Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Neve Gordon and family: Why does Rivka Carmi call this man a "traitor?" (National Catholic Reporter)

Ben Gurion University has intensified the witch hunt against Prof. Neve Gordon, who published an op-ed column in The Guardian and L.A. Times endorsing the Global BDS movement’s program against the Israeli Occupation.  The column provoked a firestorm of controversy here in the U.S. and in Israel.  The worst vitriol has come from the University’s president herself, Rivka Carmi.  She has approvingly noted that many are calling Gordon a “traitor.”  She has called for him to resign and leave Israel (Gordon is a decorated paratroop officer who was severely wounded during the first Lebanon war).  She has alleged that Gordon seeks to destroy Israel.  She has also called her University a “Zionist institution” that cannot have any truck with nation-threatening notions such as BDS.

But now, things have gotten worse.  The school cannot fire Gordon because he has tenure.  But they can exert enormous pressure on the department to can him as chairman.  That’s what’s happening now. The University rector met with faculty supporting Gordon and told them:

…Gordon is not able to properly promote his department’s international programs while addressing the same people regarding a boycott, and the contradiction on this point poses a conflict of interests.

Since when is it a conflict of interest for a political scientist to publish an article on a major issue within his discipline?  When the distaste of donors conflicts with the pursuit of knowledge, must the latter lose at BGU?  If so, what kind of University is this?

In addition, the American support group for Ben Gurion has introduced particularly hateful rhetoric into the controversy.  In Jewish Week, the American affiliate’s PR flack weighed in:

Gordon has been a “thorn in our side for many years” and that there has been a campaign by a number of people in the U.S. to have him fired from the university.  Strongin said Gordon’s op-ed has reactivated the group…

She further calls Gordon’s column the “reprehensible remarks of one rogue faculty member.”  When a faculty member called Strongin’s comments against Gordon “irresponsible” she had the temerity to reply:

How dare you call me irresponsible…My comments only reflect that of BGU’s administration, so don’t you dare stand on your high horse and accuse me of wrong doing.

In further communication, Doron Krakow, executive vice president of American Associates of Ben Gurion University (Strongin’s boss) lays down the law and fires up the big rhetorical guns against Gordon:

Gordon’s editorial is merely the latest example of his exploiting his position with the University to call attention to himself through the use of extreme, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel rhetoric not inconsistent with that which we hear from Israel’s worst enemies.  Though this is hardly news, you and your colleagues nonetheless saw fit to elect him as department chair.

Personally, I find it extraordinarily offensive that the non-academic American affiliate of an Israeli university would lecture a faculty member about the mistake of appointing another faculty member as department chair.  Since when did anyone arrogate to Doron Krakow the right to lobby for or against candidates for academic positions?  Is Ben Gurion to appoint its leaders solely on the basis of which donors they will or won’t offend?  Will it vet candidates for academic positions based on the controversial nature of their writings or publications?  Where does this end?

Furthermore, since when does someone who is essentially a fundraiser get to make politically freighted judgments on faculty members comparing their views to those of “Israel’s worst enemies?”

The truth is that the academic discourse at Ben Gurion is among the most diverse among all Israeli universities.  Debate about the Occupation among various disciplines on campus is vigorous and challenging.  That is why a smart president would tell the world that this is a mark of what universities do best and would praise such diversity.  Donors may not like certain points of view, but they can be made to understand that to be a great institution all ideas from the popular to the unpopular must be debated and studied.

If someone doesn’t calm Rivka Carmi and her associates down, her University will end up the laughingstock of Israeli institutions.  Their thinking represent the tyranny of small minds.  If they win, BGU will proudly bear the banner of a “Zionist” educational institution which wears its ideology on its sleeve; and where inquiry, academic freedom, and the pursuit of knowledge take a back seat to Zionist political correctness.  The only faculty who will want to teach there and the only students who will want to study there are settlers and supporters of the Likud and Israel’s nationalist parties.  What kind of University will that be?

If there are academics reading this I would like to start a campaign on Gordon’s behalf that might involve a letter published in the N.Y. Review of Books and any other activity that might enlist support here in the U.S. and in Israel.  Carmi and the American branch of Ben Gurion are clearly bullies who care nothing about concepts like academic freedom.  But if they know there are other distinguished academic figures who are watching what they are doing they will back down.  But Gordon needs our help now.

And for anyone who doubts Neve Gordon’s commitment to his country (which he proved by the severe injury he suffered at Rosh Ha-Nikra in the first Lebanon war), please read Why I Live in Israel.

Carmi: ferretting out the traitors in BGU's midst

Ben Gurion University president Rivka Carmi wrote an open letter to faculty and donors around the world in which she accused Prof. Neve Gordon of “treason” in writing an L.A. Times/Guardian op-ed endorsing the Global BDS movement:

…The severity and scope of the [Gordon's] attack are unprecedented, both because of the article’s extremist line, which is perceived by many readers as an act of treason against the state of Israel…

…I am personally deeply disgusted by it.

I have spent many years as an undergraduate and graduate student on various campuses (Columbia, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Hebrew University, Jewish Theological Seminary) and have witnessed my share of acrimony and academic politics, but I have never heard a senior administrator use such vituperative language.  In the United States, no doubt Carmi would be out of a job.  It is a university president’s job to explain to the public how academic processes work.  It is her job to explain that universities entertain unpopular ideas and that is a deliberate part of the process of inquiry and gaining knowledge.  It is NOT her job to dump a faculty member at the earliest expedient opportunity.

Imagine if the Catholic Church’s medieval decree that the sun revolves around the earth had never been challenged.  Galileo’s ideas were as unpopular then as Neve Gordon’s are now.  The scientist suffered deeply for holding them.  But fortunately there were others who persevered and eventually realized that the consensus was wrong and that Galileo’s unpopular idea was right.  Rivka Carmi is nothing more and nothing less than Pope Leo, an errant, misguided leader who cravenly tacks whichever way the political winds blow.

My earlier professional career was as a major gifts fundraiser for several large universities and colleges, a hospital, and other non-profits.  The most elemental rules of public communication on behalf of fundraising goals instruct you that donors want to build things.  They want to create something that will make a difference.  Therefore, fundraisers always emphasize the positive.  You never want to communicate with donors on the basis of disaster or imminent catastrophe.  Donors do not want to save you from the poor house or stave off ruin.  Such negativity is the bane of fundraising campaigns.

Which is why the language and tone of her letter is entirely counter-productive.  She’s the Chicken Little of university presidents.  And much of her hysterical language about impending doom caused by Gordon’s single article is simply not believable:

…This article will likely cause a destructive blow to fundraising for the university, and the article’s potential damage to the university budget…is vast.

I see it as my duty to share with you my fears about the damage and its dire influence on the university’s financial situation, on its academic and social reputation, on its professional prestige and the loyalty of each and every one of us.

…This type of article brands the university as one unworthy of support from the Jewish world. Many of those who contacted me emphasized that they will never again support a university who employs a faculty member willing to harm the state like this and that they will recommend that their friends to follow suit.

…All I want is to share with you the distress in which…the university currently finds itself and…share my fears of what is likely to happen to the future and growth/flourishing of the university.

Carmi actually expects that her donor base will rally round the flag and send their shekels streaming into BGU by turning into a Richard Viguerie and screaming hysterically about the traitors in their midst who threaten not just the university, but the very foundations of the state.  This goes beyond hyperbole.  It is simply impermissible speech in an academic context.  There can be no such thing as a legitimate academic or political idea that “harms the state.”  In effect, what Carmi has done is to invite the Shin Bet to haul Gordon in and accuse him of being a traitor to the state.  On what basis can she say that?  What secret has Gordon given away?  What weapons system has he compromised?

Carmi reminds me of Sterling Hayden’s brilliant comic character, Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove.  She accuses Gordon, in effect of draining Israel’s “precious bodily fluids” in order to make Israel vulnerable to its enemies.  Does any university president deserve their job who stoops to such nonsense?  An indication of just how weak academic freedom is within Israel is the fact that there has been virtually no backlash against Carmi. Clearly, the president doesn’t care to hear opposing points of view, but if you want to make yours known to her contact her here.

Prof. Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University has published a scathing attack on Pres. Carmi’s rhetoric in Yediot Achronot (Hebrew only).  In it, he reveals that Carmi called Ben Gurion University:

…A Zionist institution which realizes the vision of David Ben Gurion on a daily basis advancing the development of the Negev and the State of Israel.

This is astonishing.  How does a university as a whole embody an ideology?  Can we teach math or French or nuclear physics as “Zionist” disciplines?  What does this even mean?  Do we want to bring back the Zionist equivalent of “Communist science” in which academic disciplines existed to serve ideological purposes?  We all know how well that went.

The Tel Aviv University professor points out that Ben Gurion is an Israeli, and not a Zionist university.  There is a world of difference between the two.  Carmi could’ve remained content with the claim that Gordon somehow damaged the State of Israel, and this would have been a harsh enough criticism (and false).  But she upped the ante as all ideologues do by claiming that Gordon’s endorsement of the boycott movement is anti-Zionist, which it is not.  Yes, there are those who support boycott who are anti-Zionist.  But doing so does not ipso facto render one anti-Zionist.  In fact, Gordon has made clear that it is precisely because he fears so deeply for Israel’s future that he endorses the radical option of BDS.

Sand further reminds his readers that there are many students and some faculty at Ben Gurion who are not Jewish and probably not Zionist, including a large population of Bedouin.  What does Carmi’s language say about their role in her school?  Does BGU shun its non-Zionist students and faculty?  Or does it suffer their presence there reluctantly?  In effect, Carmi’s rhetoric has gotten her up a creek without a paddle.  How can you rightly say that yours is an institution dedicated to the ancient traditions of learning, of pure inquiry, and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, when you’ve basically sold that birthright for a mess of Zionist porridge?