Assault
on Academic Freedom? UCLA Conference Blames Israel
by Cinnamon Stillwell and
Adelle Nazarian
Jihad Watch
December 22, 2015
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 In recent months,
California campuses have been awash in conferences alleging an
"assault on academic freedom" against those who "teach
Palestine." In October, the University of California, Riverside hosted
"Palestine, Israel and the Assault on Academic Freedom," while
California State University Fresno followed
suit on November 6 with, "Universities at the Crossroad: The
Assault on Academic Freedom."
The same day, the University of California, Los Angeles held its own version,
"Palestine and Pedagogy at the University (listen here),"
sponsored by the highly
politicized Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES). UCLA's conference
featured a succession of anti-Israel speakers complaining that the
Palestinian narrative is being "silenced" on campus,
particularly in the field of Middle East studies (MES). In reality, it is
the MES establishment—as exemplified by the Middle East Studies
Association (MESA),
which passed
a pro-boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) resolution earlier this
year—that is biased against Israel.
Around ten students and thirty middle-aged to elderly members of the
public attended the day-long conference. The low turnout prompted one of
the moderators to issue the disclaimer that "thousands" of
people download CNES event podcasts.
In introducing the first panel, Lara Deeb, professor and chair of
anthropology at Scripps College and founding member of the U.S.
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), proclaimed
that, "We live in a society that is marked by structural
racism" and "hate speech is generating an environment that is
averse to learning."
First to speak was Yaman Salahi, an attorney at the National Security
and Civil Rights Program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice: the Asian
Law Caucus. He began his discussion on "Academic Freedom in Middle
East Studies" by warning the audience, "I'm going to start with
the caveat that I'm not an academic. I'm a lawyer." Nevertheless, he
felt confident in declaring that, "academic freedom" does not
exist in MES.
Salahi inadvertently alluded to the field's paucity of rigorous,
objective scholarship when, after noting that one can "engage in
falsehoods" under the First Amendment," he added, "which I
think generally would not pass in academia depending on what you think a
fact is."
After condemning critics of academic bias, Salahi asked who among the
audience was active in opposing such efforts. Seeing no raised hands, he
concluded, "Okay, that's a problem." He then issued a call to
arms against the dastardly forces working for reform in higher education:
It's important, especially in this moment, where so many different
scholars in so many different fields focusing on the Middle East and in
other fields are under attack. Or their ability to study, research and
publish is under attack or they're being pressured to conform to certain,
narrow political criteria. It's important for people in those fields to
seek out these institutional positions at their university's committees
of academic freedom.
In a talk titled "Pedagogical Challenges of Engaging
Palestine," Cheryl Harris, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the UCLA School of Law, attacked the
principle of "neutrality." Using "racist speech" as
an example, she claimed that, under the "rubric" of neutrality,
"a certain kind of speech oppression becomes lawful [emphasis
added.]" As she freely admitted, Harris is no First Amendment
scholar.
Blaming the "pro-Israeli view" that "occupation is
necessary for U.S. foreign policy" for allegedly suppressing
"pro-Palestinian" academics, Harris railed against, "This
state with all of its power and resources" for being "aligned
with one viewpoint that brings with it access to the major media and the
like." Given that media bias
tends in the anti-Israel direction, her claims were not only paranoid,
but groundless. Adding to this impression, she then ranted about:
[A] host of private institutions, interests and organizations [that]
exercise vigilance and seek to ensure that the dominant view not only
remains dominant, but that other views are marginalized or simply not
heard.
The final panel of the day featured David Lloyd, an English professor
at UC Riverside and member
of the USACBI "organizing collective," who is notorious for
using his classroom to
promote BDS.
Referring to a UC Irvine talk on the "peculiar patterns of
American Zionists' refusals of fact and . . . of debate," Lloyd
accused "American Zionists and particularly liberal Zionists"
of seeking "to suppress our speech" because they "are
losing the argument the more and more the question of Palestine gets
debated in public." What Lloyd and his ilk falsely label suppression
is merely the pro-Israel, or scholarly, side exerting itself and fighting
back after years of silence.
Attempting to put a positive spin on the BDS movement's failure to generate
concrete achievements, Lloyd gloated:
Even when we fail, the Zionists get so heated up about the fact that
we are discussing Israel in public that they scream it from the rooftops
for us. So I just want to say, thanks. That's really helpful.
During the question and answer session, panelists were queried about
whether the deteriorating relationship between Jews and Muslims and the
rise in Islamic anti-Semitism could be attributed to the fact that,
unlike Christianity, Islam has not undergone a reformation. Lara Deeb of
Scripps objected to the premise of the question because it places "a
particular a kind of Christian historical perspective on Islam" and
involves "viewing Islam through a very, very [Western] centric
lens." Asked if she agreed with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah
Al-Sisi's call for an
Islamic reformation, she stated, "I don't think this idea of
saying Islam needs a reformation makes intellectual sense."
Instead, Deeb, displaying exactly the sort of ahistorical projection
she had just decried, chalked up the problem to Zionism, claiming that
what is, in fact, Islamic supremacism is merely "political divisions
related to contemporary history and the history of nation-state
building."
UC Santa Cruz anthropology professor Lisa Rofel chimed in: "I
also don't think the Christian reformation led to a better relationship
between Christians and Jews. So I'm a little confused by that
assertion."
The crowd burst out into laughter and started clapping, despite the
fact that both professors glossed over the dire need for progress in the
Muslim world, regardless of the historical parallels.
Far from demonstrating that there is an "assault on academic
freedom," speakers at the UCLA conference proved the opposite.
Railing against "suppression" from a podium in a major
university doesn't exactly inspire sympathy. Moreover, given the utterly
unfounded claim that critics of Zionism are being targeted and muzzled in
the lopsided field of MES, the entire premise rests on an inversion of
the truth. It's time to break out the world's smallest violin.
Adelle Nazarian is a journalist and contributor with Breitbart
News, who has reported extensively on politics, national
security, Asia, and the Middle East. You can follow her on Twitter @AdelleNaz.
She co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast
representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
Stillwell can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an
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author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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