free speech and the issue of human rights for Palestinians.
Ed Corrigan
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)
Saree Makdisi,
The writer is a professor of English literature at UCLA.
I didn't think America was a place where bookstores barred people for
their viewpoints, until it happened to me, right here in Washington,
D.C., the city of my birth.
I was scheduled to speak at Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
last month about my latest book, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday
Occupation."
My appearance was canceled when the bookstore owners realized that my
book concludes by questioning the viability of a two-state solution to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead it proposes a single
democratic, secular and multicultural state in which Israelis and
Palestinians live peacefully as citizens with equal rights.
"I do not believe that your book will further constructive debate in the
United States," one of the owners wrote to me in an e-mail. "A single
state is not a solution."
I was dismayed that my invitation was rescinded because I express a
different point of view from the one sanctioned by a supposedly
independent bookstore. Yet the cancellation seems to fit into a larger
pattern of nationwide censorship about this
Related stories
Stanford professor Joel Beinin had been invited to speak about Israel
and Palestine at a Silicon Valley school last year; his appearance was
canceled when the school was criticized for booking the event. Tony Judt
of New York University was invited to speak about Israel and Palestine
at the Polish Consulate in New York last fall; his talk was canceled
after the consulate came under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League
and the American Jewish Committee.
The fact that senior scholars are prevented from speaking in well-known
forums because they do not toe an official line suggests that the civic
culture on which our country was founded has broken down, at least when
it comes to Palestine and Israel.
Yet citizens can object to the muzzling of ideas. After receiving
letters of protest and eloquent entreaties by bloggers, Politics and
Prose decided last week to reissue my invitation.
This reversal is an important step forward but questions still linger.
Can we afford not to hear each other out as we evaluate our Middle East
policies? Should Palestinians not be allowed to speak unless their
erstwhile audience gets to tell them what to say? What, then, is the
point of a conversation? What is the alternative to conversation?
What is so unspeakably wrong with saying that justice, secularism,
tolerance and equality of citizens -- rather than privileges granted on
the basis of religion -- should be among the values of a state?
&
What Do Critics of Israel Have to Fear?
By J. LORAND MATORY
At what point do imbalances in access to money, media, and society's
administrative apparatuses constitute the censorship of dissent?
Recent events at Harvard provide an exhaustive example.
At the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting on Nov. 13, 2007, I
moved "that this faculty commits itself to fostering a civil dialogue
in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are
encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas."
Expressing the fear that voting down so self-evidently reasonable a
proposition would be embarrassing, my colleagues voted massively
(74-27) to "table" the motion -- that is, to end discussion of it and
to avoid a vote. They did so because the motion had arisen in the
context of what many of my more silent colleagues regard as the
widespread censorship of dissent about Israel-Palestine on campus and
in the nearby bookstores that are an essential part of the
intellectual life of the University. Moreover, as I showed on this
page last November, the vote unambiguously violated Robert's Rules of
Order, the standard of parliamentary procedure in Faculty meetings.
The fervor of their conviction blinded 74 Ph.D.'s to the fact that
they were proving my point.
The massive displacement of people that resulted from Israel's
founding 60 years ago is the object of willful forgetting in American
foreign policy and of baffling ignorance by the American public in
general. How else could we justify the massive and ongoing theft of
the Palestinians' native land since the mid-20th century -- subsidized
annually with upwards of three billion dollars from the U.S.
government -- while we correctly enforce the right of Jewish refugees
to recover European properties from which they were displaced in the
mid-20th century? If we do not recognize the equality of Palestinian
and Jewish rights, how can we avow the equality of the rights
belonging to Tibetans and Han Chinese, Sahrawis and Moroccans,
Africans and Americo-Liberians, women and men, blacks and whites, gays
and straights?
However, on no other issue at Harvard have I ever heard of the
disinvitation of even one invited speaker, much less three. In 2002,
Harvard's Department of English invited Tom Paulin -- Oxford professor
and one of the finest living British poets -- to speak, but promptly
disinvited him after then-University President Lawrence H. Summers
expressed disapproval of Paulin's criticisms of Israel. Though the
Department later voted to reverse the disinvitation, Paulin has never
come to campus. In 2005, DePaul historian Norman G. Finkelstein, who
has both sharply criticized Israeli military conduct and accused
Harvard Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz of plagiarism, had
been invited to speak at Harvard Book Store but was abruptly
disinvited without explanation. While Finkelstein cannot prove that
Dershowitz was responsible for the disinvitation, the Dershowitz modus
operandi is evident in the hundreds of pages of threatening legal
correspondence which document Dershowitz's campaign to stop
publication of Finkelstein's book at University of California Press
(UCP) and had evidently succeeded at doing so at the New Press.
Dershowitz even wrote -- using Harvard Law School letterhead -- to ask
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the book's publication.
Some have opined that, with the passing of the Summers administration
in 2006, these threats to free speech about Israel have ended.
However, in 2007, long after Summers' departure, Martin A. Nowak --
Professor of Mathematics and Biology and Director of Harvard's Program
for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) -- invited Rutgers biologist Robert L.
Trivers to speak on the occasion of his receipt of the prestigious
Crafoord Prize in biosciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences. Hours before the scheduled speech and party, according to
Trivers, Nowak abruptly rescinded the invitation and said that he was
doing so under the orders of someone he would not identify. Also
according to Trivers, Jeffrey Epstein later admitted ordering the
cancellation and said that he had done so under pressure from
Dershowitz. Epstein, a legal client of Dershowitz, had donated the
funds used to establish PED, which, according to other sources,
depends for its future effectiveness on further funding from him.
Dershowitz, who is also a Faculty Affiliate of PED, had complained of
a letter to the Wall Street Journal in which Trivers described
Israel's attacks on Lebanese civilians during the 2006 invasion as
"butchery." He also called Dershowitz a "Nazi-like apologist" for
justifying it, and told Dershowitz to "look forward to a visit" from
him if his public justifications continued. Trivers denied any intent
to threaten or harm Dershowitz physically. In 2008, it was a professor
from outside of PED who ultimately invited Trivers anew.
Notwithstanding Dershowitz' dramatic claim to have posted his
karate-expert secretary at his office door to protect him, Trivers
delivered a brilliant and well-attended speech, which took him nowhere
near Dershowitz or his office. That Trivers was disinvited in the
first place remains an unwashed disgrace to Harvard, unprecedented
since the McCarthy era with regard to any issue other than
Israel-Palestine.
Two of the three major local bookstores have participated in this
censorship process. I have mentioned Harvard Book Store's
disinvitation of Finkelstein. In 2002, Hillel Stavis, owner of the
now-defunct Wordsworth bookstore in Harvard Square, played a prominent
role in a highly damaging donor boycott of public radio station WBUR,
on the grounds that it allegedly broadcast pro-Palestinian points of
view too freely. Following my December 2007 lecture at Harvard Law
School about the context of my FAS motion, in which I referred to
Stavis as having "led" the boycott, he screamed at me from the
audience and threatened to sue me.
Dean of FAS Michael D. Smith invited Dershowitz to the Dec. 11 Faculty
meeting to contest these reports. Dershowitz said that he "was unaware
of any attempt in his 44 years at Harvard to prevent speech, comments,
or arguments about the issue of Palestine." Yet, in order to state his
disagreement with it, he acknowledged that Paulin had indeed been
disinvited. Dershowitz also acknowledged alleging to the Harvard
University Police that Trivers had threatened him, implying that his
allegation may have led other University officials to disinvite him.
While also claiming that Finkelstein had threatened him, Dershowitz
flatly denied that Finkelstein had ever been disinvited–a claim that
Finkelstein disputes. Most readers will wonder whether so many people
are actually threatening Dershowitz, or whether the mere accusation
has not become a conveniently hands-free way for Dershowitz to keep
some people off campus.
I am happy that Dershowitz was able to speak for himself at the Dec.
11 FAS meeting. However, it should be noted that his involvement in
the discussion -- beyond his distribution of flyers at the meetings
and his multiple Crimson articles -- arose from an uneven application
of the rules. On the one hand, I was required to jump through every
possible procedural hoop in order to raise these incidents for
discussion in the FAS meeting, and it cost me significant time,
effort, and social capital to secure my undeniable right as a Faculty
member to do so. For example, before acknowledging a full month later
that they had erred in allowing the "tabling" of my Nov. 13 motion,
officials told me repeatedly that they had been right, that I should
take my discussion elsewhere, and that my proposal to resume
discussion and to take a vote by secret ballot was "strange." On the
other hand, the rules were stretched to allow Dershowitz, a Law School
professor, to speak at an FAS meeting. According to the Rules of
Faculty Procedure, "The Dean of the Faculty…may invite [non-FAS
professors] to attend as observers [emphasis mine]," but neither the
term "observers" nor any other passage in the Rules suggests the right
to speak.
Finally, my colleagues and I hold the strong suspicion that a recent
tenure case was terminated because of the candidate's non-academic
writings about the Israel-Palestine issue. Faculty rules forbid me to
disclose any further details. Despite the brevity with which this case
must be treated, the potential for political bias in tenure decisions
is the most serious and frightening of threats to free speech and to
Harvard's reputation for excellence. Every one of the dozen junior
faculty members who have privately expressed support for my motion
have also expressed fear of doing so publicly.
For some people, such disinvitations, compromises to the tenure
process, donor boycotts and threats thereof, legal threats, appeals
for state governors to intervene in the peer review and publication
process, and one-sided bending of the rules are themselves merely
instances of "free speech" -- mechanisms in what Dershowitz calls "the
marketplace of ideas." For others, they are bold threats to the
process of scholarship, debate, and the free dissemination of
information. They also result in the loss of career opportunities to
which scholars are rightfully entitled. One Faculty member who asked
not to be named here spoke of "a campaign of intimidation," saying,
"If you are perceived as being `anti-Israeli,' …[and] you're up for
some honor or some position, you might not get it," or you might,
through "behind-the-scenes retribution," lose what you already have.
Another colleague wrote, "we are not able to have reasoned debates
about Israel without someone yelling anti-Semitism."
Some have interpreted my apparent lack of fear and my recent success
in publishing these ideas in The Crimson as proof that there is
neither censorship nor fear of criticizing Israel on campus and in the
US generally. They should know, first, that both The New York Times
and the Boston Globe have repeatedly refused to publish my editorials
on this issue. Moreover, I am afraid. Much of a professor's global
effectiveness depends on the personal esteem and cooperation of deans,
administrators, and fellow professors. Even my annual salary increases
are determined by officials who appear to feel threatened by my
bringing up this issue. Furthermore, I have received a stream of
insulting and threatening emails calling me, among other things, an
"anti-Semite," a "pussy," and a "mentally inferior black jew-hater."
Some called for my dismissal. It is difficult to stand up while
everyone else is sitting down. One risks the hammer.
In the Dec. 11 faculty meeting, Dean of the Extension School Michael
Shinagel and I re-introduced the motion with an amendment
acknowledging the ideals and the gaps in the 1990 legislation.
Incredibly, many express the faith that this legislation, which had
been formulated to balance the rights of speakers at Harvard against
those of disruptive protesters, had all along been sufficient to
guarantee free speech generally on campus. The scope of the
legislation, however, was far removed from the phenomena of
disinvitation, politically biased tenure deliberations, and donor
boycotts. Moreover, the laissez-faire principle of the earlier
legislation had done nothing to remedy situations in which the most
popular, most confidently-voiced, best-financed, and
best-administratively-supported positions are allowed to drown out all
others.
Opponents labored to poke holes in the motion because it arose in the
context of an issue close to home. The circus of amendments and
motions -- amid universal uncertainty about the applicable rules of
procedure -- prompted me to withdraw the motion altogether. My only
hope was that those who are tempted in the future to disinvite a
speaker or torpedo a tenure case over politics will at least think
twice. In the end, however, most of my colleagues literally groaned in
collective denial, convinced that their defeat of our motion disproved
that there had been ever been any problem in the first place. Only one
concrete proposal apparently survived the abortive free-speech debate
of fall 2007. At my suggestion, Dean Smith recommended to University
President Drew Faust the establishment of a University-wide Committee
on Free Speech, consistent with the unfulfilled recommendation of the
1990 legislation. Six months later, there is still no Committee.
Harvard has known me for 31 years. I was promoted from within, by two
separate departments, an outcome of the closest examination of
scholarship, citizenship, and collegiality known in the academic
world. Moreover, I am the faculty co-chair of one of the largest
University-wide associations of faculty and administrators. Yet those
who feel chastened by my complaint now comfort themselves by
whispering the self-serving rumor that I am "not a team player." The
kind of team player who would comfort such detractors might have felt
at home in Dixie, Nazi Germany, or the Bush White House, but he or she
does not deserve tenure in the Acropolis of world education. Tenure
affords and demands a finer moral compass. We must act on the wisdom
that justice withers when intended for just us. And "free speech" is
nothing but the self-congratulation of the moneyed and the mighty when
the university does not fulfill its unique calling to defend this
principle for all.
J. Lorand Matory '82 is professor of anthropology and of African and
African-American studies.
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