Academic McCarthyism Threatens Democracy
Black Commentator, Commentary, David A. Love Posted: Oct 07, 2007
Editor's note: Despite the continuing swirl of activity around tenure and political viewpoints, the story of academic freedom and censure remains off the front pages and certainly off network news.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger recently took a lot of heat when he allowed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make a speech at the Ivy League institution. Bollinger, a First Amendment legal scholar, understands the importance of free speech in a democratic system. And these days, free speech is under attack on college campuses throughout the nation.
Professor Norman Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors and the most prominent critic of Israeli policy in American academia, was denied tenure by DePaul University, even though the political science department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recommended tenure.
Harvard law school professor Alan Dershowitz lobbied against tenure for Finkelstein, an act described by MIT professor Noam Chomsky as a "jihad" designed "simply to try to vilify and defame him, in the hope that maybe what he's writing will disappear." Finkelstein told the Democracy Now! program: "I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn't enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict." The late Raul Hilberg, dean of Holocaust historians and a Finkelstein supporter, had said: "I have a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom."
Professor Ward Churchill was fired by the University of Colorado at Boulder, ostensibly because of research misconduct, a pretext, many believe, for his unpopular views. Churchill has written extensively on the genocide of Native Americans and the federal government's COINTELPRO program. The trouble started when Churchill characterized the 9-11 attacks as a response to years of U.S. abuses, and called the victims of 9-11 "little Eichmanns" who formed a "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire."
Then there is Erwin Chemerinsky, constitutional scholar extraordinaire who has argued for judicial review for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and represented Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by the Bush administration. He was chosen to become dean of the new University of California-Irvine law school. Then, the chancellor of Irvine rescinded the contract —- allegedly due to pressure from conservative groups -— then reinstated Chemerinsky.
Meanwhile, Andrew Meyer, a student at the University of Florida, was tasered by police during a speech by Sen. John Kerry, while he asked questions that were critical of Bush. And there are calls by the College Republicans for the resignation of David McSwane, the editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University's student newspaper, who wrote an editorial in which he said "Taser this. F*** Bush."
Conservative pressure groups, including David Horowitz and his Students for Academic Freedom (in classic Orwellian fashion, they purport to stand for academic freedom, the opposite of that which they really advocate), are trying to muzzle free speech in academia. In their warped worldview, there is a leftwing conspiracy to control the college campuses and enforce liberal, politically-correct thinking. They are kindred spirits with those political hacks in the Bush administration who cried liberal bias in public broadcasting, and attempted to recreate PBS in the image of Fox News.
And professors are strong-armed and vilified in the process. Horowitz has compiled a list of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America," which includes Finkelstein; Chomsky; Kathleen Cleaver of Emory University; Howard Zinn of Boston University; Manning Marable, Eric Foner and Victor Navasky of Columbia; Angela Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz; David Cole of Georgetown; Derrick Bell of NYU; Amiri Baraka of Rutgers; Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Ron (Maulena) Karenga of the California State University, Long Beach, bell hooks and Leonard Jeffries of the City University of New York, Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, and others.
Horowitz claims most college professors are left-leaning, which is hardly the point. I am inclined to believe that free thinking, open-mindedness and flexibility are more compatible with the purpose of the university.
Ideological conservatism stands for black or white, right or wrong, friend or enemy, with no shades of gray. One is not supposed to challenge conventional wisdom, authority, the laws, the status quo or longstanding institutions. It is worth noting that in a recent study, psychologist David Amodio and others found that conservatives tend to be more rigid and closed-minded, less tolerant of ambiguity and less open to new experiences.
And as far as the Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia is concerned, certainly, those chickenhawk Americans who are beating the drums of war with Iran are dying to be provoked by the words and actions of the Iranian bogeyman. And denying the existence of the Holocaust, and presiding over a government that disregards women's and gay rights, and executes juveniles is reprehensible at the very least. Is he a petty dictator, as Bollinger suggests? Perhaps. But he is also a politician who is playing to his base. And there are many would-be petty dictators in this country who, in playing to their base, support the most outrageous and unconscionable policies, such as the criminalization of women's rights, including abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, guns for everyone, the teaching of creationism mythology in the schools, homophobia, criminalization of Latino workers, and the elimination of civil rights and civil liberties.
Our own President Bush is responsible for the deaths of 1 million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. citizens, all from a war based on lies, for the purpose of protecting his and his friends' oil interests. His administration, detested by millions, acts with a total disregard for the law, on a daily basis. Yet, he is allowed to give speeches everyday -— albeit with the aid of teleprompters displaying phonetically-spelled words —- unimpeded, and without impeachment, for that matter.
Free speech dictates a higher standard than merely giving a pass to those whose ideas are acceptable, those with whom we agree, whoever "we" are. It is better to have all of the ideas out there in the marketplace, save those which amount to yelling fire in a crowded room or inciting violence. If the Constitution is not durable or inclusive enough to protect dissident views and unpopular statements, maybe it is not worth keeping. Perhaps it is not worth the paper on which it is written, and it is time for us to find another plan.
So, enough of this academic McCarthyism. Words are powerful, as they can liberate bodies and minds, spur revolutions, and change history. Indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword. But free speech is supposed to be feared by a dictatorship such as Burma or China, not a democracy. Which one are we?
BlackCommentator.com Columnist David A. Love is a lawyer based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons (St. Martin's Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson, organized the first national police brutality conference as a staff member with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and served as a law clerk to two black federal judges. His blog is at davidalove.com.
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User Comments
Ian on Oct 11, 2007 at 18:10:45 said:
The "official" death count that I can find ranges between 25 to 40 thousand Iraqis killed since the start of the invasion in March of 2003. Other counts range from 75 to 700 thousand. No where can I find, through the Internet, a source which gives me your estimate of 1 million killed. Though, I'm fairly certain I might be able to find one if I tried hard enough.
All I'm saying is that I'd very much like a source for your information, and that any source must be taken with a grain of salt as there are a lot of sources which provide wide-ranging data on the death toll in Iraq.
Mark W. Stein on Oct 11, 2007 at 07:23:13 said:
How like our enemies we become! Hatred and oppression are like child abuse, propagated through generations. Israel acts like the Third Reich in its policies and procedures. The fate of the Third Reich, then, may well befall Israel.
Gene Tinelli on Oct 10, 2007 at 18:47:53 said:
As an old Barry Goldwater Republican who is also an Associate Professor at the SUNY, fuck political correctness.
Ian MacLeod on Oct 10, 2007 at 14:51:25 said:
It isn't just academic McCarthyism by a long shot - the neocon Republicans and their supporters are after ALL freedom of expression, action and thought. From Giuliani wanting to make criticism of Petraeus illegal, to Bush making criticism of the Iraq debacle illegal, to "fundamentalist Christian" cultists wanting to make everything but their version of religion illegal, it's starting to look like the nutjob contingent of America has crawled out from under its rocks everywhere, and not ONE of them has ever actually read the Declaration of Independence OR the Constitution. Even Congress has, for the most part, no notion of what they swore in taking office, or of what their powers and responsibilities under the Constitution are!
The people being called "un-American" more than anyone are those of us who demand our rights under the Constitution: things like freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble peacefully and protest our government's actions and policies, the right to expose government and corporate corruption and demand that action be taken - okay, that last wasn't exactly in the Constitution as such, but it's still very much part of the Rule of Law. More than anything, we have been denied the right to a government that is ultimately accountable for its actions to the representatives of We the People. Instead, we are carefully fed what campaigners for office have to say in order to get elected, then either completely ignored, or viciously attacked.
No, this McCarthyism is worse than anything McCarthy himself ever raved about: it is a concerted, well-organized attempt to destroy the core principles of America, using the excuse of protecting them. Does anyone else remember from Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it!"? Well, here, my friends, you are observing the attack on the village of America - on ALL of us who believe in the Rule of Law and the core principles that make us what we are. Every agency in the government that was designed to provide redress for, or protection from, an Imperialistic/totalitarian/fascist Executive has been compromised one way or another. The civilian agencies, save for a few blogs, the same, or they are simply ignored: they have no real weapons and not enough money to make a difference, you see. Power respects only force, and this administration respects NOTHING else.
Nothing.
Ian
d/miller on Oct 10, 2007 at 11:07:30 said:
Another example of the denial of academic freedom that should have been used is when the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis rescinded an invitation to Archbishop Tutu to speak. It seems that the president of the university felt that it would be \"hurtful\" to Jews because once Bishop Tutu criticized Israeli actions in occupied Palestine.
Anonymous on Oct 07, 2007 at 09:21:35 said:
Here are a couple of interesting articles. This guy had it right back in 1987.
-->SAN FRANCISCO – THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, a genre spy-thriller by Robert Spirko, is now in its second printing and was fourth on the best-seller list at Atlasbooks, Inc., a national book distributor. Ingram Books is the worldwide distributor.
Spirko, a financial and geo-political analyst who has given his advice to the National Security Council, turned his attention to the Middle East in 1987, after discovering several common elements related to the Middle East question. He wrote down his analysis, and when he was finished, he not only had a solution to the quagmire, he had a story to tell. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY foreshadowed the Persian Gulf War by three years, and the resultant Iraq War followed by the Sept. 11 attack.
Spirko states, \\\"The chief threat in the region I see right now is the threat to Saudi Arabia by Iran and Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda were to overthrow the present royal family in Saudi Arabia, cutting off the oil supply to western nations including Japan and China, it would bring down entire world economies. France and Germany would be begging us to go to war to retake those oil wells. It would be World War III.\\\"
“If such a scenario were to occur,” he reiterates, “France and the European economies would collapse in a matter of weeks.”
“Another looming concern is Iran which wants to develop nuclear weapons to couple with their Shahab 4, 5 & 6 missiles on the drawing boards which have a range to hit London, Israel, all of Europe, southern Russia and the United States. Also, the Iranian government has said it initially had 300 centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons grade material. They have increased that to 3,000. They will soon increase that again to 10,000 centrifuges,” Spirko says. “They have the additional capacity to add another 20,000 centrifuges in mass production techniques that will enable them to produce at least seven nuclear bombs in about a year. Where did they get these centrifuges?”
Spirko answers that question by stating an Arab proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Simply put,” Spirko explains, “they probably got them from Saddam Hussein before the Iraq War started and were probably smuggled out of Iraq and into Iran just like he did his air force of 600 Soviet fighter planes. In other words, he gave them to his former enemy rather than let them be destroyed on the ground.”
“Why would he have done any differently with the 30,000 centrifuges he supposedly had on a decentralized basis inside Iraq before the war?” Spirko asks. “Isn’t it strange that Iran could come up with a nuclear weapons program in about six months to a year when it took the United States six years under the Manhattan Project with 5,000 of the world’s most brilliant scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Seaborg, Einstein, Fermi, and others working on it?”
Another point Spirko makes on the Mideast is that, “It is time for the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the Camp David Peace Talks or some other place, resume where they left off and \\\"freeze in place\\\" the already-agreed-upon negotiating points,” Spirko says.
\\\"And, it\\\'s all related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which I said back in 1987 was the crux of my book. It always has been, and always will be until it\\\'s settled,” Spirko says. “That linkage is exactly what Osama Bin Laden stated in a taped message aired the weekend before the election in November of 2004. Whether you believe him or not is beside the point. That\\\'s what\\\'s he told us, and we\\\'d better take that into account.\\\"
The novel is a mass market paperback produced by Olive Grove Publishers, and can be purchased at area bookstores through Ingram Book Group, New Leaf Distribution, and Baker and Taylor, priced at $14.99, ISBN 0-9752508-0-9. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY can also be ordered on the web at www.atlasbooks.com, or email orders from: order@bookmasters.com, or from Barnes & Nobles, Border\\\'s, Dalton\\\'s, efollett.com & Follett bookstores at colleges and universities, WaldenBooks, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com and other popular retail bookstores. Or, readers and store managers can call 1-800-BOOKLOG, or 800-247-6553 direct, to order.
SAN FRANCISCO - When it comes to spy novels and Middle East intrigue, after 16 spell-binding years, the gripping story behind the Middle East quagmire - its issues of nuclear weapons and the quest for a Palestinian State - is finally being told in a ground-breaking new book entitled, THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY.
Author Robert Spirko created the work in such a way that every reader in the world would understand all the intricate issues in the Middle East and how close the region actually came to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, a genre spy-thriller by Robert Spirko, was fourth on the best-seller list at Atlasbooks, Inc., a national book distributor. Ingram Books is the worldwide distributor.
Mr. Spirko has a unique way of holding the reader in his grasp as the plot of THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY unfolds. He literally takes you from your armchair and immerses you into the lifestyle of the Bedouin, the Israeli, the PLO and the mindset of the Middle-Easterner.
THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY is not just another spy-novel; it is the quintessential spy-thriller because it forces the reader to understand how both sides \\\"think\\\" and why that thinking ultimately led to repeated wars in the Middle East.
Spirko, a financial and geo-political analyst, turned his attention to the Middle East in 1987, after discovering several common elements related to the Middle East question. In working for peace, and after several frustrating years, he put down his analysis in writing and when he was finished, he not only had a solution to the quagmire, he had a story to tell.
But, nobody was listening.
Today, all that has changed, thanks to Olive Grove Publishers who decided to give his book a chance.
When the Palestinian question came to a festering crisis in 1990, he had already predicted several of the actual events before they occurred. For instance, Spirko predicted the Intifada and Persian Gulf War, missing the actual invasion date of Kuwait by only one week. He did this through spectacular supposition, analysis and prediction based on what he was \\\"seeing\\\" in the region.
When Spirko typed his manuscript, he set the work to fiction, about what he thought might occur soon in the Middle East involving weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation, the Palestinian uprising before it occurred, and how the Palestinian question begged to be answered, little did he realize that every event he described in the book would eventually transpire.
His story of what was really happening behind the scenes in the Middle East is truly astounding and remarkable, and his contribution to the Camp David Peace Talks in 2000, formulated a solution to the Jerusalem question. When the BBC got wind of it, they termed it \\\"as nothing short of brilliant\\\" - Jerusalem becoming the simultaneous capitals of both Israel and Palestine in congruous or concentric zones.
Spirko originally copyrighted his book on October 20, 1987, in the U. S.
Library of Congress where intelligence agencies reviewed his work.
Today, finally, somebody is listening.
Spirko feels that both sides must return to the Camp David Peace Talks and resume where they left off and \\\"freeze in place\\\" the already-agreed-upon negotiating points.
“It\\\'s like a marriage where both spouses storm away mad in an argument.
They don\\\'t divorce and then try to resume their relationship, they come back together, settle their differences, and resume their marriage. It must be the same for the Middle East Peace talks,\\\" Spirko says.
The story begins in Beirut, Lebanon, once a great financial capital of the Middle East, which lay in ruin, having been systematically blasted to rubble during 20 years of inexhaustible civil war and siege by Israel, the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah and Lebanese factions. Soon, the quest for a Palestinian State would be framed by these events; namely, the invasion of Kuwait by a neighboring rogue state, Iraq, with Saddam Hussein\\\'s goal of seeking nuclear parity with Israel.
In Mr. Spirko\\\'s story, Rick Waite, a forgotten UPI correspondent, and Adrienne Waters, a Pulitzer Prize journalist from the London Times, meet-up in Beirut with a PLO operative named Ahmed, who discovers a secret intelligence memo about a secret plan to destroy Israel.
In the ensuing chase to find the answer to this secret communiqué and what it means, a deadly race against time begins as the unlikely trio tries to halt the launch of a secret weapon from a hidden PLO base camp in the Syrian Desert. U. S. and British intelligence operatives have their own agenda, and attempt to stop whatever is going on to save the entire region from a nuclear holocaust.
Spirko weaves a tale of chilling duplicity and thrilling action, as the characters evade and devise a method to announce the discovery of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles to the rest of the world - all while United Nations\\\' delegates bicker endlessly.
An executive at BookMasters, Inc., says, \\\"The book is absolutely stunning in the manner in which Mr. Spirko, tells his tale. He is truly a master as an analyst, and it\\\'s totally unlike anything else we\\\'ve ever read in a spy-thriller. It keeps you turning pages and won\\\'t let you quit - until the very end. And, what an ending it is! If you crave twisting plots, thrilling spy-action and intriguing characters, then this is the book for you.\\\"
Spirko, whose own background includes a stint in the U. S. Air Force and has given his advice to the National Security Council in Washington, D. C., has a degree in journalism and knows first-hand about the newsroom and what it takes to be an intelligence field agent. His knowledge of the trade makes the story real, daunting, and strikingly similar to \\\"The Year of Living Dangerously.\\\"
\\\"THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY drips with reality,\\\" quips a book reviewer from Olive Grove Publishers. \\\"If books were rated by Siskel & Roeper, it would be given a two-thumbs up.\\\"
Not since, Casablanca, do characters as earthy as Rick Waite, or as beautifully mysterious as London Times reporter, Adrienne Waters, or as desperate as PLO operative, Ahmed, bring fresh characters to a story that will be remembered by readers for a long time.
The novel is a mass market paperback produced by Olive Grove Publishers, and can be purchased at area bookstores through Ingram Book Group, New Leaf Distribution, and Baker and Taylor, priced at $14.99, ISBN 0-9752508-0-9. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY can also be ordered on the web at www.atlasbooks.com, or email orders from: order@bookmasters.com, or from Barnes & Nobles, Border\\\'s, Dalton\\\'s, efollett.com & Follett bookstores at colleges and universities, WaldenBooks, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com and other popular retail bookstores. Or, readers and store managers can call 1-800-BOOKLOG, or 800-247-6553 direct, to order.
For readers who want to know what was really going on in the Middle East prior to the Persian Gulf War, Sept. 11th, and Iraq War, THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, is a must read.