semitism.net

Andrew’s mom here again…
The flap continues about Carter’s talk at Brandeis University. According to The Jewish Week it is possible that major donors to the university have withdrawn their financial support because of the school’s decision to invite former President Jimmy Carter to speak. The university stands to lose a considerable amount of money because these people were among the wealthiest givers to Brandeis. Although the figure of five million dollars is quoted in the article, this amount has not been confirmed. In addition, the school’s senior vice president for communication, Lorna Miles, denies knowing anything about it and contends that she has “not heard anything from donors.” However, the article notes that a student member of the faculty-student committee that invited Carter claims Miles was the person who provided him with the information that the school had “already lost” the $5 million, and at a February 5th faculty meeting, the school’s chief fundraiser referred to a “brewing problem” with donors.
Rebecca Spence, writing in The Forward, reports that Brandeis administrators have now refused permission to student groups who want to bring Norman Finkelstein, noted left-wing professor who is critical of Israel, to the campus, while a committee formed to deal with the issue of visiting speakers on Middle East politics has “put a hold” on an appearance from Daniel Pipes, a right-wing pro-Israel hawk.
The university’s policy vis-a-vis criticism of Israel has been, at the least, highly ambivalent. In spite of considerable ire from mainstream Jewish organizations, Brandeis awarded an honorary doctorate to Tony Kushner, another outspoken critic of Israel. But on another occasion President Reinharz (who managed to be out of town when Carter appeared) removed an art exhibit that included some paintings by children from Palestinian refugee camps which were clearly unflattering to Israel.
It is a cliche to say that universities ought to serve as venues for the open exchange of ideas. The many justifications for defending free speech on this and other campuses don’t need enumerating here. But since this is Brandeis University, it could be useful to imagine how Justice Louis D. Brandeis himself might have regarded the “balagan” (Hebrew for mess, uproar, major muddle) that his university finds itself in. Judge Brandeis was a leader in the early Zionist movement in the United States. His Zionism was rooted in the liberalism of his times; he saw it as a movement that would serve to embrace all Jews, whether they chose to live in their as-yet-to-be-established Jewish “homeland” or not. When, in July 1918 the Zionist Organization of America met at its convention in Pittsburgh to formulate the seven “resolutions” that would frame its policy in pursuit of this homeland, Brandeis was a highly influential contributor to the final result. The first of these resolutions informs us that one of the tenets of the Jewish homeland would be “Political and civil equality irrespective of race, sex, or faith, for all the inhabitants of the land.” (Whoops!! Has anyone told the current ZOA leadership about this?) The second resolution affirms the establishment of ownership and control of the land and of all public utilities by “the whole people.” If one accepts the premises of the first resolution, then of course it follows that “the whole people” must include all those living in the Jewish homeland, “irrespective of race, sex or faith.” (Whoops again, ZOA people.) And so on. The only one of the resolutions which specifically allots primacy to the “Jewishness” of the state is the last one, which specifies that Hebrew shall be the language of public instruction.
Some further quotes from Brandeis might help us imagine more fully what he might have to say about the current flap at his eponymous university.

“The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.”

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

“Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”

“No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is an opportunity for full discussion. Only an emergency can justify repression.”

“In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.”

My guess is that Justice Brandeis would not be pleased with what is happening at Brandeis University right now. And those donors who in the past have given to the school because it bears his name, dishonor him now by witholding funds only because the university has chosen to allow the exercise of free speech he so eloquently defended in the quotes above. Furthermore, the donors seem to have forgotten that they are giving to an educational institution, not to an organization that exists for the purpose of promulgating a particular ideological position.

Of course, it’s easy to wax indignant about the issue of the donors at Brandeis, and the potential ramifications of the university’s caving in to that pressure. But how about the issue of the attempted boycotts of Israeli universities by European academics? The first of these was initiated in England, in 2002, and although that one and the others that have arisen periodically since then (in 2005, e.g.) have been variously debated and ultimately voted down, it is an issue that continues to crop up. Mona Baker, an Egyptian professor at the University of Manchester in England who publishes two journals, did succeed in “firing” two Israeli professors from her editorial board. Juan Cole, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education provides many clear and well reasoned arguments as to why “the shunning of Israeli academic institutions” is wrong — one of which is that academics of ALL
political persuasions are thereby punished for what their government is doing. Although the donors’ witholding of funds at Brandeis is not precisely analogous to academics denying the opportunity for contact and communication to their counterparts in Israel, in both cases there is a constriction placed on encounter with opinions and positions different from one’s own. Isolating any academic institution involves obstructing face-to-face contacts, denying presentation at conferences and the dissemination of journal articles that allow one to argue that one’s position has merit. This does not mean that every ideologue need be provided with an audience for his/her vitriol. But both individual institutions and the collective academic community have an obligation to make space for dialogue, for the transmission and evaluation of information, ideas and research findings through open exchange. Academic institutions have an obligation to expose students to conflicting ideas, to help them live with ambiguity, to stimulate them to ask questions and seek answers in non-dogmatic ways. The donors at Brandeis think they can use their money to exercise control over the university’s mission. The academics who promote boycotts use what I’m sure they think is the moral high ground to exercise inappropriate control over the mission of academia in general. Neither should prevail.