Israel Matzav

It's not about 'academic freedom'

The Chronicle of Higher Education gets involved in the battle to rid Israeli academia of its post-Zionist rot. The problem is that the Chronicle apparently believes that this is a battle over 'academic freedom.' But that's not the issue. These professors (and there are many more than the four who have actually called for an academic boycott of Israel) are using their state-paid salaries at state universities to undermine the state's existence. And they refuse to allow themselves to be subjected to the most basic standards of academic supervision.

This week, Mr. Klafter [President of Tel Aviv University. CiJ] faced another storm of protest after his office forwarded the Institute for Zionist Strategies report to faculty members it had criticized, asking to examine their reading lists and syllabi. He apologized and withdrew the request, saying it had been made in error, and denounced the "frightening indications of harm to academic freedom [and] attempts to interfere with the content of materials being taught."

Anat Matar, one of the pro-boycott professors at Tel Aviv, told The Chronicle that it seemed the self-styled Zionist attack on Israel's universities had crossed a line.

"This was one step too far­—such blatant, such explicit interference," said Ms. Matar, a philosophy professor. "I think they lost this round. The Israeli academic world would not let such things interfere with the way it is conducted."

"What I'm worried about is the gradual, crawling, quiet succumbing to such trends. People who in the future will think twice before they publish something," she said.

Miriam Eliav-Feldon, a professor of history at Tel Aviv who organized the letter protesting Mr. Dershowitz's speech, said she was "horrified" by recent developments.

"What they are saying is that more or less all of us in the humanities and social sciences in all the universities are anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli, and anti-the-state, and that they have the right to decide what is the correct way to teach Israeli history, sociology, or political science. It's unbelievable," said Ms. Eliav-Feldon, who received insulting e-mails from outraged donors after criticizing Mr. Dershowitz.

"There are certain of my colleagues who have asked to join the boycott on Israeli academia. I don't agree with them, but if they say it not in the classroom, but in the newspapers this is part of their freedom to express their opinions, and they should not be punished in any way," she said.

Ms. Eliav-Feldon said the threats reminded her of the McCarthy era in the United States, when her great uncle was hounded out of the University of California at Berkeley for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. "I think that something very similar is brewing up here," she said.

I would say that what's 'brewing up over here' is a long overdue reaction to academic terror from the Left (for example, harassing discharged combat soldiers in the universities, not allowing reserve soldiers who miss exams while in the IDF to make them up).

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:10 AM