Bardian SPRING 2011

state, then imagine the reaction to someone in the late 1980s getting
up in a public square and saying anything positive about Apartheid.
Divestment was an issue at Evergreen State. After divestment
motions failed in a few California universities, students at Evergreen
passed a resolution favoring divestment. Evergreen is the alma mater
of Rachel Corrie, the young woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer in
Gaza in 2003. When the resolution was being debated, swastikas
sprouted up around campus. Because pro-Israel voices had, for years,
been shouted down at Evergreen, no one spoke up. When I met with
Jewish student leaders in fall 2010, they refused to meet me on campus,
because they believed it would have been risky to be seen publicly with
someone from a Jewish human rights agency. We met in a synagogue.
I spoke with Evergreen’s president about the need to change this
climate and ensure that students were exposed to different ideas about
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I find abhorrent the
notion of “balance” that some outside academia
promote: if teachers teach one side, they must teach
the other. This violates a professor’s academic freedom,
and in any event, students are not scales that
need balance—they need to have their thinking
shaken and learn how to confront difficult ideas,
including (perhaps especially) biased ones. But the
college also has a responsibility to ensure credible
theories in any field are being taught. (The Evergreen
president’s assertion that the Zionist narrative had
been taught a few years earlier by a professor of
puppetry was unpersuasive.) Contrast Evergreen Kenneth Stern ’75
with Stanford University. A BDS resolution was
©Don Hamerman
considered there last spring too, but the leading
Palestinian and Jewish student proponents were both aghast at the
level of vitriol the debate unleashed. The resolution was pulled, the
two students wrote a joint op-ed, and they held meetings so that pro-
Palestinian students could understand why the call for boycotts struck
Jewish students so deeply, given the many instances in history when
Jews, alone, were singled out for different treatment. And Jewish students
gained a better understanding of what it was like to be a
Palestinian in the West Bank or Gaza. These students demonstrated
the essence of critical thinking by inviting, instead of rejecting, challenges
to their most fervently held ideas.
While I strongly disagree with those who try to paint antisemitism
on campus as normative (it is not), I believe that, when antisemitism
does appear, improvement can be made in treating it as
seriously as other forms of bigotry.
The challenge seems to come especially around antisemitism in
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a lecture at Brown University, I noted
that if a political policy is attacked as one would oppose an American,
French, or other such plan, that is fine. But when Israel is singled out
in a way no other democracy is, there is a problem. As with any instance
of bigotry, substitute the nationality, sex, sexual orientation, race, or
religion (as befits the example), and if the same rules do not apply,
something is wrong.
The campus has a unique, powerful tool to tackle antisemitism:
critical thinking. What is, and is not, antisemitism? Why? How is it the
same as, or different than, other forms of bigotry? Is it antisemitic to call
for boycotts? How about boycotts of products from the West Bank?
Some, possibly out of concern, hysteria, lack of understanding of the
academic mission, or a combination thereof, are trying to subvert the
process rather than trying to ask and answer these questions academically.
I have heard people suggest that anti-Israel professors should be
fired, even if they have tenure. Such requests are dangerous, even if
directed toward an antisemitic professor. They also change the dynamic:
academics no longer see their role as challenging that professor’s bigotry,
but rather as offering support to their embattled colleague because they
see their own academic freedom at risk.
While I do not like antisemitic speech any
more than racist or sexist speech, it must be allowed.
Jewish groups should not try to censor others, even
antisemitic speakers or groups. Instead they should
underscore the duty of others on campus to use
their free-speech rights in objection, and if done
well, in illumination.
The Hillel director at Columbia University
asked me in 2005 to speak with progressive Jewish
students about antisemitism. An allegation had
surfaced that some pro-Palestinian professors had
mistreated pro-Israel students inside and outside
class (which had occasioned those frantic calls from
parents). The students had heard comments about
“Jewish power” or the “Israel lobby” during debates about the professors,
and were confused about whether this was, or was not, antisemitism.
I asked if Columbia offered a class on antisemitism, where
these events could be discussed. To my surprise, there was not.
Upon investigation, I was stunned to find that only three standalone,
comprehensive courses on antisemitism likely exist in the
world: at Baruch College, the University of Cape Town, and Indiana
University. Of course, antisemitism is treated in Holocaust classes and
Judaic studies, and mentioned in classes on racism and discrimination.
But antisemitism is not deemed worthy of a full-semester course
hardly anywhere. Even in Israel.
More than incidents here or there, the lack of serious interdisciplinary
academic study of antisemitism troubles me. Antisemitism
has much to teach us: How a religious-based hatred added a racebased
hatred. Why antisemitism is present in countries that do not
have Jews. What works to combat it and what does not, and the relevance
of both to other forms of bigotry.
Antisemitism is serious business. Rather than be discounted or
exaggerated for political purposes, it needs to be better understood.
The academic community can lead the way.
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