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CounterPunch
September
23, 2002
Campus Watch:
The Vigilante Thought Police
by Will Youmans
A Philadelphia-based pro-Israeli organization
with the seemingly innocuous name, the Middle East Forum, began
a website to monitor US college campuses for academic pro-Palestinian
bias and happenings. Campus-Watch (http://www.campus-watch.org)
publishes dossiers on professors, as well as some examples of
their writings.
It describes itself as a group of "highly
qualified American academics that have banded together in defense
of US interests on campus, which includes the continued support
of Israel." This statement is misleading since all the content
of the website centers on criticism of Israel and concerns no
other supposed "US interest." That would be like the
pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC stating as its mission "to
bring more American support for the countries of the world, including
Israel."
Part of "the problem" they
are confronting is that sectors of academia "reject the
enduring policies of the U.S. government." How odd, professors
disagreeing with the government? I thought academics were supposed
to be hired based on the extent of their agreement with the government!
While the website dresses their monitoring
as a purely academic exercise, it generates hostile phone calls
and e-mails to listed professors and their families, as a profiled
academic told me. Not only is this website inflammatory, but
it clearly seeks to bring political pressure to bear on the professors
and institutions. Under the guise of keeping the public informed,
they are trying to force professors who do not share their unquestioning
support for Israel to be silent.
It does not engage their views in an
attempt to change their minds; it merely offers a public file
on individuals and institutions. The Middle East Forum seeks
to create such a backlash that will force them into keeping their
opinions to themselves.
Campus-Watch encourages students to snitch
on their professors. It has a whole section dedicated to student
reports. Campus-Watch is essentially forming a paramilitary thought
police, a private TIPS program for pro-Israeli advocates.
What the site omits is more interesting
than its transparent goal to quiet public expression of support
for the Palestinian cause. .
Oddly, it only has 8 professors and 14
institutions profiled right now. This is a miniscule proportion
given that over 400 faculty members have signed petitions calling
for divestment from Israel at the University of California, Princeton,
Harvard, and M.I.T. Even one of the founders, Martin Kramer,
admitted to the Chronicle of Higher Education that "the
list [of professors] is actually too short."
The brevity of the list of dossiers is
intentional in order to isolate the few chosen ones and depict
them as anomalies. The list is not short because each dossier
requires difficult research. These are essentially Google dossiers,
and would involve about 15 minutes of labor. The point is not
to substantiate criticism of the given professor's work, but
to lay out the targets for pressure. If they find that Campus-Watch
is successful, they will be strategic and calculating about who
and when they add dossiers.
After Snehal Shingavi announced his class
on "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,"
the University received several thousand calls, e-mails and letters.
Donors also withheld their contributions. What Campus-Watch seeks
to do is to arm and direct similar campaigns. A list of even
half of the Palestinian sympathizers on campuses would present
academic institution lobbyists with too broad of a base to start
with.
Interestingly, none of the featured professors
are recognizably Jewish, while some of the most prominent critics
of Israel are. The majority of the faculty they aim to expose
are of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. I suspect that
Campus-Watch is engaging in a bit of race-baiting. This complements
the stereotype that critics of Israel are foreigners and anti-Semitic,
and that support for Israel is in "US interests." Including
dossiers on Jewish professors such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelsetin,
and Joel Beinin would be inconsistent with the site's insinuations.
Despite the fear the targeted professors
and their families now have to face from the organized hostility
this site invites, there is something I like about it. It proves
that academic freedom and debate are not particularly valued
at the Middle East Forum and by the pro-Israeli zealots who are
accustomed to their opponents having no institutionalized avenues
of expression in this country. They are responding like the spoiled
child whose candy has been taken away.
Why are they so afraid of differing opinions
that they must file and chronicle those who hold them? This is
a response to their insecurity in the midst of a gradual withering
away of the efficacy of Israel's propaganda. I feel bad for the
crusading defenders of Israel, they have no factual basis for
their positions, so they have to resort to these kind of low
tactics.
What can activists do about this cyber-idiocy?
Activists should inundate the site with
reports. Our goal should be to have more information, more professors,
more institutions. Every utterance of criticism of Israel should
be sent to them. First, they may not be able to handle to flow
of information logistically speaking. Second, if they actually
add more information it will undermine their project. If many
professors are on there, it may actually become apparent that
there are some independent logical and moral bases for their
positions, despite the dismissive tone of the website.
Professors should send dossier information
to them and ask to be included. It not only will show solidarity
with those who are profiled, but it will give proof that they
are trying to focus pressure on certain targets rather than do
what their mission states.
For now, I am pursuing my own activism
against it. I decided to infiltrate this program. I am going
to submit several reports to Campus-Watch, under different aliases,
that show how stupid and uninformed their efforts are (I am using
fake names since one day I hope to have my own dossier).
Report 1:
"I agree wholeheartedly with the
fact that bias in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a huge problem
in the academy. Even worse, many outrageously one-sided academics
have worked their way through the revolving doors that connect
campuses, think-tanks, and the government. I want to report several
individuals whose unflinching partisanship, combined with their
positions of influence, make them detrimental to the prospects
of Middle East Peace:
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense,
is a former professor at Johns Hopkins University. He spoke last
April at a pro-Israeli rally in Washington DC. There he declared
that "we stand with you (Israel) in this time of trial."
He is publicly and privately in the hands of the pro-Israeli
lobby.
Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's third-highest
official, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Richard Perle,
Chief of the Defense Policy Board are also ardently pro-Israeli.
In 1996, Richard Perle was an Assistant Secretary of Defense
in the Reagan Administration, Feith was his Special Counsel.
They wrote a paper suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin
Netanyahu 'break from the peace process.' They argued that Israel
has a right to all of the land. This position interestingly,
was more extreme than that of most Israelis.
This is the truly dangerous academic
bias because it affects directly US policy. It is essential to
note that since there are no countervailing voices in the government;
there is no meaningful debate. That cannot possibly be in the
US's interest, which according to your website, is what you really
care about, right?
Michael Francisco, New York"
Report 2:
"I want to report several professors
dead and alive who are virulent haters of Israel. Something must
be done to combat their legacy and counter their stupidity and
academic dishonesty:
Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein wrote
in an op-ed in 1948 that condemned one of the pre-cursors to
the Likud party, which current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon belongs
to. They wrote, That this party is "closely akin in its
organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal
to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership
and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing,
chauvinist organization in Palestine." They accused then
future Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin's party of committing
a massacre at Deir Yassin where allegedly 240 civilians died.
Noam Chomsky, the world famous Linguist
and professor at M.I.T. is an outspoken of American policies,
including its unending support for Israel.
Though Gandhi was not technically a professor,
he had much input into the formation of Indian universities.
In 1938, he wrote that "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in
the same sense that England belongs to the English or France
to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on
the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce
the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews
partly or wholly as their national home." Need I say more?
Ahad Ha'am, the founder of Hebrew University,
criticized the ideological progenitors of Israel, the Zionists.
They wanted exclusively Jewish political control and power over
the land of Palestine. He wanted a Jewish cultural presence only.
While they said Palestine is a "land without people for
a people without land," he noted that there were indeed
native inhabitants. Thus, according to that crazy old man, it
was already a land with people. As a result, he wanted to "prepare
the people for the land, not the land for the people." Campus-Watch
should create a dossier for an anti-Israeli fanatic for this
anti-Israeli fanatic without a dossier.
In 1949, the famed Philosopher Martin
Buber told Israel's first Prime Minister that "we will have
to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive.
And that in its creation, and expansion; we as Jews, have caused
what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora.
We must address anti-Israeli bias in
the past as well as the present since the intellectual legacies
of these so-called academics is very much alive. Can you believe
we actually study some of these people's work and lives?
Thank you, Stan Carbunkle, Youngstown,
Ohio"
Report 3:
"Today in my sociology class Professor
Nick Johnson said that there are 'two-sides to every issue, including
the Israel-Palestinian conflict.' This rejects the position of
the government and most reasonable Americans, who know there
is only one-side, Israel's, and it is the right one. I did a
search for Professor Johnson in Google and found a letter to
the editor he published in the Boise Daily Bugle in 1997. He
wrote that 'the Arabs have a long and proud history.' These disturbingly
anti-Israeli statements must be reported.
Fred Russell, Boise State University"
Will Youmans is a 3rd year law student
at UC-Berkeley. He can be reached at wyoumans@umich.edu
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