Anti-Zionism on Campus

Description

Many scholars have endured the struggle against rising anti-Israel sentiments on college and university campuses worldwide. This volume of personal essays documents and analyzes the deleterious impact of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the most cherished Western institutions. These essays illustrate how anti-Israelism corrodes the academy and its treasured ideals of free speech, civility, respectful discourse, and open research. Nearly every chapter attests to the blurred distinction between anti-Israelism and antisemitism, as well as to hostile learning climates where many Jewish students, staff, and faculty feel increasingly unwelcome and unsafe. Anti-Zionism on Campus provides a testament to the specific ways anti-Israelism manifests on campuses and considers how this chilling and disturbing trend can be combatted.

Acknowledgments
Introduction and Overview: The Silencing / Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar

I. Scholars' Essays
1. BDS and Self-Righteous Moralists / Dan Avnon
2. Consensus, Canadian Trade Unions, and Intellectuals for Hamas / Julien Bauer
3. Bullies at the Pulpit / Doron Ben-Atar
4. A Traumatic Professorial Education: Anti-Zionism and Homophobia in a Serial Campus Hate Crime / Corinne E. Blackmer
5. Slouching Toward the City That Never Stops: How a Left-Orientalist Anti-Israel Faculty Tour Forced Me to Say Something (Big Mistake!) / Gabriel Noah Brahm
6. On Radio Silence and the Video That Saved the Day: The Attack Against Prof. Dubnov at the University of California San Diego, 2012 / Shlomo Dubnov
7. Fraser vs UCU: A Personal Reflection / Ronnie Fraser
8. If You Are Not With Us : The National Women's Studies Association and Israel / Janet Freedman
9. Rhodes University: Not a Home for All: A Progressive Zionist's Two-Year Odyssey / Larissa Klazinga
10. Loud and Fast versus Slow and Quiet: Responses to Anti-Israel Activism on Campus / Jeffrey Kopstein
11. A Controversy at Harvard / Martin Kramer
12. Attempts to Exclude Pro-Israel Views from Progressive Discourse: Some Case Studies from Australia / Philip Mendes
13. Anti-Israel Antisemitism in England / Richard Millett
14. Conspiracy Pedagogy on Campus: BDS Advocacy, Antisemitism, and Academic Freedom / Cary Nelson
15. When Did We Abandon Academic Integrity for Academic Freedom? / Denise Nussbaum
16. BDS and Zionophobic Racism / Judea Pearl
17. Friday, Nov. 13, 2015 at the University of Texas, Austin: Anti-Zionists on the Attack / Ami Pedahzur and Andrew Pessin
18. Col. Richard Kemp at the University of Sydney, Australia 11 March 2015 / Jan Poddebsky, Peter Keeda, and Clive Kessler
19. "Oh! Now I've Got You!": In the Sights of Anti-Israelists at The Claremont Colleges / Yaron Raviv
20. The Magic of Myth: Fashioning the BDS Narrative in the New Anthropology / David M. Rosen
21. Retaliation: The High Price of Speaking Out about Campus Antisemitism and What It Means for Jewish Students / Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
22. A Field Geologist in Politicized Terrain / Jill S. Schneiderman
23. Fanatical Anti-Zionism and the Degradation of the University: What I Have Learned in Buffalo / Ernest Sternberg
24. What is it Like to be an (Assertive) Israeli Academic Abroad? / Elhanan Yakira

II. Students' Essays
25. A Wake-Up Call at the University of Michigan / Jesse Arm
26. On Leaving UCLA Due to Hostile and Unsafe Campus Climate / Milan Chatterjee
27. BDS and Antisemitism at Stanford University / Molly Horwitz
28. On Being Pro-Israel, and Jewish, at Oberlin College / Eliana Kohn
29. Battling Anti-Zionism at CUNY John Jay College / Tomer Kornfeld
30. Students for Justice in Palestine at Brown University / Jared Samilow
31. Battling Anti-Zionism at the University of Missouri / Daniel Swindell

III. Concluding Thoughts
32. Inconclusive, Unscientific Postscript: On the Purpose of the University, and a Ray of Hope / Andrew Pessin

Index

Sujets

• Jewish Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• General officer
• Judaism
• Religion
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253034106
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ANTI-ZIONISM ON CAMPUS
STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Editor
ANTI-
ZIONISM
ON
THE UNIVERSITY, FREE SPEECH, AND BDS
CAMPUS
Edited by
ANDREW PESSIN and DORON S. BEN-ATAR
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pessin, Andrew, editor. | Ben-Atar, Doron S., editor.
Title: Anti-Zionism on campus : the university, free speech, and BDS / edited by Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2018] | Series: Studies in antisemitism | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018000247 (print) | LCCN 2017060899 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253034083 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253034076 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253034069 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Zionism—United States—Public opinion. | Zionism—Public opinion. | Public opinion—United States. | Education, Higher—Political aspects—United States. | Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (Movement) | Israel—Politics and government—Foreign public opinion, American. | Propaganda, Anti-Israeli.
Classification: LCC DS149.5.U6 (print) | LCC DS149.5.U6 A58 2018 (ebook) | DDC 320.540956940973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000247
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
Andrew Pessin
To Spencer Pack and John Gordon, who understand;
To Richard Landes, sine qua non;
and to the Algemeiner, for keeping watch
Doron S. Ben-Atar
To Alvin Rosenfeld, a model of scholarship, courage,
and decency
ובמקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש
In a place where there are no persons of integrity, try to be one.
—Pirke Avot 2.5
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction and Overview: The Silencing / Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar
I. Scholars’ Essays
1 BDS and Self-Righteous Moralists / Dan Avnon
2 Consensus, Canadian Trade Unions, and Intellectuals for Hamas / Julien Bauer
3 Bullies at the Pulpit / Doron S. Ben-Atar
4 A Traumatic Professorial Education: Anti-Zionism and Homophobia in a Serial Campus Hate Crime / Corinne E. Blackmer
5 Slouching toward the City That Never Stops: How a Left-Orientalist Anti-Israel Faculty Tour Forced Me to Say Something (Big Mistake!) / Gabriel Noah Brahm
6 On Radio Silence and the Video That Saved the Day: The Attack against Professor Dubnov at the University of California San Diego, 2012 / Shlomo Dubnov
7 Fraser versus the University College Union: A Personal Reflection / Ronnie Fraser
8 If You Are Not With Us: The National Women’s Studies Association and Israel / Janet Freedman
9 Rhodes University, Not a Home for All: A Progressive Zionist’s Two-Year Odyssey / Larissa Klazinga
10 Loud and Fast versus Slow and Quiet: Responses to Anti-Israel Activism on Campus / Jeffrey Kopstein

11 A Controversy at Harvard / Martin Kramer
12 Attempts to Exclude Pro-Israel Views from Progressive Discourse: Some Case Studies from Australia / Philip Mendes
13 Anti-Israel Antisemitism in England / Richard Millett
14 Conspiracy Pedagogy on Campus: BDS Advocacy, Antisemitism, and Academic Freedom / Cary Nelson
15 When Did We Abandon Academic Integrity for Academic Freedom? / Denise Nussbaum
16 BDS and Zionophobic Racism / Judea Pearl
17 Friday, November 13, 2015, at the University of Texas, Austin: Anti-Zionists on the Attack / Ami Pedahzur and Andrew Pessin
18 Colonel Richard Kemp at the University of Sydney, Australia, March 11, 2015 / Jan Poddebsky, Peter Keeda, and Clive Kessler
19 “Oh! Now I’ve Got You!”: In the Sights of Anti-Israelists at the Claremont Colleges / Yaron Raviv
20 The Magic of Myth: Fashioning the BDS Narrative in the New Anthropology / David M. Rosen
21 Retaliation: The High Price of Speaking Out about Campus Antisemitism and What It Means for Jewish Students / Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
22 A Field Geologist in Politicized Terrain / Jill S. Schneiderman
23 Fanatical Anti-Zionism and the Degradation of the University: What I Have Learned in Buffalo / Ernest Sternberg
24 What Is It like to Be an (Assertive) Israeli Academic Abroad? / Elhanan Yakira
II. Students’ Essays
25 A Wake-Up Call at the University of Michigan / Jesse Arm
26 On Leaving the University of California, Los Angeles, Due to Hostile and Unsafe Campus Climate / Milan Chatterjee

27 Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and Antisemitism at Stanford University / Molly Horwitz
28 On Being Pro-Israel, and Jewish, at Oberlin College / Eliana Kohn
29 Battling Anti-Zionism at City University of New York John Jay College / Tomer Kornfeld
30 Students for Justice in Palestine at Brown University / Jared Samilow
31 Battling Anti-Zionism at the University of Missouri / Daniel Swindell
III. Concluding Thoughts
32 Inconclusive, Unscientific Postscript: On the Purpose of the University, and a Ray of Hope / Andrew Pessin
Index
Acknowledgments
W E GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE the generous support of the Academic Engagement Network in the production of this volume. We are also grateful to Fordham University for its Marketing and Book Publishing Award in support of this volume.
ANTI-ZIONISM ON CAMPUS
Introduction and Overview: The Silencing
Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar
If someone dared to publish among us books that openly favored Judaism, we would punish the author, the publisher, the book dealer. That arrangement is a convenient and sure way to always be right. It is easy to refute people who do not dare speak . . . [when] conversing with Jews. . . . The unfortunates feel themselves at our mercy. The tyranny practiced against them makes them fearful. . . . I will never believe that I have rightly heard the Jews’ reasoning as long as they do not have a free state, schools, universities where they might speak and argue without risk.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile , Book IV (1762)
The Campus Situation
Change the word Judaism to Israel and Jews to Zionists and Rousseau’s eighteenth-century observation is disturbingly applicable to today’s campuses, two and a half centuries later. Those in the academy who support Israel, or who merely don’t despise Israel, are finding it increasingly difficult to speak up without risking verbal attack, social and professional ostracization, setbacks to their careers, and sometimes even physical threats. As a result, the Israel-friendly (or merely non-anti-Israel) voice on campuses around the world and in the global “republic of letters” is rapidly being silenced . The implications of this phenomenon, not only for Jews but also, we believe, for free speech, for the academy, and for Western values in general, are chilling.
Where some might see in Israel a prosperous (if flawed) liberal democracy, or the only modern example of an indigenous people reclaiming lost sovereignty over its homeland, the new campus orthodoxy sees only an apartheid regime founded on racism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and colonialist imperialism. Zionism, it believes, can be neither defended nor corrected, because the very idea of a Jewish state in that region depends on the dispossession of others and because the concept of Jewish democracy is an offensive oxymoron that can only perpetuate the unjust and discriminatory status quo. Israel and Zionism are thus cast as illegitimate, incorrigible abominations .

Those believing this are welcome to their opinion, of course, and should be free to advocate for it appropriately on campus and elsewhere. Indeed, freedom of speech requires tolerance of anti-Israel and even antisemitic hate speech, and we oppose efforts, however well intentioned, to spare universities this toxic scourge by denying advocacy groups a foothold on campuses. 1 The much bigger problem is that anti-Israel activists themselves are generally not interested in genuine open and honest debate. They don’t want to hear what the other side says, nor let anyone else hear it, because to them there simply is no other side; they seek to delegitimize Israel and Zionism as part of a long-term strategy of destroying the lone Jewish state in the world. Painting it as an abomination is a crucial part of that strategy. In pursuing that strategy, they exchange the mantle of scholarship for activism, or use the mantle of scholarship as a cover for activism. The current volume will show that these thinking-class activists sacrifice the appropriate norms of scholarship and freedom of speech (including respect for truth); they violate basic community standards of civility, decency, and respectful discourse; and they regularly harass and bully Israel-friendly individuals.
The problems raised by campus hostility to Israel were already serious a decade ago when Manfred Gerstenfeld published Academics against Israel and the Jews . 2 Its chapters document disturbing incidents on major American campuses (such as Columb