Inside Higher Education reports on a new effort organized by Joan W. Scott from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J., and former chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom; Jeremy Adelman, a historian from Princeton; Steve Caton, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard; Edmund Burke III, director of the Center for World History at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and Jonathan R. Cole, provost emeritus of Columbia University.

Saying that they are fed up with “aggressive incursion of partisan politics into universities’ hiring and tenure practices,” five prominent academics have issued a call to “defend the university” and gathered dozens of backers in what they view as a new way to bolster academic freedom.

The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University has issued a statement and is asking professors and others to sign on.

The statement makes a general call for academic freedom, and defense of the university against outside political pressure. They make absolutely clear the source of most of these attacks:

Unfortunately and ironically, many of the most vociferous campaigns targeting universities and their faculty have been launched by groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel. These groups have targeted scholars who have expressed perspectives on Israeli policies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with which they disagree. To silence those they consider their political enemies, they have used a range of tactics such as:

• unfounded insinuations and allegations, in the media and on websites, of anti-Semitism or
  sympathy for terrorism or “un-Americanism;”
• efforts to broaden definitions of anti-Semitism to include scholarship and teaching that is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and of Israel;
• pressures on university administrations by threatening to withhold donations if faculty they have targeted are hired or awarded tenure;
• campaigns to deny scholars the opportunity to present their views to the wider public;
• the promotion of efforts to restrict federal funding for area studies programs and the teaching of critical languages on political grounds;
• lawsuits in the name of the “right” of individual students not to hear ideas that may challenge or contradict their beliefs;
• and demands in the name of “balance” and “diversity” that those with whom they disagree be prevented from speaking unless paired with someone whose viewpoint they approve of

Scott told Inside Higher Ed:

…the statement came about because “a number of us were just fed up with the amount of pressure that groups which claim to be defending Israel are exerting.” Citing such cases as the anthropologist at Barnard, Scott said “outside political groups are trying to force the hand of university administrators in ways we think are really dangerous.”

The scholars in these cases deserve tough scrutiny, Scott said, but it should come from scholars in their disciplines — their departments and the outside experts recruited by their departments for evaluations — not from the public or people in other fields. She said that critics of these professors imply unfairly that their work is never reviewed, when their books would never have been published without thorough peer review and they never would have been hired without intense questioning about their scholarship and teaching.

“It is the prerogative and responsibility of the members of the discipline to make these judgments,” she said. “It’s not as if people get a free pass. It’s that at every stage, the review has to be within the discipline.”

She said, for instance, that it would not bother her if Alan Dershowitz offered opinions on law professors, but that he should not have been evaluating Finkelstein, a political scientist. As a general rule, she said, “biologists shouldn’t tell historians how to interpret Middle Eastern history and historians shouldn’t tell biologists what good biology is.”

Sign the petition here.

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Longtime Jewish Week reporter Larry Cohler Esses writes in The Nation about recent orchestrated attacks on Nadia Abu El-Haj and Debbie Almontaser and others:

In case after case, a network of right-wing activists has started an online furor based on a mélange of distorted or provably false charges against someone involved in Middle East studies. They supported these charges with quotes yanked out of context or entirely made up and wielded a broad brush of guilt by association. Right-wing media megaphoned the charges, stoking the furor. And mainstream media ultimately noticed and responded, often focusing their stories on the furor rather than the facts.

Under pressure from these assaults, some academic institutions buckle and a professor’s career is derailed; in other cases it is permanently stained. More insidious, even when tenure puts an academic beyond the reach of his or her assailants, more vulnerable junior faculty and grad students take note. “There certainly is a sense among faculty and grad students that they’re being watched, monitored,” said Zachary Lockman, president of the Middle East Studies Association. “People are always looking over their shoulder, feeling that whatever they say–in accurate or, more likely, distorted form–can end up on a website. It definitely has a chilling effect.”

This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists. Its purveyors include Campus Watch, run by Arab studies scholar Daniel Pipes; the David Project, supported by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation; and David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine (in October Horowitz organized an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on campuses across the nation).

Their efforts often appear to be linked. As first noted by blogger Richard Silverstein, the earliest web attack on El-Haj’s book was posted simultaneously by Campus Watch and FrontPage, in October 2005. Alexander Joffe, identified as a professor at SUNY, Purchase, published a harshly negative review of the book in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies that same month. The prestigious journal did not note–and was not informed–that he was then director of Campus Watch. Soon after, he became research director for the David Project. Less prominent researchers like Stern, the online PipeLine News and writers such as Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer provide raw material to the more well-known portals, such as Pipes and Horowitz. Pipes’s and Horowitz’s material is, in turn, picked up by key conservative papers like the New York Post and New York Sun.

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Finally, here is a case where the person who was apparently censored was asked to step down because he is a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to an email being sent to faculty at the University of Delaware, the story is still unfolding, and the Israeli authorities are getting involved. An email circulating from the Jewish Federation representative says:

The incident at UD occurred on Wednesday night, and promptly thereafter University and Jewish Federation, Israeli authorities and others began consultations on the topic. They have the matter well in hand, and certain information is not yet appropriate to publicize at this time. The story broke nationally on the Internet on Thursday, and additional details did not emerge until Shabbos.

Maybe this is the reason Muzzlewatch can find so few stories of silencing of supporters of US-Israeli policy. When it appears to happen, institutions get a visit from the consul general and local advocacy groups (who have every right and obligation to advocate for free and open debate). But when a principled critic of Israeli policy is silenced, even an IDF veteran, those parties are generally nowhere to be seen.

The story, as reported by the National Review:

Yesterday, the University of Delaware asked Asaf Romirowsky to step down from an academic panel at the University of Delaware because another panelist, University of Delaware political scientist Muqtedar Khan, didn’t want to share the podium with anyone who served in the Israeli Defense Forces.

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Just as some of the best reporting on Israel/Palestine is in the Israeli press (Ha’aretz), some of the best reporting on the culture wars here comes out of the Jewish press.

Not long ago, Ben Harris at the JTA investigated the source of a quote, supposedly said by Archbishop Tutu, that had been used repeatedly to prove that Tutu was anti-Semitic. In fact, as Harris discovered, the source of the quote was actually Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America.

Now Larry Cohler-Esses at NY Jewish Week has gotten to the root of another series of smears, this time against Palestinian American Nadia Abu El-Haj who is in an intense tenure battle at Barnard. Cohler-Esses writes:

The key organizer of a campaign to deny tenure to a Barnard College professor seen by some as virulently anti-Israel acknowledged this week that her petition against the professor may not have quoted the book completely accurately.

Barnard alumna Paula Stern, who now lives in an Israeli settlement community on the West Bank, acknowledged Tuesday that her petition —signed now by more than 2,500 people — incorrectly quotes from Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book in charging she is grossly ignorant of Jerusalem geography.

How did he get such an admission. Cohler-Esses actually read the book!

In her petition, Stern says that Abu El-Haj “asserts that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a ‘pure political fabrication.’”

After a close reading of the 319-page book, this reporter found that the only place in which that phrase appears is in a section devoted to comparing the understandings Israeli Jewish and Palestinian archaeologists have of their respective origins on the land. Abu El-Haj notes that some Palestinian archaeologists argue Palestinians are heirs to the Cannanites who preceded the Israelites on the land.

Israeli archaeologists, she notes, dismiss this as complete nonsense while for them the “modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as pure political fabrication.”

Stern denied she had taken out of context Abu El-Haj’s quote about political fabrication.

“She denies the ancient history of the Jewish kingdoms in many ways,” Stern said in an email about Abu El-Haj, “as when she says that Jerusalem in the times of Herod was not Jewish.”

The statement in question, in Abu El-Haj’s own voice, reads, “For most of its history, including the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by ‘other’ communities.”

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I’ve been on the road, so apologies for reporting important news a bit late here. On October 16, the New York Times reported this important update on a story we covered about the campaign (which one progressive rabbi called a “high-tech lynching”) against Debbie Almontaser as the head of an Arabic culture charter school in NYC.

Principal of Arabic School Says She Was Forced Out

By Jennifer Medina

Debbie Almontaser in April. (Diane Bondareff/Associated Press)

Updated, 6:48 p.m. | Debbie Almontaser, who resigned under fire from her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the city’s Arabic-themed school, spoke out publicly for the first time today since her case attracted headlines and protests from opposing sides. Ms. Almontaser, a Yemeni-American with an extensive record of educational and community work in Brooklyn, stepped down on Aug. 10 amid a controversy that erupted after she was quoted defending the use of the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan.

Ms. Almontaser released a prepared statement through her lawyer and later read the statement from the steps of City Hall in a news conference that started soon after 5 p.m. In the statement, she said that she was forced to participate in an interview with The New York Post, that the newspaper misrepresented her views and that city officials then threatened to shut down the academy if she did not resign.

Good evening. My name is Debbie Almontaser. I am the founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which is known as KGIA. Over a two-year period beginning in 2005, I devoted my life to establishing a school that reflected not only my vision, but the ideas of a design team that included other educators, prospective parents, community members, and the Arab American Family Support Center.

In early August of this year, under pressure from The New York Post, The New York Sun, and right-wing bloggers, representatives of the mayor, the chancellor, and New Visions demanded that I resign as KGIA’s principal. They threatened to close down KGIA if I refused. The next day, I submitted my letter of resignation. Because I believe that I am the person to carry forward the mission of KGIA, I have today submitted my application to become the principal of KGIA. I have also asked my lawyer to begin preparing a lawsuit against the D.O.E. for violation of my constitutional rights.

When I first discussed with New Visions for Public Schools the creation of an Arabic dual-language public school in New York City, controversy was far from my mind. I was thrilled to create a unique school that would provide a rigorous regents-based curriculum with Arabic language and cultural studies, and that would equip students for work in such areas as international affairs diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding. As with the more than 60 other dual language programs in the city, KGIA was created to foster multilingual and multicultural education. It was also joining many New York City public schools that use theme-based approaches to inform and enrich curriculum across subject areas. As an Arab-American Muslim, born in Yemen and raised in the U.S., establishing KGIA was my American dream. It turned into an American nightmare.

On Feb. 12, 2007, the Department of Education announced the establishment of KGIA. In the days following, right-wing blogs began spinning KGIA as an Islamist school with a radical extremist jihad principal. And local New York City papers fanned the flames with headlines like: “Holy war! Slope Parents Protest Arabic School Plan,” “A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn,” and “Arabic School Idea Is a Monstrosity.” From the day the school was approved to the day I was forced to resign, The New York Sun plastered my picture on its website with a link to negative articles about KGIA.

Leading the attack was the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” run by Daniel Pipes, who has made his career fostering hatred of Arabs and Muslims. The coalition conducted a smear campaign against me and the school that was ferocious. Members of the coalition stalked me wherever I went and verbally assaulted me with vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments. They suggested that, as an observant Muslim, I was disqualified from leading KGIA, even though the school is rigorously secular, and its namesake, Khalil Gibran, was a Lebanese Christian. To stir up anti-Arab prejudice, they constantly referred to me by my Arabic name, a name that I do not use professionally. They even created and circulated a YouTube clip depicting me as a radical Islamist.

Then in early August, The New York Post and the Stop the Madrassa Coalition tried to connect me to T-shirts made by a youth organization called Arab Women in the Arts and Media. The T-shirts said, “Intifada NYC.” Post reporters aggressively sought my comment. Because the T-shirts had nothing to do with me or KGIA, I saw no reason to discuss the issue with the media. I agreed to an interview with a reporter from The Post at the D.O.E.’s insistence. During the interview, the reporter asked about the Arabic origin of the word “intifada.” I told him that the root word from which the word intifada originates means “shake off” and that the word intifada has different meanings for different people, but certainly for many, given its association with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it implied violence. I reiterated that I would never affiliate myself with an individual or organization that would condone violence in any shape, way, or form. In response to a further question, I expressed the belief that the teenage girls of AWAAM did not mean to promote a “Gaza-style uprising” in New York City.

Although The Post story distorted my words, it accurately reflected my view that I do not condone violence. That should have been the end of the matter. D.O.E. officials should simply have said that it was clear that neither I nor KGIA had any connection to the T-shirts. They should have pointed out that I had devoted my entire adult life to the peaceful resolution of conflict and to building bridges between ethnic and religious communities. In other words, they should have said that the attacks upon me were utterly baseless. Instead, they forced me to issue an apology for what I said. And when the storm of hate continued, they forced me to resign.

In closing, permit me to explain why I am speaking out at this time. While I have been the victim of a serious injustice, the far larger offense has been to the Arab and Muslim communities of New York City. In the years since 9/11, our communities have been the object of the most vile and hateful attacks. The attacks on me are part of a larger campaign to intimidate and silence marginalized communities. Among other strategies, the right-wing is trying to get people from other communities to view Arabs and Muslims as threats to their safety and security. As a result, well-meaning people sometimes act out of fear—not just a knee-jerk anti-Arab, anti-Muslim response, but the fear that, if they do not succumb to right-wing pressure, they too will become targets.

Those seeking to harm our communities would like nothing more than for me to remain silent in response to their hate. For the sake of the Arab and Muslim communities and for all marginalized communities, for the sake of the families of KGIA, and for the sake of all of us committed to creating a society that we can be proud to leave to future generations, I stand here today to say that they will not prevail. I will continue to stand against division, intimidation and hatred; I will stand for a society based on mutual respect and understanding and dignity for all our communities. These are values to which I have devoted my entire adult life and career.

I am applying to be the principal of KGIA because, as its founding principal and the person who envisioned the school, I believe I am the person most qualified to be its educational leader. Throughout the planning process, I worked with a wonderful and devoted design team comprised of educators, parents, students, and community members. I would like to continue that work and to build KGIA into a model dual language school that, to quote KGIA’s mission statement, “helps students of all backgrounds learn about the world” and fosters in them “an understanding of different cultures, a love of learning, and desire for excellence in all of its students.”

Ms. Almontaser’s resignation came amid the treacherous ethnic and ideological currents of New York City politics. Some protesters have rallied in her defense and demanded that she be reinstated.

David Cantor, a spokesman for the Department of Education, responded to Ms. Almontaser’s account with the following statement:

In August, Ms. Almontaser said she resigned as principal from Khalil Gibran International Academy to protect the stability of the school and give it “the full opportunity to flourish.” The Chancellor agreed with her decision, accepted her resignation, and now considers the matter closed.

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Listen to audio here of Chomsky, Mearsheimer, Finkelstein, Larudee et al at Oct 12 forum in Chicago.
Chronicle of Higher Education reports

A conference last week at the University of Chicago brought the latest volley in the controversy over academic freedom and protest involving the much-publicized denial of tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein at DePaul University. Finkelstein’s writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what he has termed the “Holocaust industry” have become a lightning rod for debate about American support of Israel.

The Chicago Maroon, an independent student newspaper at the university, reports that Rockefeller Chapel was packed with some 1,500 people to hear such speakers as Noam Chomsky, emeritus MIT professor, Tariq Ali, editor of The New Left Review, John Mearsheimer, the Chicago professor who has stirred controversy with his attack on “the Israel Lobby,” and Tony Judt, the New York University scholar who has come in for his own share of tumult over his criticism of Israel.

Ben Harris at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency writes:

Collectively they have published more than a hundred books and countless articles. Four are tenured professors at elite American universities. Internet searches reveal them to be widely cited experts on international affairs and American foreign policy.

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