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Fear and Loathing in the Ivory Tower: On Foreign Policy, Middle East Studies, and Academic Freedom |
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"It is one of the great shams of our country that while we label the U.S. as the great bastion of democracy and open expression, there still remain topics which are considered too taboo, even for the world of education, to discuss critically and honestly."
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Dr. Juan Cole, the eminent historian of the Middle East and a professor at the University of Michigan, is known for - in addition to his books and academic credentials - his hugely popular, and award-winning, blog, Informed Comment. [1] Cole's blog, like many political blogs, is packed with news stories on the Middle East and many online videos as well, documenting issues as diverse as the warring conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and Egyptian politics. An interesting impact is present on media influence here. Since blogs, at least in the United States, are not subjected to the paternalistic influence of managing corporate conglomerates as national media networks like Fox News or CNN are, they have much more independence in reporting on sensitive political issues. What most mainstream media networks will not show, such as the brutalities of war on the ground, due to financial and political pressures from their parent companies and investors, blogs are able to display (through written or video commentary) as a result of the freedom of the internet which, in America at least, is still independent of privatized or governmental control. It is this freedom which also allows western intellectuals like Cole the right to publish political commentary and, through growing technological mediums, reach a wider audience. However, with great freedom comes great responsibility. In Cole's own case, this powerful admixture has gotten him into trouble at the Ivory Tower. In 2006, Yale University was considering giving Cole a tenured position in its history department. In a very surprising move, however, Cole was denied the position. The main reason cited for the denial was the politically provocative content of his blog. A Yale Daily News story explained: "But while professors familiar with Cole's work said he had excellent recommendations and scholarship credentials, his blog was a point of contention." [2] Yale professor Paula Hyman of the history department, who oversaw Cole's tenure process, further enunciated: "There was also concern, aside from the process, about the nature of his blog and what it would be like to have a very divisive colleague." [3] It is interesting how having a blog which comments on political matters - as mentioned, a respected and award-winning blog - played a powerful role in costing Cole a tenured position at an Ivy League university. Today's blog, as Arianna Huffington once noted, constitutes a form of "opinion journalism" and, unfortunately, opinions can get people into trouble, as in Cole's example. [4] Cole is a noted critic of American and Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East, very politically sensitive issues, which are believed to have negatively influenced his tenure decision at Yale, given the fact that his blog made such views publicly available for scrutiny. Thus, while Cole has been able to comment on sensitive political matters which our mainstream media tends to be silent on, his work has not been free of personal and professional consequences for such independent commentary. I met Juan Cole in 2008, having had the pleasure of having dinner with the professor. It was February and DePaul University's Academic Freedom Committee (AFC), of which I was a founding member, hosted an academic freedom conference in relation to Middle Eastern studies. The conference was, of course, inspired by the controversial and indefensible tenure denial of Norman G. Finkelstein, who, as a professor at DePaul, was the author of numerous books, international bestsellers that have been translated into 46 foreign editions, more than the work of the entire faculty of DePaul's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences combined. At DePaul, Finkelstein also received outstanding student evaluations and, more than once, was the recipient of the LA&S Excellence in Teaching Award, DePaul's most prestigious teaching award. Hence, we were more than a little bewildered when DePaul's president, Dennis Holtschneider, decided to deny this eminent scholar and popular professor tenure. However, this was not the first, nor would it be the last, time wherein an academic critical of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy would undergo such unjust and disrespectful treatment by an American university. As a result of the grave injustice that transpired at our university, our conference attracted such big names as Juan Cole and Sara Roy, the Harvard political economist and Gaza Strip expert who was our opening speaker. The fearsome politicization of academia, very present at institutions like DePaul and likeminded universities, has come to a disturbingly urgent (and national) climax over the past few years. In addition to the Finkelstein case, what also merits recognition is the banning of prominent political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from speaking at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs about their groundbreaking book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy; the tenure controversy of Nadia Abu El-Haj, the Palestinian-American archeological academic at Barnard College; the suspicious tenure struggles of brilliant Columbia University scholar Joseph Massad, a frequent target of "pro"-Israel lobby groups; not to mention the attempted censorship in distribution by the University of Michigan Press against Joel Kovel's book, Overcoming Zionism, and, thereafter, Kovel's shady dismissal from Bard College in 2008. These are only a few cases out of an ocean of intimidation. The public and political pressures against intellectuals criticizing Israel and defending the natural human rights of Palestinians have been excessively taken to a higher level. Our two-night conference was meant to discuss these issues openly and seriously. The night began with a speech from our keynote speaker, Sara Roy of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Giving a poignant talk that dealt with both the notion of objectivity in scholarship as well as Roy's own intellectual and moral influence as a daughter of Holocaust survivors, she explained to us, quoting the late Edward Said, that "the intellectual is perhaps a kind of counter-memory, with its own counter-discourse that will not allow conscience to look away or fall asleep. The best corrective...is to imagine the person whom you are discussing - in this case the person on whom the bombs will fall - reading you in your presence." [5] Roy, probably America's top Gaza expert, made these observations only a year before Israel committed its infamous and horrific massacres on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. These words, invoking Said's memory, would paint a pensive and ominous cloud over the events that were perpetrated against innocent blood the following year. Our conference continued with a panel that included the Jewish theologian Marc Ellis, along with Joel Kovel and Peter Kirstein. Each professor spoke of the struggles present in mainstream American academia for scholars who treat Palestinians with equality - in other words, as they should be treated, as human beings. Ellis aptly emphasized how the struggle for academic freedom and open Middle Eastern discourse is not simply an issue that should be reduced to the Left-and-Right wing paradigm, for it is a much more complex phenomenon. Ellis explained that throughout his career he has received antagonism not just from the Right but even from the Left for his criticisms of Israeli occupation and military policy. Living up to his reputation as a dissident, also interesting was Ellis' point that the Left tends to be too anti-religious in the conversation. These remarks are fascinating, and vital for an academic freedom conference, for they do break a lot of stereotypes. While support for Israeli policy is usually publicly portrayed as coming from Zionist groups (both Jewish and Christian), it is essential to note that some of our greatest advocates for Palestinian rights and for a just peace in the Middle East have been people of faith, from the religiously Jewish Ellis to the devoutly Christian Baptist Jimmy Carter to the great South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, not to mention humane Christian groups like the Religious Society of Friends who work with Jewish and Muslim peacemakers for unity and solace in Palestine. Finishing up the conference with the final panel were Juan Cole, Peter Novick of the University of Chicago (emeritus), and DePaul's own Scott Hibbard who used to work with Norman Finkelstein in the political science department. Although the panel ranged diversely with polarization in views, from Cole speaking of academic threats against Middle East studies in "pro"-Israel watchdog groups (like the neoconservative Campus Watch) to Novick playing devil's advocate and labeling Finkelstein "a deranged lunatic" in an incendiary rant, a central - and monumental - theme was prevalent among the speakers: there is enormous fear in American academia of dedicating, and publishing, scholarship about Palestine and, more directly, about Palestinian rights (or, more aptly, the lack thereof). Cole himself mentioned knowing numerous cases wherein serious academics have performed excellent research on Palestine, especially aspiring Ph.D.s, yet decided not to publish their work through fear of professional persecution. Hibbard acknowledged this reality from personal experience, explaining that despite concentrating on the Middle East, he has also tried to avoid Palestinian scholarship on the basis of such prevalent fears. Perhaps it is Finkelstein who is the prime example. As a graduate student at Princeton he dedicated his doctoral dissertation to exposing Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial (which argued that there, in actuality, is no such thing as a Palestinian) as an academic hoax, a scholarly fraud. He did so successfully, intellectuals as esteemed as Noam Chomsky and Avi Shlaim have acknowledged his achievement. Unfortunately, as a young scholar, the result for Finkelstein was not praise for such muckraking scholarship from the Ivy League community, but threats and condemnation against this doctoral candidate; not to mention Princeton's refusal to offer a Ph.D. (eventually they did so out of their own shame) and, in addition, ongoing struggles for Finkelstein to even find work in American academia thereafter, as Noam Chomsky explained in his poignant essay, "The Fate of an Honest Intellectual." Unfortunately, Israel's lobby has been very successful in influencing and monitoring discussion on the Middle East in the United States, more so in the political realm of Washington but also behind the stained glass of higher education. John Measheimer and Stephen Walt have acknowledged this troubling reality: "The lobby's desire to police academia has led to several noteworthy efforts to pressure administrators or influence personnel decisions." [6] Such incidences have not been sporadic or accidental. In a talk given at the University of Chicago in 2003, aptly titled "The Patriot Act on Campus," Jonathan Cole, the former provost at Columbia University, explained how much pressure the university experienced for employing such eminent, pro-Palestinian scholars like the late Edward Said and his intellectual inheritor Rashid Khalidi. Regarding Said, Cole observed: "At Columbia we have had a series of incidents over the past year that resulted in alumni, journalists, and others attacking the university for standing behind its faculty and defending the value of free inquiry. One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the preeminent literary critic Edward Said will illicit hundreds of e-mails, letters, and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him." [7] Similar lobbying efforts ensued against Rashid Khalidi, arguably the most esteemed historian of modern Middle Eastern politics working today. Cole explained: "Most importantly, Khalidi was enormously admired for the quality of his published work on Palestinian identity within the community of historians. But when it became known that we were recruiting Khalidi to Columbia the complaints started flowing in from people who disagreed with the content of his political views." [8] Joseph Massad, the brilliant political scientist and scholar of intellectual history, experienced equally invasive and intimidating tactics while pursuing his tenure bid at Columbia. Massad, who himself comes from Palestinian-Arab descent, was targeted by the pro-Israel group the David Project. The David Project produced a notorious documentary in 2004 called Columbia Unbecoming, in which Massad and other Columbia University professors are attacked as "anti-Semites" and portrayed as intimidating pro-Israeli students in class. The documentary evoked the reaction of New York's political elites as well. U.S. representative Anthony Weiner, who represents districts in Queens and Brooklyn, called for Massad's dismissal, accusing the professor of "displays of anti-Semitism." [9] Notwithstanding such claims, the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee which was subsequently formed to investigate such allegations against Massad, found most of them to be false and without merit. The Committee's report even explained that Massad "has been categorical in his classes concerning the unacceptability of anti-semitic views." [10] What is perhaps most striking is the Committee's finding that Massad was spied upon while on campus by at least one faculty member. Also, registered students and auditors systematically disrupted his classes, and outside organizations targeted Massad and his teaching. One such organization was Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch, a pro-Zionist group that monitors academics critical of Israeli foreign policy in the Occupied Territories. Campus Watch, according to Massad, "set up McCarthyist public dossiers on the eight professors of choice [featured in Columbia Unbecoming] on a Web site and called on our students to spy on us and report any anti-Israel statements that we might make in class." [11] Such shameless tactics, regrettably to Zionist supporters, did not work and a few years later (after a long struggle and endless pressure) Massad was finally rewarded tenure by Columbia. The recent case of Tariq Ramadan also deserves close attention for both its early consequences, under the Bush administration, and its progressive developments under Obama's ongoing tenure. Ramadan, a Swiss-Muslim scholar who, as a professor, held the prestigious His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, was given a chance to teach in the U.S. when he was offered a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame in 2004. Notre Dame was specifically interested in appointing Ramadan as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the university's Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. While Ramadan was originally granted a non-immigration visa, it was subsequently revoked by the U.S. State Department, which cited the "ideological exclusion provision" of the USA PATRIOT act as justification for excluding the Muslim scholar from entering the States, thus constituting a revocation of Ramadan's visa. Amy Goodman reported why this transpired, explaining: "The Bush administration initially barred his entry without explanation and then said it was because he once gave money to a Palestinian charity." [12] In a future interview with Goodman, Ramadan added why he believed the PATRIOT act was invoked against him: "At the end of the day, what is quite clear for me is the fact that I was so critical, very critical toward the foreign policy in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and criticizing also the unilateral support of the United States of America towards Israel..." Interestingly, while this appears to be the case, it is important to note that just recently the Obama administration lifted the ban on Ramadan's entrance into the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially lifting the travel ban earlier this year. Ramadan arrived in New York in April 2010. Of course, Ramadan, by no means a naïve man, acknowledged that while this is a progressive step by Obama, the administration still needs to show more progress in policymaking, especially in its hawkish foreign policy toward Afghanistan and Palestine. [14] It is important to note that while scholarship criticizing Israeli foreign policy and its influence on American politics does, in fact, constitute the most pervasively taboo topic in American academia, the question of Zionism is not the only foreign policy issue which gets scholars - particularly political dissidents - into trouble. Let us consider the case of Dora Maria Tellez. Tellez, a prominent Nicaraguan historian, was offered the Robert F. Kennedy visiting professorship in Latin American Studies at the Harvard Divinity School in 2004. The U.S. government, however, prevented Tellez from obtaining the entry visa necessary to teach on the grounds that she is a terrorist. What the allegation was referring to is the fact that Tellez, beyond being a historian, was also a leading figure in the popular revolt to oust Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan dictator, from governmental power. Tellez's political activism transpired in the 1970s when, as a young (and precocious) medical student, she was made a Comandante of the Sandinista Revolution at the early age of 22. Noam Chomsky noticed the dark irony of her subsequent situation, observing that at the same time that Tellez was denied entry into the U.S. while being labeled a terrorist, our government appointed John Negroponte to be the director of intelligence heading counterterrorism. During the Reagan-Bush administration, Negroponte, Chomsky observed, "was ambassador to Honduras, running the world's largest CIA station, not because of the grand role of Honduras in world affairs, but because Honduras was the primary US base for the international terrorist war for which Washington was condemned by the International Court of Justice and UN Security Council (absent the US veto)." [15] Why is this significant in connection to Tellez's case? Because the hypocrisy is remarkable. As Chomsky sharply noted: "There was virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading international terrorist to the top counterterrorism position in the world. Nor to the fact that at the very same time, Dora Maria Tellez, the heroine of the popular struggle that overthrew the vicious Somoza regime in Nicaragua, was denied a visa to teach at the Harvard Divinity School. She was deemed a terrorist because she had helped overthrow a US-backed tyrant and mass murderer." [16] The possibility of categorizing an American bureaucrat as a terrorist is, Chomsky explains, a conceivable category for rational discourse - however, in western culture, it constitutes an inconceivable category for, often, in American political discourse, calling a spade a spade constitutes "doctrinal fiat." [17] Of course, Tellez's case is a bit more complex and unique than many of the others explored here, for a couple of reasons. First, she was persecuted for her political - not academic - activities. Inversely, for her scholarship as a historian, we can argue, Tellez was praised (and not vilified) by being offered a visiting position at one of America's most elite universities. She did, after all, write an authoritative book studying the economic and political history of Nicaragua. Second, what makes Tellez's case especially interesting is the fact that her political persecution did not come from the Ivory Tower but from the Capitol Dome. She was not denied entrance through an academic institution, like many of the foregoing scholars examined here were, but through our federal government. This is the same situation that Tariq Ramadan, another unique case, experienced. Noticeably, in Ramadan's struggle, we also see an interesting transition developing - away from the familiar pattern. It is the academic institution - in Ramadan's case also including one of America's most prestigious universities in Notre Dame - which supported the dissident scholar while our federal government denied him access. Hence, in both cases, the universities have stepped up; both Harvard and Notre Dame supported (and encouraged) the presence of sophisticated and courageous, iconoclastic intellectuals among its faculties while Washington, D.C., thought otherwise. This contrasts profusely with the cowardly denial that Yale offered Juan Cole, for instance, just a few years ago. Fortunately, Cole was born in New Mexico and, therefore, this eliminated the alternative possibility of him having any visa problems with Washington's bureaucrats. It is one of the great shams of our country that while we label the U.S. as the great bastion of democracy and open expression, there still remain topics which are considered too taboo, even for the world of education, to discuss critically and honestly. While millions of people suffer in the Middle East, whether Palestinians, Israelis, or Iraqis, we are taught by our mainstream media and our politicians - who, as Juan Cole aptly explained during our conference, live in a fantasy world - that it is always the fault of Arabs and Palestinians (never portrayed as human beings but always viewed, through the western Orientalist paradigm, as malevolent terrorists), and that inexplicable violence could never be perpetrated by the U.S. or Israel, who always fight in the name of "defense" and "democracy." Such propaganda, though ubiquitously present in our media and in Washington, silences debate and dissent by creating an environment of fear and loathing, supported by powerful lobbies (like AIPAC) and corporate interests, and being especially utilized against those who are willing to speak up for the voiceless and victimized. However, since progressive gains in debate have been made over the years, from the example of Jimmy Carter writing on Palestine to the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis, to governmental advances like the Obama administration reopening boarder access to international scholars synonymous with political dissidence, perhaps the time of cowardice and silence is slowly, but surely, leaving our cultural discourse in regard to these monumental matters. If anywhere, it is in the American university, that so-called oasis of open thought and ideas, where we must preserve and protect academic freedom, supporting serious scholarship and intellectual development by alleviating fear and challenging political dishonesty, especially governmental censorship. Daniel Klimek is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Committe at DePaul University, where he was a student of Norman G. Finkelstein. He completed his M.A.R. at Yale University Divinity School and will pursue his Ph.D. in spirituality at the Catholic University of America. He is an editor and regular contributor to MinistryValues.com.
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