Academic Freedom is at Risk

Academic Freedom is at Risk

[Originally published by Saree Makdisi in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 October 2007]



"Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night."

Kramer's warning inaugurated an attack on intellectual freedom in the U.S. that has grown more aggressive in recent months.

This attack, intended to shield Israel from criticism, not only threatens academic privileges on college campuses, it jeopardizes our capacity to evaluate our foreign policy. With a potentially catastrophic clash with Iran on the horizon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spiraling out of control, Americans urgently need to be able to think clearly about our commitments and intentions in the Middle East. And yet we are being prevented from doing so by a longstanding campaign of intimidation that has terminated careers, stymied debate and shut down dialogue.

Over the past few years, Israel's U.S. defenders have stepped up their campaign by establishing a network of institutions (such as Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our campuses and bringing pressure to bear on those critical of Israeli policies. By orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their cause, they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free function of which once made American universities the envy of the world.

Outside interference by Israel's supporters has plunged one U.S. campus after another into crisis. They have introduced crudely political -- rather than strictly academic or scholarly -- criteria into hiring, promotion and other decisions at a number of universities, including Columbia, Yale, Wayne State, Barnard and DePaul, which recently denied tenure to the Jewish American scholar Norman Finkelstein following an especially ugly campaign spearheaded by Alan Dershowitz, one of Israel's most ardent American defenders.

Our campuses are being poisoned by an atmosphere of surveillance and harassment. However, the disruption of academic freedom has grave implications beyond campus walls.

When professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer drafted an essay critical of the effect of Israel's lobbying organizations on U.S. foreign policy, they had to publish it in the London Review of Books because their original American publisher declined to take it on. With the original article expanded into a book that has now been released, their invitation to speak at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was retracted because of outside pressure. "This one is so hot," they were told. So although Michael Oren, an officer in the Israeli army, was recently allowed to lecture the council about U.S. policy in the Middle East, two distinguished American academics were denied the same privilege.

When President Carter published "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" last year, he was attacked for having dared to use the word "apartheid" to describe Israel's manifestly discriminatory policies in the West Bank.

As that case made especially clear, the point of most of these attacks is to personally discredit anyone who would criticize Israel -- and to taint them with the smear of "controversy" -- rather than to engage them in a genuine debate. None of Carter's critics provided a convincing refutation of his main argument based on facts and evidence. Presumably that's because, for all the venom directed against the former president, he was right. For example, Israel maintains two different road networks, and even two entirely different legal systems, in the West Bank, one for Jewish settlers and the other for indigenous Palestinians. Those basic facts were studiously ignored by those who denounced Carter and angrily accused him of a "blood libel" against the Jewish people.

That Israel's American supporters so often resort to angry outbursts rather than principled arguments -- and seem to find emotional blackmail more effective than genuine debate -- is ultimately a sign of their weakness rather than their strength. For all the damage it can do in the short term, in the long run such a position is untenable, too dependent on emotion and cliché rather than hard facts. The phenomenal success of Carter's book suggests that more and more Americans are learning to ignore the scare tactics that are the only tools available to Israel's supporters.

But we need to be able to have an open debate about our Middle East policy now -- before we needlessly shed more blood and further erode our reputation among people who used to regard us as the champions of freedom, and now worry that we have come to stand for its very opposite.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/335667_academics17.html

Excelsior Creations

Fashion is forever changing. And to keep up with the changing trends, we change too. And so, a four generation old firm, established in 1948, has now launched its website.

We are based in two loactions, namely, Lucknow and Mumbai. Our production units create the most exquisite range of products ranging from Designer Saris, Bridal Saree, Wedding Sari to Formal Salwar kameez, casual suits and elegant Lehngas.

Our clientele is spread across continents and we deliver quality in everything we design. You maybe a bride wanting to style up your trosseau, or a retailer who deals in exclusive Indian wear, Excelsior can help you a long way.


Click here to visit us and know more from us.


A few designs from our portfolio are displayed below:


















Contact us, if you would like to know more about these sarees.



Click here, to see more sarees like this.

Excelsior Creations

Fashion is forever changing. And to keep up with the changing trends, we change too. And so, a four generation old firm, established in 1948, has now launched its website.

We are based in two loactions, namely, Lucknow and Mumbai. Our production units create the most exquisite range of products ranging from Designer Saris, Bridal Saree, Wedding Sari to Formal Salwar kameez, casual suits and elegant Lehngas.

Our clientele is spread across continents and we deliver quality in everything we design. You maybe a bride wanting to style up your trosseau, or a retailer who deals in exclusive Indian wear, Excelsior can help you a long way.


Click here to visit us and know more from us.


A few designs from our portfolio are displayed below:


















Contact us, if you would like to know more about these sarees.



Click here, to see more sarees like this.

Excelsior Creations

Fashion is forever changing. And to keep up with the changing trends, we change too. And so, a four generation old firm, established in 1948, has now launched its website.

We are based in two loactions, namely, Lucknow and Mumbai. Our production units create the most exquisite range of products ranging from Designer Saris, Bridal Saree, Wedding Sari to Formal Salwar kameez, casual suits and elegant Lehngas.

Our clientele is spread across continents and we deliver quality in everything we design. You maybe a bride wanting to style up your trosseau, or a retailer who deals in exclusive Indian wear, Excelsior can help you a long way.


Click here to visit us and know more from us.


A few designs from our portfolio are displayed below:


















Contact us, if you would like to know more about these sarees.



Click here, to see more sarees like this.

Excelsior Creations

Fashion is forever changing. And to keep up with the changing trends, we change too. And so, a four generation old firm, established in 1948, has now launched its website.

We are based in two loactions, namely, Lucknow and Mumbai. Our production units create the most exquisite range of products ranging from Designer Saris, Bridal Saree, Wedding Sari to Formal Salwar kameez, casual suits and elegant Lehngas.

Our clientele is spread across continents and we deliver quality in everything we design. You maybe a bride wanting to style up your trosseau, or a retailer who deals in exclusive Indian wear, Excelsior can help you a long way.


Click here to visit us and know more from us.


A few designs from our portfolio are displayed below:


















Contact us, if you would like to know more about these sarees.



Click here, to see more sarees like this.

Excelsior Creations

Fashion is forever changing. And to keep up with the changing trends, we change too. And so, a four generation old firm, established in 1948, has now launched its website.

We are based in two loactions, namely, Lucknow and Mumbai. Our production units create the most exquisite range of products ranging from Designer Saris, Bridal Saree, Wedding Sari to Formal Salwar kameez, casual suits and elegant Lehngas.

Our clientele is spread across continents and we deliver quality in everything we design. You maybe a bride wanting to style up your trosseau, or a retailer who deals in exclusive Indian wear, Excelsior can help you a long way.


Click here to visit us and know more from us.


A few designs from our portfolio are displayed below:


















Contact us, if you would like to know more about these sarees.



Click here, to see more sarees like this.

Palestinians Think Otherwise...

West chooses Fatah, but Palestinians don't

[Originally published by Saree Makdisi in The Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2007]


IN THE WEST, there's a huge sense of relief. The Hamas-led government that has been causing everyone so much trouble has been isolated in Gaza, and a new government has been appointed in the West Bank by the "moderate," peace-loving Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.

So why then do Palestinians not share in the relief? Well, for one thing, the old government had been democratically elected; now it has been dismissed out of hand by presidential fiat. There's also the fact that the new prime minister appointed by Abbas — Salam Fayyad — has the support of the West, but his election list won only 2% of the votes in the same election that swept Hamas to victory. Fayyad and Abbas have the support of Israel, but it is no secret that they lack the backing of their own people.

There is a reason the people threw out Abbas' Fatah party in last year's election. Palestinians see the leading Fatah politicians as unimaginative, self-serving and corrupt, satisfied with the emoluments of power.

Worse yet, Palestinians came to realize that the so-called peace process championed by Abbas (and by Yasser Arafat before him) had led to the permanent institutionalization — rather than the termination — of Israel's 4-decade-old military occupation of their land. Why should they feel otherwise? There are today twice as many settlers in the occupied territories as there were when Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat first shook hands in the White House Rose Garden. Israel has divided the West Bank into besieged cantons, worked diligently to increase the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem (while stripping Palestinian Jerusalemites of their residency rights in the city) and turned Gaza into a virtual prison.

People voted for Hamas last year not because they approved of the party's sloganeering, not because they wanted to live in an Islamic state, not because they support attacks on Israeli civilians, but because Hamas was untainted by Fatah's complacency and corruption, untainted by its willingness to continue pandering to Israel. Fatah leaders were viewed as mere policemen of the perpetual occupation, and the Palestinian Authority had willingly taken on the role of administering the population on behalf of the Israelis. Hamas offered an alternative.

Here in the U.S., Hamas is routinely demonized, known primarily for its attacks on civilians. Depictions of Hamas portray its "rejectionism" as an end in itself rather than as a refusal to go along with a political process that has proved catastrophic for Palestinians on the ground.

Has Hamas done unspeakable things? Yes, but so has Fatah, and so too has Israel (on a much larger scale). There are no saints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians, frankly, see a lot of hypocrisy in the West's anti-Hamas stance. Since last year's election, for example, the West has denied aid to the Hamas government, arguing, among other things, that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel. But that's absurd; after all, Israel does not recognize Palestine either. Hamas is accused of not abiding by previous agreements. But Israel's suspension of tax revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority, and its refusal to implement a Gaza-West Bank road link agreement brokered by the U.S. in November 2005, are practical, rather than merely rhetorical, violations of previous agreements, causing infinitely more damage to ordinary people. Hamas is accused of mixing religion and politics, but no one has explained why its version of that mixture is any worse than Israel's — or why a Jewish state is acceptable but a Muslim one is not.

I am a secular humanist, and I personally find religiously identified political movements — and states — unappealing, to say the least.

But let's be honest. Hamas did not run into Western opposition because of its Islamic ideology but because of its opposition to (and resistance to) the Israeli occupation.

A genuine peace based on the two-state solution would require an end to the Israeli occupation and the creation of a territorially contiguous, truly independent Palestinian state.

But that is not happening. Fatah seems to have given up, its leaders preferring to rest comfortably with the power they already have. Ironically, it is Hamas that is taking the stands that would be prerequisites for a true two-state peace plan: refusing to go along with the permanent breakup of Palestine and not accepting the sacrifice of control over borders, airspace, water, taxes and even the population registry to Israel.

Embracing the "moderation" of Abbas allows the Palestinian Authority to resume servicing the occupation on Israel's behalf, for now. In the long run, though, the two-state solution is finished because Fatah is either unable or unwilling to stop the ongoing dismemberment of the territory once intended for a Palestinian state.

The only realistic choice remaining will be the one between a single democratic, secular state offering equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians — or permanent apartheid.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-makdisi20jun20,0,2672122.story?coll=la-opinion-center