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

Mitch Bard replied to my post about the L’Affaire Hanna Diskin at George Washington University in which an ill-suited Israeli academic attempted to indoctrinate her students in pro-Israel propaganda, all on the dime of the American Israel Cooperative Exchange and the Schusterman Foundation. Bard is the director of AICE, in fact its only employee. It’s only fitting that if he wishes to hang himself AND provide the rope that I allow him to do so. Here’s his apologia with my questions and comments interspersed:

1. What is the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise?

We are a 501c3 organization devoted to improving the quality of education about Israel available on U.S. college campuses. We view the impartial and scholarly study of Israel to be critical in understanding the Middle East. We are trying to address the dearth of Israel Studies on U.S. campuses; Most U.S. campuses have at most one class on the subject, and that often deals exclusively with the Arab-Israel conflict. We aim to bring scholars to U.S. universities — scholars who could broaden understanding of Israeli society, politics, history, language, and culture (in the same way that, say, Chinese or French or Russian history, language, and culture are studied on U.S.
campuses — often without regard to the current governments of each of those nations).

It is true that such a focus makes us susceptible to the charge that we support Israel’s right to exist; I do, our funders do, and our scholars do.

Whoa, let’s just stop here for a minute. You support the “impartial” study of Israel yet you freely admit that “ALL” your scholars support Israel’s right to exist. Which means that AICE has a litmus test which excludes certain Israel studies scholars from participating in the program. Ipso facto, AICE is NOT impartial. At the least Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhart would never be AICE scholars. But who else would be excluded? Would it only be anti-Zionist scholars? Or does the litmus test exclude others as well? Would Norman Finkelstein (who supports a two state solution) were he an Israel studies scholar, be treif?

Aside from this, Bard sets up a straw man when he says his scholars support Israel’s “right to exist.” Most Israel studies specialists support Israel’s right to exist (as do I). But some are critical of Israel and its policies. Would they be accepted as AICE scholars? What would be the political criteria that would exclude one from being considered? How much criticism is too much?

To be sure, there are indeed programs of Middle East Studies where such a point of view would make me and our scholars unwelcome.

I challenge Bard to name a single program which has made a scholar unwelcome ONLY because he or she accepts Israel’s right to exist. The notion is preposterous.

In some classrooms, a map of the Middle East will not include the geopolitical boundaries demarcating a country called Israel.

This sounds like more propaganda from Bard’s AIPAC broadsheet, Myths and Facts. First, which classroom and at which school? Second, is AICE’s entire raison d’etre based on the fact that classroom maps exclude Israel? That’s the best he can do?

In such an environment, an accurate understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict is surely impossible, yet that is in fact a real problem on some U.S. campuses.

No, the problem as Bard sees it is that scholars like Juan Cole, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and others are simply too persuasive to their students. He worries that if their alleged propaganda goes unchallenged that students will get the wrong idea and begin actually doubting the AIPAC narrative. Further, Bard confuses these scholars critique of Israeli policy based on scholarship with political propaganda. So Bard’s answer is to respond to so-called propaganda with pro-Israel propaganda of his own.

We believe that the scholars we help bring to the campus can and do bring understanding, scholarship, and a depth of knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable to students and other faculty. And the growth of our program suggests that there is an enormous appetite for what we offer.

Or could it be the growth of your program is due to a sugar daddy willing to shell out $3 million and universities on severely reduced budgets only too happy to accept free faculty positions.

I should add, of course, that we are hardly alone in helping bring experts to U.S. campuses to teach specialized courses; foundations do this all the time, and there is nothing unusual about it, so long as the university maintains total control over the hiring of guest faculty and the review of their work.

Which brings me to another important subject. Bard claims that the university “maintains total control over the hiring of faculty and review of their work.” Yet he has already acknowledged that some faculty cannot be considered for ideological reasons. So if a university wanted to hire Ilan Pappe (just as a fer instance) they couldn’t. So how is this “total control?” I think what Bard means is that AICE provides candidates he vets for ideological and other purposes and the university then picks which candidate it wants. I don’t call that total control. But Bard’s standards are different than mine.

2. How do we work?

We secure funding to bring eminent scholars to U.S. campuses — we review the academic qualifications of those scholars, make sure they have the requisite English speaking skills to teach on a US campus, and make them available to campus administrators.

Which brings us to another question: if AICE reviews the academic qualifications of its scholars how did it place an Israeli instructor from Ariel College whose academic specialty was Communist era Poland in a GWU classroom teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict? Just how much reviewing was there?

We have a faculty advisory board of prominent American and Israeli scholars who help us identify the best Israeli scholars. We also invite professors to apply. Our number one criterion is scholarship.

Which brings me to another question: why isn’t the faculty advisory board mentioned on AICE’s website? Who sits on this board? What role do they play? And why aren’t AICE scholars and their campuses listed on the site either?

NOTE: Eric Fingerhut, writer of the original Washington Jewish Week e mailed me that he’d located a list of the Schusterman scholars, though not on the AICE website.

It is in our interests to have universities hire those with the highest academic standards.

Which is why of course AICE provided Hannah Diskin to GWU.

We offer recommendations of scholars to the universities based on these applications and the advice of our board. In the end, however, AICE has no say in who is hired by the university.

Though AICE has a say in who is NOT hired because it weeds out those it disapproves of.

The university decides whom to hire and what they will teach. We require only that the professors teach four courses, at least two on modern Israel.

Again, AICE approved an unqualified person to teach a course on modern Israeli politics. Why?

Our funding only partially covers the cost of the professors; the universities provide matching funds. The universities are solely responsible for monitoring the content of the courses.

This strikes me as PR management. You mean to tell me that the fact that Hannah Diskin taught material that was completely inappropriate in her course and that this fact was exposed by the local Jewish media is NOT something that concerns AICE?

3. What happened at GWU?

Here is what I know; At George Washington University. AICE provided funding for a postdoctoral fellow position. It was up to GW to choose whom they wanted and ultimately decided on Diskin. We had never interviewed her and had no role in her hiring.

Sorry if I repeat myself but…what is your faculty advisory board doing? You claim they recommend candidates and you provide the names to the schools and that you review their qualifications and yet you wash your hands of Diskin and claim that she somehow appeared out of thin air. You didn’t know her, didn’t recommend her. Then how did she become one of your fellows?

It was our hope and expectation that she would have met the university’s criteria for the position. It was very disappointing to us to learn of her resignation
– yet ultimately, the university administration has the full information regarding her hiring and resignation (and any student complaints).

Spoken like a true bureaucrat passing the buck onto the next guy.

4. Who am I?

I have a Ph.D. in political science and am one of the leading authorities on U.S.-Israel relations and author/editor of 18 books.

I’m glad you only claimed to be “one of the leading authorities on U.S.-Israel relations.” Gee, you could’ve said you were THE leading authority. I’m glad you retained a bit of modesty. You won’t mind if I also mention that you spent a significant portion of your career dishing out AIPAC talking points and other broadsides. You won’t mind if I point out that this AICE scholars program is supported by a Foundation that funds virtually all of AIPAC’s campus pro-Israel advocacy including the director’s salary. You won’t mind if I point out that you don’t have a regular academic position. You wouldn’t mind if I pointed out that some of the those 18 books were published by your own Foundation and not by a peer-reviewed academic press. You wouldn’t mind if I pointed out that the Virtual Jewish Library is a font of partisan propaganda regarding its discussions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And a last word on propaganda. Dr. Bard touts the intellectual rigor of the academics in his program and claims they are vetted almost solely on that basis. How does he reconcile this with the following interview he gave:

“Donors need to be very careful about how they give to universities because their money can be used for purposes that are contrary to their intentions,” warns Mitchell Bard of the AICE.

Bard points to the case of Helen Diller, the wife of real-estate developer Sanford Diller. In 2004, she gave $5 million to the University of California at Berkeley and its Center for Middle East Studies to finance research grants and underwrite visiting professorships.

“You know what’s going on over there,” she said of Berkeley to a San Francisco Jewish newspaper. “With the protesting and this and that, we need to get a real strong Jewish studies program in there….Hopefully, it will be more enlightening to have a visiting professor and it’ll calm down over there.”

Mrs. Diller clearly wanted an academic with a partisan agenda named to her endowed chair. Yet when she gave her money directly to the University she was forced to deal with a rigorous departmental process that vets candidates. The result was a distinguished Israeli geographer highly critical of the settlement enterprise and the failures of Israeli democracy. Bard, in this interview, clearly states that AICE will give donors the comfort of knowing it will appoint scholars who adhere to the donor’s ideological viewpoint. That’s not scholarship, that’s partisanship and it doesn’t belong on campus.

I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier post on this: I have nothing against Jewish foundations funding Israel studies. I have nothing against Israelis teaching in such programs who are largely supportive of Israeli policy; as long as I know that ALL qualified Israelis regardless of ideological predispositions are eligible for AICE and actually appointed to its positions. This is not the case with AICE as far as I can tell.

If I am wrong it should be simple enough for Bard to list those AICE academic participants who, unlike Hannah Diskin, don’t have a slavish adherence to the pro-Israel narrative in the classroom. (If he would’ve listed them on his site I could’ve already done this myself).

tags american-israel-cooperative-exchange, george-washington-university, hannah-diskin, israel-studies, lynn-and-charles-schusterman-foundation, mitchell-bard

A note before I begin this post. I am a supporter of Israel. I am a supporter of Jewish philanthropy, including philanthropy which supports Israeli social projects. I am a supporter of Israel studies on campus. But I am not a supporter of partisan teaching that conceals a political agenda. I am in favor of teaching about Israel in a non-partisan fashion that allows students to argue the merits of the issues and make up their own minds.

Washington Jewish Week recently reported that students in a George Washington University course on the Israeli-Arab conflict complained that their instructor, Hanna Diskin, was spending all of her class time promoting a highly partisan view of the conflict that favored Israel. On hearing of this, Diskin fled the classroom and quit leaving the University and department in a lurch. If Diskin had stood her ground and defended herself I think people might approach this bizarre incident differently. But her precipitous flight has led Jerry Haber and myself to do some digging and what we’ve discovered has alarmed us.

Jerry wrote a damning post yesterday about Diskin’s academic background and suitability to teach the course she was instructing. Among other things:

The instructor, Hannah Diskin, was described by the WJU as “visiting from Hebrew University”. and a “postdoctoral fellow” funded by Mitchell Bard’s American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. And indeed, Dr. Diskin is listed as a postdoctoral fellow for the current year on the AICE website…

Dr. Diskin’s cv which appears not on the Hebrew University website, but — surprise!– on the website of the West Bank Ariel College of Judea and Samaria. (Yes, that’s the one that calls itself a “university center”, despite that it is not recognized as such by the Israel Council of Higher Education)

First, Dr. Diskin, who is listed by AICE as an “AICE supported postdoctoral fellow” at GWU this year, received her doctorate from Tel-Aviv university over twenty-five years ago. Generally, the limit for eligibility of postdoctoral fellows is seven, maybe, nine years. Why would AICE award somebody like Dr. Diskin a posdoctoral fellowship?

Second, Dr. Diskin is not on the faculty of Hebrew University, so she cannot be described as “visiting from Hebrew university.” Her cv lists her as having a “teaching position” at Hebrew University from 1992-2005 in the Political Science department. That is usually code for being an adjunct instructor. Her husband, Avraham Diskin, is a professor in that department and a former chair. He is a visiting professor at GW this year. (Oddly, this was not mentioned in the WJW article.) In fact, if I understand her employment history correctly, she has never been more than an adjunct at Hebrew University or any other university inside or outside of Israel. From 2001 she is listed as the Director General of a publishing company.

Third, Dr. Diskin’s area of scholarly expertise — according to her publication history — is Polish-Christian relations. The only book that she has authored by herself is entitled, The Seeds of Triumph: Church and State in Gomulka’s Poland — a book that was published twenty years after she received her doctorate. She has coauthored with her husband several articles in one of his main areas of scholarly expertise, the Israeli electoral system. She has not authored a single article on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as far as I know.

Let me be clear again–I have no problem with someone like Hanna Diskin teaching the GW course or with the spouse of a professor teaching on the same campus as him. But the facts of this case are so egregious as to warrant full review by AICE, its funders and George Washington. When there is little or no oversight of multi-million dollar philanthropic-academic projects like AICE this is what happens. Boondoggles like the one which allowed Hannah Diskin to teach propaganda at a major U.S. university tarnish the good name of all the serious, reputable scholars in the field of Israel studies.

Haber continues his critique of the AICE program at George Washington:

My problem is not with Dr. Diskin, but with GW, which allowed an advocacy operation like AICE sponsor an adjunct instructor who is an expert in Polish-Christian relations to teach a class on the Arab-Israel conflict!

I won’t even begin to comment on the appropriateness of her assigning as one of the two books in the class, Mitchell Bard’s Myths and Facts, a highly biased and one-sided polemic that has no academic value whatsoever. Bard’s organization sponsors her, and then she turns around and assigns Bard’s book?

Nor will I speculate that the position was arranged for her by AICE as part of a package deal that brought her husband and her to GW on her husband’s sabbatical. That is not the issue. Had she been teaching in her field of expertise, or even in her area of teaching competence, without such tendentious sources, then who would have cared?

When are universities going to learn that they cannot be cavalier with accepting money from outside organizations that fund teachers who, based on the news report, do not meet the minimum standards of objectivity? Assigning the Bard book in a college classroom, if true, is a big smoking gun.

I’ve done some further research on AICE myself. The academic program it sponsors is largely funded by the Lynn and Charles Schusterman Foundation, a large Jewish philanthropic enterprise which funds a diverse set of priorities. A review of its Israel giving does show that it funds a great deal of Israel advocacy programs on campus. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, it should be noted that many such programs come across as little more than propaganda apparatuses for a pro-Israel agenda. In fact, I have learned from a former AIPAC staffer that the Foundation funds virtually the entire AIPAC on Campus program (under the rubric of the American-Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s non-profit vehicle) including the director, Jonathan Kessler’s salary. Stacy Schusterman serves on AIPAC’s executive committee as did her father, Charles who was the group’s vice-president. The family is heavily involved with Republican Party politics.

Given the Schusterman-Bard AIPAC affiliations one has to ask whether AICE’s campus program is a subtle attempt by AIPAC to interject itself into the academic arena. A direct intervention would of course be unacceptable and seen as partisan interference in academic discourse. But Mitchell Bard is enough of an independent operator to give AICE the veneer of academic respectability it needs. I may be overstating AIPAC’s interest in this. But if that is so it is only because AICE seems so insular, opaque, and partisan. I note that AICE doesn’t even list its visiting scholars nor their designated campuses on its own website.

The Schusterman website notes it has given AICE nearly $3-million over five years to create 20-30 such academic positions each year. Mitchell Bard, a former AIPAC staffer, appears to be the sole paid staff of AICE (he runs it out of a basement office in his home) who receives $125,000 per year for his efforts (see AICE’s IRS form 990 (pdf)). I don’t know the nature of Bard’s work for this project, but it would seem to me that spending 17% of such a grant to fund one administrative position is a bit excessive. But that’s something the Foundation needs to take up with Bard if it hasn’t done so already.

AICE claims that there is an advisory board which oversees the Schusterman program. But the “advisory board” listed on its website is not an academic board. I’m guessing that there is no academic oversight of the Schusterman program by AICE.

Bard himself is a well-known pro-Israel propagandist in the AIPAC mold. No doubt this fact endeared him to the Schustermans who appear to be strong supporters of AIPAC. But a review of any of Bard’s writing in the Jewish Virtual Library website he maintains or the The Complete Idiot’s (!) Guide to Middle East Conflict which he edited shows him to be a pure partisan. What gave the Schustermans the impression that their funds would be well-spent by a character like Mitchell Bard is beyond me–unless they wanted a highly partisan pro-Israel academic program.

A clue to the ideological agenda behind AICE’s work can be found in this illuminating passage from the Philanthropy Roundtable:

Another potentially helpful development in higher education is the rise of Israel studies. This small but growing field offers college students a way to study the politics and culture of a country that sits near the center of many events. It’s not the ideal lens for studying the entire Middle East, but it does have the potential to increase knowledge about an important nation. It also offers a helpful corrective to Middle Eastern studies programs that are compromised by anti-Israeli bias.

What is deeply problematic about this statement is that without even intending to do so it concedes that AICE-type programs are meant as an attempt to address a perceived ideological imbalance in Middle East studies programs. I should note that the so-called “bias” is perceived by groups like Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine, and AICE which are themselves accused of harboring deep-seated ideological biases.

The Roundtable article continues:

“A couple of years ago, we conducted a survey and discovered that the vast majority of colleges and universities don’t offer any courses on Israel,” says Lisa Eisen, national program director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. “Our goal is to create opportunities for students to learn about Israel both in and out of its conflict — everything from Jewish literature to modern counterterrorism — in accurate ways.”

Working through the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the Schusterman Family Foundation sponsors visiting professorships in the United States for Israeli scholars and gives awards to graduate students who want to research topics in Israel. It currently supports programs at Brandeis, Columbia, UCLA and several other schools.

Improving the quality of university study of the Middle East faces real obstacles. “Donors need to be very careful about how they give to universities because their money can be used for purposes that are contrary to their intentions,” warns Mitchell Bard of the AICE.

Bard points to the case of Helen Diller, the wife of real-estate developer Sanford Diller. In 2004, she gave $5 million to the University of California at Berkeley and its Center for Middle East Studies to finance research grants and underwrite visiting professorships.

“You know what’s going on over there,” she said of Berkeley to a San Francisco Jewish newspaper. “With the protesting and this and that, we need to get a real strong Jewish studies program in there….Hopefully, it will be more enlightening to have a visiting professor and it’ll calm down over there.”

Berkeley didn’t seem to care about this motive. As its first Diller Visiting Professor, the university hired Oren Yiftachel — “one of the Israeli academics most critical of his country’s policies,” according to Moment, a Jewish magazine that covered the controversy. Diller was helpless. “Having given the endowment, there was nothing she could do but wince,” reported Moment.

Again, the passage is deeply problematic. First, the fact that Moment Magazine accuses Yiftachel of being one of the most critical academics of Israeli policy without any proof is dubious. Second, there are MANY Israeli academics who criticize Israeli policy, both Zionist and non-Zionist. Yiftachel is certainly not “one of the most critical.” In fact, he is but one of many. And in fact, he is a highly respected geographer at Ben Gurion University. It should also be noted that the attacks against Yiftachel emanate from the usual suspect right-wing sources, Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine, Martin Kramer, and academic neo-Kahanist Steven Plaut. Third, the notion that a serious academic cannot teach critically about issues related to Israel and the Middle East conflict is also alarming and runs counter to the concept of critical thinking that should characterize academic discourse. Fourth, the notion that Mitchell Bard is in a better position to vet the bona fides of Israel studies professors than UC Berkeley is entirely bogus. What special academic expertise does he have that the professors at UC Berkeley don’t have? Isn’t it possible that the very bias Bard accuses UC Berkeley of practicing is mirrored in his own decision regarding AICE appointments? But with the major difference that Bard is an unaccountable one man band, while UC Berkeley at least has an academic system of vetting such appointments with layers of accountability?

I would go further. Has AICE appointed ANY Israeli academics to its positions with critical views of Israeli policy? What are the ideological views of those it does appoint? Has it appointed anyone with the critical perspectives of a Shlomo Ben Ami, Tom Segev, Neve Gordon, Martin Van Creveld, Zeev Sternhell, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Brom, Menachem Klein, etc.? I don’t know the answer to this question. But I would challenge them to show us that they do not have an ideological axe to grind.

If the Schustermans had entrusted their money to a reputable nonpartisan academic consultant or Jewish foundation which funds Israel studies programs, I would support their program wholeheartedly. In fact, they have provided a $15 million grant to support Israeli studies at Brandeis University. This is money undoubtedly well-spent. But the AICE project appears to be little more than a boondoggle to benefit partisan pro-Israel academics (and their spouses) looking for a comfy year at a U.S. campus; not to mention Mitch Bard.

AICE’s 990 form notes that as of 2006 it funded similar programs at the following institutions:

University of Texas
Stanford University
Syracuse University (Maxwell School)
Washington University (St. Louis)
University of Florida
Rutgers University
University of Arizona
Harvard University

It’s possible that each of these institutions have qualified people filling their AICE positions. But if George Washington can make the mistake it did virtually any campus could do the same. Again, I would urge Schusterman and each campus to redouble their efforts to vet their scholars and assure their suitability to teach the courses they are assigned. I would also examine carefully the course curricula and assigned textbooks to ensure they are not out and out propaganda like AIPAC’s Myths and Facts.

Hat tip to Muzzlewatch.

tags american-israel-cooperative-exchange, george-washington-university, hannah-diskin, lynn-and-charles-schusterman-foundation, mitchell-bard, pro-israel-campus-advocacy

I just plain don’t feel much like writing a full blown post today. But I’ve been reading some terrific material at other blogs and would like to point you to some important reading.

First, Muzzlewatch reports on the odd development at George Washington University of an Israeli visiting instructor quitting in a huff when her students (some Jewish) accused her of being a pro-Israel partisan instead of a dispassionate academic. It seems that the University has accepted funding for several positions (including this one) from a foundation run by notorious pro-Israel ideologue and former AIPAC staffer, Mitchell Bard.

Jerry Haber does some terrific sleuthing to discover that Hannah Diskin, the instructor in question, is not affiliated with the Hebrew University as the original Washington Jewish Week story contends. Rather, she is affiliated with the West Bank’s Ariel College, an unaccredited Israeli institution.

I would like to know who are the sugar daddies funding Bard’s academic positions. Could it be that they might be AIPAC megadonors, which would mean that AIPAC is surreptitiously (and indirectly of course) attempting to slant the teching of Israel and Zionism in the college classroom. Perhaps a view of the Foundation’s IRS 990 form might tell us something on that score (I haven’t done this yet).

Sol Salbe links to another terrific piece of investigative journalism by Daphna Berman (who broke the Other Israel Film Festival story recently) in Haaretz. She investigates a juicy scandal simmering at the Shalem Center, home of American-Jewish neocon demi-god and Wall Street Journal darling, Michael Oren. After reading this, it seems to me that Shalem is nothing more than a warmed over version of the Hudson Institute. The most riveting fact (besides the inter-office sex and director’s directives about the precise angle at which to staple reports) in this expose is the worship by the three Shalem founders of Meir Kahane during their college days at Princeton. How can such an institution command any respect with this intellectual/political pedigree?

I just read Jerry Haber’s recap of this article and he has one hilarious comment on the hot sex at Shalem:

Of course, there is the usual nepotism associated with family businesses. Yoram’s brother, David, worked there for twelve years in an executive position…until he was forced to leave because of an affair he conducted with one of his subordinates. (At the time he was working on a book on the Ten Commandments – or maybe, for him, the Nine)

tags daphna-berman, george-washington-university, jerry-haber, magnes-zionist, mitchell-bard, muzzlewatch, shalem-center