The perils of dissent in U.S. universities
By Hamid Ansari
The quest for sanity should begin by undoing thought-control devices such as the Campus Watch in American universities.
FIRST IT was Harvard and the disowning of the John Mearscheimer-Stephen Walt monograph on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Now it is Yale and the denial of a tenure professorship to Juan Cole. Both send the unmistakable message that the `Campus Watch' programme of the neo-con circles is being pursued with deadly intent. It brings to mind Harold Laski's 1948 book, American Democracy.
Professor Cole is professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at Michigan University. He is a known authority on Shia Islam in Iraq, Iran, the Gulf, and South Asia and is fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. His `Informed Comment' is a daily blog on Iraq since 2002. His comments are based on deep knowledge, hard facts, and careful assessments; occasionally they are pungent. His fondness for India is evident from the picture of the Taj Mahal on his website.
The story of the current controversy is revealed in the June 2 issue of the Jewish Week. Yale University set up a search committee earlier this year to look for a qualified scholar to teach modern Middle East. It suggested Prof. Cole's name. In two separate votes last month, Yale's history and sociology departments approved the selection and sent it for endorsement to the Tenure Committee consisting of about six senior-most professors of the University. The latter, in what has been described as a `highly usual' move, turned down the recommendation.
According to the Jewish Week report, the move was prompted by Professor Cole's views on U.S. policy in Iraq and on the Israeli policy in the West Bank: "When Cole's potential hiring became publicly known, several of his detractors including the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin and Washington Times columnist Joel Mowbray, took various steps to protest the decision. They wrote op-ed pieces in various publications and Mowbray went as far as to send a letter to a dozen of Yale's major donors, many of whom are Jewish, urging them to call the university and protest Cole's hiring."
The latter move had the desired effect: "Several faculty members said they had heard that at least four major Jewish donors... have contacted officials at the university urging that Cole's appointment be denied."
As on such occasions, academic reasons have been cited for the decision. Professor Cole's scholarship, it is alleged, is focussed on the 18th and 19th centuries; he lacks collegiality and is combative; his politics, it is conceded, "may have played a role."
The Iraq blog may be combative but happens to be factually correct. The changed public mood on Iraq, in any case, may not help make this a good enough excuse today. Israeli policies, however, are an altogether different matter.
In August 2004, Professor Cole wrote that many of the Bush neo-conservatives are "pro-Likud individuals" who wish "to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." His detractors see this as condemnation of the American Jewish community. Professor Cole denies this categorically and refuses to equate the Likud with Israel and with Jews.
The Cole episode, like the earlier one at Harvard, is indicative of a mindset that has dominated considerable segments of American opinion since 9/11. Last year, Professor Tariq Ramadan of Geneva was denied a visa to take up a tenure appointment.
Anatol Lieven, the author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, has sought to analyse this "chauvinistic and bellicose nationalism" and attributes it to two of America's requirements: guaranteed supplies of oil from West Asia and the attachment to Israel.
The quest for primacy and unipolarity is a related factor. Andrew Bachevich drew attention to it last year in his book The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. He reminded his readers of George Washington's valedictory address and advice to fellow citizens to be wary of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
Mr. Bachevich digs out another gem of a remark, as relevant today as it was in 1795 when written by James Madison: "Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
The pasture of stupidity, wrote the historian Ibn Khaldun, is unwholesome for mankind and "the evil of falsehood is to be fought with enlightened speculation." Perhaps the quest for sanity would begin by undoing thought-control devices such as the Campus Watch and abandoning the undesirable quest of political correctness. [The Hindu, Tuesday, Jun 13, 2006]
The quest for sanity should begin by undoing thought-control devices such as the Campus Watch in American universities.
FIRST IT was Harvard and the disowning of the John Mearscheimer-Stephen Walt monograph on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Now it is Yale and the denial of a tenure professorship to Juan Cole. Both send the unmistakable message that the `Campus Watch' programme of the neo-con circles is being pursued with deadly intent. It brings to mind Harold Laski's 1948 book, American Democracy.
Professor Cole is professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at Michigan University. He is a known authority on Shia Islam in Iraq, Iran, the Gulf, and South Asia and is fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. His `Informed Comment' is a daily blog on Iraq since 2002. His comments are based on deep knowledge, hard facts, and careful assessments; occasionally they are pungent. His fondness for India is evident from the picture of the Taj Mahal on his website.
The story of the current controversy is revealed in the June 2 issue of the Jewish Week. Yale University set up a search committee earlier this year to look for a qualified scholar to teach modern Middle East. It suggested Prof. Cole's name. In two separate votes last month, Yale's history and sociology departments approved the selection and sent it for endorsement to the Tenure Committee consisting of about six senior-most professors of the University. The latter, in what has been described as a `highly usual' move, turned down the recommendation.
According to the Jewish Week report, the move was prompted by Professor Cole's views on U.S. policy in Iraq and on the Israeli policy in the West Bank: "When Cole's potential hiring became publicly known, several of his detractors including the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin and Washington Times columnist Joel Mowbray, took various steps to protest the decision. They wrote op-ed pieces in various publications and Mowbray went as far as to send a letter to a dozen of Yale's major donors, many of whom are Jewish, urging them to call the university and protest Cole's hiring."
The latter move had the desired effect: "Several faculty members said they had heard that at least four major Jewish donors... have contacted officials at the university urging that Cole's appointment be denied."
As on such occasions, academic reasons have been cited for the decision. Professor Cole's scholarship, it is alleged, is focussed on the 18th and 19th centuries; he lacks collegiality and is combative; his politics, it is conceded, "may have played a role."
The Iraq blog may be combative but happens to be factually correct. The changed public mood on Iraq, in any case, may not help make this a good enough excuse today. Israeli policies, however, are an altogether different matter.
In August 2004, Professor Cole wrote that many of the Bush neo-conservatives are "pro-Likud individuals" who wish "to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." His detractors see this as condemnation of the American Jewish community. Professor Cole denies this categorically and refuses to equate the Likud with Israel and with Jews.
The Cole episode, like the earlier one at Harvard, is indicative of a mindset that has dominated considerable segments of American opinion since 9/11. Last year, Professor Tariq Ramadan of Geneva was denied a visa to take up a tenure appointment.
Anatol Lieven, the author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, has sought to analyse this "chauvinistic and bellicose nationalism" and attributes it to two of America's requirements: guaranteed supplies of oil from West Asia and the attachment to Israel.
The quest for primacy and unipolarity is a related factor. Andrew Bachevich drew attention to it last year in his book The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. He reminded his readers of George Washington's valedictory address and advice to fellow citizens to be wary of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
Mr. Bachevich digs out another gem of a remark, as relevant today as it was in 1795 when written by James Madison: "Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
The pasture of stupidity, wrote the historian Ibn Khaldun, is unwholesome for mankind and "the evil of falsehood is to be fought with enlightened speculation." Perhaps the quest for sanity would begin by undoing thought-control devices such as the Campus Watch and abandoning the undesirable quest of political correctness. [The Hindu, Tuesday, Jun 13, 2006]
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