The official newspaper of Yeshiva University in New York is reporting that after Erin Stalcup, a departing professor of English at the school, was discovered to have signed a letter to Obama denouncing Israel as an apartheid state, students called on the school's president to condemn her statement. But then AIPAC stepped in to the controversy and said that YU should not condemn her:
by a number of student leaders calling on President [Richard] Joel to denounce
Prof. Stalcup for her comments. An AIPAC representative, however,
successfully pressed Fischman to stop the petition, arguing that the
petition would draw more attention to the letter and not result in a
useful contribution.
There was a lingering impression among
several students that as a faculty member of YU, Professor Stalcup has
impugned the Yeshiva University brand by signing her name on the letter.
Max
Saltzman [another pro-Israel student] responded that “while working for a Jewish institution,
surrounded by Jewish students, Professor Stalcup openly supported a
statement calling the Jewish homeland an apartheid state.” He added,
“While she is entitled to her beliefs, to publicly express these
particular beliefs while working for YU is inappropriate.”
President
Richard M. Joel distanced himself and Yeshiva from the letter when
asked about it at the recent Town Hall meeting uptown (see page 22).
President Joel maintained that while YU faculty have the right to voice
their personal opinions outside the classroom, he found the letter
abhorrent.
Thanks to Drubetskoy, and Medad.
http://media.www.yucommentator.com/media/storage/paper652/news/2009/04/02/Editorials/Slinging.Rocks.At.Israel.From.The.Ivory.Tower-3695072.shtml
The Commentator, The Official Newspaper of Yeshiva College and Sy Syms School of Business
Slinging Rocks At Israel From The Ivory Tower
Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Editorials
On January 12th, the Beirut Daily Star published an open letter to President Obama, “calling for the United States to change its policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian-Israel conflict.” It was written and signed by over 900 academics. After discussing Israeli discrimination against Arab-Israelis, the construction of the West Bank security fence, and the Palestinians’ alleged right to return, the letter draws parallels – in a point-by-point fashion – between Israel and the apartheid state of South Africa.
Erin Stalcup, an adjunct Literature Professor Yeshiva College, was one of the signatories.
We wish to express first our understanding that academic freedom needs to be a foremost tenet of Yeshiva University’s professorial culture. Indeed, we appreciate that universities are the factories of new ideas and fresh perspectives, which in turn give raw material for the constant expansion of the ever-important frontiers of technology, medicine, and science. Academics power the improvement of our political institutions, the deeper appreciation of our cultural exchanges and the reinventions of our national society. And since the answer to the next big question or the inspiration for the next big idea can be found only by the freely curious academic, our professors must be allowed to investigate, research, write, propose or articulate whatever it is they wish. It is for that exact reason that the concept of tenure was first created, granting professors the professional protection they needed to conduct their free inquiry without fear of recrimination.
Moreover, if Yeshiva University is to attract and retain the brightest and most promising professors, it must adhere strictly to the tenets of academic freedom and allow their staff the full range of honest and intellectual discovery and debate.
So when we admonish Professor Stalcup for lending her name and reputation to the misleading public letter, we wish to be clear about what we disapprove. Let us first say that it is not for holding anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian views. We ourselves hold strong views on the Middle East, but we understand that reasonable people may not agree with every one of our views. For instance, there are those who hold contrary, but legitimate, positions towards Israel’s cultural discrimination of its Arab citizens and the location of the construction of the West Bank security fence. To support the Palestinian position is to be outnumbered on Yeshiva campus, to be sure; this, however, is not grounds for reproach.
The letter, however, goes beyond anti-Israel rhetoric. Rather, it attempts to compare Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the South African apartheid, and alleges that the accumulated Israeli behavior towards Palestinians, culminating in the recent Gaza offensive, constitute “an insidious policy of extermination of a people that refuses to disappear.”
Taken together, the letter says, these actions “constitute one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of all time.” It is this extreme and sweeping conclusion that reflects the extent of its ideological bias and the blatant one-sidedness of its view.
For example, no mention is made of the relative peace and security that existed in 2000 before the alleged atrocities began. Palestinians then moved freely within their own borders and into Israel, securing well-paying jobs and sophisticated health care services. Indeed, the number of Palestinian who worked within the borders of the Jewish state on a daily basis in Israel rose from 35,000 in 1996, to 56,000 in 1998 and to 125,000 in January of 2002. By then, roughly a quarter of the West Bank work force and one in five workers in Gaza were employed within Israel. Yet, once the intifada began in 2002, the number of Palestinian workers in Israel tumbled to just over 7,500. Those numbers have yet to recover.
These statistics reflect the fact that the Israeli actions that the letter so strongly condemns were taken only after the intifada of 2002 broke out. The security fence, the checkpoints, the incursions, and, yes, even the restricted flow of Palestinian workers into Israel occurred as reactions to Palestinian aggression.
At the very least, the historical relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is long, complex, and nuanced. To cite the last seven years of Israeli military measures as one of the most massive atrocities of all time is to reveal oneself as ignorant at best and ideologically hell-bent at worst. No matter which, it is outrageously negligent for those who claim to be the scholars of our society – learned, reasoned, and knowledge-seeking – to be so dismissive of complexity and reality.
In signing this slanderous letter, Professor Stalcup has damaged her own professional reputation and credibility as well as hurting the concept of professorship as a whole. For when a professor cloaks ideological preferences and dogmatic beliefs under the guise of scholarly conclusions, the protected intellectual space of academic freedom granted to academics is itself undermined and tainted. Professor Stalcup has taken the privilege of the ivory tower and turned it into a soapbox for the dissemination of distorted facts.
And by attaching the name of our university to the letter, she has abused not only our own reputation, but also our confidence and trust in her as our teacher and mentor [.sic]
Huge story. They will probably start the evening news with this. An Adjunct English Prof. that's actually anti Israel.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Huge story. They will probably start the evening news with this. An Adjunct English Prof. that's actually anti Israel.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
A new shade of lipstick. Yeah, that's the ticket. We're all for academic freedom. Why we invented academic freedom. We're all for nuance and complexity. We of course have among ourselves many shades of disagreement along the whole front of Middle East issues. But Apartheid? Failing to see that it was the Palestinians and their Second Intifada that regrettably is the sole source of the security fence and Gaza invasion and their own general suffering? Well, that's just ignorance, hell-bent ideology, and outrageous conduct. Then the clincher, the projection of one's own failings onto the opponent as personally disqualifying them from civilized respect:
"In signing this slanderous letter, Professor Stalcup has damaged her own professional reputation and credibility as well as hurting the concept of professorship as a whole. For when a professor cloaks ideological preferences and dogmatic beliefs under the guise of scholarly conclusions, the protected intellectual space of academic freedom granted to academics is itself undermined and tainted. Professor Stalcup has taken the privilege of the ivory tower and turned it into a soapbox for the dissemination of distorted facts." Shame on her. Shame on anyone who would slander others, who would dress up ideology and dogma in academic clothing, who would use their privileged position as a soapbox to disseminate distorted facts. Shame, shame, shame – sincerely, your big brother from AIPAC.
Israelis are dirt.
They need to be stamped out.
Is that "nuanced" enough?
This blog is very confusing to me. More and more, I see a post, and I say to myself,"wait a minute, this was over and done with, long time ago".
I am getting the idea that American Jews, some of them, have used their affluence and acceptance to construct and foster a false schema of Jewish separateness in America. The separateness American Jews have is, when you get down to it, entirely the result of us being able to afford to make the kind of consumer choices (and one makes consumer choices about religion, too) which enable us to maintain it. The very affluence which is the sign of our complete (or complete enough, goddammit, what do you want, not everybody in the fucking world is going to love you, didn't your parents tell you that?) acceptance and integration is being used to fool Jewish children into a false consciousness which may please their parent's vanity in some respect, but can't be good for the children, it's not real. Just a mashpocha (which is a bunch of misconceptions mashed together, of course), and as we can see from all the ziocaine ODs on the comment threads, a very dangerous one.
Schema, of course, is a Yiddish word meaning "an orderly mispocha". Just in case you haven't been brushing up, like the song says.
I would have thought that the relationship between white and black South Africans was also "long, complex, and nuanced," but that doesn't mean it wasn't apartheid.
Speaking of unjustified complaints against speaking a truth, I could never understand why so many people thought the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism was obviously wrong.
Why is Erin Stalcup leaving the madrassas?
Why would AIPAC call off the condemnation?
"[...] “while working for a Jewish institution, surrounded by Jewish students, Professor Stalcup openly supported a statement calling the Jewish homeland an apartheid state.” He added, “While she is entitled to her beliefs, to publicly express these particular beliefs while working for YU is inappropriate.”[...]"
No dissent please, we're Zionists and Zionists in the making… Get them while they're young, at shul…
Zionist yeshiva = madrassa! Great counter-hasbara analogy, Laurie!
Yeshiva is a Jewish Jihadist training site.
It needs to be shut down.
Ah yes, pre Intifada, how well I remember, soulful darkies singin down by de ribba, while the their kindly overlords generously dispensed gainful employment.
"I could never understand why so many people thought the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism was obviously wrong."
Zionism is by definition a form of racism.
Ah yes, pre-Intifada, how well I remember: soulful darkies singin down by de ribba while their kindly overlords dispensed gainful employment.
@ Mooser
"I am getting the idea that American Jews, some of them, have used their affluence and acceptance to construct and foster a false schema of Jewish separateness in America."
This also confuses me. As an intermarried Gentile who has long lived amid my wife's extended family, long enough to remember when the first Mercedes was purchased on my wife's side of the family in the face of
the long-held oral ban, I remain confused. All the Jews I have known have done very well, thank you, and none of them have ever personally experienced the slightest anti-Semitism; rather, the reverse is true–being Jewish has always helped them in so many ways. To the extent anyone has been discriminated against to my knowledge, it's my side of the family, beginning with me, though I am now accepted. Anyway, my kids and nieces and nephews have no problem
at all moving between both circles. It's never an issue at all, and neither is the entangling relationships so many have developed involving a really wide array of ethnic types…
My own son prefers Latino hotties; of course he lives in LA, and he takes being discriminated in reverse there as just part of the landscape–he's always being pulled over as he looks too white
to the local police. He teaches and his students are 90% Latino… His favorite heroes are usually
black basketball players. He knows the full history of my wife's side of the family, and enjoys holidays from that familial sector, and simultaneously, he enjoys Xmas, etc too. He also knows my side of the family, and that history, and has his own preferences as to everyone on both sides. His annoyance derives much more from people's personal character and personality traits than from any tribal view.
Gaza!
How I love ya,
How I love ya,
My dear old Gaza!
I'd give the world to be,
back home in Israel's
Orderly Occupied Territory…
Okay, Jackie, I'm not wedded to these lyrics, just spitballing, just running it up the old flagpole to see who lights it on fire…
Aipac is getting worried that too many open purges of people criticizing Israel could lead to a backlash. For many years we have all know that public criticism of Israel could result in serious damage to our careers (at least for those in the arts, humanities, sciences, non-profit fundraisers, and so on). This was known to be true by those who were concerned about their careers, but there was very little overt proof that it was true. Silent fear was key. Recently things are getting too public –eg Finklesteins removal at St Paul, the Juan Cole flareup at Yale, the public image of Dershkowitz the bully — and the victims come out of these events with more credibility and visibility than they had before.
I think Aipac wants to bring back the good old days when they were feared but invisible to the public. I expect them to make a number of other tactical changes in their lobbying and threatening program.
Watch this video: settlers in Shdema in action…
Gert gives you a clip from the Women In Green, conflating USA interests with Israeli Likud interests–it's a clear case of agitprop.
In comparison, Mooser, here's the real deal, not quite the romantic conception you have of a typical Israeli settler:
Every passover we should reduce Tel Aviv to rubble.
It should be a yearly, carnivalesque event until israel ends the occupation.
Maybe even AFTER they end the occupation.
It's obvious that open repression by pro-Israel college administrations interferes with the Lobby's latest campaign to raise alarms about "repression" of Jewish opinion on campuses. There have been any number of appearances by Dersh and other assorted Zionuts on campuses calculated to draw out hostile audiences so they can broadcast the "intolerance" of the academy to voices supporting Israel.
They need to show how magnanimous they are toward Jewish dissenters — at least until they can do them in. . . quietly. What do you think about the job security and future employment prospects of the Yeshiva prof?
Citizen, thanks for responding. My portrayal of settlers was intended to be ironic, the reason I like settlers is because they help reduce the numbers of Jews in prison in the US. Perhaps misplaced ethnic pride, but there it is. Every religion should have such an easy way to get those with criminal tendencies out of the way, and Judaism has no priesthood, at present. But you never know what Zionism may accomplish, perhaps they'll even get that Divine penalty lifted.
Mooser has it approximately right. The sequence of events was: first, europe sent their undesirables and riff raff to America. From that unsavory crop, America selected the worst of the worst and sent them to Israel, supplying the fledgling state with the highly concentrated, homogenized evil one finds there today.
rykart, you are just so down on them Israelis! Can't talk bad enough about 'em. Insofar as we could talk bad about Israelis for years, and never come close to the amount of bigotry, a veritable canardicopia of dissembling, spewed by Zionists against Arabs, I love it. But I think you are missing one aspect of the situation; most of the Jews in Israel, oh, not all of them, but I would say a great many of them, are Zionism's victims, too.
@
"I think Aipac wants to bring back the good old days when they were feared but invisible to the public. I expect them to make a number of other tactical changes in their lobbying and threatening program."
Posted by: syvanen | April 10, 2009 at 04:16 PM >>>>>>>>
I think you are right. It's clear the damn has been breeched on Israel and AIPAC…too many 'former' and some 'current' politicans are speaking up…started by W&M., Carter, Tutu..it's growing..although most forget that it was Sen. Fritz Hollings (SC) who immediately after his retirement first slammed AIPAC in a Charleston Gazzett editorial for their meddling in US ME affairs and for the Iraq war.
AIPAC is nervous…good.
Huummm…..
Sinn Fein head meets Hamas leader in Gaza
Sinn Fein head meets Hamas leader in Gaza, voices support for Palestinian people
BEN HUBBARD
AP News
Apr 09, 2009 10:48 EST
The leader of Irish Republican Army-linked Sinn Fein party met with the head of the internationally shunned Hamas government during a two-day visit to Gaza and said he plans to brief President Obama's special Mideast envoy about his contacts.
Gerry Adams, a key player in Northern Ireland's peace process, met with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh late Wednesday and planned more talks with officials of the Islamic militant group Thursday.
Haniyeh's meeting with Adams, at an undisclosed location in Gaza City, was not announced ahead of time. TV footage from a local news outlet showed Adams sitting in an armchair next to Haniyeh
"We want to help. We support the Palestinian people," Adams said.
Adams told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday he said he met Obama's special Mideast envoy George Mitchell in Washington last month and told him of his plan to visit Gaza. He said he plans to "brief the Irish government, friends in the U.S., others I deal with internationally, and that would include Sen. Mitchell."
Mitchell did not meet with Hamas officials during a visit to the region several months ago. Mitchell and Adams have known each other since the former U.S. senator helped broker a Northern Ireland peace deal in the 1990s.
Sinn Fein is a political party linked to the Irish Republican Army — a group that, like Hamas, was labeled terrorist because of violent tactics used to battle Britain. But unlike Hamas, Sinn Fein engaged in negotiations that transformed it into a legitimate political player, recognized by Britain and local foes."
Huummmm……..
The New ForeignPolicy.com
Passport : Tom Ricks : Dan Drezner : Stephen Walt : David Rothkopf : Marc Lynch
The Cable : Madam Secretary : Net Effect : Shadow Govt. : The Argument : The Call
Obama's nightstand: Recommended Iran reading
Thu, 04/09/2009 – 12:23pm
Last night, after he had made a grocery-store run, helped put his two kids to bed, and answered reporters’ phone calls about Washington’s decision to join international talks with Iran, Trita Parsi, a protégé of Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinski and a former Hill aide, was surfing the web when he noticed a spike in Amazon sales of his 2007 book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.
That’s when Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that promotes engagement with Iran, realized what was causing the bump: a new opinion column in the New York Times that calls for President Barack Obama to read his book.
In the latest in a recent series of bracing columns on U.S. policy toward Iran, the Times’ Roger Cohen argues that Israel has been hyping the Iranian nuclear threat going back more than a decade. “You can't accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf,” Cohen writes:
Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.
Now here comes [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in an interview …spinning the latest iteration of Israel's attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:
"You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs.When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran."
What’s critical, Cohen continues, “is that Obama view Netanyahu's fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time … The president should read Trita Parsi's excellent ‘Treacherous Alliance’ as preparation.”
Parsi, 34, who as president of the NIAC and before that as a Hill aide and later a Ph.D. student of Fukuyama and Brzezinski’s at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has long advocated for Washington to engage with Tehran. He found himself frequently demonized during the Bush administration as an apologist for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the Bush administration shunned as a charter member of the axis of evil.
With the Obama administration now making a series of recent moves to try to engage Iran, Parsi finds his analysis in daily demand. Parsi, an Iranian-born Zoroastrian who lived in Iran until he was four, and whose father was previously imprisoned in Iran, spent his youth in Sweden before emigrating to the United States.
Of Cohen's mention of his book, Parsi says, "Pretty cool. Will give the president a copy of the book per the NYT's recommendation.”
But the other day, after Obama spoke in the Turkish capital Ankara, Parsi thought he detected evidence that someone in Obama’s inner circle had already read it closely.
"We want Iran to play its rightful role in the community of nations, with the economic and political integration that brings prosperity and security,” Obama said in Ankara.
“This is completely new language for the White House to use, but it sounded awfully familiar to me,” Parsi wrote excitedly Monday. “I went and checked the last chapter of the book where I discuss a strategy of regional integration, and on page 279 I write: "This policy would be based on the recognition that, like China, Iran is a country that the US cannot contain indefinitely, that Iran becomes more antagonistic when excluded, and that the US can better influence Iran by helping it integrate into the world's political and economic structure rather than keeping it out." (Emphasis his).
Coincidence? Whatever the case, Parsi said he would be happy to forward a copy of his book to the White House.
Laura Rozen
Summary of Treacherous Alliance
by hass on Thu, 04/09/2009 – 3:17pm
The summary of Dr. Parsi's book is that despite the rhetoric, Israel and Iran have worked together in the past, and that now Israel does not want to see an improved US-Iran relations because it would reduce Israel to a Cold War vestige:
"[I]t wasn’t Iran that turned the Israeli-Iranian cold war warm – it was Israel . . . The Israeli reversal on Iran was partially motivated by the fear that its strategic importance would diminish significantly in the post-cold war middle east if the then president (1989-97) Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the Bush Sr
administration was successful."
And so,
Israeli politicians began painting the regime in Tehran as fanatical and irrational. Clearly, they maintained, finding an accommodation with such “mad mullahs” was a non-starter. Instead, they called on the US to classify Iran, along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as a rogue state that needed to be “contained.”
Naturally the neo-Cons did not like this book and resorted to ad hominem attacks against Dr Parsi, effectively (and falsey) accusing him of being an Iranian agent:
“>link to huffingtonpost.com
Cohen's column was datelined Istanbul (Apr. 8, if memory serves). No doubt what brought him to Istanbul in the first place was Obama's visit to the city.
I suspect his column reflects discussions he's already had with the advisers accompanying Obama, perhaps even with Obama himself.
Ah what a great thread so far! Even the hope Obama will personally skim through Parsi's book, which is incredible in its historical knowledge of the twisting and turning Iran-USA-Israel rope.
Perhaps we might not hang our selves after all?
@ Mooser: "…most of the Jews in Israel, oh, not all of them, but I would say a great many of them, are Zionism's victims, too." Would you say, like a great many of the Germans in the preamble and implementation of Nazi Germany? Were they similar victims of Nazism? If not, why not, precisely?