History News Network | The Long Campaign by White Supremacists to “Take Our Country Back”.
Jonathan Judaken is just the latest victim in a concerted effort by a well-organized group united in defense of Israel. I have written on this topic several times (Pro-Israeli Groups Continue their Assault on Academic Freedom and Conservatives go after UCLA’s historian James Gelvin). It is a troubling trend that threatens academic freedom and the progress that flows from it.
Judaken opens with an explanation of his situation: “Let me tell you how I ended up on Jihad Watch. This is a tale of the new red scare wending its way across college campuses. More than an account of my own travails, this is an anatomy of how critical thought about Islam and Judaism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism is today monitored in the academy with the goal of chilling reflection.”
I noticed a common theme in the comments section. (Of course, going to the comments section of any online forum is a bit like going to the Twilight Zone. You enter at your own risk.) Many of the commenters accused Judaken of being the McCarthyites, not the minions of Campus Watch. The strategy of flipping an argument on its head as a way of taking down your opponent is not new. It has proven to be an effective strategy on the right. Someone calls you a racist, you respond by claiming that they are the real racist. Someone calls you intolerant, you respond by calling them intolerant, and so on.
The problem with their argument is that they fail to make the appropriate distinction between McCarthyism and criticism. What McCarthy did was attempt to silence people that he disagreed with through intimidation and bullying tactics, not debate. Judaken was not trying to silence those associated with the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, but expose what they were doing. And the analogy is appropriate because they use the tactics of intimidation to bully those in academia whose account of Middle East history does not agree with theirs (the Israeli government is always innocent and anyone who says otherwise is an anti-Semite).
What Caschetta did was not criticism for the purpose of advancing the debate, but an intentional distortion of Judaken’s lecture and intentions. The Middle East Forum was founded to promote a particular ideology. And the way they have chosen to further that ideology is through intimidation, not academic debate. The academic world is built on the principle of debate and criticism. This is what fuels progress in all academic fields of knowledge. If the real goal of Campus Watch was the advancement of knowledge, there are multiple avenues available to critique Judaken’s position in a constructive and professional manner. Every academic has to face criticism as they engage in their own field. This is not the kind of criticism that Caschetta engaged in. He intentionally distorted Judaken’s lecture as a way to intimidate him. This was the way of McCarthy, and therefore the label is apt in the case of Campus Watch, but not the other way around.
Essay on being accused of being an anti-Israel professor | InsideHigherEd.
History News Network | The Hoax of Climate Denial.
In Arizona the state legislature cut $99 million dollars from the higher education budget, and it is even worse in places like Wisconsin and Louisiana. This trend has been going on for some time, but the economic crisis prompted even more severe cuts to higher education. As Michelle Goldberg notes, many states have begun restoring funding, but “[e]ight Republican-dominated states, however, have kept cutting. Among them are North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Louisiana, and South Carolina.”
What is driving this trend? It is partly political (animus towards the “liberal” academia), partly ideological (absolute devotion to privatization and taxing cutting), and partly financial (the opportunity to make money off of education).
What are the consequences? 1) Higher tuition that will increasingly make college accessible only to the wealthy. 2) University’s are turning to solutions that will harm the long-term quality of education, such as larger class sizes and corporate partnerships that put the focus on making money rather than educating students. 3) There will be less time and money for faculty to do the research that is vital to the health and wealth of our nation. 4) Higher education will start to become more of a job-training program, rather than an educational institution that creates well-rounded and thoughtful citizens in addition to preparing them for their careers. 5) Inequality will increase.
Please read the entire article here:
This Is What Happens When You Slash Funding for Public Universities | The Nation.
More proof that movies have more influence than historians, even when the movie is mostly myth!
History News Network | Could a Movie Help Lead to the Departure of Scotland from the UK?
Reflecting on the years he spent in conflict zones all over the globe, John F. Burns declared, “What those years bred in me, more than anything else, was an abiding revulsion for ideology, in all its guises. From Soviet Russia to Mao’s China, from the Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban to the repression of apartheid-era South Africa, I learned that there is no limit to the lunacy, malice and suffering that can plague any society with a ruling ideology, and no perfidy that cannot be justified by manipulating the precepts of a Mao or a Marx, a Prophet Muhammad or a Kim Il-sung.” Many of us who have studied ethnic/religious conflict have come to the same conclusion.
But the lesson goes beyond the violent and oppressive regimes encountered by Burns. As Walter G. Moss notes in his article on this topic (“Why Learning from History Means Saying No to Rigid Ideologies” HNN), “the growth of a rigid U.S. political conservativism” has been harmful as well, even if less deadly.
If ideologies are so destructive, can we eradicate them? Moss believes that we don’t need to completely reject “all isms or embracing an unprincipled opportunism. We can, for example, prefer conservatism or liberalism in our approach to politics, as long as we let our individual values and judgments and not some party platform (see, e.g., here for that of the tea party) determine our political decisions.” I agree, but this still leaves the problem of persuading individuals to let go of their cherished world views.
Ideologies are so pervasive because they are comforting and often intoxicating. They give us meaning, certainties, identities, and a sense of self-worth. The best weapon against ideological thinking is education with a healthy dose of the humanities. The study of history in particular could potentially inculcate students against the temptations of ideologies. If students learn how to critically evaluate evidence, make analytic comparisons, and learn to appreciate complexities and ambiguities they will be less likely to fall for the distorted views of ideologies. And any exposure to the long train of human misery caused by ideological rigidity might make them think twice before they fall under the spell of any ideology. I don’t believe that we’ll ever completely eradicate ideological thinking, but we must try to at least limit its appeal.
For now, we as individuals must take responsibility for our own beliefs, and the behaviors that flow from those beliefs. And here Moss’s advice is apt: “Political wisdom requires a proper mix of idealism and realism and other virtues or values such as the love, kindness, and humility mentioned by Pope Francis, as well as compassion, empathy, tolerance, a sense of humor, creativity, temperance, self-discipline, passion, courage, and prudence. The trick is finding the proper combination of such values to apply to any concrete, unique political situation in order to further the common good.”
The Things I Carried Back – NYTimes.com.
“Rituals For the Perpetuation of False Ideologies” by Jeremy Eskin at http://eskinfineart.blogspot.com/
Michael Hiltzik, in the LA Times, rightly scolds some of the Supreme Court Justices for their ignorance of history. During the arguments about same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court last week, Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “Every definition that I looked up, prior to about a dozen years ago defined marriage as unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife.” As Hiltzik points out, “He must not have looked very far.” The historical record is very clear that marriage “[i]n definition and practice…has evolved and devolved to meet economic and political demands, shifting cultural norms and biological imperatives. The mandate of procreation to preserve the human race has always been part of the definition of marriage, certainly, but rarely the only goal or, in some cases, even the principal one.” Read the entire article here:
Same-sex marriage: Supreme Court Justices don’t know much about history – LA Times.
What has been the impact of the “Stand your Ground” laws since their enactment? This is the subject of an article in The New York Times today. After examining several new studies on the subject, Robert J. Spitzer concludes that “[n]ot only have these laws failed to increase public safety, they have also turned the clock back to the mythologized mayhem of the Wild West.” And he points out, “We’ve learned this lesson before, in our own violent past, when strict regulation of concealed gun carrying was the near-universal and successful response to gun violence. As early as 1686, New Jersey enacted a law against wearing weapons because they induced ‘great Fear and Quarrels.’ Massachusetts followed in 1750. In the late 1700s, North Carolina and Virginia passed similar laws. In the 1800s, as interpersonal violence and gun carrying spread, 37 states joined the list. Tennessee’s 1821 law fined ‘each and every person so degrading himself’ by carrying weapons in public. Alabama’s 1839 law was titled ‘An Act to Suppress the Evil Practice of Carrying Weapons Secretly.’ Why must we relearn a lesson we codified centuries ago? How dumb are we?” It’s unlikely that these laws will be repealed any time soon. Evidence means little to the NRA and its zealous followers.
Stand Your Ground Makes No Sense – NYTimes.com.
John-Patrick Thomas, The New York Times (May 4, 2015)
History News Network | Two Things You Don’t Know About Roe v. Wade that Will Surprise You.
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