Monday, February 25, 2008
Martin Kramer on the Israel studies chair at Columbia, meant to salve the university's bias ills. What do you know, Rashid Khalidi and Lila Abu-Lughod were on the search committee:
...Avid readers of this blog will recall that Lee Bollinger, back in 2005, tried to calm the raging waters by announcing the establishment of a chair of Israel studies. Four trustees quickly anted up $3 million. The university then appointed a search committee that included Palestinian agitprofs Rashid Khalidi and Lila Abu-Lughod. At the time, I wrote this:
The inclusion of Khalidi and Abu-Lughod on the search committee is perverse. Edward Said used to complain that the Palestinians needed "permission to narrate" their story. At Columbia, the situation is reversed: Israel can't be narrated without the permission of the great Palestinian mandarins. They must be appeased, satisfied, propitiated.
So were they? The chair has been filled by Yinon Cohen, a former Tel Aviv University sociologist who works mostly on labor markets and migration. Cohen isn't a hard-left post-Zionist, but he's far enough left to have signed a May 2002 open letter by some Israeli faculty. At the time, Israel was wrapping up Operation Defensive Shield, its response to the wave of suicide bombings inside Israel that had killed Israelis in the hundreds. The letter's signatories announced their "wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories... [T]he present war is not being fought for our home but for the settlements beyond the green line and for the continued oppression of another people."
I don't think Khalidi and Abu-Lughod have much to worry about.
It was utterly predictable that $3 million donated without guarantees to a systemically flawed institution would go through the process and be turned into mulch by the machine. No offense, but duh. People with that kind of money to give are usually so much more careful with their giving...or maybe they're not, so long as the right things are named after them. All else is secondary.
I can think of some worthy bloggers who could put some good cash to good use, and they take Paypal. For the right amount I will even subtitle the blog in the name of the honoree of your choice.
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I attended this conference featuring lectures by Joseph Massad, Gil Anidjar, Noha Radwan and Lila Abu-Lughod on a dark and stormy evening last week. Columbia's non-tenured Joseph Massad, whose manner and delivery reminded me of Vincent Price in his... Read More
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Khalidi is probably having a door plaque etched for norman finkelstein.