continue to fuel the classrooms full of hate such as Ward Churchhill at the University of Colorado and others who abuse academic freedom to promote academic irresponsibility. Academic freedom does not and never has allowed for academic irresponsibility or lack of integrity. Poor scholarship should never be rewarded or protected, regardless of tenure status. Incompetence is grounds for dismissal even with tenure and certainly promoting violence, bigotry and hate are grounds for moral turpitude violations.
Administrations are reluctant to rock the boat. Students come and students go, despite their best intentions of changing campus culture. Hillel’s have little or no standing in many and most academic communities and are guests on campus. Community groups may “shrie a gevald” until they turn blue in the face and do programming on campus in the community, with some effect. Ad Hoc groups can capture the attention of issues and must continue to do so. But only the faculty, the intellectual heart and soul of the university, are the real permanent residents of the academy and only they can change the academic culture on campus. Columbia faculty is leading the way, as a group are saying that their colleagues and the administration deserve and “F.” SPME has been working with perseverance and diligence since 2002 to overcome entrenched Israel advocacy groups’ skepticism and negativity to enable faculty to come out of the foxholes for fear of being considered politically incorrect on campus and are turning the tide to stand for scholarship and integrity. We are starting to see the payoff of that effort at Columbia. Things will change. There’s no turning back. I appeal to the advocacy groups to work with SPME and through SPME if institutional change is the real goal of Israel advocacy efforts. SPME’s courageous faculty deserve your support. Learn how you can support them at spme.org
