The recent attacks on Ward Churchill and other left-wing academics are inexcusable. Churchill has been forced to resign his chairmanship of the Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado University and professors at Columbia University have faced intense censure for their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. These attacks are veiled in language defending academic freedom, but their purpose is to stifle it. Conservatives are taking inspiration from small victories that marginalize left-wing academics. They’ve taken their lead from Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who has proven that once under fire, academics will face serious obstacles in their careers. Education administrators are capitulating to pressure orchestrated by the media and right-wing interest groups — regardless of their political motivations. This poses a serious threat to academic freedom and only the rebuilding of a principled left can stop it. This will require abandoning the current dominant strategy on the left, which distances us from anything remotely unpopular.
Because of his provocative language, Ward Churchill is the best-known example. Churchill’s statement about the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have given the right wing the opportunity to set a precedent of silencing opposition to the so-called War on Terror. The stated reason for silencing Churchill — stopping hate speech against victims of Sept. 11 — is about as sincere as Bush’s charge of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In a moment of candor, O’Reilly gave the real reason for targeting Churchill: “The problem with this guy is that he sees the USA as a country that persecutes people, a bad country.” However mistaken Churchill’s specific assertions may be (Churchill mistakenly places blame on those regular Americans who are complicit with America’s wars and wrongly indicts white-collar workers in corporate America) his central thesis is accurate.
Churchill correctly asserts that rather than “they hate our freedom,” the explanation for terrorism is rooted in America’s history of military interventions around the world. The danger of such a thesis is clear. It undermines the very legitimacy of the War on Terror and exposes everything Orwellian about it. This, like O’Reilly admits, is what upsets the right. If the policies of the United States are, in fact, to blame for such catastrophes as that of Sept. 11, then the burden lies on the United States to cease — rather than escalate — the use of its military.
Columbia University has become the epicenter of the battle for academic freedom. The past months have produced an organized attack against four Columbia professors. Three (George Saliba, Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad) from the Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures Department have been attacked for their purported intimidation of pro-Israel students. These students, with the help of the Boston-based Israel advocacy group The David Project, produced a 30-minute movie called “Columbia Unbecoming.” The movie featured 14 students and their complaints, particularly targeting Massad — coincidently, the only untenured of the three. Only one of these students had taken a class with Massad and all of the “evidence” presented in the film was shoddy at best. As the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz admits, “The movie fuses few solid examples of intimidation — only some of which involved professors and the students they were teaching — with generalized complaints of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements and behavior on campus.” These supposedly “silenced” and “intimidated” students debut their complaints in the form of a well-funded documentary without filing a complaint through the university’s official channels. Curious. Doubly so is their inability to substantiate their claims.
The fourth Columbia professor under attack is Rashid Khalidi. The New York Department of Education (which runs a program with Columbia to help public school teachers discuss the Middle East) fired Khalidi on the day after the New York Sun — a conservative tabloid — published a story that chastised the professor for his diagnosis of Israel as a “racist” state. Despite the clear political motivation behind these attacks, the students seeking to remove those critical of Israel have ironically named their organization “Columbians for Academic Freedom.” Yet this group — like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and the New York Sun — seeks the destruction of such freedom and the marginalization of all pro-Palestinian voices.
These are despicable, politically motivated attacks on academic freedom. The right seeks to wedge open an assault against all opponents of the military policies of the United States and Israel. To do this, they have begun with the easiest targets.
Supporters of Palestinians are among the first targets precisely because their struggle is already marginalized in American discourse. Further, the right magnifies comments like Churchill’s to discredit his larger point about where terrorism comes from. If we stand for this assault then we set a very dangerous precedent. The message put forward by those educational administrators who capitulate under political pressure is clear: with access to the media, you can silence anyone. As Rashid Khalidi recently said, “The sooner there’s an organized response to these people, who have absolutely no scruples about twisting the truth, the better.”
Chris Dols ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in civil engineering and is a member of the International Socialist Organization.
