A shocking/not-shocking story from Goucher College outside Baltimore. Students wanted to bring in two (Jewish) speakers on Israel/Palestine: Josh Ruebner of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and Rabbi Brian Walt of Fast for Gaza, hardly a bombthrower. The Goucher president, Sanford Ungar, a former establishment-journalist and freedom-of-speech type, blocked the invitations, saying they were unbalanced.
The school paper, the Quindecim reports [Emphasis mine]:
In an interview with The Quindecim, Goucher President Sanford J. Ungar defended his decision, citing a history of anti-Israel speakers on campus, several of which have resulted in complaints from students, alumni, and parents. "We don’t want Goucher to end up on a list of schools with a reputation of bringing vehemently pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli speakers to campus," said Ungar. "I don’t think it would be good for enrollment."
Echoing a similar refrain from other administrators, President Ungar also emphasized the need for a range of views on the panel. "For something to be a Goucher public program, it needs to meet a set of requirements, one of which is balance." Asked if he was aware of any student plans to bring a pro-Israeli speaker to campus, Ungar replied that he did not, but that his office is in talks to bring the Israeli ambassador to Goucher.
After the college faced a severe backlash in the wake of Anna Baltzer’s first appearance on-campus, including a newspaper attack ad listing his phone number and e-mail address, Sandy Ungar wrote an impassioned defense of free speech in The Goucher Quarterly, the college’s alumni magazine. “We at Goucher did not consider for one moment canceling the program that had provoked the uproar. If we yielded to this assault on free speech, what would be next? Objections to certain politicians — say, Governor Ehrlich? As I had asked at the time of the protest over his appearance, if we were to start down that slippery slope, who would compile the lists of which speakers were acceptable and which ones were not?"
Good question, Ungar. The newspaper’s editorial:
The administration’s decision to prevent Josh Ruebner and Rabbi Brian Walt from participating in dialogue on human rights in Gaza and the West Bank is troubling. There is no doubt that what we are witnessing is a classic struggle for academic freedom, a classic struggle between students and an administration. In the opinion of this newspaper, the administration has violated one of the essential principles of a liberal education: academic freedom.
…What are Rabbi Walt’s political views? The stated goal of Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza, of which he is a co-founder, is to “end the Jewish community’s silence of Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.”…
Josh Ruebner takes a much harder line on Israel, and many of his views fall squarely outside of the [consensus-manufacturing cliche eliminated to save readers of this site valuable time]. Among his published essays is an account of how he burned his Israeli draft card (he is a citizen of Israel by virtue of his father’s citizenship) in front of the embassy in Washington D.C. because he refuses to serve in “an army of occupation and oppression.” Ruebner is quoted by stand4facts.org, a pro-Israeli fact checking site, as saying, “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people is a moral outrage and a blight on the soul of the Jewish people.”
Couple comments. I always say that students will lead us on this issue. They see the hypocrisy and it’s upsetting to them. It makes them flock to the issue. This was the exciting energy in the Yale debating society’s vote a year ago to end the special relationship with Israel. Also note that an educational institution dedicated to free speech is falling into line on the lobby’s anti-Goldstone line: Let us assert that the killing of 300 children, many of them in a ghastly manner, was acceptable, and not give a platform to anyone who has a different opinion. And still those children are dead, and the world knows about it.
Let me be plain about my view of why this happens: This is about the Jewish community. If a speaker wanted to go on campus and criticize George Bush for the Iraq war and Obama for Afghanistan, he or she would be welcome. This is all about raising money; even the "enrollment" issue is a signifier for that. Note Ungar’s fundraising plans.
Also note Ungar’s free-speech-for neocons back story:
Ungar is a strong advocate of free speech and investigative journalism. He is an outspoken advocate of Judith Miller. Steadfastly supporting the New York Times journalist, he called her an American Hero.
Let’s remind Sandy about his “impassioned defense of free speech” before the neo-cons got to him. Here’s his contact info:
Sanford J. Ungar. President. Goucher College. 1021 Dulaney Valley Road. Baltimore, MD. 21204. By email to: sungar@goucher.edu . . . cc: kristen.keener@goucher.edu.
If you’re not in a position to donate a million dollars or so, or to withdraw a contribution of that size, your voice doesn’t get heard.
If we are being plain, we need to say it plainly – the Zionist supporters are using the power of money to quash opposing voices.
The sad thing is, it’s our money they end up using, ultimately.
We are subsidizing their contributions, no question of it.
Crony power uber alles, from the micro to the macro; nothing else really matters. It’s like a small town ruled by a clique of gossipy women, only writ large.
You know, I have to say I find this college president’s public admission of his lack of integrity a refreshing departure from the norm. He realizes that his behavior is crooked and hypocritical, but at least he acknowledges it.
RE: “Free speech advocate Ungar muzzles free speech at Goucher”
SEE: “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 TIKKUN MAGAZINE
(excerpt) …It is an extraordinary fact that no fewer than thirty-three distinct organizations-including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund-are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The coalition is an overwhelmingly powerful presence on American college campuses for which there is simply no equivalent on the Palestinian or Arab side. Its self-proclaimed mission is not merely to monitor our colleges and universities. That, after all, is the commitment of Campus Watch, which was started by pro-Israel activists in 2002. It is, rather (and in its own words), to generate “a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on campus.” There is, accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for — and even less interest in — the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process. Insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies. As far as these outside pressure groups (and their campus representatives) are concerned, the intellectual and academic price that the scholarly community pays as a result of this kind of intervention amounts to little more than collateral damage…
ENTIRE EXCELLENT ARTICLE – link to tikkun.org
Who wants free speech in the USA? Israel is much more important. The Americans
don’t count at all; they just need to step up their donations to Israel. Also, let’s get some more volunteers into the US Army and Marine Corps–we will be needing more boots on
the ground in the Middle East, to help Israel keep its hegemony there.
Wow, an advocate of Judith Miller! I enjoyed her imprisonment. I mean I was conscious of her incarceration on a daily basis and it made me feel a little better. Admittedly it was for other reasons than “free speech”. Her work with Chalabi and the neocons earns her eternal damnation, if there is such a thing.
Wasn’t there an insinuation by NYT’s Bill Keller that she might have been dorfing Scooter Libby? She was an “embedded” reporter, all right!
What do you want to bet Witty the Hypocrite cheers on Ungar’s choice as “his right.” Mr. First Amendment Fig Leaf tends to leave himself exposed in some very telling ways.
Referring to Rabbi Brian Walt as “anti-Israel” , as Ungar did by implication, is truly idiotic beyond words. On the other hand, it also shows the silliness of going on about “Zionists”, since I am quite sure that Rabbi Walt considers himself a Zionist, unless there has been a truly radical change in his views.
I think the person who has the best handle of what is going on is Neve Gordon in this instance, even in light of the current assault on him. A couple of years back he pinpointed the real issue in regard to the higher education campus, the creeping shadow of privatization and therefore private money, the overbearing control of the administration above the academic body (along with the disappearance of tenure), causes the current debacle on campuses across the USA. So once again we have this systemic specter which gives room to a moneyed elite, just like the activity in the government, puts everything up for sale.
“The answer is rooted in the fact that many American universities are being reconstructed as corporations whose major objective is to sell products, most obviously degrees to students. The corporatization of academic life means that faculty members are perceived as both producers and products. They are expected to come up with inventions and patents that can be sold to corporations, as well as with research funds and citations that have a pseudomarket value, since they help elevate the university’s ranking. As saleable products, faculty members are valued according to a corporate calculus rather than an academic one. To put it bluntly: Finkelstein was considered a liability to the corporation; therefore he was sacked…
The remaking of universities as corporations has also altered accountability. Those at the helm have become more accountable to boards of trustees, shareholders (i.e., major donors), and customers (i.e., students, parents, and viewers of athletics events) than to the university’s original mission (i.e., seeking truth and educating the next generation) and the faculty members who carry it out. Consequently administrators behave like corporate executives and are hardly invested in intellectual achievements or democratic processes…
The pressures brought to bear on tenure cases in America by the pro-Israel lobby are only one part of a much more complex story. There will, after all, always be attempts from outside to suppress unpopular voices in academe, and there will always be people within higher education who act as accomplices in efforts to stifle academic freedom. Neither group, however, would be as likely to succeed if the faculty governed its own university. And that is precisely where American academics have failed. It is not enough to expose the pro-Israel lobby. The menacing tide of corporatization must also be opposed. Academic freedom can be guaranteed only once the idea of the university is restored and the structure of universities transformed.”
WHY NORMAN FINKELSTEIN WOULD HAVE TENURE – IN ISRAEL
Of course, in Israel they are now trying to bring this same process to fruition (it is difficult because of university formation there), but they do it with ease in the USA. Why is that?
EVERYTHING IS UP FOR SALE
VR – Thank you for posting the music video. The honesty of young people gives me hope.
VR, thanks for the ref to the Neve Gordon piece. I think he makes a good point.
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“”For something to be a Goucher public program, it needs to meet a set of requirements, one of which is balance.”
balance – the thing missing in coverage of the i/p issue and in the attitude and position towards the i/p issue… yes, an important requirement and something hard to get when things are so very lopsided as they are with the i/p issue…
“”For something to be a Goucher public program, it needs to meet a set of requirements, one of which is balance.”
“Balance” is an excuse reporters and academicians use to soften (or stifle) any criticism of Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
No need for “balance” if you’re presnting the Israeli point of view. Accordingly, The Dersh is free to trash Goldstone at NYC’s Fordham Law School without the Ungarian canard of “balance.”
Balance is a joke. I can hardly believe Ungar expects us to fall for such a transparent sham in this day and age.
I have always liked Chomsky’s take on this issue of intellectuals, who is heard and who is not heard –
PARADE
Perhaps one of the best indictments i have heard in regard to “balance,” is one given by Rashid Khalidi after the assault on academics at Columbia –
FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM
VR – thanks very much for the link to Khalidi’s speech. Fantastic defense of academic freedom.
If you like this Oscar, there is a site which is devoted to the subject of academic freedom in real time. It came out of the denial of Norman Finkelsteins tenure, and the consequent loss of his position at DePaul University. It is an eclectic work give by a few towering academics and intellectuals, rarely in the same room to approach the same subject of academic freedom (you can either listen or watch videos of each presentation) –
DE PAUL ACADEMIC FREEDOM COMMITTEE
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