Thursday, October 25, 2007
And the University of Delaware caved? Nice: Academic Freedom?
Yesterday, the University of Delaware asked Asaf Romirowsky to step down from an academic panel at the University of Delaware because another panelist, University of Delaware political scientist Muqtedar Khan, didn't want to share the podium with anyone who served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Romirowsky, who holds joint American/Israeli citizenship and lives in Philadelphia, had been invited to join Khan, his colleague in political science, Stuart Kaufman, a staff member of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, and a graduate student to discuss anti-Americanism in the Middle East. The program was organized by the College Republicans, the College Democrats, and the Students of Western Civilization Club. The Leadership Institute provided the funds for the panel, which met on the University of Delaware campus on Wednesday evening. The students offered Romirowsky the opportunity to come to campus next week and speak alone, with no other panel members who might object to his presence.
If Khan was just an academic, that would be one thing. But he also straddles the policy world: Khan is a a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Pentagon consultant. According to an e-mail he sent to the University, he gave a workshop at the Pentagon yesterday afternoon...
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It should be a joke, but it's not. The State Department has given a grant of $494,368 to the University of Delaware scholar who refused to appear on a panel with an IDF veteran to be used "to initiate a... Read More
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, p.30
I'm not surprised. This tactic began with Joseph Massad's verbal attack on a student, a former IAF pilot, who challenged him over his bizarre theories in Columbia.
I encountered the same tactic in this complaint in Prof. Makdisi's "opinion" piece from the Seattle PI:
“So although Michael Oren, an officer in the Israeli army, was recently allowed to lecture the council about U.S. policy in the Middle East, two distinguished American academics were denied the same privilege.â€
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/335667_academics17.html
Who is Michael Oren?
“Michael Oren received B.A. (1977) and M.I.A. (School of International Affairs, 1978) at Columbia University and M.A. and Ph.D. (History of the Middle East) at Princeton University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and Yale University.â€
“American-Israeli scholar, historian, and author best known for his best-selling and highly acclaimed books on Middle Eastern history." (Wiki)
In other words, Prof. Makdisi omitted to tell his Seattleite readers that Michael Oren is no less a distinguished scholar than Mearsheimer and Walt.
These are very dangerous precedents that begin to gain legitimacy due to the cowardice of the universities involved. They must be opposed rigourously. It's a boycotting drive by different means.