[R-G] Joel Kovel on his termination from Bard College For Criticism Of Zionism

[Sid Shniad]

STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE 



Introduction 



In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social 

Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside 

the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last 

of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and 

full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 

2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the 

College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 

and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote 

that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive 

Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members 

of the Faculty Senate. 



This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and 

motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by 

political values, principally stemming from differences between myself 

and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course 

much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial 

subject, my work on ecosocialism ( The Enemy of Nature ). However, the 

evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent 

of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have 

been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this 

instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process 

which was used to justify my termination from the faculty. 



A brief chronology 



• 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In 

October, my article, "Zionism's Bad Conscience," appeared in  Tikkun . 

Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein's 

office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said 

that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added 

that it had not been made because of what I had just published about 

Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically 

opposed to mine. 



• 2003. In January I published a second article in Tikkun , 

"'Left-Anti-Semitism' and the Special Status of Israel," which argued 

for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks 

later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, 

on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that 

perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result 

of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the 

current half-time contract as "Distinguished Professor." 



• 2006. I finished a draft of Overcoming Zionism . In January, while I 

was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a 

concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has 

directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert 

practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the 

United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except 

for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, 

however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship" between the 

United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and 

massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I 

organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call 

attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest 

were students and community people; and the issue was never taken 

up on campus. 



• 2007. Overcoming Zionism was now on the market, arguing for a 

One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, Martin Peretz 

for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the Los Angeles 

Times . Peretz is an official in AIPAC's foreign policy think-tank, and 

at the time a Bard Trustee—though this latter fact was not pointed out 

in the book). In August, Overcoming Zionism was attacked by a watchdog 

Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the 

book's United States distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to 

remove it from circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 

letters to U of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of 

book-burning. I was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with the 

exception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from 

Bard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a 

professor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why this was so, 

he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. 

This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its 

faculty from violation of their rights of free expression—all the more 

so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a 

bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in 

its Faculty Handbook as a "right . . . to search for truth and 

understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings 

without intimidation." 



• 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a 

course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was 

carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, another evaluation 

of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 

and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as 

instrumental in the decision to let me go. 



Irregularities in the Evaluation Process 



The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with 

Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of 

the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus' 

Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of 

the Episcopal–Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New 

York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair 

Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously 

against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against 

the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to 

the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, 

Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of 

the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, 

MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and 

expressed admiration for his position. It should also be observed that 

Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli 

aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, 

"Religion on the Line," (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of 

Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for 

human rights violations—this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews 

have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza. 



Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic 

and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the 

committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me 

from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely, Professor 

Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to 

do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in 

context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders 

the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the 

College's Faculty Handbook calls a procedure "designed to evaluate each 

faculty member fairly and in good faith." 



I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable 

negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by 

Dean Dominy's curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to 

her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted that there 

was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a fait accompli . 

In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the 

release of this document. 



On the responsibililty of intellectuals 



Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of 

progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in 

2005 by the Princeton Review as the second-most progressive college in 

the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 

'liberal arts.'" But "liberal" thought evidently has its limits; and my 

work against Zionism has encountered these. 



A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the 

injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in 

conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy 

to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state 

violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply 

more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is 

this issue more strategically important than in the United States, given 

the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel's behavior. 

The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of 

criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are 

deeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not 

exclusively, in the United States—which culture arises from suppression 

of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, 

whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world 

stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be 

outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel 

impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has 

suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore 

has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This 

notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is 

also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist 

ideology it enables becomes marginalized, and then removed. 



For further information: www.codz.org ; Joel Kovel, "Overcoming Impunity," 

The Link Jan-March 2009 ( www.ameu.org ). 



To write the Bard administration: 



President Leon Botstein 

president at bard.edu 



Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou 

dpapadimitrou at bard.edu