‘Civility’ is for dancing classes, not universities, and is tool of pro-Israel political operatives — Franke

Columbia law professor Katherine Franke has been a true leader in the Steven Salaita case at the University of Illinois. She wrote a letter to Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise calling Salaita’s firing a “catastrophe” and canceling a long-scheduled appearance at the school. Then she went to Urbana Champaign on her own dime on September 18 to speak at the Independent Media Center. I’ve watched the speech portion of her appearance (the first 40 minutes) and it’s just great. Franke is self-effacing, humorous, insightful, and devastating.

At the end she states, “I recommit to an uncivil university,” making a “solemn pledge to continue inciting a new generation of students that refuse an obedience to orthodoxy and threaten to disorder settled notions of belonging, dispossession and identity on this campus and in Israel/Palestine.”

Some excerpts of the speech (rush transcript):

I’m here to stand with you in outrage on the assault on academic freedom that Professor Salaita’s termination represents… I’m here to engage this vibrant, thrilling really, intellectual community as you find yourselves in the eye of a storm that has touched almost every one of our campuses around the country….

Your struggle is our struggle, and that’s why I’m here and that’s why so many scholars and students and activists around the country… and around the world are with you.

You are not alone… You are not alone also in confronting the work of a very well financed, well organized and powerful set of groups that seek to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” [in the words of Justice William Brennan]. An orthodoxy regarding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and the meaning and consequences of certain forms of state violence in the Middle East, an orthodoxy regarding complex claims of dispossession, belonging and identity both here and in the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean…

What a great theme: complex claims of dispossession, belonging and identity. She’s talking about the discourse of anti-Semitism, of Jewish safety, and of the cheapness of Palestinian lives.

Franke refers to some of the school’s “largest donors” and “a powerful lobby that seeks to censure speech critical of Israel on college campuses.” They reflect a “concerted, well-coordinated political strategy” that “seeks to purge the academy” of speakers who defend Palestinian human rights and sovereignty on campus. There have been similar “witchhunts” at several other schools. The Columbia provost was blanketed by appeals by outside actors in connection with tenure for faculty up for promotion, who supported Palestinian rights.

They claimed that such speakers created a “hostile climate for Jewish students” — “Not only does criticism of the state of Israel amount to anti-semitism in this set of arguments but sympathy for the plight of Palestinians so too is antisemitic at its core.”

Franke went to the Federal Election Commission database to see to whom faculty and officers of the University of Illinois had contributed. Some of those faculty contributed to people who held openly homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic views.

On the new civility norm on campus, promulgated by Chancellor Wise:

Let me say one thing emphatically. Whatever else civility may be, it is not an academic norm. Rigor is an academic norm. Making arguments backed by evidence is an academic norm. A willingness to reexamine our settled premises in the service of understanding a problem more fully and more carefully is an academic norm. Civility… undermines the very values we hold dear in the academy. Civility has the air of something that is taught in finishing schools. Or to women to be more lady like. My mother sent me to dancing school when I was 10 to learn foxtrot and the waltz so I would be more ladylike and more civil…. I hated it.

The timing of the civility norm at several campuses is no accident.

These new civility codes echo in profoundly disappointing ways the framing that’s been advanced by political operatives that seek to capture the parameters of discussion of Israel and Palestine in an academic context..

This is their new strategy, advanced in a pr campaign aimed at university executives: that pro-Palestinian ideas are out of place, or are misplaced.

P.S. Nicholas Dirks at Berkeley has issued the same civility norm.. Sad come-down, that, from Dirks’s barricade days.

 

 

 

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>> K.F.: Whatever else civility may be, it is not an academic norm. Rigor is an academic norm. Making arguments backed by evidence is an academic norm. A willingness to reexamine our settled premises in the service of understanding a problem more fully and more carefully is an academic norm.

Well said! “Civility” seems to be an approach similar to “narratives”: Let’s not demand that the rapist be brought to justice and held to account for his past and on-going crimes! Rather, let’s be civil and discuss his narrative and those of his victims female co-habitationists.

This sudden clamor for “civility” on campuses seems orchestrated and has the focus group stench. Having worked briefly in market research and also having been paid fifty bucks to participate in a focus group about long distance service, I can imagine market research professionals trying out different words to a carefully selected sample of the group they are trying to reach. My guess is they are trying to figure out the best word to get middle class educated Jews to tune out Palestinian voices. I can almost hear the discussion about how “civil” scores against another vague word like “respectful”.

RE: You are not alone… You are not alone also in confronting the work of a very well financed, well organized and powerful set of groups that seek to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” – Katherine Franke

SEE: “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg & Saree Makdisi, Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009

[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 ARTICLE – http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/sept_oct_09_goldberg_makdisi

”Civility is for dancing classes…”Franke

I like this lady. LOL
So true. When dealing with Zionist Israel supporters especially.
I think one reason I even bother to read or follow the Zios drivel any more is I am fascinated by their upside down brains. How did their brains get that way?
They attack people like a pack of hyenas , defame, slander them, lie, cost them their jobs.
And then demand everyone else be ‘civil’….gawd!..there is a huge void in their grey matter if they think no one notices the hypocrisy.

MRW posted some interesting articles on here a while back about scientific research being done on whether ‘taught emotions and beliefs” that are constantly repeated and passed down in generations of families or groups can ‘ genetically alter’ the brain and some of its functions. I think there may be something to that There has to be some explanation beyond just ‘cult thinking’ for the hypocrisy….,.something that doesnt ‘click’ mentally and allow them to register it.
When you study the ‘instincts’ of animals which is inherited generation after generation in animal ‘memories’ its entirely possible humans could inherit the same process.

RE: “Nicholas Dirks at Berkeley has issued the same civility norm.. Sad come-down, that, from Dirks’s barricade days.” ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: The Zionist campaign to suppress free speech here in the U.S. is yet another reason I fear that Revisionist Zionism and Likudnik Israel (specifically by virtue of their inordinate sway over the U.S.) might very well be an “existential threat” to the values of The Enlightenment [like the “right of free speech”]! ! !

OTHER EXAMPLES OF REVISIONIST ZIONISM AND OUR “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” WITH LIKUDNIK ISRAEL TRUMPING (OVERRIDING) THE VALUES OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT HERE IN THE U.S.
“How We Became Israel”, By Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative, 9/10/12
LINK – http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-we-became-israel/
“America Adopts the Israel Paradigm”, by Philip Ghiraldi, Antiwar.com, 7/05/12
LINK – http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2012/07/04/america-adopts-the-israel-paradigm/
“Report: Israeli model underlies militarization of U.S. police”, By Muriel Kane, Raw Story, 12/04/11
LINK – http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/04/report-israeli-model-underlies-militarization-of-u-s-police/
“From Occupation to ‘Occupy’: The Israelification of American Domestic Security”, By Max Blumenthal, Al-akhbar, 12/02/11
LINK – http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/2178 OR http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29892.htm
“Homeland Security Made in Israel”, by Philip Giraldi, Antiwar.com, 8/22/13
LINK – http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2013/08/21/homeland-security-made-in-israel/
• NRA PUSHES PLAN IMPORTED FROM ISRAEL TO PUT POLICE IN ALL OF OUR SCHOOLS – NRA President’s Report: David Keene on the Push to Protect Our Children [VIDEO, 12:10] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Iy-LVL5dU
• IN THE WAKE OF THE BOSTON BOMBINGS, a “National Security Expert” on Fox Faux News said that the U.S. is like a 14-year-old teenager going through “security puberty”; and we must demand that our government “get on the Israeli page”! ! !
On the Wish List from the Boston Bombings – The Israelization of America [VIDEO, 00:25] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fff8dXQNVdA
“Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA”, By Michael Kelley, Business Insider, 6/07/13
LINK – http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6
“IDF Unit 8200 Cyberwar Veterans Developed NSA Snooping Technology”, By Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 6/07/13
LINK – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/06/09/top-secret-iaf-unit-exposed/
“Meet the Israeli-linked firm that sold Big Brother machines to Mubarak, Qaddafi – and Washington”, by Max Blumenthal, Mondoweiss, 6/15/13
LINK – http://mondoweiss.net/2013/06/machines-qaddafi-washington.html
“What was the Israeli Involvement in Collecting U.S. Communications Intel for NSA? ~ By Haaretz, The Associated Press and Reuters, informationclearinghouse.info, 6/08/13
LINK – http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35215.htm
“The Second Battle of Gaza: Israel’s Undermining Of International Law”, by Jeff Halper, mrzine.monthlyreview.org, 02/26/10
LINK – http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/halper260210.html
“The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg & Saree Makdisi, Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009
LINK – http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/sept_oct_09_goldberg_makdisi
“Brooklyn College’s academic freedom increasingly threatened over Israel event”, by Glenn Greenwald, guardian.co.uk, 2/02/13
LINK – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/02/brooklyn-college-bds-alan-dershowitz
“Peter ‘Powder Keg’ Beinart is disinvited from gig at Atlanta Jewish book festival”, by Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss, 11/05/12
LINK – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/peter-powder-keg-beinart-is-disinvited-from-gig-at-atlanta-jewish-book-festival.html
‘Israelis are helping write US laws, fund US campaigns, craft US war policy’, by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 6/30/12
LINK – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/israelis-are-helping-write-us-laws-fund-us-campaigns-craft-us-war-policy.html
“David Yerushalmi, Islam-Hating White Supremacist Inspires Anti-Sharia Bills Sweeping Tea Party Nation”, by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 3/02/11
LINK – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/03/02/david-yerushalmi-islam-hating-white-supremacist/
“Boston airport security program rife with racial profiling has Israeli links”, by Alex Kane, Mondoweiss, 8/14/12
LINK – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/boston-airport-security-program-rife-with-racial-profiling-has-israeli-links.html
“Obama’s kill list policy compels US support for Israeli attacks on Gaza”, By Glenn Greenwald, guardian.co.uk, 11/15/12
LINK – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/15/israel-gaza-obama-assassinations

P.P.S. Thank G_d for the constitution (especially the Bill of Rights) and the ACLU! ! !