Britain’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) is to hold a special session Thursday for a revote on the decision to boycott two Israeli universities.

 

Jewish organizations and opponents of the boycott were feverishly busy Wednesday in last-minute preparations for the session. No one was prepared Wednesday to vouch for success in turning around the decision but both sides appeared to agree that the massive pressure on the part of the universities and the anti-boycott activists would bear fruit.

 

Dr. John Pike, a philosophy lecturer at the Open University, told Haaretz on Wednesday that is seemed likely the boycott would be overturned but that it was not sure.

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Dr. Sue Blackwell of Birmingham University, one of the driving forces behind the boycott, said the outcome of Thursday’s session seems to be “fixed.” She said all sorts of people who had never participated in the AUT would come with the specific aim of stopping the boycott.

 

“I have never heard of such a thing in the 14 years I have been active in the AUT,” she said, noting that special sessions are convened only when there have been changes. “There is something anti-democratic in this,” she said.

The head of Deakin University’s law school is at the centre of a national furore after publishing an article advocating the use of torture in some circumstances.

 

Academics, politicians and refugee advocates yesterday condemned the views of Professor Mirko Bagaric after details were published in The Age.

 

However, Deakin University’s vice-chancellor strongly backed Professor Bagaric’s right to academic freedom, and refused to criticise his advocacy of torture.

 

Professor Bagaric and a fellow Deakin law lecturer, Julie Clarke, have co-written a paper for an American law journal titled “Not enough (official) torture in the world?”, an extract of which appeared in The Age yesterday.

 

In their paper, the pair argue that even torturing innocent people to death under interrogation may be justified if they could reveal information that could save many more lives.

 

Four senior law lecturers from Deakin University yesterday publicly dissociated themselves from the views of Professor Bagaric and Mrs Clarke.

Russell Cocks and Roger Gamble said while they respected the pair’s right to voice their opinions, they believed advocating the use of torture in any circumstances “is morally repugnant and shameful”.

 

Mr Cocks and Mr Gamble also said they were worried that people would think the article’s stance was widely shared at Deakin.

 

“This is wrong. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth: there is widespread condemnation and a real fear that this article is a blight on the (Law) School as a whole.

 

“May we assure the public, our graduates and current students, as well as the legal profession, that the views expressed in the article are not those of the Deakin Law School and are not reflected in the curriculum or the culture of the school.”

 

Senior law lecturer Samantha Hepburn, in a letter published in The Age today, wrote: “The views of one academic at Deakin Law School do not represent us all. Torture is a base instinct… (and) there is no justification for it.”

 

The paper also attracted criticism from federal and state politicians including Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Greens senator Kerry Nettle and Premier Steve Bracks.

Mr Kurian,

 

Please do not mistake my candor and civility with a lack of underlying intense emotion regarding your editorial. As I have already mentioned, it is one of the most anti-Semitic things I have ever read. Or, more specifically, it reads as a compilation of practically every anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jewish people. However, in this case, I decided to allow my head to rule over my heart – hence the rather muted tone of my initial response.

 

I fail to see how your tale of a powerful Jewish establishment,  Jewish money, Jewish privilege, Jewish prominence in universities, and a “Holocaust” industry, supports your assertion (that your main contention was that some Jews worked very hard to suppress the free speech of others at Duke). Even if it did support this assertion, I do not see what you are doing to enrich the debate. Some Jews do all sorts of things, just like members of any other religious or ethnic group. The difference is, the Jewish people are subject to more stereotypes than any other group, and you are contributing to this phenomenom.

 

I also find it very interesting that you characterize well-organized Jewish protests against the anti-Israel conference as “suppressing the free speech of others at Duke.” Duke President Richard Brodhead commended the protesters, who “instead of seeking to silence others..mounted arguments on the other side, enriching the debate and giving us all a chance for education.” At the same time, you see the conference itself (with its opposition to the very existence of the Jewish state) as an expression of free speech (I would have thought eliminating an entire state of people is the epitome of trying to supress free speech). Why the double standard?

 

Finally, I was unsure as how to take your statement “I appreciate your candor and willingness to consider my perspective, however naive and uninformed.” If you were implying that my contentions are “naive and uninformed”, then I can assure you that when it comes to Judaism, Israel, the Middle East conflict, and terror-supporting groups like the PSM and ISM, you will find that I am well-informed. (On this topic, you might want to know that Pirkei Avot does not mean The Book of Principles, as you have stated, but rather Ethics/Chapters of the Fathers. I am willing to help correct your other misapprehensions as well, if you so desire).

 

Mr Kurian, I suspect that you are about to go through an extremely difficult time, as you face the consequences of your bigoted editorial. I hope you use this time to reflect on why exactly you decided to blame the Jews, like so many others before you.

In the weeks before the conference, I received many reasoned expressions of concern, but also some attacks on Duke’s decision that were astonishing in their virulence. Among the things I found troubling in these messages was the tendency to think of the conference’s supporters in this way: You, Duke student, can be thought of as belonging to a group that contains terrorists and terrorist supporters. Therefore, you are indistinguishable from terrorists and deserve as little opportunity to exercise your rights as they do.

 

One can understand the passion that underlies such a thought, but that does not prevent it from being highly dangerous. This is the disindividuating, dehumanizing logic of prejudice. It says, I already know you because I know your type—more truthfully, your stereotype.

 

I was deeply troubled by Philip Kurian’s Oct. 18 column because it seemed to display the same habits of thought.

I was deeply troubled by Philip Kurian’s Oct. 18 column because it seemed to display the same habits of thought. The column was headed “The Jews,” as if Jews were susceptible to group definition, and though its author probably did not mean to, it revived stereotypical images that have played a long-running role in the history of anti-Semitism.

Dear David,
 
I appreciate your candor and willingness to consider my perspective, however naive and uninformed. I want to assure you that I harbor no hatred towards the Jewish people, and the intentions in my writing were not insidious.
 
My main contention is that SOME Jews worked very hard to suppress the free speech of others at Duke, not just present their own point of view. I respect not only your right to speak your mind, but anyone else’s.
 
Once again, I appreciate your civility and frankness in this discussion.
 
My best,
Philip

You are not required to complete the work, yet you are not allowed to desist from it.

 

—Pirkei Avot (The Book of Principles), 2:21

 

Such describes the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam. Perfecting, preparing or repairing the world: a credo that, to many Jews, prescribes what role they should play in the wider concerns of our society. Judging by the opposition to this past weekend’s Palestine Solidarity Movement conference, however, I cannot help but conclude that the powerful Jewish establishment has distorted the meaning of this age-old teaching.

 

It is well known that Jews constitute the most privileged “minority” group in this country. Among the top 10 universities, Jews enjoy shocking overrepresentation: Only the California Institute of Technology has an undergraduate Jewish population below 10 percent, and four schools have particularly stark Jewish advantages—Harvard (30 percent), Yale (23 percent), UPenn (31 percent) and Columbia (25 percent). Keep in mind that, at best estimate, no more than 3 percent of all Americans are Jewish.

 

In his slim volume The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), Jewish-American historian Norman Finkelstein argues that American interest in Judaism is “a tribute not to Jewish suffering but to Jewish aggrandizement.” The holocaust label, he says, arose from the real suffering of European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, in turn giving rise to the Holocaust ideology, distinguished in its capitalization. He documents economic exploitation by this “Holocaust Industry,” which he calls an “outright extortion racket.”

 

Regardless of your political stance or position on the PSM conference, it is impossible to ignore the unprecedented outpouring of pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli support in defiance of free speech at Duke. Jewish alumni, faculty and staff have gone out of their way to lobby Duke to reject the PSM conference, mustering 92,000 signatures for their online petition and denouncing professors who have spoken out in support of free speech, as Duke’s chair of political science Michael Munger can attest.

 

Supposedly apolitical in nature, the Students Against Terror concert, headlined by Sister Hazel, kicked off this weekend’s festivities. The Chronicle reported, “The Freeman Center for Jewish Life funded 90 percent of the $80,000 event through the private donations from parents and alumni.” The Joint Israel Initiative, a coalition of campus Jewish and pro-Israeli groups, coordinated a series of events in opposition to the PSM, at a price tag of $25,000, more than two-and-a-half times what was spent on the conference itself. Four pro-Jewish, full-page advertisements appeared in the Friday, Oct. 15, edition of The Chronicle, with two directly condemning the PSM. We are dealing with a very well-funded and well-organized establishment, indeed.

 

Granted, I tend to err on the side of complete academic freedom; I would probably let the Ku Klux Klan hold a conference on campus, as long as it could be couched within the framework of serious discussion. But what Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States—amounts to is a stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended. If the Duke administration had buckled under the influential weight of the Jewish establishment by not allowing the PSM conference, we would be suffering from the Orwellian notion of consciousness, where the only ideas that matter are the ones espoused by the powerful.

 

While Jews undoubtedly lay claim to a long history of racism and genocide that continues across the world today, this characterization does not transport perfectly to the United States. After World War II, overt anti-Semitism gradually subsided, in part because of American response to Hitler’s murderous regime, but largely due to Jewish association with whiteness and the privileges white skin affords. In short, Jews can renounce their difference by taking off the yarmulke. Clearly, this is not a luxury enjoyed by all minority groups.

 

When former President Bill Clinton nominated his first two judges to the Supreme Court, both were Jews.  Remarkable in the slightest? No, of course not. But the American public still can’t get over Clarence Thomas’s cultural heritage, after being appointed by Bush 41. To be Jewish is to have the right to move seamlessly between the majority and minority, without constraint. Thus, Jewish-American appropriation of the “oppressed” moniker is disingenuous, belying the reality of America’s social hierarchy.

 

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans. As the world-renowned historian John Hope Franklin mentions, the U.S. decision to authorize federal funding of a holocaust memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.—hallowed ground otherwise reserved for commemorating U.S. history—camouflages this nation’s guilt in our own crimes against humanity: the Native American genocide and slavery.

 

I do not ignore historic Jewish oppression or discredit the stark realities of the holocaust. Nor do I discount anti-Semitic sentiments that still persist in America. With the burden of Tikkun Olam, Jews were even some of the most vocal abolitionists and supporters of the civil rights movement. However, to preserve our democracy and honestly confront inequality where it persists, Jews must own up to their privilege in America, and use it more wisely.

As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.