For those of us at Columbia University, and who are familiar with the campaign that has included hate-mails by the thousand, intimidation, computer attacks and even death threats against certain of our professors, what David Horowitz's on line magazine has written about Marla Ruzicka will come as no surprise.
When The New York Times, Nightline, and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, its time for a reality check.
Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka's sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harm's way, and morally equate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11
[. . .]
With her cascading blonde hair and youthful looks, Ruzicka didn't look like your average greasy-haired, pot-smoking, hackey-sack-playing, crunchy radical. And the media swooned over her, the newly-anointed Vanity Fair pin-up in Birkenstocks. . .
But looks are deceiving. Marla Ruzicka was no mere peace activist
[. . .]
Ruzicka went to Iraq as an activist for Code Pink, which is more aptly titled Code Pinko by FrontPageMag.com writer Jean Pearce. Code Pink is an assortment of neo-Commie America-haters who love Fidel Castro (and Cuba under him) and Marxist Sandinista thugs (thankfully, long ago deposed) and have ties to environmental terrorist groups (Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front)
[. . .]
Back on U.S. soil, Code Pink harasses badly wounded American soldiers, protesting them outside the Walter Reed medical facility in Washington, DC. Code Pinkos disrupted last weeks Congressional confirmation hearings on UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton, shouting and unfurling banners against him. They are also shadowing military recruiters to foil recruiting efforts
[. . .]
"There are plenty of young American men and women Ruzickas age and younger who've been brutalized or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But none of them got the wall-to-wall fawning coverage that Ruzicka got unless they were anally raped or formerly played pro football.
Link to article in FrontPageMag.Com.
But what is so distressing is how the NYTimes and the Columbia administration essentially endorsed the David Project's charges against the three professors and rather than defending them from attack, in fact launched an investigation premised on the claims made in a utterly fraudulent propaganda film produced by the David Project.
I good introduction to the issue can be found in an article written for Daedalus (the official journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) by Columbia Provost and Emeritus Professor of Sociology Jonathan Cole. In this article Cole sets the recent attack on academic freedom in an historical context.
Excerpts:
Unfortunately, most leaders of higher education have done a poor job of educating the public about the essential values of the American research university. They have also failed to make the case for the research university as the incubator of new ideas and discoveries. As a consequence, when a professor comes under attack for the content of his or her ideas, the public has little understanding of why the leader of a research university, if he or she is to uphold the core principle of academic freedom, must come to the professor's defense.
Attacks on academics follow a clear pattern: A professor is singled out for criticism. This is followed by media coverage that carries the allegations to larger audiences. The coverage is often cursory and sometimes distorted. Some citizens conclude that the university harbors extremists who subvert our national ideals. Pressed by irate constituents, political leaders and alumni demand that the university sanction or fire the professor. This is an all-too-familiar story in our nation's history.
The recent attack on Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University offers a perfect example of how this process unfolds. The drama began with a group called the David Project, which was launched in 2002 "in response to the growing ideological assault on Israel."
The Project subsequently produced a one-sided twenty-five-minute film, "Columbia Unbecoming," in which former students accused Professor Massad of inappropriate behavior in his elective course, "Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies." One former student alleged on camera that Massad used "racial stereotypes" and "intimidation tactics . . . in order to push a distinct ideological line on the curriculum"; another asserted that Massad had crossed the line "between vigorous debate and discussion, and hate."
The David Project distributed this film to the media, and one-sided stories soon began to appear in conservative publications such as The New York Sun. This triggered follow-up stories in The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other local, national, and international news outlets. One, appearing in the November 21, 2004, Sunday edition of The New York Daily News, bore the headline "HATE 101."
Not every story about Massad was this crude. A correspondent for The Jewish Week, for example, interviewed an Israeli student at Columbia who strongly defended Massad. "The class was an incredible experience," this student reported. "It wasn't fun to be the only Israeli in class, but I never felt intimidated. Passionate, emotional, but not intimidated."
The response of the University was to establish an "ad hoc" committee to investigate the charges. The committee established that the allegations made in the David Project's film, Columbia Unbecoming were baseless with the exception of one incident on which eyewitness accounts were equally divided. Most of the "students" who appeared in the film, it turned out had never even attended Prof. Massad's class.
Some would say that justice has been done. But the David Project, emboldened by Republican control of Congress and a far-right administration very much in synch with their agenda has vowed to continue the fight.
Others point out that the real acts of intimidation were never investigated and, in essence, a well-funded group of outside attackers, were allowed to dictate University policy. The following cogent summary of the ongoing threat and its implications was written by one of my fellow PhD students, who chooses to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisals.
It is for us to get upset when David Horowitz attacks an utterly uncontroversial figure like Marla Ruzicka, but the real test of our values is the extent to which we can take equally (if not more serious) attacks on those who may advocate views which not all of us are comfortable with (i.e. criticism of Israeli state policies). I hope some portion of the DKos community will read this and take it seriously enough to follow the links and find out more.
I post my friend's commentary in full, despite its length, because it is not available anywhere on the web; links to further reading are provided below this.
The Columbia Ad-Hoc Committee that was created in response to allegations of intimidation in the classroom by several faculty members in the MEALAC program was released on March 31. I watched the David Project's film for the first time on March 6th. I gather from those who had seen the film once before, that this was the 7th version of the film. The makers of the film have constantly changed it in the face of criticism--including criticism in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. The incidents that were described in the film did not appear to be acts of intimidation to me. Rather the film gave an entirely new meaning to the term intimidation: intimidation was everything that did not fit the David Project's political agenda! In response to criticisms from several Columbia faculty members, the makers of the film said that it was not a documentary, but an affidavit of evidence. The film itself was screened all over the place--to politicians in the US and Israel; to trustees; to the alumni; before it arrived here for students to evaluate. It seems everyone had a right to respond to it except the accused. The film's supporters have argued that the proof of guilt of the accused was in their scholarship and their political stance. There were and still are demands from the film's supporters that the University set up a commission of inquiry made up of outside experts, chosen in consultation with the David Project and its allies (i.e. vetted by them). I have concluded from various conversations here at Columbia, that the President of the University had in fact agreed to the creation of a such a committee.
However, several senior faculty members demanded a meeting with President and trustees, to argue that outside interference would violate academic freedom and the autonomy of the university. The CU administration set up an ad hoc committee as a compromise solution. I gather that at the political-ideological level the lines within the university were between those who have internalized the Zionist/Israeli state definition of anti-Semitism versus those that believed that a critique of Israeli policy was a valid academic pursuit and that such critique was not by definition anti-Semitic. At the "purely" administrative level the line was between those who presumed from the beginning that the allegations were valid and true versus those who did not make such a presumption.
Unlike most faculty and many graduate students here at Columbia, I view the creation of the ad hoc committee as a serious problem. It should never have been created because it sets a precedent and sends a message to anyone who wants to target teachers and the academy. I know that most faculty view the ad hoc committee as a way to protect the Universitys autonomy from outside right wing attacks (a common sense conclusion). I happen to differ with them on the committee because there were and are very powerful forces on the inside who want to institute a political witch hunt, and will do it even if it means undermining this autonomy. Nor are these folks going to be going to be easily out-maneuvered. In addition, events prior to and after the committee issued its report suggest that Joseph Massad is being singled out by both the David Project and by the University administration. A few weeks ago, before the committee's report was released, Bollinger addressed a group of students on this controversy and prefaced his comments by saying that he would "assume that the allegation are true." Also, one has to assume that the committee did not issue a unanimous report--rather the document reflects a compromise of a divided committee. There is no public evidence of this; but I feel that there are good grounds to believe this from what the rumor mill is saying.
The University administration and now the ad hoc committee claims that Columbia's grievance procedures are obscure, unclear and did not work. Thats pure bull shit. There are administrative processes and structures in place to handle grievances. All they had to do was appoint a senior dean of undergraduate advising as a temporary special administrator, whose responsibility would be to gather these grievances and then to walk them through the grievance process (which I gather takes longer than 3 months, but does work). If the existing grievance structures were not up to the task to handle the complaints, there were are all kinds of internal committees that were already reviewing grievance procedures here at Columbia; and these could have been speeded up. So the evidence that was to presented could have been gathered and while the 'reform' committees were told to expedite their work. This would have shown that the university had more spine than to cave in and it would have killed the problem much more subtly and quietly. There were also other strategies available to the administration to question the claims that Columbia is afflicted a severe case of anti-Semitism.
The tactic of using a film to make serious allegations, and that too in a manner that disregards the privacy of both accuser and accused is itself a violation of the rules that govern such administrative procedures. I have worked for seven years at a small college and served on an internal grievance panel for two of those years. The procedures there were even more obscure. But one thing stood out--all sides were required to respect the privacy of everyone involved. Here, the accused were named in very public way and portrayed as guilty until proven innocent by everyone. In effect, even though the Committee's report tries to criticize this aspect of the film, it has legitimized this tactic of public accusations and the violation of privacy by its very existence.
The other problem has been the administration's public response. I think there is special burden on senior administrators--especially the Provost and the University president to defend the idea that one aspect of liberal education is to teach students to recognize distinctions and make judgments. In this case, their challenge was to argue that that critiques of Israel are not by definition prejudiced or anti-Semitic and that such critiques do have a place in the academy. But neither has done that. Bollinger has done the exact opposite, as his statements to various news outlets suggest. He has for instance made comments on the content of the courses taught by some of the MEALAC faculty to the press. This is precisely what Jonathan Cole (the ex-Provost) argues is an invitation from the inside to breakdown the autonomy of the University. And I keep hearing them (i.e. Bollinger, especially) make these ridiculous statements that reduce the classroom to a space where opinions and 'beliefs' are to be freely expressed. This, again is bullshit; its a lazy way of talking about academic freedom. I have yet to encounter s single professor who has let me get away with expressing my opinions and beliefs without challenging me. So, why should there be exceptions made for those who find a critique of Israeli policies offensive? The classroom is not Hyde Park. This is what Mahmood Mamdani keeps repeating in his speeches on this issue. So why can't Brinkley and Bollinger say the same, only in different terms? Why can't they say that students come to learn, that the faculty are hired to teach an issue or topic from a particular perspective; and that the University will protect both equally vigorously? Why can't they argue that "academic freedom" is a collective right and demands equal RESPONSIBILITY from student and teacher; that the University is committed to creating space for learning and teaching (not just spouting opinions)? I say equal responsibility even though there is a fundamental power difference between student and teacher because students are here at the university as adults, and because they are generally quite adept at distinguishing scholarship and pedagogy from ideological indoctrination. Mine are not very original or complex ideas about academic freedom; in fact, they can be communicated by any average thinker or pr hack. Yet, we have a president who is running rampant saying all kinds of stupid and yes, racist things. My favorite is his line about how we must have balance in our teaching of complex, disturbing issues. Presumably, neo-liberal economics does not require this balance because it is not disturbing as an economic theory! I guess, the next time I discuss the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 with my students I should provide them with a balanced view by presenting them with Vajpayee and Narendra Modis denials! After all, I should not unsettle my Hindu nationalist studentsit will intimidate them.
It is also very disturbing to me that neither the administration nor the faculty has made a single public comment on how or why Massad's research and teaching projects are well within the bounds of very mainstream research agendas within Middle East studies. That, in fact, from the very beginnings of Zionism, Jewish scholars and thinkers here in the US, in Europe and in Israel, have been reading and deconstructing Zionist narratives of the past and the present and critiquing them for their silences and exclusions. Massad's crime has been to bring these together and teach these texts in his Israel-Palestine class. So, far from being controversial, his research is so mainstream that it would not raise an eyebrow in most circles within Middle East studies, and definitely not in the academy in Israel. I think the David Project's problem with Massad is more subtle than most liberals like Bollinger will ever recognize. Massad is truly subversive and dangerous to them because when one translates his research into the realm of politics, it subverts the two holy grails of Bush-Sharon and of liberals here: 1) that Israel is a democracy and 2) their commitment to the two-state solution. This solution is the one that Sharon-Bush and every liberal claims is the only legitimate one and one to which they are all committed to. The two-state solution is also what goes by the name of balance in the academy and media. However, these same folks, when presented with evidence of Israel's rapid expansion into the West Bank, defend Sharon or remain silent. The leading students of the campaign constantly defend themselves in public that they are balanced/unbiased (in contrast to Massad) because they stand for a two state solution. This is somehow meant to silence their critics. But when pushed, they have NOTHING to say about the fact that Israel has virtually transformed the West Bank into three bantustans. (For evidence of their positions, you can take a loom at Ariel Beery's blog on the net. Beery is a former IDF spokesman and the leader of the students here at Columbia. Much of what he spews on his blog is so outlandish, its unworthy of comment. On his blog, Beery says he was a peace activist in the Gaza. I want somebody to ask him the name of that organization. I am curious to know its acronym! You can also take a look at the web site of their local group: http://www.columbiaacademicfreedom.org/)
By creating the committee, the university has actually sent out the wrong message: that a critique of Zionism/Israel is so problematic within the academy that such projects (both as teaching and research projects) need special scrutiny at all times. According to news reports, and this was predictable, the David Project is unhappy with the ad hoc committee's report; claiming its a white wash. I think that the problem from their perspective is that the report a) finds 'credible' one of the allegations intimidation against Massad and concludes that he violated University norms; b) it finds 'credible' one allegation against Saliba and the second against Massad, but concludes that these cannot be judged as violations of any university norms; c) does not punish/censure these individuals; instead it recommends that the University needs better grievance procedures; and d) the report does not address the other "allegations" that were brought to the committee's attention. All of this is a way for them to pursue their real aimswhich are to breach the autonomy of the university.
Of course, from my perspective, the finding that the allegations are credible and that on one instance Massad violated university norms is odd. There were 3 witnesses who backed up the student making the allegation against Massad. One of them was an unregistered auditor, and well-known activist for a Zionist group in New York, who had spent most of the time in class reading from the propaganda booklet that Massad mentions in his testimony. But there were also 3 witnesses who testified in favor of Massadtwo of them were teaching assistants and one a registered student. The student making the allegation admits that she was graded fairly. Yet, the committee finds against him (implying that he and his TAs are lying). The committee report does not give us enough of a sense of their reasoning or the evidentiary basis on which they concluded that this incident did occur. One can only conclude that there was a division within the Committee and the more powerful amongst them or from outside (the Pres?) prevailed.
Almost all of the groups allied with David Project (the Israel on Campus Coalition, campus-watch, etc.) have openly stated that their aim is to breach the self-governance of the faculty and radically transform the peer review, the hiring and firing processes of the University. Columbia is a test case for them. To do this, they are still arguing for an outside review committee (the demand that they began with). The ad hoc review committees report does dwell on the role of these outside groups; it even points to the role of current faculty who support these outside groups. For instance, the report has some muted reactions to the fact that there are faculty members who actively recruited students to spy on Massad and others in class and then report back to them. But it does not conclude that such activities could be intimidating to Massad; or that these are serious and gross violations of University norms that deserve more than expressions of sadness. (For a sampling of the views endorsed by these faculty members, take a look at the videos and transcripts of a conference that they hosted here at Columbia on March 6th . These can be found at http://spme.net/columbia.html.)
I have a feeling that the right-wingers will be coming in fast and furious now and it will be interesting to see what their next move will be. My guess is that there will be more editions of the film; and they will in all likelihood be targeting other individuals who have signed the divestment petition. Their spokespersons have promised that they will not stop till Bollinger gets rid of everyone they have targeted (and will target in the future) at Columbia. Will there be another committee each time a new version of the film is released? Or will the University quietly start firing everyone here at Columbia?
Further reading:
Censoring Thought, a web site dedicated to providing up-to-date information on the Columbia case and related issues.
Commentary on the issue by Juan Cole, in which he focuses on the New York Times' caving-in to the McCarthyite witch-hunt in its editorial endorsement of the ad hoc committee.
Joseph Massad's own statement to the ad hoc committee.
The ad hoc committee's report.
Finally, a pseudonymously written analysis by a recent Columbia Phd, "Mark Roberts" (no relation to myself) which explores the roots of the ongoing harassment campaign at Columbia.
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When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.
When they came for the social democrats,
I did not speak out
because I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew;
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
-Pastor Martin Niemoeller, Nazi Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
