Author: Martin Kramer

Searching for Israel in all the wrong places

On By Martin Kramer

Last month, Columbia University announced with much fanfare that it would establish a chair of Israel studies. Four generous trustees threw in $3 million to make it happen—and to help extricate the university from its crisis. Michael Stanislawski, a professor of Jewish history, will conduct the search. The New York Sun reported today that the search committee has been formed. When the reporter read me the names, I burst out laughing.

The committee includes Ira Katznelson, chair of the ad hoc (a.k.a. “whitewash”) committee that investigated student grievances; Dan Miron, a long-suffering Hebrew lit professor in the Middle East department; and Karen Barkey, an authority on the Ottoman empire. So far, reasonable. But then add this to the mix: Rashid Khalidi, the ubiquitous Edward Said Professor; and lesser-known Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and signer and supporter of Columbia’s divestment petition. Abu-Lughod, who’s writing a book on the Palestinian experience in 1948, has just published a longing letter to the departed Professor Said. “I sit here on the earthen terrace with the sunset warming the pharaonic temple across the field, wondering how to carry on your work. The first step, I know, is to keep talking about Palestine.”

The inclusion of Khalidi and Abu-Lughod on the search committee is perverse. Edward Said used to complain that the Palestinians needed “permission to narrate” their story. At Columbia, the situation is reversed: Israel can’t be narrated without the permission of the great Palestinian mandarins. They must be appeased, satisfied, propitiated.

And we know what price they will exact. The incumbent of the new chair must be someone who freely acknowledges Israel’s sins, perhaps even its original sin. It must be someone at home in the self-excoriating world of post-Zionism. It must be someone willing to consider, in all seriousness, whether the “one-state solution” is the only one left—what is called in the code “Israel/Palestine.” (Perhaps that should be the designation of the chair: Israel/Palestine studies.)

There will be plenty of willing and able candidates. Israeli universities are teeming with academics who fit the bill, and who’ve taken their oaths to Saint Edward. The search hasn’t formally begun, but some hopefuls have already floated their names to friends at Columbia. Did you really believe that the great mafia on Morningside Heights would cede any of its home turf without a fight? These people are militants, and they fight for every inch as though the world depended on it. I’m not going to guess how the battle for the Israel chair will end, but it will leave bloodstains on the upholstery, and it will perpetuate Columbia’s crisis right through the next academic year.

The affair also raises the larger question of whether Israel studies are the answer to the problems at Columbia or anywhere. Last month, the Forward did a piece on the drive for Israel studies on campuses, quoting its various boosters. I was the sole dissenter. “The answer to flawed Middle Eastern studies,” I was quoted as saying, “isn’t Israel studies, it’s better Middle Eastern studies.”

Without broader change, the malaise of Middle Eastern studies is bound to infect Israel studies. Last year I showed how Berkeley’s Said-set took funds given by pro-Israel donors for visiting Israeli professors, and hijacked them to serve post-Zionist purposes. They did it by rigging the selection committee. (“Anyone with experience in academic administration,” I wrote back then, “will tell you that most battles are won or lost by the selection of committee members.” Memorize that sentence.) Here and there, it may be possible to protect an Israel studies position, by burying it deep in an isolated Jewish studies program. But who wants to go down there? That really is “fortress Israel,” and it doesn’t do anything to improve the lot of students with broader interests, who are left with holy rollers like Joseph Massad and Hamid Dabashi.

So I don’t rejoice every time some heavily padded chair in Israel studies gets planted in the sand. I will rejoice when the entire public begins to understand that America (and not just Israel) deserves better. Low Library isn’t home to the kind of courage it takes to change the big context. The U.S. Capitol just might be.

Back at Columbia, I do look forward to the adventures of Professor Stanislawski, skipper of the search committee, as he tries to steer his boat while members of the crew row furiously in different directions. Of course, he’s busy giving assurances that only “academic qualities” will determine the outcome of the search. (He’s a precedent-setter.) Speaking to the Columbia Spectator on who might fit the chair, he promised an international search, and added: “It could be an American, Israeli, Australian, Austrian, Swede, a Palestinian.” I think he should be taken literally.

Then there are Bollinger’s trustees, whose money pads the chair. Let’s name them: David Stern, Mark Kingdon, Richard Witten, and Philip Milstein. However this ends up, the composition of the committee leaves them looking like cuckolds for the next year—and, possibly, forever. It’s an open question whether their current plight is tragic or comic. But whenever guys in master-tailored suits get taken for a ride by the tweed jacket gang, you’ve gotta chuckle. I do. It’s best to end where I ended my exposé of Berkeley last year: In academe, as in real estate, buyer beware.

• 2008 update: The chair has been filled. And guess what?

Joseph Massad: orientalist!

On By Martin Kramer

Last week, I brought this quote from Columbia University student-abuser Joseph Massad, regarding his book Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan: “The only unfavorable review, out of seventeen favorable reviews, it received was in Martin Kramer’s unscholarly magazine, Middle East Quarterly.” So I reproduced that review, which happened to have been written by a highly regarded scholar of Jordan, Asher Susser–someone Massad himself cites as an authority.

It turns out that this wasn’t the only unfavorable review. A Jordanian friend recalled reading a negative review in Jordan’s leading daily newspaper, Al-Ra’i, and went to the trouble of tracking down its author to get it. The reviewer, Jehad Al-Mheisen, is a researcher at the Jordan Press Foundation in Amman, and the author of a book (in Arabic) on tribe and state in Jordan. His review of Massad’s book appeared in Al-Ra’i on July 18, 2003, page 25. Here it is, in Arabic (pdf). (I also have the newspaper page, which I’ll get around to scanning, uploading and posting. The last bit of page one in the pdf version is cut off.)

The title of Al-Mheisen’s review is an apt synopsis of what follows: “An Orientalist View of the Making of Jordanian Identity.” Massad, he writes, is fixated on the top-down role of the army and the law in forging a Jordanian identity. But he completely overlooks the country’s social structure, most importantly the tribes. The integration of the bureaucracy with traditional social groups like tribes forms the core of Jordanian identity, which is durable, deep-rooted, and authentic. In that respect, Jordan isn’t any different than other Arab countries, including Egypt. Unfortunately, suggests Al-Mheisen, Massad is less interested in historical analysis than in political posturing. The resulting study is marred by “numerous distortions” and “conclusions that have no bearing on reality.” As for Massad’s invocation of Foucault and Gramsci, it’s just a formality. The analysis itself “serves Massad’s a priori orientalist perspective.”

Not being a Jordan expert myself, I won’t venture an opinion on the substance of Al-Mheisen’s critique. Of course, it’s wonderfully ironic that a Jordanian should charge Massad with orientalism. If that means seeing the West as prime mover, and denying Arab-Muslim “subjects” all agency, then Massad seems vulnerable. Even a sympathetic reviewer has complained that “the mass of the population barely get a mention in Massad’s account, the key subjects of which are the ‘Great Men’ of Jordanian history.” The greatest man is Glubb Pasha, the British commander of the Arab Legion and the anti-hero of Colonial Effects. “There is an impression that one, white, male, colonial subject is privileged with potency, whereas the agency of others is effaced. For the colonizer, one theory of the subject, for the colonized, another.” Hmmm, sounds like orientalism to me.

Al-Mheisen’s review gets effaced too. If, like Massad, you’re Jordanian-born and raised, you’re a regular visitor to Jordan, and you’re author of a book on Jordan, you’re going to know that your book was hammered in the kingdom’s leading daily newspaper. But why spoil the impression of scholarship above reproach? Anyway, the thumbs-down review appeared in Arabic, and who reads that? A committee in faraway Manhattan won’t be the wiser, so why not keep the narrative simple and elegant? Only one unfavorable review! And Kramer published it!

Alas for Massad, there are people in Jordan who do read the country’s top newspaper, and even remember what they’ve read, especially when it has to do with their “identity.” So he’s been caught in yet another lie, this one easily documented. Is there a pattern here? You tell me.

Who threatens Columbia?

On By Martin Kramer

In Professor Joseph Massad’s mid-March statement to the ad hoc committee investigating faculty intimidation of students at Columbia, he listed the support he’d received from various quarters, including petitions and letters. He then added this:

The Middle East Studies Association’s Academic Freedom Committee also issued a letter defending my academic freedom, as did the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

I’d seen all of these missives, with a major exception: the letter from the American Association of University Professors. The AAUP has much more weight than any of the other outfits: it’s the union of professors, and the prime defender of their academic freedom and tenure rights. It can and does censure universities for infringements. I’d assumed that the AAUP hadn’t entered the Columbia fray, so Massad’s reference to an AAUP letter surprised me. I asked the AAUP.

The AAUP confirmed to me that it wrote not once but twice to the Columbia administration the first time, prior to Massad’s appearance before the ad hoc committee, and the second time, after the committee issued its report on March 31. When I asked the AAUP whether it had plans to release the texts of these letters, it answered in the negative. So I asked a journalist to follow up, and he confirmed that neither the AAUP nor Columbia is prepared to release the letters.

Why? Let me propose a hypothesis: the AAUP laid down the law to Columbia. Do this, and we’ll stay silent. Do that, and we’ll go against you. It’s all hush-hush, of course, but it’s massive secret pressure. For all we know, the first letter may have framed the ad hoc committee report, which has been so widely criticized as a whitewash. The second letter may well set the parameters of Columbia’s future treatment of Massad and the Middle East department.

Isn’t it ironic? The ad hoc committee and the Columbia profs have denounced the outside pressure of the tiny David Project, Campus Watch, etc. Well, at least they applied their pressure in a public way, fully above the board. It now turns out that the AAUP, a national advocacy organization with 45,000 members and 500 campus chapters, has been sending missives straight to Low Library missives that Columbia and the AAUP are resolved to keep secret.

When the ad hoc committee issued its report, it said the following: “Although we originally anticipated producing two documents (a confidential report to the Vice President and a public summary), in the interests of transparency we have prepared a single document.” If the interests of transparency are so paramount in this case, let Columbia release the AAUP letters. Let’s determine whether they contain explicit or implicit threats. Let’s find out whether the members of the committee knew the contents of the first letter as they deliberated. (After all, Massad told them it existed.)

Until we see the secret letters, they’ll hang like a black cloud over the ad hoc committee report and over whatever the university might do to resolve the faculty crisis in future.

Update: Guess who’s the featured speaker at the AAUP’s annual convention in Washington in June? It’s Lisa Anderson, dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. She was Massad’s thesis adviser, she later defended him in a letter to Columbia’s president and she still somehow wound up as a member of the ad hoc committee. (A New York Times editorial said the university had “botched this job” by appointing her.) I imagine she knew precisely what the AAUP expected of the committee. How about letting the rest of us in on the secret?