Tag: Columbia

Profs say the darndest things (about Columbia)

On By Martin Kramer

“Columbia has a lot of diversity in the professors teaching about the Middle East, even politically.” That’s Joel Migdal, president of the Association for Israel Studies and a political scientist at the University of Washington. It’s the most inane thing yet retailed about Columbia’s Middle East faculty, and it shows how incredibly fungible the notion of “diversity” is within academe. Migdal’s last name means “tower,” and he seems to inhabit one.

I’d be interested to hear Professor Migdal elaborate on his statement to explain, with his rigorous attention to detail, what distinguishes Joseph Massad’s concept of Israeli racism from Hamid Dabashi’s concept of Israeli racism, or why Massad’s one-state solution is different from Rashid Khalidi’s one-state solution. (To judge from their recent joint appearance, any difference between the two seems to have shrunk appreciably.) And I wonder what he would say to Richard Bulliet, who’s taught Islamic history at Columbia for thirty years, and who now describes the Middle East department as being “locked into a postmodernist, postcolonialist point of view.”

There’s a broader context here. Despite Migdal’s presidential title, he won’t be well-known to you if your sole interest is Israel studies. That’s because he’s best-known as the co-author (with Baruch Kimmerling) of the standard post-Zionist history of the Palestinians. The revised edition is titled The Palestinian People: A History, and it carries the endorsement of Rashid Khalidi (“a dispassionate and balanced analysis”). What all this says about the priorities of Israel studies in America is a subject for another posting.

There was another recent quote that doesn’t contribute to the discussion, this one from Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in his Columbia speech on Monday. He got the essence of the problem just right: Columbia’s coverage of the Middle East is the most unbalanced of any university in America. But I don’t believe, as Dershowitz is reported to have said, that Edward Said was the “Palestinian Meir Kahane.” Said came to advocate the dissolution of Israel, but he never exalted violence, which is the mark of Kahanism. If Meir Kahane has a parallel, it’s the suicide-cult priests of Hamas (whose “moderation,” of course, is a matter of general consensus among America’s Middle East experts).

In my book Ivory Towers on Sand, I quoted the historian Maxime Rodinson, who said that Said employed a style that was “a bit Stalinist,” and the historian P.J. Vatikiotis, who wrote that “Said introduced McCarthyism into Middle Eastern studies.” Said wasn’t a Palestinian Stalin (there’s another candidate), but a Palestinian McCarthy? Absolutely. What we’ve seen at Columbia among Said’s acolytes is that same underlying McCarthyism, stripped of the veneer of learned respectability that Edward Said gave to everything he touched.

Saving Private Massad

On By Martin Kramer

Fiascos at Columbia University follow one another in a dizzying succession. This week’s episode opens tonight at the Law School, where four academics will solemnly consider a burning question. No, it’s not how to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which is the present mission of armies of diplomats and statesmen. It’s this: “Is the two-state solution still the best hope for Palestinians and Israelis, or is time to begin working toward a one-state option?” On Morningside Heights, some people ponder this over their cornflakes.

The correct answer, in case you were wondering, is that the right time isn’t now or ever. The binational “one-state option” is a thin euphemism for the elimination of Israel and its total replacement by Palestine, which would invite “back” several million Palestinians eager to realize their “right of return.” Those few Israelis who have heard of the idea shrug it off as a joke, and no responsible Palestinian faction advocates it, because it defies common sense and popular will on both sides. It’s a bit of secular messianism, which if it were ever made operational would produce a few more generations of blood and fire. It properly belongs on the same shelf of “solutions” as the “transfer” of Palestinians across the Jordan River or the Hamas vision of a Jew-free Islamic state. It’s crackpot.

So the idea would consign millions of people to endless bloodshed. Is that a reason for intellectuals not to champion it? In Edward Said’s declining years, when he took on the aura of a prophet, he veered toward the “one-state solution.” Unfortunately, he never really thought through its implications for the Jews. “The Jews are a minority everywhere,” he told an Israeli interviewer. “They are a minority in America. They can certainly be a minority in Israel.” When the interviewer asked him whether a Jewish minority would be treated fairly, given the region’s past history, Said offered this bit of rigorous thought:

I worry about that. The history of minorities in the Middle East has not been as bad as in Europe, but I wonder what would happen. It worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don’t know. It worries me.

It worried him? He wondered what would happen? How many Israeli Jews would sign on to that? Said never managed to persuade even his one Israeli soulmate, Daniel Barenboim, that his messianic fantasy was workable.

But academe has never lacked for people willing to follow Edward Said off a cliff, and assorted acolytes have since cogitated, speculated, and elaborated upon his half-baked idea. Palestinian intellectuals living abroad have flocked to it because it makes their impassioned hope for the demolition of Israel look fashionably progressive: The Israeli Jews don’t have to leave, they can live comfortably as a minority among us. (I have the uneasy feeling that they don’t worry as much as Said did about whether that would really work.) A handful of Jewish and Israeli intellectuals have also taken up the idea, because… well, go figure. It gets them written up in the Haaretz Friday supplement, for a weekend of fame.

The mission of this cult is to establish that the “one-state option” wasn’t simply the hallucination of the Morningside messiah, but that it’s a genuine program (unlike, say, “transfer” or an Islamic republic), deserving of inclusion on any panel devoted to “alternative proposals for Middle East peace.” That’s the sub-title of tonight’s Columbia panel, and to judge from its co-sponsors, the cult members have achieved their initial goal. The prime mover behind the panel is Qanun, a group of Arab students at the Law School, but co-sponsors include the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA; Lisa Anderson, dean), the Middle East Institute (Rashid Khalidi, director), and the office of the chaplain. That’s the backing of social science and God right there.

But there’s another goal, more immediate in the Columbia context, and I think it’s this: to save the besieged Joseph Massad, assistant professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and the prime target of Columbia’s investigation into faculty abuse of students over Israel.

Since coming to Columbia, Massad has modeled himself on Said. But the result has been a crude parody of Said: Massad’s extremism is unmitigated by finesse or nuance. He once denounced Israel as racist twenty-two times in a single mind-numbing op-ed. His forthcoming book, for which he hopes to get tenure, is an attempt to redefine Zionism as “an anti-Semitic project.” He has compared Ariel Sharon to Goebbels. He has written that Christian fundamentalist supporters of Israel are “the most powerful anti-Semitic group worldwide.” (All references here.) The student charges against him are plausible precisely because he reads like a man who has lost all control of his rage.

When Said was around, he could shelter Massad and see to his needs under one roof—a Columbia doctorate, publication by the university press, and a first appointment in a Columbia department. Were Said still around, he would have quashed the present controversy with one sharply-worded essay in the Ahram Weekly, sending everyone at Columbia scurrying back into their burrows. But Said is gone, the students and some faculty have gotten their courage back, and it’s now a level played field. So how is Massad to be saved?

By including him, as the announcement of tonight’s panel does, among a group of “eminent” scholars in an event co-sponsored by reasonable people. By framing the event in a way that seems to locate Israel’s elimination within the field of mainstream debate. By positioning him alongside an Israeli of comparable extremism (Haifa University’s Ilan Pappe, en route to participate in “Israel Apartheid Week” in Toronto). And by putting him up there with Rashid Khalidi, who will say that Massad’s vision could become the only option if Israel doesn’t concede, concede, concede. (The Princeton medievalist Mark Cohen also appears on the panel. He’s window-dressing.)

So SIPA and the Middle East Institute have affixed their names to an exercise in quasi-academic extremism, which legitimizes the case for dismantling Israel and throws a lifeline to the professor who champions it. There’s no surprise in any of this: it’s Columbia. What did surprise me was the news that Columbia wants to raise millions of dollars for a chair and a visiting professorship in Israel studies.

My question to Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger is this: do you mean the two-state-solution Israel, or the one-state-solution Israel/Palestine? And if it’s the latter, or something in between, are you going to use that money to sponsor events like this evening’s timely discussion? Or bring over more Israelis in Maestro Barenboim’s wake, to pay tribute to “my dear Edward” in the Said Memorial Lecture? Or bring Joseph Massad and Ilan Pappe together to co-teach Massad’s course on “Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Society”? (You know, the one with the blunt disclaimer: “The purpose of the course is not to provide a ‘balanced’ coverage of the views of both sides.”) Or develop new trendy courses like the one being offered this semester by another Said acolyte (an Israeli Arab) on “Cultures of Colonialism: Palestine/Israel”?

Sorry to ask all these pesky questions, but like Edward Said, I tend worry a great deal about the Jews.

Morning-after update: Here’s a report on the panel proceedings from the Columbia Spectator. Only one of the four panelists (Cohen) is reported to have supported a two-state solution, and he spoke off-topic. The Spectator: “Khalidi and Massad agreed with Pappe’s assessment that a two-state solution is a ‘utopian vision’.” A two-state solution is utopian! If the report is true, then Khalidi has abandoned his past position in favor of Said’s folly. Otherwise, everyone was perfectly true to form: “The panelists attacked Israeli racism as the root of conflict.” Of course. It’s Columbia.

Further update: Mark Cohen corrects the Spectator: “I in no way and in no words associated myself with that view [‘the reality is defined by Israeli racism’], which was most vociferously presented by Professor Massad.” Glad to learn it.

Columbia’s Darkest Hour… So Far

On By Martin Kramer

On Sunday, I posted an entry at my weblog Sandbox, on a conference scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, at Columbia University. The conference was to deal with the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the advertised speakers included the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon.

The event looked to me like a public relations set-up and a disaster in the making. For months now, the national press has reported Columbia’s mishandling of the crisis prompted by the documentary film Columbia Unbecoming, in which Jewish students tell of faculty intimidation over Israel. In the midst of this maelstrom, at the last possible minute, and out of the blue, came the announcement of the conference. In a planned day-long event, to be punctuated by a luncheon and capped by a reception, the Israeli ambassador would be rubbing shoulders with three key players in the controversy: President Lee Bollinger, Dean Lisa Anderson, and Middle East Institute director Rashid Khalidi.

I believed that an all-smiles photo of the ambassador with these people, at this time and place, would undermine the courageous students who have come forward with their accounts. So I urged the ambassador to reconsider his appearance, and he did. According to a press report, he consulted with Jewish community leaders, reviewed the situation at Columbia, and decided to cancel the engagement. (According to that same report, Columbia has “postponed” the entire event until September.)

I applaud the ambassador’s decision. It must have been a difficult call. It’s the mission of Israeli diplomats to make Israel’s case, and in pursuing that mission they seek to sit at any table, stand on any podium, and enter into any dialogue. Only the most extraordinary circumstances would justify a decision to cancel an engagement to speak to a distinguished audience in a prestigious setting. And a speech in the Low Library Rotunda of Columbia University, preceded by greetings from the university president, is precisely the sort of event that an Israeli ambassador covets—in normal times.

Alas, these are not normal times at Columbia. In his consultations, the ambassador would have heard this: Columbia’s leaders have failed to lay out a roadmap for resolving the problems exposed by the film. One American Jewish leader, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has gone on record expressing disappointment with Bollinger’s performance. “We haven’t seen anything except talk,” Foxman said earlier this month. “It’s a process without an end.” Ambassador Ayalon’s gesture amplifies that message of discontent.

This is Columbia’s darkest hour so far, and it’s mind-boggling to think that it’s come to this. Many facts surrounding the affair are disputed, but one of them isn’t: the university’s leaders failed to detect the problem early, diagnose it in a timely way, and act decisively to solve it. I first wrote in some detail about dysfunction in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) way back in the summer of 2002. A year later, the distinguished composer John Corigliano caused a stir by criticizing MEALAC during an acceptance speech at a Columbia award dinner—and he got a round of applause for it. Corigliano, I wrote the very next day, “said out loud what untold numbers of friends of the university are saying in private. This time the criticism was in a minor key. The next time, the university may not be so lucky.” Columbia has been very unlucky since I posted those words, but MEALAC would never have attracted the attention of the filmmakers if the administration had opened its eyes earlier.

Indeed, if the administration had only listened to other faculty, it might have heard the oncoming train. “The university should have looked at MEALAC five or ten years ago.” Those aren’t the words of the Hillel rabbi or a med school professor or the head of a Jewish organization. They belong to Professor Richard Bulliet, who for nearly thirty years has taught Islamic and Middle Eastern history in the History department. It’s safe to assume there was similar grumbling in the faculty lounges. Sure, you would have had to strain to hear it above the noisy doings of Edward Said and his acolytes. But registering rumbles before they become roars is what administrators are paid to do.

Even now, Bollinger’s strategy for managing the crisis has been inept. Only in the bubble of Columbia would anyone think to create the kind of committee that Bollinger created to investigate the problem. This contraption, flawed in its composition, vague in its brief, shot through with conflicts of interest, is precisely the sort of half-measure that would send stockholders fleeing if Columbia were a corporation. Far from easing the credibility crisis, it has exacerbated it.

What should Columbia conclude from the ambassador’s gesture and the collapse of the conference? It’s this: the worst isn’t over just because the New York Times has done its article. Columbia’s situation can worsen, and I believe it will worsen, unless and until the university comes up with an operational plan for addressing the grievances of students and breaking up the cult that pretends to be Middle Eastern studies. That takes leadership. As soon as Bollinger’s committee finishes its work next month, it’ll become irrelevant to the bigger question. And at that point, Columbia’s president will need his own plan, and the determination to see it through.

Let there be clarity on this final point: no one advocates a boycott of Columbia. The Israeli ambassador isn’t an academic, he represents his government, and it’s his duty to act in a way that upholds the dignity and interests of the State of Israel. At this moment, he believes this duty is best served by avoiding Columbia, and I think he’s absolutely right. But his act implies nothing for the regular academic traffic in which Columbia is so central. I can’t commend Columbia to aspiring students of the Middle East, but I wouldn’t hesitate to participate in a purely academic activity of the university. And if I were advising Bollinger, I’d tell him to begin to engage prominent Israeli scholars in an academic discussion of Columbia’s problem. (By “Israeli scholars,” I don’t mean the Israel-bashing post-Zionists regularly feted at MEALAC and Rashid Khalidi’s Middle East Institute. I mean people in positions of academic leadership.)

I’m rooting for Columbia, and I have a vested interest in its redemption. I earned a master’s degree in history there (thirty years ago), and Columbia University Press published my tenure book (twenty years ago). The enduring value of these credentials depends partly on the enduring good name of the university. I pray the day isn’t far off when the ambassador of Israel can ascend the steps of Low Library without pangs of conscience. It’ll be the same day I put my Columbia diploma back on the wall of my campus office.