Political Crossfire Forums

[jher]

Policing Academia

The Lobby has had the most difficulty stifling debate about Israel on college campuses, because academic freedom is a core value and because tenured professors are hard to threaten or silence. Even so, there was only mild criticism of Israel in the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway. Criticism rose after that process collapsed and Ariel Sharon came to power in early 2001, and it became especially intense when the IDF re‐occupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force against the Second Intifada.


The Lobby moved aggressively to “take back the campuses.” New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to U.S. colleges.92 Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel jumped into the fray, and a new group—the Israel on Campus Coalition—was formed to coordinate the many groups that now sought to make Israel’s case on campus. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending for programs to monitor university activities and to train young advocates for Israel, in order to “vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro‐Israel effort.”

The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, for example, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro‐Israel neoconservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel.94 This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars prompted a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed he dossiers, but the website still invites students to report alleged anti‐Israel behavior at U.S. colleges.


Groups in the Lobby also direct their fire at particular professors and the universities that hire them. Columbia University, which had the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said on its faculty, has been a frequent target of pro‐Israel forces. Jonathan Cole, the former Columbia provost, reported that, “One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the preeminent literary critic Edward Said wil elicit hundreds of e‐mails, letters, and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him.”95 When Columbia recruited historian Rashid Khalidi from the University of Chicago, Cole says that “the complaints started flowing in from people who disagreed with the content of his political views.” Princeton faced the same problem a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred in late 2004, when the “David Project” produced a propaganda film alleging that faculty in Columbia University’s Middle East studies program were anti‐Semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who defended Israel. Columbia was raked over the coals in pro‐Israel circles, but a faculty committee assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti‐Semitism and the only incident worth noting was the possibility that one professor had “responded heatedly” to a student’s question.98 The committee also discovered that the accused professors had been the target of an overt intimidation campaign.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this campaign to eliminate criticism of Israel from college campuses is the effort by Jewsh groups to push Congress to establish mechanisms that monitor what professors say about Israel.Schools judged to have an anti‐Israel bias would be denied Federal funding. This effort to get the U.S. government to police campuses have not yet succeeded, but the attempt illustrates the importance pro‐Israel groups place on controlling debate on these issues.

Finally, a number of Jewish philanthropists have established Israel studies programs (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programs that already exist) so as to increase the number of Israel‐friendly scholars on campus.100 NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been established at other schools like Berkeley, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but the truth is that they are intended in good part to promote Israel’s image on campus. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the “Arabic [sic] point of view” that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programs.

In sum, the Lobby has gone to considerable lengths to insulate Israel from criticism on college campuses. It has not been as successful in academia as it has been on Capitol Hill, but it has worked hard to stifle criticism of Israel by professors and students and there is much less of it on campuses today.

No wonder a professor were sacked because he discussed about Israelis & Palestinians in his class. Israel's supporters are really strong.

[temple of vitriol]

This is all just more proof of everything that's stated in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Read that book and you'll see how the Jews control everything.

And guess who controls the Jews?

The reptilian bloodline of the Rothschilds and the British Monarchy.

[Akage]

the jews and the neo-cons have money.

and they use that money to establish academic chairs at universities, so hack academics like daniel pipes can get phd's in jewism and spread their judeofascism and islamophobia as though it were a legitimate ideology and not jewish propaganda

[Claudia Schiffer]

You could really feel the Jewish lobby here in Montreal Canada after a march in protest to the last massacer in Lebanon, there was no missing that and they push really really hard to the point that i got upset...You really felt they had an agenda, and defended their views aggressively. They even accused a minister of sympathizing with Hezbollah, and even had a full page article that says the people of Quebec support Hezbollah, because there was a couple of Lebanese with Hezbollah flag in the bunch... Can you believe the nerve this people have? They were basically accusing the whole province of Quebec of supporting terrorist/extremist while in fact we were supporting Lebanon and calling for a cease fire...i don't really remember the article's title but it pretty much says: we are witnessing the rise of extremist in Quebec etc... :x

The worst thing about that is that it works in way. That very well respected minister career will most likely suffer from it, while in fact he ask those guys not to bring the flag, but they refused. So since we still believe in freedom of speech we couldn't force them...And those Zionist used that for they own benefit, et voila! That's the manipulative kind of people they are.

Every time they commit some sort of crime that the public don't like, they show up defending Israel etc.... And to me it's like they're wearing a big guilty sign around their neck...I'm really tired of this crap and i think people are feedup too.

Anyway, thanks jher for the post.

[temple of vitriol]

Quote: You really felt they had an agenda, and defended their views aggressively.

Wow, what a concept! Lobbyists with an agenda, defending their views aggressively. Imagine that.

Quote: That's the manipulative kind of people they are.

Damn sneaky little Jews. I'm proud to be an anti-semite and it looks like I'm not the only one.