The only nation that cannot be criticized

“We never made a judgment that he is anti-Semitic. We have not made that judgment. We have only been told by members of the Jewish community that his words have been hurtful,”

This sentence says it all. Colleges and universities are running scared of the Jewish Lobby, but why? It seems Americans are free to criticize any nation, except Israel. This is incomprehensible.

Steve, at 10:05 am EDT on October 4, 2007

Bishop Tutu

If Bishop Tutu didn’t have the courage to stand up against apartheid, which meant making comments “hurting” those who felt it was a manifest destiny to marginalize blacks,he wouldn’t be the man he is; he is simply being himself, and speaking out against what he feels is wrong.

So much for the first amendment in some academic settings in The United States.

—Gilmore Harris

Gilmore Harris, at 12:00 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Ultimate hypocrisy

Hurtful to Jews?! I guess this means the Pope will be banned from speaking at this Roman Catholic institution due to his frequent and persistent hurtful comments towards women.

Disgusted, at 12:00 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

The Reverend Desmond Tutu is a man who has firmly stood against hate, intolerance, and injustice. A person of his stature should be honored and not turned away from an institution whose mission statement states, “Inspired by Catholic intellectual tradition, the University of St. Thomas educates students to be morally responsible leaders who think critically, act wisely and work skillfully to advance the common good.”How can a higher education institution teach its students to think critically when it deprives them a once in a life time opportunity to interact with a man who by any account has devoted his life to bring about a more just and compassionate world?

Dawit, at 12:30 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

“Hurtful to Jews?! I guess this means the Pope will be banned from speaking at this Roman Catholic institution due to his frequent and persistent hurtful comments towards women.”

You mean like Larry Summers was disinvited from his University of California visit? Funny how quickly everyone seems to have forgotten that one.

I’m not saying I approve of the Tutu situation, but please let’s not claim (as so many seem to, and not only on this site) that it’s “only” when people criticize Israel that they are “silenced” or “censored.”

also disgusted, at 12:55 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Better demotions

More appropriate demotions should be those of the academically tone-deaf administrators who made this boneheaded decision. The rationale is ludicrous. Are we to expect biologists now to be turned away because evolutionary biology is “hurtful” to fundamentalists? Anti-death penalty activists because their views are “hurtful” to right-wingers? Editors because their comments are “hurtful” to writers? Sigh...what a poor excuse for academic leadership.

old hum prof, Asst. Vice President for Undergraduate Studies at University of Northern Colorado, at 1:25 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

The Tutu affair at the University of St. Thomas

Your right to speak does not entail my duty to listen, much less my duty to provide you with a free hall and microphone. In the case of the retracted invitation to Archbishop Tutu we have a defensible second thought on the part of the University of St. Thomas about the appropriateness of providing a forum to a speaker who is without professional standing to speak with authority about a complex and sensitive matter in dispute—and above all a speaker whose public remarks about the issue reveal a willingness to use the credit of his undoubted achievements in another context to spread naked prejudice, to the point of defamation, about one of the parties to the dispute. Archbishop Tutu’s remarks were as follows: “People are scared in this country [U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful, very powerful. Well, so what? This is God‘s world. For goodness sake, this is God‘s world. We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end, they bit the dust.” Please study these words with care. In them Archbishop Tutu explicitly equates (a) the power of the Israel lobby to distort public discussion of Israel in the US with (b) the sinister powers of intimidation wielded by a rogue’s gallery of monstrous enemies of humanity, including the author of the Final Solution. If this is not defamation pure and simple—particularly in the absence of a scintilla of supporting evidence—it is a mystery what kind of malicious screed could possibly qualify as defamation. Since 1948 Israel has been continuously threatened with annihilation by its neighbors—threats often acted on with bloody savagery. It is all too easy for Americans so inclined to criticize that beleaguered nation for amassing and using deadly force in its own defense, and people who forget precisely how longstanding and categorical and homicidal the Palestinian consensus has been in its hatred of the Zionist entity are entitled to exercise their right to vent their prejudices (as they have with a vengeance) in any American forum they are provided with. But the proposition that the University of St. Thomas, or anyone else, is solemnly obliged by the First Amendment, or by any moral imperative, to give such critics a hearing, much less a forum, is inane on its face. Perhaps the notion is consistent with not being an antisemite or a virulent enemy of fairness to Israel in its current predicament, but alternative hypotheses for explaining where the proposition came from—short of ideological groupthink—are hard to come by.

Harold Skulsky, Chair Professor Emeritus at Smith College, at 2:35 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Tutu

Dr. Skulsky, If you are so fond of the law, why don’t you mention the plight of Palestinians? And the terrorism-soaked manifesto of Zionism? Because of practicing apartheid, Israel is loosing its moral standing, globally. The heavy involvement of the Israel lobby in the tragic policy against Iraq and Iran is what really hurtful to the Jewish community.It does not serve you well to sanctify people on a basis of their Jewish-ness.

Marionn Ross, at 3:55 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Mr. Harris, I am curious to know where you get the idea that a private institution is bound by the First Amendment to provide a platform for Tutu. (I have no position on the merits of their decision). Your invocation of the First Amendment seems problematic, as the constitution does not apply to private parties. Perhaps you could explain what you are talking about, or whether you were engaged in simple political rhetoric which wasn’t intended to be legal analysis. Thank you.

Larry, at 4:20 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Steve

Steve,The Ann Coulter firestorm is exactly why a campus like St. Thomas is loath to invite anyone. You can’t win if you do and you can’t win if you don’t in the eyes of faculty or the public. He should have been invited, but it is not accurate to say he was “barred” or “uninivited".

PR Pro, at 4:50 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

First of all, I think allowing any group to keep a Nobel Prize winner from speaking at an American university is reprehensible. Secondly, how does one get to be a professor at a major university without knowing how to use paragraph breaks?

Smokey Strodtman, at 10:25 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Boy, am I glad I never studied with Prof. Skulsky...

I certainly would’ve flunked his course as our views are so entirely dissimilar.

I’m writing as the 2nd blogger to break this story (Muzzlewatch was the first) and the one who brought it to Scott’s attention. Thanks for covering this story. I too can’t believe it hasn’t been picked up by major media.

As an American Jew, I’m deeply distressed by the small-mindedness of the St. Thomas decision. I’m not surprised by the small-mindedness of the Minneapolis Jewish community representative who decided that Tutu was anti-Israel or the rabbis teaching at St. Thomas who supposedly influenced this decision. Criticism of Israel frightens many Jews. It shouldn’t, but it does.

But that won’t stop us from speaking the truth as we see it.

Richard Silverstein, at 6:00 am EDT on October 5, 2007

“I certainly would’ve flunked his course as our views are so entirely dissimilar.

I’m writing as the 2nd blogger to break this story (Muzzlewatch was the first) and the one who brought it to Scott’s attention. Thanks for covering this story. I too can’t believe it hasn’t been picked up by major media.

As an American Jew, I’m deeply distressed by the small-mindedness of the St. Thomas decision. I’m not surprised by the small-mindedness of the Minneapolis Jewish community representative who decided that Tutu was anti-Israel or the rabbis teaching at St. Thomas who supposedly influenced this decision. Criticism of Israel frightens many Jews. It shouldn’t, but it does.

But that won’t stop us from speaking the truth as we see it.”

So the political views of those teaching at (or visiting) a university campus should be considered relevant and powerful? Even when a professor is teaching, say, Milton rather than the Middle East? In that case those students with “dissimilar” views from, say, Norman Finkelstein should be very glad DePauw didn’t tenure him.

As an American Jew, I am deeply distressed by the small-mindedness (and hypocrisy) I see right here. First, this article itself reads more like a blog post than like a “news” article. Thanks for disclosing the connection here, Mr. Silverstein.

And the scorn and rudeness heaped on Professor Skulsky simply because he does not take the favored majority position (though, again, a position subject to change when certain individuals, like Larry Summers, may be substituted for Bishop Tutu), is also deeply distressing. Professor Skulsky, thank you for your courage in braving the attacks you surely knew would come.

And one more note, this for everyone wringing their hands over the Nobel credential. These days, it can be argued that the Nobel Peace Prize unfortunately does not automatically confer the moral authority it once did (just as, I suspect, some who have commented so vehemently here might argue that the respect once automatically accorded the American presidency might now vary depending on which president we might be talking about). The Nobel’s moral authority must continue to be sustained even after Stockholm.

Hopefully everyone—and yes, that includes Professor Skulsky and those who might agree with him—also “won’t stop...from speaking the truth” as they see it.

also disgusted, at 8:10 am EDT on October 5, 2007

applying double standard to Israel

I’ve read here and elsewhere that criticism of Israel is off limits. That’s not the issue — criticism of Israel is extremely common among Jews, emphatically including in the Israeli press itself on a daily basis. The issue here is the application of a double standard: People who criticize Israel by holding Israel to standards to which they wouldn’t dream of holding Israel’s neighbors. I visited Israel once, in 1979, before the final waves of Soviet immigration and, at that point, the majority of Israel’s Jews were Sephardim, refugees from Arab countries and their families and descendants. They all faced persecution, they all faced dispossession (in some cases after living in these Arab lands for millenia), but the countries that perpetrated this are free from criticism and free from remarks about Apartheid. The human rights records of these countries are universally worse than Israel’s to this day.

Criticize Israel all you want, but use a single standard. Anything else really is antisemitism. The Israeli lobby is right about this. Without such a double standard, the Israeli lobby would largely be unnecessary.

Tutu isn’t Ahmadinejad. I’d have let him speak, but I’d have made him answer for his own double standards.

Koshersalaami, at 10:40 am EDT on October 5, 2007

ckerst

The answer is immediately above your question. Please read the previous post.

Koshersalaami, at 12:20 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

rational exhchanges of ideas breed peace.

Tutu did not make a generalization about the entire body of Jews. He spoke of the american jewish lobby and its distortion of the political discourse in this country.

There is a difference between millions of Jews and the small body of pro-settler likudniks that are the most successful ‘jewish’ lobby in this country. If you doubt me just Google AIPAC and Spy.

AIPAC is not all jews. Not all jews are zionists. But AIPAC and its allies have a distinct effect upon our discourse, slanting it to the israeli right. Yes there is much debate within the jewish community, but outside that community if you oppose the actions of settlers or the israeli right wing you are an anti-semite.

Of course a private institution is not bound by constitutional guarantees of freespeech. But they should be judged on their dedication to academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas that develops critical minds. If I was hiring someone from St. Thomas I would now doubt the worth of their education.

As for judging Israel with one standard, we dump tons of money on Israel’s totalitarian neighbors like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi. And we never say boo about their horrific human rights abuses. How many condemnations of Israel has the UN attempted to issue where the US has been the sole veto, 70? We invaded Iraq, apparently, because Saddam violated 2 or 3 UN resolutions.

Until we can have a rational discourse that does not have ‘anti-semite’ in its first sentence Israel and US interests in the area will continue to suffer.

Tutu is an anti-semite like Jimmy Carter is an anti-semite. Oh and Jimmy Carter’s peace truce between Egypt and Israel has saved more Israeli lives in the last 30 years than anything Sharon ever did, including Sabra and Shatila.

Everyone in this party has dirty hands, and the only way to find peace is through rational discussion, not war.

Is there anyone, outside of Israel, who has been critical of the policies of the Israeli government who has Not been labeled ‘anti-semitic’ by someone?

I don’t think Tutu or Carter disrespect the Holocaust or Israel’s right of existence. I do think the frivolity of automatically labeling someone anti-semitic instead of engaging their points logically is the real disrespect to all of Hitler’s victims, not just jews, gypsies or homosexuals.

And justifying it by citing the firestorm after an Ann Coulter visit, really? What accolades does Ms. Coulter have to counter her endless string of unquestionable hatespeech?

feckless, at 12:35 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

did you expect to find academic freedom at St. Thomas?

An institution like St. Thomas cannot afford to be controversial in the way that Columbia University can. Small religious institutions which do not have a serious intellectual reputation and rely heavily upon gifts from alumni and philanthropists must be careful not to risk alienating potential or current donors. While Columbia also relies upon such fund raising, it has an intellectual reputation that allows it to “transcend” controversy and even gain prestige from events like the speech of Iran’s president. In other words, academic freedom requires strength and reputation. Also, it was clear that Iran’s president is crazy, so his appearance could become an intellectually relevant event with Columbia’s president challenging him. Tutu at St. Thomas would have been a very different event.

Angelo, Professor of Philosophy at Liberal Arts College, at 1:45 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

It is difficult to believe that someone could teach at a place as prestigious as Smith College as Professor Shulsky has and not understand the least thing about freedom of speech and the role of universities within the body politic.

These decisions to disallow criticism of Israel at our universities is destroying the fabric of civil discourse in this country. I suppose this is one more thing that will convince faculty members to fear losing their jobs for speaking on this issue— wow, back to McCarthy we go.

Madrid, at 4:20 pm EDT on October 5, 2007

“It is difficult to believe that someone could teach at a place as prestigious as Smith College as Professor Shulsky has and not understand the least thing about freedom of speech and the role of universities within the body politic.”

Well, that explains a lot of things for me. To think, as kids, a friend and I would walk around and pretend to be “Smithies” and talk about what we would do when we applied there. Some life decisions I really do not regret.

kgotthardt, at 1:00 pm EDT on October 6, 2007

Desmond Tutu

Perhaps St. Thomas’ administrators based their decision on more than is revealed here. If so, it would be instructive to know what. If not, and it really was the result of comments by one local Jewish community representative and a couple of rabbis, then they are a bunch of overcautious ninnies.

Nevertheless, the resulting articles and comments in the media and on the web are revealing. Now that Mearsheimer and Walt have done so much to sanitise the idea of an all-powerful pro-Israel Lobby, many people are quick to claim its hidden hand is at work here and to charge that all criticism of Israel is suppressed. Rubbish. Nothing is more common than criticism of Israel, much of it far beyond the bounds of reason (and yes, some of it really is antisemitic). On the evidence presented so far, nobody forced St. Thomas to cancel Tutu’s invitation — they censored themselves, in much the same pro-active, would-be PC way that a British business, a year or two ago, banned piggy banks from its offices for fear they might upset Muslims. Only there, no one accused an all-powerful Muslim cabal of crushing British rights.

Tutu earned great respect as a courageous opponent of apartheid, and he deserved his Nobel prize. As far as I can tell he’s no antisemite, but he shoehorns all other conflicts into the mould of his apartheid experiences. He apparently lacks the humility to try and understand the unique history and complexities of the Palestinian/Israeli struggle. His views on the Middle East are full of Israeli oppression and absolutely devoid of Palestinian terrorism, let alone other Arab rejectionism, antisemitism and warmongering. For Tutu, Ma’alot and Munich, Entebbe and the Achille Lauro, the Dolphinarium, Cafe Moment and Sbarro never happened, because they don’t fit within his paradigm. I’ve yet to hear of Tutu lacerating the Palestinians for the incessant rain of rockets over the Gaza border. For Tutu, Palestinians are blacks and Israelis are Afrikaners; end of story. By the same token, for Tutu September 11th was about people forced by the West into “conditions of poverty, of disease, of ignorance”, because that’s what his great struggle was about.

If Julie Swiler of the Minnesota JCRC said that there was Jewish consensus on Tutu she was almost certainly wrong, because there’s Jewish consensus on essentially nothing. However, I have no doubt most Jews are offended when Tutu heaps all the blame on Israel and pigeonholes it with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. And when he dabbles in talk of the overwhelming power of the “Jewish lobby” (later amended to the “pro-Israel lobby”) he’s not only offensive, he demonstrates how far out of his turf he is and how little he knows or cares of Jewish sensitivities and the history behind them.

Paul M, at 6:55 pm EDT on October 6, 2007

Oso Raro’s rejoinder to my recent communication deserves an answer, though barely. He makes three main points. Following are the points, with my replies.

(1) I suggested that invited speakers on an inflammatory issue in a reputable academic venue need to be established experts, not soap box amateurs spouting vituperation and slogans on one side of the issue or the other. Oso Raro: this suggestion is a piece of “credentialism.” My reply: a university should not lend itself to rallies and harangues; only rational discourse—measured assertions and appropriate, checkable evidence, belongs there. (I note that Oso Raro’s pseudo-technical jargon about “credentialism,” which I’ve spared myself the trouble of quoting at length, is a brickbat, not an argument.)

(2) I quoted in full Archbishop Tutu’s defamatory equation of (a) the state of Israel, and its legally organized American Jewish support, with (b) the monstrous quartet of Idi Amin, Stalin, Milosevich, and Hitler. Raro’s objection: my description of the Archbishop’s equation (made without a trace of evidence or argument) as defamation pure and simple is “ungenerous"; all the Archbishop was doing here was listing “coercive political figures.” Furthermore, Raro adds, “choices have been made on both sides, but those choices function within history and power.” My reply: the fatuously “generous” assumption that the architect of the Final Solution and the unspeakable Idi Amin are adequately classified as “coercive political figures” is unworthy of Oso Raro; and it does no credit to Raro’s client for Raro to bob and weave by changing the subject feebly with tactically fuzzy platitudes about “history” and “power.”

(3) To my remark that (a) the right to free speech is not (b) a right to expert status in an academic forum, Oso Raro replies as follows: “The level of discourse going on here is one of fear.” After all, adds Raro, “the most heinous and unethical speakers are championed as avatars [sic] of free speech.” My reply: pretending to busy oneself with psychoanalyzing one’s opponent’s EMOTION is a transparent evasion of the responsibility to attend to one’s opponent’s POINT. But as it happens Raro is no better at psychoanalysis than he is at facing the consequences of his own position; I defy him to find in my actual words a scrap of genuine evidence of my being afraid of Archbishop Tutu’s being allowed to speak. I deplore the invitation, I am very far from fearing it. Deploring and fearing, as Oso Raro surely knows, are very different things. As for his claim that “heinous and unethical” speakers are often “championed,” and so (presumably) this speaker should be “championed” as well, the galloping non sequitur is an embarrassment. The fact that academic institutions have demeaned themselves by allowing hate speakers to peddle their wares does not imply that it’s now acceptable for those institutions to turn their original folly into a tradition.

This concludes my reply, and along with it my visits to this comment page. At the outset I said that Oso Raro’s rejoinder deserved an answer—but barely; I know only too well that if he replies, I am in for another smarmy dose of mock-courteous highminded sophistries and opportunistic misreadings. What’s more, I know only too well that his response is the best I can expect from this group. The other criticisms of my original note were for the most part furious mouthings of the usual cliches, spiced in one case by a reference to the “bloody manifesto of Zionism"; this from a fervid writer hobbled by True Belief and faltering English who has chosen to emulate the ancient slander circulated under the title of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He or she should at least exercise some ingenuity and fabricate a few choice specimens of the alleged “manifesto” (though she would be wise to begin by finding out what “manifesto” means).

Please don’t misread me here (a futile request, in this venue); I am not expressing indignation at criticisms of my contribution, but disappointment at the level of skill in careful reading, let alone analytical argument, on display in the criticisms—among supposed members of my profession. To be fair, I need to add that this disappointment emphatically does not extend to the very few particpants who had the elementary decency to acknowledge the Archbishop’s defamatory tirade for what it was.

Again, I’m fully resigned to the toxic spray of rant that this note will inspire, and will not jettison good time after bad by reading, much less replying, to any of it.

Harold Skulsky, at 4:40 pm EDT on October 7, 2007

“The Tutu phrases Skulsky objects to in his first posting are a gloss on the phrase “We live in a moral universe” and scarcely bear the argument, much less the level of indignation, that he builds up over them.”

C is offended by my reflections on the poor reading skills of those who find no slur in Bishop Tutu’s juxtaposition of Israel and its representatives with a list of historic mass murderers. No offense to him could possibly have been intended by remarks aimed at others, but if C finds one he is welcome to it. Unhappily, the interpretation C supplies to vindicate his own skills is an invalid inference from the premise that Tutu’s introduces his list as a “gloss” on the observation that we live in a moral universe. C’s premise is obviously consistent with the falsity of his claim that Tutu’s juxtaposition does not do what juxtapositions generally do—imply a moral equivalence between the moral status of the things being presupposed. C’s huff at the notion of being a poor reader is perfectly understandable; poor readers often think that a wave of the wand is enough to demonstrate their acuteness.

I note that C thinks I was building my reading on “Tutu phrases.” This is a characteristic piece of self-service; sophomores generally grow out of it, unless seduced by their own self-regard—in which case they plume themselves on nonexistent sagacity for the rest of their lives. What I quoted were not disjointed phrases but sentences, linked in a discourse of Tutu’s own devising, and linked so as to convey the implication I found in them. The presence of Hitler and Idi Amin in Tutu’s list is clearly relevant to the topic of a “moral universe” and its judgment on gross evil.

If C were my student I would urge him to pick up a paperback of the writings of Paul Grice on conversational implicature. But C would probably find this well-intentioned suggesion offensive, and respond with contempt.

c, at 6:40 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Harold Skulsky, at 11:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Correcting Previous Post

RE: Previous post— “In that case those students with “dissimilar” views from, say, Norman Finkelstein should be very glad DePauw didn’t tenure him.”

That’s DePaul (with an “L"), not DePauw (with a “W").

Ken, at 1:50 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

Denial of Archbishop Tutu to speak at St. Thomas

As a Catholic college graduate (Jesuit institution) I am ashamed that once again a Catholic university has caved in to the (nonexistent ?)"Lobby". First De Paul re: Finkelstein and now Archbishop Tutu whose credentials are flawless. I am ashamed also of Yale which denied Juan Cole a position and the Polish Embassy which cancelled a speech by Tony Judt. I am not worried by the “LOBBY” so much as the cowardice of this who lay down and assume the position of a door mat when confronted by it. Israel is just another country subject to all of failures that others like it have exhibited

Dave Orintas, at 6:35 pm EST on November 29, 2007