Princeton Panelists Share Cautionary Tales Of Dangers to Academic Freedom

By Jane Adas


	Participating in the lecture and panel discussion on“Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies” were (standing, l-r) Professors George Saliba, Mark Mazower and Joan Scott, and (seated, l-r) Professors Zachary Lockman and Miriam Lowi (Staff photo J. Adas).

PROFESSOR Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study, and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), was the keynote speaker at a Sept. 18 lecture and panel discussion on “Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies” sponsored by the Princeton Middle East Society. The AAUP has found that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment on campus has become acceptable, she reported, attributing this to elements of the USA PATRIOT Act and a compliant press. Among the many victims of this attitude she cited were Tariq Ramadan, the renowned Islamic scholar who was unable to teach at the University of Notre Dame after the U.S. revoked his visa, and Sami Al-Arian, the tenured professor who was suspended by the University of South Florida because the threats that were made on his life were deemed unsettling to campus life.

Of the incidents the AAUP has tracked since 9/11, Scott said, all but one have been instigated by the pro-Israel bloc. Off-campus lobbying groups, such as Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch and David Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom, have promoted an atmosphere of fear that leads to self-policing by professors and administrators. She described their efforts to bring the judiciary and legislature to bear on hiring, grading, and class content as “affirmative action for the conservative agenda.” There have been some examples of brave university administrators, Scott acknowledged, but more of capitulation to outside pressure and interference.

Panelist and professor Mark Mazower arrived at Columbia from England in the fall of 2004, just as the David Project, a Boston-based pro-Israel organization, was arranging private showings of “Columbia Unbecoming.” The film targets three Arab professors at Columbia, accusing them of intimidating and harassing their Jewish students. Mazower was appointed to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee to investigate those charges. He said he found the originating events of less concern than the broader issues of academic freedom. The former were propelled into the public arena by outside groups bringing Washington lobbying tactics into academe via sympathetic students. He was surprised, Mazower said, to find some students performing a monitoring role in the classroom, and cited the New York Times headline, “Committee finds no anti-Semitism at Columbia,” as evidence of the conflation of anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel—something that is “a huge cultural fact in the U.S.” and “raises serious questions about the attitudes of American Jews.”

Professor George Saliba was one of the accused Columbia professors. Some students came to his classes with video cameras, he said, and he now worries about every word that might be taken out of context. Describing The David Project’s mission as political rather than academic—to improve Israel’s image on campus—he said it has succeeded in casting a shadow on the future of Middle East studies. From now on, Saliba charged, any administration will be cautious about hiring Arabs or offering courses on Israel/Palestine and will accept the taboos of society so as not to jeopardize funding.

Professor Zachary Lockman was the academic adviser to Mohamed Yusri, a Ph.D. candidate at New York University who was charged with material aid to terrorists and conspiracy to deceive the U.S. government. Lockman testified at Yusri’s trial, but his former student was convicted and is now awaiting sentencing of up to 20 years. Lockman had suggested Yusri’s dissertation topic: a political biography of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was sentenced to life in 1995 for an alleged plot to bomb the Lincoln Tunnel. Yusri, who supported his graduate studies and family as an Arabic translator, had access to Abdel Rahman as the translator for the sheikh’s lawyer, Lynn Stewart, who also was convicted. Yusri, a 49-year-old secular Egyptian married to an evangelical Christian, was accused of being an “acolyte of the sheikh.” The prosecution cited as evidence a book in Yusri’s possession on political Islam (published by the University of California Press) and materials for his dissertation, thus criminalizing his work as a translator and researcher. Lockman described Yusri’s conviction as a gross miscarriage of justice.

Professor Miriam Lowi of The College of New Jersey discussed Zionism, anti-Semitism and the state of Israel. The diaspora is essential to Israel, she said, with the defining elements securing the bond between the two being the Holocaust and the 1967 war. The victim status of the former, Lowi maintained, has led to Israel being in a state of permanent defense, in danger of extermination even if it is the aggressor. When Lowi visits Israel and is asked why she does not make aliyeh (move to Israel), she replies, “Life is good in the U.S.” The response, she said, is generally, “That’s what they said in the 1930s”—thus making anti-Semitism a powerful ally of Zionists. Lowi concluded by stating that diaspora Jews should have the right to be indifferent toward Israel.

Azmi Bishara at Princeton


Israeli Knesset member Dr. Azmi Bishara (Staff photo J. Adas).

The third annual Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Princeton Committee on Palestine, was delivered Oct. 6 by Dr. Azmi Bishara, who discussed “War, Occupation and Democracy: U.S. Strategy in the Middle East.” Bishara, formerly head of Birzeit University’s departments of philosophy and political science, has been a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset since 1996 and is head of Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy.

According to Bishara, the American neoconservatives who pushed the U.S. policy of democracy as an export item are now beginning to be disillusioned. This is due in part, he said, to the failure of that policy in Iraq—where not only is there no democracy, but also no electricity or gasoline for cars. There are few examples of successful democracies after occupation, Bishara observed. Japan and Germany, cited by the neocons, are the exceptions, not the rule, he argued. Both had binary parliaments before occupation, Washington was not opposed to Japanese or German nationalism, and the U.S. shared with them an opposition to the Soviets and China. When it comes to the Arab world, Bishara pointed out, the U.S. has always opposed Arab nationalism and has viewed modern secular nationalism as a threat.

Bishara accused the U.S. of making a weird, uncritical linkage between terrorism and despotism—hence the need to export democracy for national security. But, statistically, he asked, does despotism lead to terrorism? He compared democratic India to China on the specific issue of terrorism: 204 terror actions in India; 0 in China. Does traditional democracy stop terrorism? Citing the IRA in England and the assassination of a prime minister in Israel, Bishara concluded that there actually is no connection.

The U.S., Bishara continued, having very little history in the area prior to 1967, lacks the ABCs of colonialism. The former colonial powers that carved out these countries would not have made the mistake of, for instance, dissolving the functional army, an important non-sectarian institution in Iraq. For Washington, he added, the lack of separation of church and state suddenly is not a problem in Iraq. While there is no Catholic army or Protestant political party in the U.S., he elaborated, not only does the U.S. allow this in the Middle East, but it considers it democracy.

Historically, Bishara noted, confederation is an administrative decentralization into districts where citizens can choose to live. But, he said, when America takes federalism to the Third World, it becomes an issue of identity. Americans don’t speak of the French as Catholics, he pointed out, but routinely speak of Kurds, Shi’i and Sunnis. Defining confederation as the autonomy of sects, Bishara warned, will end with religious leaders leading religious groups.

Bishara said he pays careful attention to the speeches President George W. Bush reads because they are written by serious people. “They hate us because of who we are” reflects a lumping together of American identity, way of life, and policy. The majority of Arabs, he assured the audience, like the first two, but not the third. U.S. policy on Palestine, he said, is a bigger issue than Americans realize. Binyamin Netanyahu claims that Arab regimes are the central problem. Conceding that may be true for each individual country, Bishara emphasized that, for Arabs as a whole, Palestine is the only remaining colonial wound. Palestine is an issue of justice, he said, not of statehood. What is meant by the solution of a Palestinian state, wherever that might be, is in reality a demographic solution for Israel.

In Bishara’s opinion, Zionism is incompatible with a democratic state. He described two kinds of citizens in Israel: Jews as ideological citizens, and Palestinians, the incidental, accidental citizens who experience discrimination in every aspect of their lives. And yet, he said, “Israel immigrated to us, not the reverse.” One does not build a modern nation state on the basis of ancient history like the Old Testament, he added, because then Germans would have national rights in Central Asia. When asked whether the fact that he is in the Knesset proves Israel is democratic, he responded that it is not an inalienable right, but one given by Israel that can be taken away if Palestinians do not behave and are not grateful. “For me,” he said, “give me back Palestine and take away your democracy.”

Between Gaza and the West Bank


	Members of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Orly Lubin (l) and Issam Nassar (Staff photo J. Adas).

An Israeli and a Palestinian professor—both members of the international network Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (<www.ffipp.org>)—traveled to Princeton University Oct. 10 to discuss the topic “Between Gaza and the West Bank.” Orly Lubin is with the Department of Literature and the Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, while Issam Nassar, associate director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, currently teaches in Bradley University’s history department. The event, sponsored by the Transregional Institute, was the first in a series devoted to the theme of “Society under Occupation: Contemporary Palestinian Politics, Culture, and Identity.”

Nassar questioned whether Israel’s recent disengagement from Gaza was a solution and, if so, for what and for whom. The U.S. considers Gaza’s problems—high population density in very little space and high unemployment—as a result of the intifada. This is somewhat true, Nassar conceded, since the Israeli army destroyed 45,000 Gaza homes, along with many mosques, schools, and places of business. But one can’t understand the history of Gaza in only the last five years, he said.

Gaza’s problems go back to 1948, when refugees from the new Israeli state flooded into the area, quadrupling its population. Following the 1967 war, Israel incorporated the occupied territories into its economy as a market for Israeli products and a source of cheap labor inside Israel, producing what Nassar characterized as complete economic dependence on Israel. Then, during and after the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, Israel imposed a continuous closure that has sealed Gaza off “like a prison.”

As evidence that disengagement is not about solving the difficult situation for Palestinians in Gaza, Nassar quoted Israel’s original disengagement proposal of April 18, 2004: it will “serve to dispel claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Gaza Strip” and leave “no basis to claim that Gaza is occupied territory.” Under actual implementation, “overall exclusive authority over all air space and territorial water will remain in Israel’s hands” and Israel will continue to sell Gaza electricity and gas at pre-disengagement prices.

If Israelis had acted with good will, Nassar maintained, they would have worked with the Palestinians instead of unilaterally. Instead, he said, they “handed a free victory to Hamas.” Israel has sold the removal of a few thousand settlers who should not have been there, leaving great destruction in the process, as a great concession. And the U.S. is exerting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to confirm the end of any Israeli responsibility for Gaza, hinting that if Palestinians succeed in Gaza, more will be coming. But, Nassar asked, with such a history and with its borders, sky, sea, and water resources under Israeli control, how can Gaza become independent?

Lubin addressed the issue of what the Gaza disengagement means for Israelis. The majority of Israelis, she assured the audience, have no illusions that it is a courageous step. They know that Israel created a ghetto with no infrastructure and allowed no development, and that its army can re-enter at any time. What Israelis saw on television were not the weeping soldiers and mothers shown on American broadcasts, she said, but disengaged, well-trained soldiers dealing with screaming, orange-wearing fanatics and parents putting their children through unnecessary trauma. Within one week, Lubin said, things were back to the normal routine of targeted killings, bombing Gaza, and extending the apartheid wall in the West Bank.

Nobody in Israel thinks disengagement was designed to further the peace process, Lubin asserted; most think it was done for military considerations: it took too many soldiers to guard small, scattered settlements. In fact, she said, the army may no longer reveal the cost of protecting the settlements. The army also has been coping with those who refuse to serve, Lubin said: Every year one-third of those supposed to enlist do not do so, some out of principle but most because serving in the army is unpleasant.

According to Lubin, disengagement broke the myth of the settlements. They had been viewed as a serious obstacle to peace because it had been assumed that nobody could remove them. The fact that it was so easy to get out of settlements, that it took only six days—despite suicide threats and a potential split in the Likud party—has caused a crisis for the Orthodox right wing. It thought it had broad support, but two anti-disengagement demonstrations were canceled when crowds failed to show up. Lubin said the settlement movement lost the people because it was self-centered and oblivious to other issues, such as rising poverty within Israel. For some of the religious settlers who really expected the miracle their rabbis promised them, disengagement has been a theological crisis. Many no longer feel they belong to the Zionist movement.

Israel as a society, Lubin argued, has been held together for 38 years by occupation. It has always been about security, the holiness of the land, and the logistics of the military. But, she said, when the occupation turned out to be so visibly bad, the glue holding Israeli society began melting, revealing the fractures that have always been there. Lubin sees the possibility of good coming out of this fragmentation, if it leads Israelis to ask themselves, what does it mean to be accountable as a nation, to acknowledge what has been done? What would it mean to take responsibility? It would cost money, but, as she reminded her American audience, “your tax dollars will take care of that.”

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.