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In ‘naked attack on free speech,’ Harvard Hillel bars Avraham Burg

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News from the the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, released today. The speech at the Harvard dormitory took place last week.

November 20, 2013, Cambridge, MA— Avraham Burg, the former speaker of Israel’s Knesset, spoke in an undergraduate dormitory at Harvard College last week after being barred from speaking at Harvard Hillel.

images“It’s such a shame that Harvard Hillel would not allow an open discussion about Israel to take place within its walls,” Sandra Korn, who helped organize the talk. “Hillel should be a space for students to engage with Jewish issues, regardless of religious or political beliefs.”

Burg was allowed to attend an invitation-only dinner in the Hillel building, but was forbidden from hosting the event there since it was co-sponsored by the Harvard College Palestinian Solidarity Committee. The other co-sponsoring student groups included J Street U Harvard and two Hillel-affiliated groups, Harvard Students for Israel and Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance. The event took place in the Quincy House Junior Common Room instead.

“This is an attack on free speech in its most naked form,” said Ann Finkel, a Harvard student who attended the event. “I’m not sure what they were afraid of – people with all kinds of political views had a very constructive conversation with Mr. Burg.”

Notice that it was the sponsorship of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee that did it. This is the political-spiritual crisis in Jewish life, we think we can come to terms with Israeli history and future without engaging our brothers and sisters. The Jewish cocoon, as Peter Beinart put it. Or as David Remnick said on Charlie Rose, where are the Palestinians at this table?

Burg wrote this in our What Comes Next? series:

The next diplomatic formula that will replace the “two states for two peoples” will be a civilian formula. All the people between the Jordan and the sea have the same right to equality, justice and freedom. In other words, there is a very reasonable chance that there will be only one state between the Jordan and the sea – neither ours nor theirs but a mutual one.

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Shame on Harvard generally, for having such an atmosphere where thought control can be practiced so nakedly, and ineffectively. Why is this supposed to be an elite university? Come to Harvard where you’ll be taught what to think.

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Avraham Burg makes me proud to be a Jew.

He upholds the most noble and sanctified traditions of our history, in an era when dark and vicious racism is not only accepted but demanded by the Jewish organizational establishment.

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Brandeis, then Harvard. Presumably for the same reason: funding — or as it might be called a determination not to rile the moneyed old guard. Years ago it was Vanessa Redgrave, a famous actress, being hired — but then fired — by the Boston Symphony, due to funding concerns,

The universities and Hillels and Symphony Orchestras (and “public” radio stations and NPR and so much more) should stand up on their legs and say NO NO NO to funders who seek to control their programs. If everyone said NO to this sort of tyranny the big-money folks would have nowhere else to spend their money and, if they desired to see their names on a building, would have to grit their teeth and give to organizations which promoted free discussion.

But just as the Congress is “owned” by AIPAC, so too the universities are perfectly ready to allow themselves to be “owned” as well.

I don’t expect to hear many rabbis speaking out against this decision from Harvard Hillel.

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RE: “In ‘naked attack on free speech,’ Harvard Hillel bars Avraham Burg”

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”]! ! !

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

P.S. OTHER EXAMPLES OF ZIONISM’S VALUES TRUMPING (OVERRIDING) THE VALUES OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT HERE IN THE U.S. – https://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/palestinian-complained-reports.html/comment-page-1#comment-606719

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Hillel is a private group. This is not a loss of free speech.

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