Boycott Israel: A Professor’s Op-Ed, A University’s Nightmare
What should Israeli universities do when their tenured professors support boycotts that damage their own institutions?
When you’re trying to run a university, the very last thing you need during a global recession is for one of your professors to go off on a public diatribe that angers donors into withholding funding.
But that uncomfortable scenario is precisely what is playing itself out at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, after an op-ed by Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University, ran in the Los Angeles Times. The piece was titled “Boycott Israel.” Its subhead was “An Israeli Comes to the Painful Conclusion that it’s the Only Way To Save his Country.”
Describing Israel as an apartheid state and calling for an academic and cultural boycott of the country, Gordon cited and approved of international sanctions already in place: film festival organizers eschewing Israeli produced movies and Oxfam severing ties with Sex and the City celebrity spokesperson Kristin Davis after she appeared in an Israeli cosmetics ad.
In the column, Gordon admitted the seeming contradiction in advocating a ban of his own country but maintained:
It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself. I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.
Within hours, the backlash began. The professor’s column was reprinted in the Guardian, eliciting nearly 500 comments. Local columnists and bloggers penned immediate responses. None-too-happy, influential Los Angeles community benefactors picked up the phone to call Yaakov Dayan, Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles, to let him know they were considering keeping their checkbooks pocketed this year when BGU came calling.
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27 Comments
1. Arie:This is actually quite typical of the Israeli Left. Since the masses don’t want to obey their wisdom and insist on electing non-leftists the obvious solution is to have outsiders force the unwashed to accept them as kappos in the name of their private vision of democracy for the greater good
Aug 26, 2009 - 1:10 am 2. Xaxam:1. The letter circulated by prof. Carmi to the university staff does not condemn the morally flawed position of the Senior Lecturer Neve Gordon (not a professor yet, albeit with tenure). Neither does she condemn the fact that a “scientist” is in practice a fully-fledged syndicated columnist with “The Guardian” and many other newspapers and political sites, indulging in the worst-kind journalism. She only claims this article of him “counterproductive” for the well-being of the cash-strapped university. This is exactly the kind of “condemnation” issued by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas concerning the Palestinian terrorism: it is not criminal or morally abhorrent, but “currently counterproductive for the interests of Palestinian people”.
2. The article by David Newman follows similar lines: “My colleague was right in his goals but wrong in the means to achieve these goals”. But of course: the entire Department of BGU which is home to the two friends and colleagues, is practically a single-issue think tank obsessed with finding and proving the Israeli guilt while struggling for survival in the Middle East. If the university is boycotted, they would lose the academic “kashrut certificate” provided by their academic positions and would join the cohort of columnists without academic perks and respect.
3. A genuinely Zionist response to the actions of Dr. Gordon could be derived from the precedent-setting position of the Haifa University President Aharon Ben-Zeev, who faced a similar problem of dealing with Ilan Pappe. “Ben-Ze’ev said the university management would not boycott Pappe nor would it take disciplinary steps against him, because boycotts destroy academic freedom. But he said Pappe’s behavior was “intolerable from a moral point of view,” and that he should therefore decide to leave of his own accord.”
Prof. Rivka Carmi has everything she needs to restore the credentials of the university which bears the name of Ben-Gurion.
Aug 26, 2009 - 1:25 am 3. Dave Surls:“What should Israeli universities do when their tenured professors support boycotts that damage their own institutions?”
They can do as they please, but I know what I’d do.
I’d fire the guy and then I’d tell him to go apply for a teachng job with his Arab pals.
Aug 26, 2009 - 2:29 am 4. Ken Besig:This professor obviously has most of his facts wrong, is badly misinformed regarding the aggressive and anti Semitic nature of Israel’s adversaries, and is blinded by an ideology which obessively holds Israel responsible for most if not all the problems facing the Palestinians and the Middle East.
Aug 26, 2009 - 2:50 am 5. Cris:This hardly bodes well for his reputation as a teacher of anything, and I pity his students because if Mr. Gordon is so mistaken regarding Israel and the Palestinians, then much of what he is teaching them is just as incorrect and mistaken.
Regarding steps that Ben Gurion University should take, there aren’t any that the school can or even would take. The Israeli University system allows professors to fire at will any Dean or President that they take issue with, and since Ben Gurion University’s teaching staff is a veritable hotbed of radical Left wing anti Israel Bolshevism, any administrator there would soon be seeking other employment if he tried to get rid of Gordon.
But the donors to the University have every right and even the personal responsibility to withhold their donations if they feel betrayed by this professor, notwithstanding any collateral damage this witholding might cause BGU.
But the best answer would be for the students at BGU to simply no longer register for this professor’s classes, thereby letting him know of their dissatisfaction and forcing the University to seriously consider his value to BGU itself. This sort of passive aggression would protect the students from sanctions from other professors sympathetic to Mr. Gordon, while at the same time making it clear that Mr. Gordon’s continued presence on the teaching staff is too expensive and brings disadvantages which far outweigh any possible benefits that BGU might enjoy.
If one studies the Germany of the 1930s and wonders what sort of mentality Jews possessed that would have allowed their doom to come upon them, one need look no further than Senior Lecturer Neve Gordon.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:11 am 6. canuck:Tenure does not guarantee the funding of a position. Leave him alone but entirely defund his is University existence. Let him work in the dark in a powerless, airless office without support staff. No travel grants, no research grants, deny his IRBs, do not sign off any any money he might raise and keep the taxman looking over his shoulder for Arab money.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:12 am 7. Ruvy:If Rivka Carmi won’t fire this self-hating trash infesting her university, my son will not go there – for any reason. And I’ll do anything I can to persuade other potential students to stay away from Ben-Gurion U. as if it were infested with the plague. Boycotts work on several levels, and in this case, I can play the boycott game, too. And since the leftists call people like me a cancer, I will do what I can to see to it that NO money goes to their cancerous hate-ridden university.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:36 am 8. Old Soldier:Typical liberal hypocritic. He’s calling for a boycott without participating himself.
The intellectually honest way to encourage everyone to “suspend cooperation with Israel,” would begin with his resignation from a state-run school. It’s like a pro-life activist working at Planned Parenthood.
Aug 26, 2009 - 5:15 am 9. Lynn:It’s if starkly obvious that the man lives in a protected bubble while those around him defend and fight for his right to exist.
If it were just his life at risk, I would think that it is his choice, but the reality is that he could stand in a classroom, turn 360 degrees and everyone he looks at is a target for the Islamists to wipe from the face of the earth. Everyone, of that there is no doubt.
What does he want us to boycott, their right to exist? That is what the Islamists think, that the Jewish People have no right to exist in that land. One grain of sand that a Jew or infidel possesses in that land without the permission of Islam is a cause for war.
Aug 26, 2009 - 5:23 am 10. homero:the whole issue of TENURE should be opened up. there should not be tenure.
are not professors equal to others ..aren’t these clowns equal not more equal then anyone else.
they (the elite and the elitists) are like a form of dictatorship that has been like a cancer that no one cares to cure.
Aug 26, 2009 - 5:51 am 11. JHM dba "Goose N. Gander":As often happens when viewing the neocomradely community from afar, one does not need to look very far to spot signs of double, maybe even weekly, neostandardization.
Prof. Dr. Gordon is an odious ratfink, a traitor to The Demographic™, a fouler of his own nest?
Well, at any rate it is not difficult to see why konservative kiddies might think so.
The tricky part is to figure out why the KK’s don’t raise at least a subdued fuss along the same lines when some poor _dhimmí_ from Airstrip One does the like:
“British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan appeared on Glenn Beck’s show to opine on ObamaCare. His advice: ‘Don’t do it.’ He called the NHS ‘a 60-year failure’ and [so on and so forth].” [1]
From outside the monkey house, it is not clear whether these parallel ratfinkeries are to be prosecuted as High Treason or only as Noahide™ misdemeanour. Possibly Neocomrade D. Hannan is only a very *small* nest-foulin’ ratfink, and Prof. Gordon a monstrously bloated specimen. That’s as may be. What matters is that they are both in the same line of work.
A tippin’ point comes when kiddie konservatism ventures to deny any parallelism whatever, or, havin’ been wombschooled all too well, genuinely fails to notice any similarity between wunnerful US doin’ so-and-so to icky THEM and THEM doing it to US. That step brings us to the neoteric outlook of Foxcuckooland and Pajamastán, accordin’ to which loyalty has no independent and general ethical significance, though self-loyalty towards US does, as also, to a lesser extent, does self-disloyalty away from THEM.
A neokiddie who swallows her dose of Party-’n’-Ideology snake oil faithfully will not see anythin’ the least bit dubious about (say) Neocomrade Herr Prof. Dr. Fu’ád al-‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University. Or Neocomrade Associate Justice C. Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. Or even, _mutatis mutandis_, “Neocomrade General B. Arnold,” formerly with the rebels in North America but now happily returned to a sounder allegiance.
That last specimen may be a bit far-fetched in more ways than one, I admit, so let us tone it down just a little.
In fact, that _mutatis mutandis_ was (tusk, tusk!) a crude attempt on the present keyboard’s part to smuggle in everthin’ ethical that our neobetters up the slippery slope at Castle Podhóretz relish least. Denial of any _mutatis mutandis_ that starts mumbling obsolete Kantian stuff about gooses and ganders is pretty well the neogentry’s whole _shtyk_. “Moral equivalence,” I believe weekly standardizers and _Common Terror_ magazine groupies and _New Criterion_-mongers and pajamatarians like to label the bad sort of _mutatis mutandis_. [3]
Whether the Konservative Kiddies would be wholeheartedly pleased with the adhesion to their Kause of some modern Benedict Arnold equivalent is probably not the immediate crux of the matter. What one really wants to learn, less hypothetically, is whether the neocomrades have the faintest clue how the Lesser Breeds Without feel when such defections befall them, why most Arabs and Muslims have their doubts (to put it mildly) about Neocomrade F. ‘Ajamí, most holy-Homelanders™ of African descent about Neocomrade C. Thomas. In general, how the Lesser Breeds Without react to “You can trust me, I’m not like the others” — followed up instantly with exuberant revelations about how really godawful the others are. (Worse than the neocomradely outsiders ever suspected are those icky others! And here comes one of “their own” to say so authoritativel!!) [4]
Happy days.
_____
[1] http://tinyurl.com/mrhmxj
[2] _Patris dormientis nec texerat, sed potius prodiderat, nuditatem_, doncha know? See http://tinyurl.com/mfhuvo on _Lib. Gen._ IX:23.
[3] Actual DNA-carryin’ membership in The Demographic™ is optional. Buckley Minor (( http://tinyurl.com/fmvdv )) was only a _dhimmí_, technically speaking, yet Neocomrade Bill was a *good* _dhimmí_, and his favorite proverb shoehorns the whole Podhorétzian _megillah_ into an admirable nutshell: _Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi_.
So Gen. Arnold gets to change sides if he likes, but it would be “another offence, of a ftill deeper malignity; the infamous crime againft nature” (( http://tinyurl.com/kkns88 )) to extend the same privilege to “Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University.”
[4] Decent political grown-ups who still accept pre-Endarkenmment values, including application of the same sauce to virile neoganders and silly old geese alike, should not fall into this kiddie-dug pit and start supposing that Dr. Gordon is likely to offer any special insights into the condition of Jewish Statism.
Though much commoner over on the wrong side of the aisle, the “You can trust me, I’m not like the others” brain disease takes a certain toll amongst good guys as well.
And Father Zeus knows best.
Aug 26, 2009 - 6:34 am 12. Moho:Describing Israel as an apartheid state and calling for an academic and cultural boycott of the country, Gordon cited and approved of international sanctions already in place:
Why, that anti-semite should be run out of town.
Aug 26, 2009 - 8:10 am 13. uburoisc:JHM dba Lil’ Abner meet Kingfish and studies Latin? What a mess. Is this what Gore Vidal sounds like in his dotage?
Aug 26, 2009 - 8:39 am 14. Lynn:Islam has perfected the art of an apartheid state, sentencing those who practice any other faith as dhimmis, granted an uneasy protection under the rule of Islam.
In many muslim countries a pro-semite would be lucky to get out of town alive.
Aug 26, 2009 - 8:57 am 15. John from Toronto:If you followed Gordon’s logic through, the LA Times, Guardian etc. should not publish (and pay for) his drivel, solely because he is an Israeli. But that probably escapes him.
Aug 26, 2009 - 9:46 am 16. bubblehead:Typical left-wing diatribe from a man with his head so far up his *** he can’t even SEE the trutn, never mind recognize it when it comes around!
He shouldn’t simply be fired; he should be publically ridiculed! For the rest of his life, wherever he goes, people should wag their heads and say “There goes that fool again!”
He would have to have a brain transplant to rise to the level of moron!
Aug 26, 2009 - 10:08 am 17. Mike:There are a lot better causes that Jewish Jews can put their money into than BGU.
If they are Israeli’s they should start by joining Likud, if they aren’t already members, and support the Jewish Leader Faction, just as the Bogey Ya’alon, Israel Vice Premier just did.
Jerusalem Post: 30 Av 5769 (August 19, ‘09)
Vice Premier Ya’alon Forges Political Partnership with Feiglin
By JPost.com Staff
Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon seems to have recently forged a political partnership with Likud activist and head of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership Movement) Moshe Feiglin, as evident in footage released Wednesday evening on Channel 2, in which Ya’alon also called ‘Peace Now’ and the Israeli elites “viruses.”
Speaking in a closed meeting organized by Feiglin for Manhigut Yehudit members this week, Ya’alon openly expressed his fears that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might succumb to the Left.
cont. on link
http://www.jewishisrael.org/eng_contents/press/feiglininnews031.html
Aug 26, 2009 - 10:56 am 18. bibio44:#3: “I’d fire the guy….”
#6: “…entirely defund his is University existence.”
#7: “…fire this self-hating trash….”
#16: “He shouldn’t simply be fired; he should be publically ridiculed! For the rest of his life….”
Y’see, guys, governments and institutions that profess freedom of speech are actually called upon from time to time to actually back up their words with action, or, in Gordon’s case, lack of action. Sorry to disappoint you.
Aug 26, 2009 - 12:14 pm 19. BGU -in the know:There is NO freedom of speech for right-wingers at BGU- not with students, not with non-tenured staff. Carmi knows about Gordon’s rantings for years. The fact is all these lefties put down Israel , pontificating in foreign fields, and it does wonders for their careers. Right-wingers are like closet homosexuals on most Israeli campuses. You REPRESS your desire to react to the unreasonable speech and policies and liberties that left-wing profs take and hope for the best and that you won’t be “punished” in one way or another for stating your opinion, if you do. SO the right-wingers shut up and don’t exercise their right to free speech (I need a job, man, especially in this tough economy, better not make waves)and put up with all the pro-Arab anti-Israel propaganda put forth day after day, year in and year out. There are wonderfully talented young people with no chance of getting tenure and hypocrits like Gordon hold on to their jobs, unbelievably, as if the university could not manage without THEIR “exceptional” talents and abilities.
Go Donors! Be Zionists! If we at BGU lose everything we have only ourselves to blame. I have yet to see a “balanced” panel discussion on Israeli politics there. What? Carmi doesn’t know? The administration and PR Dept. are only FORCED to react now because of donors’ threats. Were it not for that, Gordon would just be dishing out more of what he dishes out, unabated and unfettered. Donors: Money talks. Let your money speak words of Zionism! Don’t give in. Do the Jewish people a favor.
Aug 26, 2009 - 1:14 pm 20. Lynn:“Y’see, guys, governments and institutions that profess freedom of speech are actually called upon from time to time to actually back up their words with action, or, in Gordon’s case, lack of action. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Yea, like Yale did with the book “The Cartoons That Shook the World”.
Wait a minute…never mind.
I belive that people have come to expect what might be properly called “selective” freedom of speech in govenments and institutions. There fixed it.
Aug 26, 2009 - 1:25 pm 21. bibio44:#20: “I belive that people have come to expect what might be properly called “selective” freedom of speech in govenments and institutions. There fixed it.”
I guess you did. Now it’s OK for BGU to be selective about freedom of speech because (as rightists usually argue) everybody does it!
Aug 26, 2009 - 3:03 pm 22. Lynn:“I guess you did. Now it’s OK for BGU to be selective about freedom of speech because (as rightists usually argue) everybody does it!”
Hmm… so you say. Hope and Change is now Everybody does it!
Yes you can!
Aug 26, 2009 - 3:39 pm 23. josil:I suggest that all potential donors ignore the facile pleas of academic freedom. Strange as it may seem, the only thing that these high minded academics understand is money. So, withhold it and you’ll see a slow but relentless change of views. It is stupid for a society to support its avowed enemies, financially or otherwise. Maybe there is a place for them at Osama U. By the way, American universities can contribute some additional faculty members to help staff Osama U.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:12 pm 24. Wallace:“They were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your institution,”
He will likely continue to collect his salary — supplied by the tax coffers of the state he feels should be boycotted.
Since he draws his salary from the university fund and the university fund is directly impacted by his call of boycott, why not start reducing his salary in accordance to the amount not received by the university? Every penny withheld by a donor is a penny not going into his salary. Make him taste the fruit of his boycott call.
Aug 26, 2009 - 7:03 pm 25. Crusader:This guy is what one calls a “useful idiot” to antisemitic Arabs and left.
Aug 26, 2009 - 9:02 pm 26. David P:just another young idealistic scholar assessing only what fits into his simple ideology ignoring the haunting desires of his enemies
Aug 26, 2009 - 9:03 pm 27. MikeNZ:Jews who hate Israel go figure.
Aug 27, 2009 - 8:45 pmIs the call just anti state or could it be classed as economic or educational terrorism?
does this count as sedition?
Could his tenure be revoked in that case?
Passport?
State benefits?
If his freedom of speech as a state employee leads to job losses, are those affected able to sue him?
can they sue the Uni for not sacking him?
What are his intended consequences on the State?
What are the unintended consequences?