Mideast
Dispute Polarizes Academia
You may not hear about it in the media, but the confrontations between
the pro-Sharon and anti-Sharon partisans on American campuses have grown
in intensity. At times, academic freedom is in jeopardy. There are no
clear battle lines between Israelis and Palestinians, or between pro-Israeli
and pro-Palestinian Americans because both sides have their hardliners
and their voices for moderation.
A typical controversy recently arose when Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian
activist, was invited to keynote a symposium at Colorado College. Probably
the most respected Palestinian voice on American campuses, Mrs. Ashrawi
is a Christian from Ramallah, a Ph.D. in comparative literature from
the University of Virginia, a dean at Bir Zeit University, and for three
years a minister of higher education for the Palestinian Authority.
She angered her detractors by characterizing the Hamas resistance members
as freedom fighters against the Israeli occupation. Governor Owens called
the College's invitation to her outrageous.
The two most prominent
hardline Israelis, prime minister Ariel Sharon and his predecessor,
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, don't need college campuses to
get a hearing in America. They are warmly welcomed at the White House
and on Capitol Hill where Palestinians get no hearing. Netanyahu testified
before the House Committee on Government Reform on what to do about
Saddam Hussein--as if there are no American experts on that issue. In
an address to U.S. Senators, Bibi brazenly equated the Al Qaeda terror
against Americans with the Palestinians struggle against the destruction
of life and property by Israeli occupation forces.
Netanyahu's cordial reception on the Hill starkly contrasted with the
angry reception he received when he came to Concordia University in
Montreal. Fearing for his safety, the Canadian police decided to call
the event off. In a similar display of protest at the Berkeley (California)
campus, Netanyahu's appearance also had to be canceled. The Likud-inspired
Middle East Forum recently launched a web site called "Campus Watch."
It presently blacklists 14 universities and 8 professors considered
"actively hostile to America's interests in the world" and
fanning "the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance."
The persons and institutions deemed anti-American are in reality anti-Israeli,
i.e., opposed to the policies of the official U.S.-Israeli alliance.
For Professor Daniel Pipes, the founder of the Middle East Forum, however,
being "anti-Israel" is synonymous with being "anti-American."
This view was recently echoed by Harvard President Lawrence Summers
who characterized criticism of Israel as reprehensible anti-Semitism.
(Never mind, Arabs are Semites too!)
Campus Watch condemned Colorado College for inviting Hanan Ashrawi,
and the University of North Carolina for assigning freshmen to read
a few passages from the Qur'an. Campus Watch invites "students
to alert it to egregious cases of professorial bias." According
to The Chronicle of Higher Education, numerous faculty members have
been denouncing Campus Watch as a tactic designed to intimidate or even
silence those whose professional teaching and writing does not toe the
Likud line. Literature professor Judith Butler at Berkeley told Campus
Watch:
"I have recently learned that your organization is compiling dossiers
on professors at U.S. academic institutions who oppose the Israeli occupation
and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights for self-determination,
as well as a more informed and intelligent view of Islam than is currently
represented in the U.S. media. I would be enormously honored to be counted
among those who actively hold these positions and would like to be included
in the list of those who are struggling for justice."
Henry Munson of the International School of Information Management,
claims that any scholar who discusses the discrimination against the
Baha'i in Iran, slavery in Sudan, or the Islamist intellectuals in Egypt
runs the risk of being called a Zionist or an agent of American imperialism.
Conversely, of course, anyone who dares to criticize the policies of
Sharon runs the risk of being called an anti-Semite or a self-hating
Jew.
At a time when America's Mideast Studies departments are urgently needed
as sources of reliable information and compassionate reasoning, outside
agitators, such as Campus Watch, only intensify their politicization
and polarization.