A blistering exposé of what passes for academic discourse at Columbia University, where the Saidists rule unchallenged (as they do almost everywhere). From the New York Daily News, with thanks to Charles Jacobs:
It's a capital of "thuggery" - a "ghastly state of racism and apartheid" - and it "must be dismantled."A voice from America's crackpot fringe? Actually, [Hamid] Dabashi is a tenured professor and department chairman at Columbia University. And his views have resonated and been echoed in other areas of the university.
Columbia is at risk of becoming a poison Ivy, some critics claim, and tensions are high.
In classrooms, teach-ins, interviews and published works, dozens of academics are said to be promoting an I-hate-Israel agenda, embracing the ugliest of Arab propaganda, and teaching that Zionism is the root of all evil in the Mideast.
In three weeks of interviews, numerous students told the Daily News they face harassment, threats and ridicule merely for defending the right of Israel to survive.
And the university itself is holding investigations into the alleged intimidation.
Dabashi has achieved academic stardom: professor of Iranian studies; chairman of the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department; past head of a panel that administers Columbia's core curriculum.
The 53-year-old, Iranian-born scholar has said CNN should be held accountable for "war crimes" for one-sided coverage of Sept. 11, 2001. He doubts the existence of Al Qaeda and questions the role of Osama Bin Laden in the attacks.
He needs to keep his head out of the "Glue bag"
since it has affected his eyes and ears.
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Calling Keithjoy!
We need your voice to be heard on this, since these are the people on Your side whom you seek to convince....
oh.
You've had no reason to come back here since kerry lost.
Another voice lost. You would Never criticize one of your own.
My God, its Columbia for Christ's sakes! Doesn't anyone remember the 60's and 70's? So what's new? Further if the tenants they preach about the Jews owning/controlling everything "are true" then the little shits that come out of there and have to go to work for 'em. Irony at its finest.
"Columbia University: Hate 101"
Maybe the university t-shirts should have
"MAKE HATE, NOT BRAINS" on them.
Later it says, "But we don't tell faculty they can't express strong, or even offensive opinions."
I guess outright lies and hate speech would fit in the category of strong, or offensive opinions. Right? They're saying it's OK to say these things, and profs, hey, they can say anything they want, they're tenured!
All of the profs listed in that article are, to my mind, seriously astray of reality and should not be teaching ...excuse me, preaching anywhere in the US.
I wonder if it'd be okay for a tenured prof to say similar things about Islam - that it was a thuggish belief system, full of racism and apartheid (which would be absolutely true)? Would his colleagues protect his freedom of speech the same as they do for these Islamics? Or would this prof be tossed out and have to go into hiding?
I feel sorry for the university students who are attacked for their belief that Israel has a right to exist. They go to these places to learn, not to be victimized. Many are probably Jewish students, whose parents have worked hard and contributed to society in a positive way and their kids are being villified and abused by a bunch of hate-filled backward Islamics, people who contribute zilch to any society.
It is not possible, at Columbia's MEALAC program, to learn much of anything about the most important subject -- Islam, its tenets, or the history of Muslim conquest and subsequent treatment of non-Muslims. So much attention is given by Saliba, Dabashi, Khalidi, El-Haj, etcetera etceterum (not to mention all the graduate-student the "Palestinians" whose one subject is-- "Palestine" -- Massad, and even a "Palestinian" "poetess" (yes, I thought each word deserved its very own quotation marks) hired to teach a course on the "construction of Arab-American identity" (get it? It's all about convincing the 80% of those who call themselves Arab-Americans but are really the descendants of Christian refugees from Islam -- mostly Lebanese Maronites and Syrian Christians -- that they really have an identity of interests with Muslim Arabs -- as if the grandchildren of Nazis, somehow permitted in this country, were to attempt to seek support by attempting to enroll the grandchildren of the German victims, Jewish and non-Jewish, of the Nazis, in one "German-American" identity.
Columbia once had the most distinguished scholars of Islam -- Joseph Schacht and Arthur Jeffery come swimmingly to mind. Now? Now it is the kind of place, in its MEALAC program, that only Adel Jubeir, and Saeb Erekat, and Amr al-Moussa, and of course 80% of the membership of MESA (the MIddle East Studies Association of America, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Arab League in collaboration with Al-Azhar University and Hamas), could love -- or even take seriously.
That "Edward Said" Chair thing was not a bad investment, however. Khalidi is giving his crude money's worth. Why, he even takes part in panel discussions, sponsored by the New Yorker, on the MIddle East -- everything, everything but Islam will be discussed, but especially the problem of Isr...oh, you know what I mean.
And he is favored, along with Rami Khoury and Fawaz Gerges (and to think that Gerges managed to climb the greasy pole at Sarah Lawrence, where Adda Bozeman, the unacknowledged source for much of Huntington's work, and herself the keenest early warner about Islam's threat to everyone else, once held sway), by Mr. Simon and others at NPR. Why don't they read up a little too -- starting with Ibn Warraq, and www.secularislam.org, and perhaps Ibn Al-Rawandi, and Bat Ye'or, and Ali Sina, and Azam Kamguian and Irfan Khawaja -- instead of letting the likes of Rashid Khalidi, once a propagandist in Beirut, continue his propaganda on NPR? Just too much work? And besides, if you are a professor at Columbia, haven't you been properly vetted and validated? Could a professor at Columbia simply be a propagandist whose every sentence is a half-truth that keeps his audience from every learning about Jihad, or about what really underlies the Arab refusal to contemplate a permanent acceptance of an Infidel state, mighty Israel, in its midst?
Jacques Barzun must not be pleased. Nor, one is glad to report, are many alumni. And the beating heart of Columbia is its Development Office. It may be the only way to get the attention of the trimmers and time-servers -- but their attention it will get.
Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a state party:
Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Is Columbia violating international human rights law?
"The Other" (a necessary for white, racist, colonial Europe and America)and "post-colonial discourse," constitute the limited lexicon of those who would presume to tell Leo Oppenheim and Leonard Woolley that, not being born in Baghdad or Mosul, they lack that special, innate understanding that the natives, by way of birthright, do, have of that statute ofAshurbanipal II or the Ishtar Gate, or somesuch. Or in telling Snouck Hurgronje that he must, perforce, be less reliable than those scholarly giants, Hamid Dabashi, and George Saliba.
Extraordinary, but akin to the French antisemite in Sartre's "Antisemite and Jew" who, upon hearing that some Jewish student came in first in some nation-wide concourse requiring the analysis of a literary text, sourly insisted that "only a Frenchman -- a real Frenchman, not a Jew -- can understand these things."
That was how Said, the intellectual thug, operated -- no one not an Arab (presumably that was enough to give one a magical understanding of Qur'an, hadith, and sira) or a Muslim could be permitted any scholarly authority when it came to Arab or Muslim society and history and belief-system. That tradition is now being carried forward by those who, like Hamid Dabashi in his by-now world-famous elegy for Edward Said (google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said" to make the tears of laughter flow) and Rashid Khalidi e tutti quanti, carry on camping under the banner of Orientalism.
The following statement was issued by President Lee C. Bollinger after viewing “Columbia Unbecoming,” a film produced by the David Project.
Statement on the David Project Film
President Lee C. Bollinger
October 27, 2004
The student accounts in the David Project film “Columbia Unbecoming” are troubling, and we take them very seriously. Columbia University does not condone the intimidation of students or discrimination of any kind.
Because of the disturbing and offensive nature of incidents described in the film, I’ve asked Provost Alan Brinkley to look into them and to ensure that the University is upholding its commitment to foster a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect within the community.
The University is committed to the core principle of academic freedom in teaching and research. But that principle is not unlimited. It must be viewed within the context of the University’s other values. It does not, for example, extend to protecting behavior in the classroom that threatens or intimidates students who express their viewpoints. The value of academic freedom applies equally to students who must be free to learn and explore ideas in a constructive atmosphere.
While it is premature to discuss how we will evaluate and respond to the student accounts in the film, we recognize that protecting and upholding academic freedom requires having a clear, consistent, and well-articulated process for airing grievances. It is important that students and faculty have full confidence that the process is fair, transparent, and accessible.
I am committed to a University environment where our students can inquire freely, and our faculty can impart their knowledge and wisdom in ways that promote dialogue, civil discourse, and mutual understanding.
LETTERS TO:
President Lee C. Bollinger
Office of the President
Columbia University in the City of New York
202 Low Library
Mail Code 4309
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
fax: 212.854.9973
==============================
Alan Brinkley, Provost
e-mail: ab65@columbia.edu
Office of the Provost
Columbia University in the City of New York
205 Low Memorial Library
Mail Code 4313
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
Fax: (212) 932-0418
were columbia to continue their slide down this slippery slope and not keep in check the radical tendencies of these hairbrained professors, could we anticipate such future course offerings as:
al qaeda recruitment 101
hamas, hezbollah; alliteration in freedom fighting 237
a hermeneutic exploration of the "great satan," and how your tax dollars feed imperial colonialism 121
che guevara, mao tse-tung, fidel castro, omichael bin mooren, lenin, stalin, zarqawi -- an exploration of the most important and vaunted revolutionaries against evil america 489 (prerequisites: successful completion of courses above)
dhimmitude and its loveliness 338 (note: this course can be taken in subsitution for all of the above)
Columbia, Calgary, they're all the same aren't they? Us "real" scholars have no place there, either by association, or by persecution.
~I wonder if it'd be okay for a tenured prof to say similar things about Islam - that it was a thuggish belief system, full of racism and apartheid (which would be absolutely true)? Would his colleagues protect his freedom of speech the same as they do for these Islamics? Or would this prof be tossed out and have to go into hiding?
I feel sorry for the university students who are attacked for their belief that Israel has a right to exist. They go to these places to learn, not to be victimized. Many are probably Jewish students, whose parents have worked hard and contributed to society in a positive way and their kids are being villified and abused by a bunch of hate-filled backward Islamics, people who contribute zilch to any society.
Posted by: feralee at November 21, 2004 08:14 PM~
No I don't think it'd be ok. They'd be called brainwashed racists, and faith rehab would begin. It is my understanding that "tenure" means: get to stay on even if you are world's scum.
Thanks for feeling for me, I do suffer. I have defended non-Muslims and those persecuted and then I get the "well America is 10x worse", "it's the Jews stupid" and the like. It's scary. I am no Jewish though, but would like to know more about the Reconstructionist branch, founded by Mordechai Kaplan.