Originally written for the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
About six months after Andrew Pessin posted on his Facebook profile a defense of Israel during its 2014 war against Hamas, the once popular Connecticut College philosophy professor was subjected to an academic smear campaign. The school paper published articles defaming him. The administration hosted condemnations of Pessin from across the campus community on the school's website, and tolerated other anti-Semitic activities that only worsened the climate for Jews and Israel supporters. Pessin received death threats and, in the spring of 2015, took a medical leave of absence. The Connecticut College administration offered no meaningful protection or support to Pessin, and never issued any apology for its role in his abuse.
The Pessin affair was part of a growing trend of anti-Israel hostility on U.S. campuses, but at least his story has a somewhat happy ending. Pessin resumed teaching last fall after an extended paid sabbatical, and – together with a colleague – convinced the school to establish a Jewish Studies program. Moreover, he has edited a new book with Fordham University's Doron Ben-Atar on the general campus trend: Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS. Ben-Atar, who is part of Fordham's American Studies program, protested at a faculty meeting about the 2013 passing of a resolution calling for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel, only to find himself soon being investigated for unspecified charges, resulting in a Kafkaesque campaign of intimidation and vilification. This volume of essays, by faculty and students who have confronted anti-Israelism on their campuses, documents and analyzes how this movement masks an underlying anti-Semitism that creates a hostile environment for Jews while undermining free speech and civility.
About six months after Andrew Pessin posted on his Facebook profile a defense of Israel during its 2014 war against Hamas, the once popular Connecticut College philosophy professor was subjected to an academic smear campaign. The school paper published articles defaming him. The administration hosted condemnations of Pessin from across the campus community on the school's website, and tolerated other anti-Semitic activities that only worsened the climate for Jews and Israel supporters. Pessin received death threats and, in the spring of 2015, took a medical leave of absence. The Connecticut College administration offered no meaningful protection or support to Pessin, and never issued any apology for its role in his abuse.
The Pessin affair was part of a growing trend of anti-Israel hostility on U.S. campuses, but at least his story has a somewhat happy ending. Pessin resumed teaching last fall after an extended paid sabbatical, and – together with a colleague – convinced the school to establish a Jewish Studies program. Moreover, he has edited a new book with Fordham University's Doron Ben-Atar on the general campus trend: Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS. Ben-Atar, who is part of Fordham's American Studies program, protested at a faculty meeting about the 2013 passing of a resolution calling for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel, only to find himself soon being investigated for unspecified charges, resulting in a Kafkaesque campaign of intimidation and vilification. This volume of essays, by faculty and students who have confronted anti-Israelism on their campuses, documents and analyzes how this movement masks an underlying anti-Semitism that creates a hostile environment for Jews while undermining free speech and civility.
Q: Your sobering introduction highlights how the campus "debate" has become so extreme as to shut down any meaningful discussion in favor of assertions that, "Israel and Zionism are...illegitimate, incorrigible abominations" as you describe it. How should pro-Israel activists counter this strategy when those espousing it have no interest in reasonable or balanced discussion?
Pessin: You've put your finger on a central point. The anti-Israel attack on the academy as a whole is reflected most clearly in (a) the personal attacks on pro-Israel individuals documented in the book and (b) the utter rejection of the pro-Israel voice via campus disruptions, the relentless calls to boycott, and the rejection of "normalization" (i.e. refusal to have any dialogue with pro-Israel voices). They couldn't be more explicit in their aims: the Israeli perspective, including the intimate connection between the Jewish perspective in general and the Israeli perspective, is simply not to be permitted on campus. They object to the "Palestine exception" while explicitly and actively advocating for and executing the "Israel exception" to free speech. The best response, I think, is to repeatedly and vocally point this out, and thus promote and defend our book's principal message: that whatever you may think about the conflict over there, the anti-Israel movement over here is profoundly antithetical to the academic and moral norms of the campus environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment