Make no mistake, I love Nick Goldberg, editor of the LA Times Op-Ed page. He runs the best pieces in the American press on the issue. He’s a smart guy, and a strong one, he’s obviously stood up to a lot of incoming. But today he runs a piece by Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben Gurion University, attacking Neve Gordon’s groundbreaking call for boycott that the LA Times bravely ran two weeks back. Carmi’s article includes this repulsive attack on academic freedom, and hint to Neve Gordon to resign:
Like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed. The law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding institution.
At the same time, by calling on other entities, including academic institutions, to boycott Israel — and effectively, to boycott his own university — Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world. After his very public, personal soul-searching in his Op-Ed article, leading to his extreme description of Israel as an "apartheid" state, how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?
The issue is, Why does the LA Times give Carmi a platform for this outrageous attack on a liberal faculty member standing up for Palestinian freedom? Why give this woman any air time outside of a news story on the issue? Because the LA Times has to. Because it has no choice. Because it is under incredible pressure from the Israel lobby for "balance." Remember what Carmi said in her equally-ugly but more nakedly-honest letter to faculty at Ben Gurion U: Neve Gordon has hurt us in the Jewish fundraising community in the U.S., his piece is a "dire" blow. This is the character of the new American establishment. When Abraham Lincoln talked about the slave power "conspiracy" inside the American political establishment of 1858, he meant just this nexus of newspapers, political parties, and players. We can change that constellation. New York Review of Books, where are you?
