[R-G] As`ad Abukhalil's Petition for Joseph Massad and Academic Freedom

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<blockquote>Sunday, October 24, 2004

To people around the world, please read and sign this petition 
<http://www.petitiononline.com/jmassad/petition.html> in support of 
academic freedoms. I urge you not because it deals with a close 
friend of mine (Joseph Massad) but because he is being subjected to a 
very nasty and sinister campaign by Zionist hoodlums. A sleazy member 
of Congress from New York has even called on the president of 
Columbia University to "fire" him. Joseph has written against 
anti-Semitism and anti-Semites in Arabic and English, and those 
hoodlums are trying to creat a caricature of Joseph that has no 
relation to reality. . . .

<http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2004/10/to-people-around-world-please-read-and.html></blockquote>

<blockquote>Pro-Israeli groups pressure Columbia University
Calls for sacking of Palestinian professor mount in wake of underground film

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff
<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=9607>
Tuesday, October 26, 2004

BEIRUT: Pro-Israeli groups in New York have stepped-up a campaign 
against Columbia University's Department of Middle East and Asian 
Languages and Cultures, complaining of its alleged strong 
anti-Israeli bias. At the center of the controversy is Joseph Massad, 
a Jordanian-born Palestinian who teaches politics and intellectual 
history there.

The far-right Pro-Israeli newspaper The New York Sun broke a story on 
Oct. 20 that there existed an underground film in which university 
students and alumni complain that they felt their academic careers 
were threatened because they expressed pro-Israeli positions.

Produced by a two-year-old Israel-advocacy group calling itself the 
David Project, the film has yet to be distributed to the public. It 
seems a small audience of Columbia administrators - including Barnard 
College president, Judith Shapiro, and Columbia provost, Alan 
Brinkley - received a private screening. The Boston-based  group has 
announced that it has sent a copy to Simon Klarfeld, head of the 
Hillel chapter of Columbia and Barnard, who plans to screen it for 
the organization's board of directors in November.

The article quoted one Columbia student, Ariel Beery, as remarking, 
"it is shocking to see blatant use of racial stereotypes by 
professors and intimidation tactics ... to push a distinct 
ideological line ..." Beery is a frequent contributor to Daniel 
Pipe's "Campus Watch," the neoconservative Web site dedicated to 
"monitoring Middle East studies on campus."

Based on its interviews with someone who claims to have seen the 
film, The Sun reported that Massad is one of its most-discussed 
scholars. The Sun accuses Massad - a tenure-track professor and one 
of the eight academics that inspired Campus Watch - is accused of 
likening Israel to Nazi Germany and saying Israel has no right to 
exist as a Jewish state.

It seems the film quotes Columbia alumni and Israeli air force 
veteran Tom Schoenfeld recalling having attended a lecture by Massad 
and trying to ask the lecturer a question. Apparently, Schoenfeld 
told The Sun, he prefaced the remark by informing Massad that he was 
Israeli. He said Massad asked him if he'd served in the Israeli Army. 
He said Massad wouldn't allow him to ask the question until he told 
him how many Palestinians he'd killed.

The plot thickened when The Sun reported on Oct. 22 that New York 
State Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat representing Brooklyn 
and Queens, wrote a letter to Columbia president, Lee Bollinger, 
calling for Massad's dismissal.

Weiner, who is toying with running for mayor, told The Sun he 
supports academic freedom but said: "There has been a line ... 
crossed here between the search of knowledge and the expression of 
hate ... Dressing it up as intellectual freedom doesn't change it 
from what it is."

In 2003, in fact, Bollinger convened a committee of Columbia 
professors devoted to drawing a more distinct line between academic 
expression and political activism. He told the New York Daily News 
that the committee found no evidence, indeed no claims, of classroom 
bias or intimidation.

Columbia is currently raising money for an endowed professorship in 
Israeli studies to compensate for what Bollinger has called a lack of 
contemporary Israel scholarship at the school.

The university has been under harsh criticism recently for having 
accepted some $200,000 from the UAE,  to help finance a chair named 
for the late literature professor and Palestinian activist Edward 
Said. The chair's donors also included some prominent Jewish 
philanthropists - The Hauser Foundation, for instance, and Jean 
Stein.</blockquote>
-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: 
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, 
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>