During the Cold War, the United States famously endured a battle on
the home front in which intellectuals and artists, among others,
were witch-hunted during Senator Joseph McCarthy's congressional
House on Un-American Activities hearings.1 Of course, it was fear
that guided the U.S. government's attacks on communists. That same
fear of communism led the U.S. government to support the emergence
of area studies programs in order to understand-or perhaps
undermine-its Cold War nemeses. It was in this context that area
studies programs-including American studies and Middle East
studies-emerged in American universities as a way to educate
students about the very issues that shaped U.S. domestic and
foreign policy. The U.S. government's desire to understand the
politics, languages, and cultures of key regions of the world led
to its funding for many of these programs.
Since September 11, 2001 Americans have faced a resurgence of
McCarthyite tactics that have palpably affected American
universities. This current scare is grounded in a fear of
religion/ethnicity (read: Islam/Arab) and in this case the specter
of the fear, rekindled by, but certainly predating, the 9/11
attacks. All of this trepidation, much of which is played out in
determining who has the power to define terrorism and who is
allowed to speak critically about the U.S. or Israel, has produced
a corollary panic about speaking on university campuses for fear of
being black listed by watchdog groups such as Daniel Pipes' Campus
Watch.2 Although communist ideology is not the target of
fear-mongering this time, the strategies used to combat it during
the cold war have been resuscitated and redirected to academics
working in Middle East studies. Intellectual "witch hunts" in the
U.S. are emerging in various forms, but one of their most
disturbing effects is the chill cast upon academic freedom on
college campuses. The project of censorship in the name of
"homeland security" has taken many forms: prohibiting distinguished
scholars such as Tariq Ramadan from entering the U.S. to begin his
professorship at Notre Dame University; passing state and federal
congressional legislation that enables government oversight of area
studies programs; labeling professors as anti-Semitic (read:
anti-Israel) in an effort to discredit, undermine, and challenge
their academic freedom; and, finally, drafting legislation in the
House of Representatives-HR 3077-to monitor professors' teaching to
make sure it is devoid of "politically biased" (that is, material
that can be interpreted as "anti-American" or "anti-Israel)"
content.3 Most of the scholars who have come under attack teach and
conduct research in subjects that include Islam in general and/or
Palestine in particular, and it is these subjects that are
perceived as the new-millennial threat worthy of the censorious
impulse. The litmus test scholars must pass is not whether they
have refused participation in any communist party program or event,
but whether they support Israel without reservation. It is within
this politico-rhetorical nexus, informed by the response to
September 11, 2001 in the form of the nebulous "war on terror,"
that anti-Israel sentiments have been conflated with anti-American
feeling, easily translated then to a potential platform for
"terrorist" action and "justifiably" censured as such.
Unbecoming Developments at Columbia
One of the most public of such controversies has taken place at
Columbia University, where professors Joseph Massad, George Saliba,
Hamid Dabachi and Rashid Khalidi have come under attack by some
students, state legislators, and the media.4 Three main Jewish
organizations championed these attacks: Campus Watch, the David
Project, and the American Jewish Committee.5 At issue for these
groups is how Palestine and Israel are portrayed in the classroom
and in scholarly work produced by professors of Columbia's
Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures
(MEALAC). What is especially troubling about the charges of
anti-Semitism and anti-Israel perspectives in these professors'
body of work is that it is unsubstantiated by the majority of
students in the class. The case with Massad, for instance, was
brought to the forefront by Deena Shanker, who claims she was asked
to leave class; the only person who corroborates her story is a
person who claims to have been in class that day, but who was
unregistered.6
Much of this debate came to the public's attention when the David
Project, a Boston-based organization that claims to "promote a fair
and honest understanding of the [Middle East] conflict," produced a
film entitled Columbia Unbecoming.7 The various (four or five
differing) versions of the brief documentary feature fourteen
Columbia students and alumni who describe feelings of intimidation
because they espouse a pro-Israeli view in the context of MEALAC
classes. Massad is one of the professors accused of intimidating
students in this film. But many of the claims made by the students
are clearly spurious. They offer an image of a university that is
generally hostile to Jewish students-indeed, former Hillel director
from Columbia Rabbi Charles Sheer states that he has heard many of
the complaints articulated in the film-the fact is that Professor
Massad has never had a formal complaint filed against him. Indeed,
what is not represented in this film is the fact that Massad is an
award-winning teacher and scholar precisely because of the rigorous
nature of his critical inquiry into the nature of the conflict
between Palestine and Israel.
Of course, as scholars and teachers, we know that good teaching
often comes out of moments when students are made to feel
uncomfortable because they have to rethink their archive of
knowledge. Thus, as Massad instructs on his syllabus for
"Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies, "The purpose of
the course is not to provide a 'balanced' coverage of the views of
both sides, but rather to provide a thorough yet critical
historical overview of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict to
familiarize undergraduates with the background to the current
situation from a critical perspective."8 This drive to critical
thought and historical examination is precisely what the higher
education of students in the global age must be about; moreover,
the mission statements of most accredited colleges and universities
(Columbia included) reference such goals as part of the objectives
for and outcomes of the educational experience they offer.
Questioning the dominant narrative of Israeli history should never
be grounds for removal from any educational institution; rather,
educators, scholars, administrators, and students must commit
themselves to the search for true meaning and understanding of
global conflicts in all contexts, regardless of how politically
charged that endeavor may be at a given moment, rather than towing
the party line as McCarthy would have had it.
A New McCarthyism
Indeed one of the primary politicians who has led the charge
against Massad, Anthony D. Wiener, a New York congressman, has
played the role of McCarthy against Columbia faculty.9 Politicians
like Weiner interfering with academic freedom illustrate the
dynamics of the current witch-hunt. The smear campaign did not end
with the release of Columbia Unbecoming; rather, in some ways the
film became a highly inappropriate platform for two students to
make formal charges against Massad, such as Shanker's complaint, an
incident which the University's Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report
found credible. However, twenty students who attended class on the
day in question released a formal public statement asserting
unequivocally that these charges were fictitious.10 Much of the
information contributing to the witch-hunt against Massad has been
bandied about through media and online organs, especially in New
York, but what has received less media attention, and which is
perhaps even more damaging than these ad hominem attacks, is the
way in which real higher education is being suppressed as a
result.11
Assertions critical of the State of Israel, which in the U.S. are
often equated with anti-Semitism and then hyperbolized in
reportage, now constitute grounds for removing distinguished
faculty from educating high school teachers about designing Middle
East curricula. In March 2005 Chancellor Joel I. Klein removed
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director
of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, from his duties
conducting workshops in the New York After-School Professional
Development Program that trains kindergarten through high school
teachers. Khalidi had participated in the program, which features a
number of professors each teaching a different facet of the Middle
East in a course entitled "The Middle East: An Overview, History,
and Culture," for the past two years. Khalidi's contribution was
largely concerned with the demography and geography of the region.
However, at issue as a catalyst for Khalidi's dismissal was not the
subject of Khalidi's seminar. Instead, what disturbed organizations
such as the American Jewish Committee were statements made by
Khalidi in his public discourse and scholarship, outside the
context of this program, that included the words "racist" and
"apartheid" in descriptions of Israel and its policies with regard
to Palestinian people and land. As with the case against Massad,
participants in the program forcefully refute the charges brought
against Khalidi. One teacher who attended his past lectures in this
program describes the content of his teaching as "apolitical."12
Moreover, two weeks after this decision, a group of teachers who
were dismayed by the decision of Klein invited Khalidi to continue
his workshop privately in a show of solidarity.
Like the witch-hunting of Massad, statements against Khalidi were
taken out of context, exaggerated, and used to silence intellectual
discourse. Professor Arthur Hertzberg, who co-taught a class with
Khalidi, illuminates the way in which his removal from the
education program violates academic freedom: "'[Khalidi] is about
as virulently anti-Israel as the Likudniks are anti-Arab. Have we
decided that we are going to throw all the Likudniks out of public
life?'"13 Thus the issue is not whether or not Jewish or Israeli or
Zionist students support Massad and Khalidi, although they
certainly do so publicly. Nor should the issue be whether or not
their scholarship or teaching is fair and balanced, although these
professors also critique the laws and practices of Arab countries
in their scholarship and pedagogy. Nor should the issue be a debate
over statements made by Khalidi and Massad in their published
records or classrooms that might make Jews, Israelis, or Zionists
uncomfortable. The issue is about censoring teaching and
scholarship on college campuses, particularly when the professor in
question is Arab or Muslim.
Oversight Bodies?
Unfortunately, these are neither isolated nor rare anecdotes. In
October 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed
HR 3077, a bill which provides funds to area studies and foreign
language centers under Title VI of the Higher Education Act. The
bill this time around did not merely approve a budget for these
programs; it added an oversight body that would have had broad
powers to investigate faculty and students in any Title VI program.
While HR 3077 would certainly have made the surveillance of
so-called anti-American academics a priority, it is clear that
teaching and research that criticizes Israel would also set off
alarms.14 In its memo to the House of Representatives, the American
Jewish Congress (AJC) (which did not support Khalidi's termination
from the New York After-School Professional Development Program)
argued,
Federal tax dollars are funding Middle East seminars exclusively
promoting one-sided anti-American and anti-Israel views. To correct
this distortion, American Jewish Congress is petitioning the
Secretary of Education to amend the selection criteria required to
be employed by the Secretary in evaluating an application for a
grant to fund comprehensive National Language and Area Centers
Programs authorized under Title VI of the Higher Education
Act.15
The conflation of the already questionable terms "anti-Israel" and
"anti-American" in the AJC document demonstrates how hysteria about
what goes on in the classroom can encroach upon academic freedom.16
Even worse: it also provides us with some not-so-subtle clues as to
the reversal of prey in this witch-hunt: not the Jewish "victims,"
as the AJC might have it, but the scholars of Islam and the Arab
world.
Although HR 3077 did not pass the Senate, professors in
Pennsylvania will find themselves subjected to an even more extreme
measure at the hands of David Horowitz, a neoconservative champion
of what he calls the Academic Bill of Rights. The Pennsylvania
House of Representatives passed the bill, HR 177, on July 5, 2005,
which charges the state legislature with the authority to set up a
committee to investigate whether or not classrooms are being used
to promote professors' political agendas. At least twelve other
states have introduced Horowitz's bill. Unlike HR 3077, this bill
cuts across academic departments and colleges, requiring faculty to
present a fair and balanced syllabus. Ensuring that creationism and
evolution are taught side by side is one example of such an
approach. Nevertheless, the language of the bill and the climate of
censorship and surveillance in the U.S. in a post-September 11th
context ensures that, as this bill gains momentum, it may well be
used as a weapon for Islamaphobes. Fair and balanced in this
context would mean that a professor teaching a course about
Palestine and Israel would have to ensure that any criticisms of
Israel would be neutralized by criticisms of Palestine. Perhaps
this would not arouse concern from many professors, as even those
who have been targeted at Columbia regularly engage in intellectual
critique on both sides of this divide. However, the idea that a
governmental body would put professors under surveillance to
monitor such classroom or scholarly statements creates a
(well-founded) panic in academe.
Importance of Rational, Critical Debate
Challenging dominant narratives and asking provocative questions
about the dominant paradigm lies at the heart of academic work.
Certainly scholarship is informed by the perspective of its author,
but this is not to say that such work is biased or invalid. Quite
the contrary, as Joseph Massad argues: "all respectable scholarship
about Nazi Germany and the holocaust, to take an important example,
is indeed biased against the Nazis, but no one except anti-Semites
would dare equate scholarly judgment of Nazi Germany and the
holocaust as the 'Jewish' perspective or narrative. The same
applies to scholarship about South Africa under Apartheid, which is
never described as the 'Black' perspective or narrative."17
We need to try to overcome our traditional historical time-lag: to
identify censorship and repression before the worst scenarios
become reality. Before we have enough retrospective distance to
realize that our worst fears (about the terrorist or Islamic
"threats") didn't materialize and we marvel incredulously at "how
unthinkable" it was that such witch-hunts took place. Isn't it time
that we catch ourselves in the act and perform the feat that
history claims as its best trick: to prevent itself from repeating
its worst? A real cause for fear lies in the fact that it is the
most vital voices-those of the intellectuals-that we shut down when
we enact such witch-hunts, the voices that have historically called
for human rights. The charge of anti-Semitism leveled at
scholarship and pedagogy that takes a critical approach to global
problems by calling such critical work "anti-American" or
"anti-Jewish" renders a binary opposition of either for or against
Israel, for the U.S. or against it, as if there are no positions in
between. This is the shoddiest form of political censorship masking
as intellectual intervention. If we silence rational critical
debate of stellar scholars such as Khalidi, Ramadan, and Massad
who-and what-will we be left with?
1. I would like to thank Rosie Bsheer and Elizabeth Swanson
Goldberg for their insightful comments.
2. Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch website, students report professors
who are "biased" against Israel or whose lectures contain political
content they disagree with. See http://www.campus-watch.org/.
3. As a harbinger of this intellectual climate, Harvard University
president Lawrence Summers stated in 2002: "Profoundly anti-Israeli
views are increasingly finding their support in progressive
intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are
advocating taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if
not their intent." Quoted in Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The
Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2004): 101.
4. To be fair, for the most part, and until recently, Khalidi was
praised as a model of "moderate" Middle Eastern professors, one
whom all others should follow. The remaining three are on leave in
Fall 2005, some planned, others not. Some believe that in their
absence Khalidi will become the new target during the 2005-2006
academic year.
5."The school board's decision was praised by some New York
lawmakers with ties to the Jewish community, as well as by the
American Jewish Committee. A number of other organizations and
individuals, however, including Columbia University and the
American Jewish Congress, have questioned the school board's
decision." Nathaniel Popper, "N.Y. School Board Bans a
Controversial Arab Professor." The Forward. 25 February 2005.
Online. http://www.forward.com/articles/2741.
6. According to Massad's "Response to the Ad Hoc Grievance
Committee Report," Shanker "claims that I told her 'If you're going
to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then
you can get out of my classroom!' Shanker has two witnesses, one is
a registered student, and one whom she claims was a visitor for the
day, a claim that has not been verified by anybody except for
Shanker who is the only witness that this person was visiting my
class, just as he is her witness that the incident she describes
took place! As for the registered student, he provided testimony
that differs significantly from that provided by Shanker. He
alleges that I 'raised' my 'voice considerably and said that '"I
will not stand by and let you sit in my classroom and deny Israeli
atrocities."' Note that Shanker's claim that I instructed her to
'get out of my classroom' is not corroborated but rather replaced
by a different claim altogether. The fact that I deny that the
incident ever took place and that my testimony is corroborated by
three students, two graduate Teaching Assistants and one registered
undergraduate student, while mentioned in the report, is treated as
immaterial to the report's conclusion. Also immaterial to the
report's conclusion is the report's finding that Shanker did not
register this complaint in her anonymous evaluation of the course,
nor reported it to anyone in authority nor spoke of it to me her
professor." See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/.
Also see "'Taking Back' Middle East Studies: The Case of Columbia
University's MEALAC." Journal of Palestine Studies 34 (Winter
2005): 70-84 and "Academic Freedom and the Teaching of
Palestine-Israel: The Columbia Case, Part II. Journal of Palestine
Studies 34 (Summer 2005): 75-107.
7. Information about the film and the David Project's mission can
be found on its website: http://www.davidproject.org/. Although the
filmmakers have recently tried to distance themselves from the
campaign against professors, the damage has already been done.
Moreover, the David Project trains Jewish students to do precisely
this type of agitating on their college campuses.
8. Importantly, largely because of this controversy, Massad has
since cancelled this class. Censoring Thought, a collective of
undergraduate and graduate students at Columbia University, has
created a database of materials related to this crisis at Columbia.
Included on their website is the above quote from Massad's syllabus
as well as specific refutations to the claims made in Columbia
Unbecoming. See:
http://censoringthought.org/behindthemyth.html.
9. See Jennifer Jacobson, "U.S. Lawmaker Urges Columbia U. to Fire
Professor Who Criticizes Israel," The Chronicle of Higher
Education. Online.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i11/11a01402.htm.
10. The full text of the students' letter exonerating Massad can be
found online:
http://censoringthought.org/twentystudentpetition.html.
11. To understand the larger concerns about academic freedom
implicated in the Columbia case and other similar post 9/11
scenarios, see Jonathan R. Cole, "Academic Freedom Under Fire."
D?dalus (spring 2005): 1-13.
12. Popper, "N.Y. School Board Bans a Controversial Arab
Professor."
13. Ibid.
14. Zachary Lockman explains: "HR 3077 provides for the creation of
a new International Higher Education Advisory Board with the power
to "monitor, apprise and evaluate a sample of activities supported
under [Title VI] in order to provide recommendations to the
Secretary and the Congress for the improvement of programs under
the title and to ensure programs meet the purposes of the title."
Four of the board's seven members would be appointed by Congress
and at least two of the remaining three members would represent
government agencies concerned with national security." "Behind the
Battles Over US Middle East Studies" in Middle East Research and
Information Project (January 2004). Online
http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/lockman_interv.html.
15. See: http://www.ajcongress.org/TitleVIPetition.htm.
16. For a wider context on the hysteria of anti-Semitism as
perceived as anti-Israel criticism see Norman Finkelstein's Beyond
Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
17. Joseph Massad, "Targeting the University." Al-Ahram Weekly.
Online. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/745/op2.htm..
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