Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, has been barred from moving to Yale University. It appears to be due to a concerted campaign by the Zionist lobby. Free speech for all, as long, of course, as you believe in the perfection of Israel and the US. Cole responded to the smear campaign with typical aplomb:
The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.
And this:
These articles [written by prominent Jews to attack Cole] attempted to make my critiques of the Likud, on both sides of the Atlantic, look like an attack on American Jewry in general, which is manifestly not the case. For these people, Likud equals Israel equals Jews, so all criticism of revisionist Zionism and Greater Israel expansionism is anti-Semitic.
Extremist Zionists know that time is not on their side and must therefore lash out at those who dare question accepted “truths.” Cole deserves our support.
UPDATE: More on the Cole saga here.
UPDATE II: Cole responds to some of the smears.
How is this an example of the stifling of free speech? Yale University is a private institution. It has the right to hire whomever it wants. It is not stapling Mr. Cole’s mouth shut, or threatening him with death if he airs his views; it is merely not granting him tenure, and therefore the ability to use the University as a pulpit for his views.
If a neo-conservative applied for employment at The Nation, and that magazine rejected his application on the basis of his politics, you would have no problem with it whatsoever. Why, then, the outraged howls in this case?
It’s an example because by Yale’s own admission, the roadblocks put up against Cole’s appointment were highly unusual. He had been given the green light by the pre approvla process and then the neocons got involved, as well as the American Enterprise Institute, as well as a concerted effor tto discredit Cole in the media.
And it’s particularly notable that Douglas Feither recently being given as tenure at Georgetown University (as Professor in School of Foreign Service of all things) an appointment that was met with widespread criticism from many faculty memebers, but the appointment was argued that Feith’s tenure woudl provide a diversity of opinion.
So here we have a war criminal being given the job (who happens to be a rabbid Zionist) and one who is a critic of Israel who’s only crime is that his opinions are considered controversial.
Douglas Feith a war criminal? Quick inform the justice department and arrest that man!! Sure, Addumbo, he doesn’t have your distinguished career as a nuclear scientist of word renown, but he does have some qualifications beyond his support for Israel. I assume that is where is criminality is defined? And of course one cannot support Israel without being rabid.
Adummmmboooo why don’t you make a citizen’s arrest? Go for it
Well captain you know how us left wingers get all hyperbolic about Iraq and the scum sucking maggots that got us there. We particularly hate “legalising” the torture thing;
http://www.slate.com/id/2100899/
“Start with Abu Ghraib. Feith’s office was in charge of Iraq’s military prisons, but that’s not the only reason his name keeps turning up in newspaper reports about the scandal. It was Feith who devised the legal solution for getting around the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on physically or psychologically coercing prisoners of war into talking. As a Pentagon official in the 1980s, Feith had laid out the argument that terrorists didn’t deserve protection under the Geneva Conventions.”
..further, questions on whose side is he on and why then are we there?
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1146
“Feith served as the number three civilian in the George W. Bush administration’s Defense Department, under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Undersecretary for Policy Feith had previously served in the Reagan administration, starting off as Middle East specialist at the National Security Council (1981-82) and then transferring to the Defense Department where he spent two years as staff lawyer for Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle. ”
…Richard Perle..well what can I say
Well he did resign at one stage, but for sure he’ll be back as a “Middle East Expert” or something we can rely on for fucking us up the arse for sure.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6137
“Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to the passing by one of his employees of confidential Pentagon documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in turn passed them to the Israeli embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating Feith. There seems little doubt that he operated in the Pentagon in such a way as to produce false and misleading ‘intelligence,’ that he created an entirely false impression of Iraqi weapons capabilities and ties to al-Qaeda, and that he is among the chief facilitators of the US war in Iraq.
“Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking of major scandals concerning his tenure at the Department of Defense, which is among the more disgraceful cases of the misleading of the American people in American history.”
Will the Franklin-Rosen-Weissman investigation implicate Feith – or someone higher up in the Washington food chain? “
I think there is a lot of paranoia here. Yale is a very liberal-left university; remember, it was Yale who admitted the sub-par former terrorist. However, I would not be very happy with a HISTORY professor shoving his views on contemporary political events down my throat. If he wished to be a political pundit, rather than an historian and scholar, he should apply for a job with Foxnews or something.
The Reich can’t have a Reich critic in the elite academy’s bosom, can it? Cole is better off out of such a place. Isn’t that the joint that went to war with it’s janitors? That houses the Skull and Bonesmen? They’re all class and they say class matters – far more than truth it seems.
You wonder which was the greater imperative – the need to keep a fiercely independent spirit out of the citadel, or the implied financial threats of wealthy opponents with secret clout.
Just another American institution ethically biting the dust.
Glen Condell
Critique of current affairs is fine. But this is not the role of the scholarly historian.
Oh yeah, that’s right. No convictions right? Were charges, much less any convictions ever made against Arafat? Surely, the only logical conclusion must be that he was a man of peace right?
Viva,
What relevance could history have with current affairs right? I mean, it’s not like one influences the other now is it?
If Yale is a very liberal-left university, then try explaining how the moon bats at the American Enterprise Institute have so much influence at the place. Try explaining why leading Republican figures attend this university.
I presume that by former “terrorist” you are referring to is Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban mouthpiece. Viva, you really got to get up to speed with the times. Did you not know that the Taliban are NOT considered terrorists by the State Department?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0502/dailyUpdate.html
Absolutely, better stick with impartial and balanced thinkers like Dershowitz to set the high bar for telling it like it is right?
Viva, you seriously need to read the labels on the bottles you a drinking from. Since when did Faux news ever allow a left wing pundit air time?
Aaron Lane Jun 9th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Call it “Yale” if you must, but don’t call it a “University” if it seeks to stifle ideas and words that its donors don’t like. One of the essential features of an actual university is that it allows freedom of thought and speech within its walls, irrespective of what its funders believe.
Ed
Oh OK, let’s not call Yale a “university.” How the hell can Yale stifle “free speech?” The only institution that can stifle “free speech” is the state.
And pray tell us of your vast experiences at “actual” universities.
viva peace Jun 11th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Here’s how:
[1] Get rid of staff who make comments that are unpleasing to management (or donors). This can be tricky. It usually involves one of three paths:
[a] Find some dirt on them and sack him/her for that, even though it was for speaking “against the interests of the university.”
[b] Summarily sack the staff member for “speaking outside his/her field of expertise,” knowing this is untrue; wait to see if the staff member persues it legally; let it drag out a bit to see how serious they are. If they drop it, then good; if not, then pay them out.
[c] Make life so unpleasant that s/he wants to leave (e.g. unfavourable timetables, large classes, support and foster student complaints, start rumours about incompetance, etc.).
[2] Don’t hire staff likely to make comments that are unpleasing to management (or donors) in the first place, thus saving management the trouble of going through option [1].
Ed
Not one of those things has anything whatsoever to do with “free speech>’ You are merely describing recruitment processes. As far as I am aware, Professor Cole has a huge platform to spruik his sophomoric anti-Israel bile.
Except that none of it is sophomoric, but it seems to be a new wors you are fond of out fo context and over-use. Has anyone explained what it means to you Viva?
There are all forms of censorship, both direct and indirect, official and unnoficial. One could suggest that “free speech zones” are a form of supporessing dissent, while to actually criminalising it. Of course, the mere notion of a free speech zone, implies there are zones where free speech is not legal.
Similarly, by distorting a “recruitment processes”, censorship is also enacted, albeit unoficially. Juan Cole was not denied a position because of his lack qualifications, but because his views were considered controversial.
viva peace Jun 12th, 2006 at 11:20 am
The purpose of the techniques is to prevent someone from speaking in a university context.
That is the means to obtain the end. It’s a pretty elementary defect to not be able to distinguish between the two, nor see the connection between them. Read items in the Western canon – esp. Max Weber on the topic.
If you interpret his work as “sophomoric anti-Israel bile”, do you think that is grounds for preventing him from lecturing to university students – i.e. censoring him on Yale’s campus?