Ben Gurion University Trustee Wishes Professor Dead « Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Ben Gurion University Trustee Wishes Professor Dead

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Tags: academic-freedom, ben gurion university, israel-lobby

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 2:01 AM and is filed under Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Ben Gurion University Trustee Wishes Professor Dead”

tzvee says:

January 1, 2010 at 8:20 AM

excellent post – this is the kind of behavior all around that diminishes the reputation of all academic institutions, their benefactors, professors and administrators. keep the spotlight on them all, good job.

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- Richard Silverstein says:
  
  January 1, 2010 at 5:15 PM
  
  Thanks Tzvee. I’d forgotten to e mail you directly about this as a Jewish studies professional. Glad you saw it.
  
  Reply
The Hasbara Buster says:

January 1, 2010 at 10:07 AM

Lobby members make, as you say, astonishing statements without raising many eyebrows. Take for instance Alan Dershowitz’s proposals that torture be legalized or that an Arab village be destroyed after each Palestinian terror attack. Did that diminish his status as a “Harvard scholar”? Or consider Nathan Lewin’s suggestion that the fathers of terrorists be executed. Was he met with any denunciation from the American Bar Association?

Gross was testing the point to which limits can be stretched. He didn’t get away with it this time around. But he knows that the fact that he was able to say what he said without facing any concrete penalty or punishment is the beginning of the normalization of academic hate speech. It won’t be long before dissident scholars begin to be fired on security grounds.

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- Richard Silverstein says:
  
  January 1, 2010 at 5:18 PM
  
  All the time I was writing this post I knew I was missing a phrase I wanted to use & you nailed it: “academic hate speech.” That’s precisely what it is. Thanks.
  
  Either they’ll be fired or maybe thugs like Gross will hire other thugs to rough up faculty they hate.
  
  Reply
- Shirin says:
  
  January 2, 2010 at 12:05 AM
  
  Have you forgotten the case of Norman Finkelstein, who has never engaged in hate speech, academic or any other kind, and yet whose academic career has been destroyed because he has quite legitimately subjected too many sacred cows to the wrong kind of scrutiny?
  
  Reply
  - Peter H says:
    
    January 2, 2010 at 8:34 AM
    
    What happened to Norman Finkelstein at DePaul was totally wrong, but he certainly didn’t help himself by engaging in inflammatory behavior. Seriously, WTF was he thinking making a solidarity visit to Hizbollah?
    
    Reply
    - Shirin says:
      
      January 2, 2010 at 6:22 PM
      
      I don’t know, maybe he was just being true to his convictions?
      
      Reply