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Coping with the Campus Intifada
By Gil Troy
The Jerusalem Report
August 8, 2005
Has the modern campus become a hostile, anti-Israel environment, where Zionists must fear to tread? Headlines this past academic year told of banned Israeli speakers and anti-Zionist hate-fests, anti-Israel professors harassing Columbia University students and British academics boycotting Israeli universities. But these brouhahas tell only part of the story. To champion Israel on campus effectively, hysterical overreactions are no better than apathy or complacency.
Overall, this is actually a golden age for Jews in universities. Jewish Ivy League presidents, Nobel Prize winners, honor students, even Jewish athletes, abound. Columbia University, long mocked as “the Ivy League’s Yeshiva University,” is teeming with kipah-wearing young men and modestly dressed Orthodox Jewish women, not to mention their bare-headed secular brothers and bare-midriffed secular sisters. The counterattack against pro-Palestinian educational malpractice in Columbia’s classrooms succeeded because so many politically savvy students there feel comfortable expressing themselves as Jews.
And yet, amid the sunny reality, ugly anti-Zionist clouds loom. The Columbia and British boycott controversies reflect a broader problem. The situation in Middle East studies festered for years before Columbia students – and some professors – finally objected. The Middle East experts’ rigid orthodoxy demonizing Israel and glorifying Palestinians has made Israel-bashing a popular professorial pastime.
This Intellectuals’ Intifada of comfortably tenured laptop warriors cheering jihad is not limited to anti-Zionism. The dominant academic strain of post-modernist, progressive politics worships Third World victimhood, condemning Westerners as oppressive. All too often, hypercritical politicking eclipses critical thought; sloganeering obscures analysis. Rhetorical inflation, sloppy thinking and anti-Western hysteria laced with double standards encourage absurd analogies, in which Guantanamo is labeled an American “gulag,” George Bush is equated with Hitler, and Israelis are compared to South African racists or Nazis. The British boycott effort sprang out of this fetid “politically correct” movement, which obsessively vilifies both the United States and Israel.
This anti-intellectual PC-chic atmosphere smothers the free thinking that good research and teaching require. Smart students resist the indoctrination; courageous professors try to stick to education. In fact, most students and professors spend their entire university lives blithely ignoring the rot, occasionally parroting the necessary postures, avoiding the most politicized teachers. Thus, the bullies dominate the debate, with rare bursts of dissent.
Those heroes who stand up deserve applause – but they should learn from the British and Columbia controversies. The British boycotters failed because, blinded by anti-Israel zeal, they violated fundamental academic commitments to free exchange. The opposition shrewdly counterattacked on academic grounds. But judging by the many statements insisting that rescinding did not endorse Sharon or “the occupation,” too many anti-boycotters implied they were so open-minded they wouldn’t even boycott evil Israel – a posture reflecting Israel’s low standing on campus.
Columbia University’s ad-hoc faculty-committee report on the controversy also confirmed the importance of mastering academic nuances. The contradictory testimony regarding intimidating incidents scattered over many years alienated committee members, as did the Boston-based “David Project’s” involvement. As a result, the report sidestepped the broader charges of politicized teaching, blasted pro-Israel “outside organizations” for “inhibiting … classroom debate,” refuted the distracting charge of anti-Semitism, and found only one time that a professor “exceeded commonly accepted bounds” of behavior.
In the future, pro-Israel students should file complaints immediately, document them thoroughly, and exhaust all on-campus channels, while downplaying whatever off-campus advice they receive. Academic culture is provincial and protective. Especially when challenging academics to defy the prevailing orthodoxies, it is best to indulge campus protocols and academic sensibilities.
Still, overall, both the British boycott fight and the Columbia campaign succeeded. Boycott opponents now have a template for success and a vigilance they lacked before. The Columbia students made biased professors defensive. Their efforts should encourage teachers to behave better in classrooms. Jewish students and even some Jewish professors are learning to defend their rights, lobby administrators, build coalitions, appeal to the media, and weave support for Israel with broader ideals of democracy, academic freedom, equality and human rights.
We must view the bursts of campus irrationality and venom in context. Rather than asking what Israel did to deserve such criticism, it is time to start asking, where did liberalism go wrong? How did progressivism spawn such knee-jerk, heavy-handed, narrow-minded campus politics – and how can thoughtful, open-minded, pro-Western liberals and moderates change this toxic dynamic?
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal, and the author, most recently, of “Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today,” and “Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s”.
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