WHO’S REALLY TREMBLING?
By Julia I. Bertelsmann
Harvard Crimson, MA
50
Nov 28 2007
Are critics of Israel persecuted at Harvard?
Anthropology and African-American studies professor J. Lorand Matory
’82 thinks so. At a recent Faculty meeting, he proposed that Harvard
reaffirm "civil dialogue," arguing that critics of Israel "tremble
in fear" on campus.
In fear of what, one wonders-becoming a bestselling author at the
Harvard Coop?
Nine months ago, I started a student journal entitled "New Society:
Harvard College Student Middle East Journal," with the aim of
creating a more constructive dialogue on campus about the future
of the region. The journal was inspired by a Harvard Hillel trip
to Israel last winter. I was determined to include a variety of
perspectives, so before I approached Harvard Students for Israel or
any other Jewish groups on campus, I asked several Muslim and Arab
students to contribute articles to the journal.
But I was met with little success: Many Muslim and Arab students
preferred not to publish their views, fearing the threat of reprisal.
An Iranian student who had privately expressed opposition to President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declined to write, saying he preferred to "lay low"
for fear of political consequences back home.
Another Iranian-American student backed out after sending me several
articles about Iranian academics based in the U.S. who had been
arrested on visits to Tehran. One such academic, Haleh Esfandiari,
on a visit to her elderly mother, was detained for eight months and
charged with crimes against "national security." The student told me
he feared the same fate and worried about what would become of his
family if he ever expressed his views about Iran’s theocratic regime.
Similarly, an Arab student who was approached to speak about the
situation in Darfur refused, saying that he was certain some of his
compatriots at Harvard would report back home about his activities
abroad and that he feared being arrested or harassed by his country’s
security services.
And one of our writers, Chia N. Mustafa ’09, was told by a poster
on the journal’s website that he belonged to "the rank of traitors"
and for writing an article advocating independence for Kurdistan.
So when Matory claims that people at Harvard "tremble in fear"
because of their views on the Middle East, he is half-right.
But it is not critics of Israel who live in fear at Harvard. Rather,
it is students and faculty from the Arab and Muslim world who feel
they must censor their criticisms of autocracy and human rights abuses
in their home countries.
As an editor, I have yet to encounter a student-Jewish, Muslim,
Christian or otherwise-who is the least bit afraid of criticizing
Israel in public or in print.
Criticism of Israel is, in fact, ubiquitous at Harvard.
At Harvard Law School, Professor Duncan Kennedy-who has no expertise
in international law or Middle East studies-is teaching a seminar on
legal issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The course focuses
almost exclusively on Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights. Kennedy
is the faculty advisor for the "Justice For Palestine" group at HLS,
and has flown in radical critics of Israel, at Harvard’s expense,
for guest lectures. Nobody has contested his right to criticize Israel
in the classroom.
Harvard also hosts programs on the Middle East in which Israeli input
is minimized or excluded at the behest of Arab sponsors: yesterday’s
Harvard Middle East North Africa Conference, for example, invited
various Arab student groups to participate but has failed to include
any of the Israel groups on campus. The Kennedy School of Government
hosts the Dubai Initiative, which is sponsored by a government that
denies Israelis-and only Israelis-the right to enter its borders,
even as tourists.
Last May, Armenian studies professor James R. Russell was disinvited
from a Harvard-sponsored exhibition of Iranian propaganda posters
because he had compared them to those of the Soviet Union. Some of
the Iranians involved in the conference were apparently worried that
comparing their country to an atheist state might provoke Ahmadinejad’s
thought police.
Even at Harvard, critics of Iran and other undemocratic regimes in the
Muslim and Arab world fear for their lives and liberty. In contrast,
the worst that an anti-Israel activist like Matory has to worry
about is a letter to the editor in The Harvard Crimson expressing an
opposing view.
Is that enough to make a critic of Israel "tremble in fear"? Fear
of embarrassment, perhaps, if that criticism is ill-informed and
demonstrably inaccurate.
The faculty must reject Matory’s motion when it comes to a vote
next month. The motion is not about protecting free speech, but
privileging anti-Israel criticism, justified or not. In most Middle
Eastern countries, the only permitted form of protest is criticism of
Israel. Harvard must not allow itself to become the Western outpost
of this false freedom.
Julia I. Bertelsmann ’09 is an economics concentrator in Eliot House.
She is editor-in-chief of "New Society: Harvard College Student Middle
East Journal."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
