In the true spirit of capitalism, I’ve identified a niche in the academic market and plan to fill it. First, let’s state the problem: the recent spate of campus firings from Yale to the University of Illinois (with earlier episodes at Princeton, Brooklyn College and other institutions) have left schools in the messy position of having to rid themselves of controversial, undesirable prospective faculty and, God knows, sometimes even chaplains. The ensuing bad publicity generated by activist troublemakers too often gives these institutions a black eye they don’t deserve.
Wouldn’t it be better if schools could vet job candidates with a group of trusted consultants who would explore their background (especially their Twitter feeds), seeking embarrassing material and ideologically suspect expression in order to save administrators the trouble of learning about it when it’s too late? I call this new product I plan on offering, ZioCredit™. It’s based on the model of accreditation committees which travel the country examining the fitness of universities to call themselves legitimate academic institutions.
In my case, for a small fee, schools throughout the United States (but especially in communities with large pro-Israel markets) may hire my company to ensure peace of mind. A few of the more cynical among you may liken what I propose to protection rackets in which the Mafia offered businesses protection from assault. Those who refused often met unpleasant ends. If that’s what you’re thinking, you can put your mind at ease. This is the 21st century after all. Not Little Italy in the 1950s. We don’t operate that way. We’re as clean and classy as our clients and sport academic pedigrees to prove it.
So this is how the process works: if we find a candidate in the ideologically lower-tier it would be best to be rid of him or her immediately. We can take care of that for you (no, you won’t find him at the bottom of the East River in cement shoes–I kid!). Why should you get your hands dirty?
We will accredit your university, department by department to ensure each one hews to a proper line. We will even examine course curricula and weed out overly contentious books, essays and ideas. We will examine individual job candidates and prepare them and their case files for presentation to hiring committees and boards of trustees. Earning our accreditation (hence the company name, ZioCredit™), is the pro-Israel Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Working with us will guarantee that you will never face the unwanted attention of the Israel Lobby because after all, we are the Israel Lobby! But we’re a manageable and cooperative version. We don’t aim to embarrass you publicly. And we ask for so little in return.
There may be a few of you Old School academics worried about values like free speech and academic freedom. I can assure you that your concerns are unwarranted. After all, these values are overrated. Like tenure, they’ve outlived their usefulness in the modern age.
The premise behind ZioCredit™ is that in this new academic age what students really want is comfort. They want to enjoy their academic experience. They want civility. They don’t want unpleasant interactions with alien groups they’ve never met in their life. Ideas should be challenging but not too challenging. After all, you don’t want to scare off your students by forcing them to face realities better off avoided.
We will help transform the campus environment from a raucous free-for-all, in which feelings become bruised and identities confused, into a polite, civil society in which everyone takes their turn and knowledge is parceled out in nice, bite-sized packages.
Back to my product, it takes into account that there may be some candidates who, though suspect, are still for various reasons beneficial to the faculty. They may fill an unspoken race or gender quota; or even an ideological quota. They may help promote the school within certain demographic profiles and market niches.
For an extra fee, my company will work with such candidates to reframe academic interests so as to be acceptable within the community. After all, academics are such unusual individuals raised like hothouse flowers in intellectual environments so alien to the average person (by which I mean any supporter of Israel). They need to be coaxed into the real world, to be shown proper manners and etiquette, if you will. In particularly awkward situations, we may even be engaged to cleanse reputations and eliminate particularly egregious examples of anti-Israel hate speech from a candidate’s internet identity.
If the University of Illinois had only had such a product available, it could’ve avoided all that Steve Salaita unpleasantness. So messy and so unnecessary.
Now I can hear a skeptic or two among you (a small minority of course) wondering how this consultancy will be structured. I assure you we will engage some of the foremost experts in the field of internet surveillance and Zionist identity politics. These will be individuals with impressive resumes and who are lionized by everyone who matters. Discussions have already commenced to hire such luminaries as Ayan Hirsi Ali, Carey Nelson and Alan Dershowitz. They know what a good candidate should bring to the table. Either they will help your job seeker to become the best pro-Israel candidate he can be; or they will tell you in no uncertain terms to toss him aside. After all, who wants to waste time on hopeless causes?
Since there is a growing acknowledgement that the customer should be represented at the table, we’re engaging students too, who’ve proven their allegiance to the cause, to sit on these vetting committees. Two of the stars of the field are Daniel Mael and Chloe Valdary. It’s a pretty tough environment for hiring such stellar young people. They have offers of employment at FoxNews and the Wall Street Journal respectively. But we hope to lure them with promises they will make the campuses of America safe for Israel. A more sacred mission I can’t conceive.
Though we believe this is a lucrative field we’re entering (creating, really), we don’t want our clients to think of as money-grubbing capitalists. To that end, we plan on donating 5% of our net revenues (you didn’t think we were nuts enough to base this on gross revenues, did you?) to various worthy, non-political causes like Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, and one of our sister Israeli organizations, Im Tirzu. We’re proud of our association with our Israeli brethren who are bringing a “second Zionist revolution” to Israeli academe.
Please don’t get the idea that any of this is political. Zionism, after all, knows no denominations or sects. There are Christian, Jewish and heck, even Muslim Zionists. It’s entirely non-partisan. And that’s as it should be. There are so many enemies of the Jewish people out there flapping their mouths. God knows what they might say. But we know what’s right. And there isn’t a political bone in our body.
Don’t get the idea that we’re affiliated with one Israel Lobby group like Aipac. After all, how would it sound to say: Aipac Certified? That’s thinking too small. No, we’re going big. We want the whole enchilada. That’s why we call our process Zio Certification.
There may be a few holdout institutions who think they can do things the old-fashioned way. They can honor all the old cliches like academic freedom and pay the price by standing by faculty who speak inconveniently in public settings. To them I say, God speed. You don’t need our help. You need a time machine. You’ll find that you’re dinosaurs and this Brave New World we’re entering will soon pass you by.
My message to academe is: we’re ready to go–are you? Zionize or die.
H/t to Abou Ali Zarif.
Yr tweet about Chaplain Shipman inspired me to write article:
○ First Amendment Rights Muted by Criticism of Israel
Some highlights of this hasbara rant in op-ed by Deborah E. Lipstadt in the New York Times:
“I am unpersuaded by those who try to dismiss what is happening as “just rhetoric.” It is language, after all, that’s at the heart of the ubiquitous slippage from anger at Israeli military action to hatred of Jews.
It’s true that this is not the anti-Semitism of the 1930s, which came from the right and was rooted in longstanding Christian views that demonized the Jews. Traditionally, Islam did not treat Jews this way. But in the past century a distinct strain of Muslim anti-Semitism has emerged. Built on a foundation of antipathy toward non-Muslims, it mixes Christian anti-Semitism — imported to the Middle East by European missionaries — and a more leftist, secular form of anti-Semitism. It is evident in political cartoons, editorials, television shows and newspaper articles.
The op-ed is filled with Islamophobic ramnifications blaming all ills of Israel and the western world on the inevitable clash of civilizations. The author quite remarkable inverts cause and effect on the I-P issue.
ZioCredit™ !!! Not only in the USA, please, but all around te world!
Wow. That’s how it works. Human beings are so trainable in our pursuit of happiness. Certainly, a brillant business model to safeguard the World of Zio that is unfolding. God Speed.
This might be regarded as satire, but comes far too close to REPORTAGE.
Thanks!
Next we’ll have MONSANTO vetting professors for anti-GMO views, EXXON vetting professors for anti-fossil fuel views, etc.
Or is “NEXT” already with us?
I’d like to apply for a Ziocredit card. Do I get air miles?
@ Mary Hughes Thompson: ZioCredit has to vet any candidate for any of its products. We’ll get back to you once we’ve completed the process, reviewing the files of our friends in a certain foreign intelligence agency!
If the definition of anti-semitism is sufficiently extended it can serve to keep out or remove all leftist faculty. The French public intellectual Alain Finkielkraut has done his level best to achieve this extension. Here are a few of the things he said at an interview in Canada (his remarks, which I have quoted at an earlier occasion, were published in the Canadian Jewish News of 9/22/05 under the title ‘Un antisemitisme au nom de l’antiracisme’.)
“…traditional French anti-Semitism is bloodless, tired, moribund….the new anti-Semitism is, by contrast, vigorous, lively and continuously expanding. The old anti-Semitism of French pedigree is in its death throes, the new developing anti-Semitism expresses itself in the name of the religion of humanity. Not, in name of the nation, against the belief in the equality of people and the equality of human rights, but in name of the religion of humanity. The Jews are reproached for betraying these rights. It is an anti-Semitism one cannot accuse by referring to the past because it has nothing to do with the past. It is not an anti-Semitism of a racial type, against which people generally mobilise. It is an anti-racist anti-Semitism.”
And also,
“We are not dealing here with racial hatred against which Jews could protest by dragging their detractors before tribunals. How can one combat anti-racist hatred? That is very difficult.”
Well, brief some academic appointment committees.
And elsewhere (in Acrimed of 1/24/05) he is quoted as saying:
“Only yesterday, the Marxist reduced reality to the class struggle. Everything was brought back to exploitation. Today, anti-racist ideology reduces reality to the great antithesis between discrimination and human rights. Only two camps remain of human plurality and the complexity of this world: the oppressors and the oppressed. In communist ideology the oppressor had the face of the bourgeois. In anti-racist ideology the oppressor has the face of the Nazi. The Jews are no longer among the oppressed, hence they must be Nazis.”
IsalmoCredit™
@ gilad: What an intelligent comment! It’s what I call the ‘Nyah, nyah’ comment. Islamophobe, much?
I don’t usually publish such comments, but yours was so stupid, and such a non sequitur, I just had to…
I would not like to argue about your intelligence, but I think one might be anti Islam as one can be anti Israel.
@ gilad: Nonsense. First, I don’t know what “anti-Israel” means. It’s a hobgoblin phrase that encompasses any enemy one wants to smear with the label. I’m pro-Israel but have been labelled “anti-Israel” hundreds of times by idiots who can’t tell their “pro” from their “anti.”
Second, hating a religion is different than criticizing, or even hating a state. Is it OK to be anti-Semitic? Or even anti-Jewish? Then why is it OK to be anti-Islam? Unless you want different rules for different religions. But that would be hypocritical, & you wouldn’t want to be that, would you?
How would you call someone which takes the side of the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria?
@ gilad: A perfect example of a nonsensical question in search of a hasbara-ready answer. Why don’t you ask an intelligent question instead of a leading question?
Supporting Palestinians doesn’t mean you’re anti Israel. Nor does supporting Iran (though it depends how that support is expressed).
Finkielkraut is not well known in the US I dare say but in France he is an important public intellectual. He was recently elected to join the ”immortals’” of the Academie francaise. He claims to have a critical attitude towards present day Israeli politics and to be a supporter of a two state solution but in a recent interview published in the conservative paper Figaro about the slaughter in Gaza he showed himself mainly disturbed about the alleged wave of anti-semitism in Europe caused by this. He was also of the opinion that the Israeli army had shown remarkable restraint – if it hadn’t Gaza’s fate would have been similar to that of Dresden. And at the question where the Gazans could have gone to find shelter he judged that Hamas had the wrong architectural preferences – instead of tunnels it should have built shelters for Gazans (why that would be necessary with an opposing army that shows such admirable restraint remains unexplained). He also repeats the Netanyahu claim that Hamas revelled in the number of victims because this constituted proof of the Israeli crimes (would there be no parents, brother, sisters of militants among these?)
As far as anti-semitism is concerned he provides a troubling example of the inquisitorial attitude towards it.
An example:
Eleven years ago an Israeli filmmaker, Eyal Sivan, and a Palestinian colleague, Michel Khleifi, cooperated in making a documentary with the the title Route 181 (one can find various fragments of it on Youtube – with French subtitles). The film is named after UN Resolution 181 that created the border between the future Jewish and Palestinian states ( the much discussed “Green Line”, the armistice line still existing on the 4th of June 1967, gives of course 22 % more of mandate Palestine to Israel than that “border 181”).
Sivan and Khleifi travelled along that route and interviewed whoever they found there, Palestinians and Israelis. Their aim, though, was to highlight especially the catastrophe that the Nakba had been for many Palestinians.
The leading idea was that the two peoples will never come together when there is no mutual understanding of what the Shoah meant for the one, and the Nakba for the other – without necessarily suggesting that there is an equivalence between these events.
Finkielkraut took exception to that documentary and accused Sivan, in a radio broadcast, of representing “Jewish anti-semitism”, of hating the Jews, and of wanting to see them disappear and liquidated. It was also because of his protests that in 2004 the organisers of the annual film festival for documentaries, held at the Centre Pompidou, refused to screen Sivan’s and Khleifi’s work.
Sivan took Finkielkraut to court for defamation, inter alia after he had received over the mail a bullet with the added text: “the next one won’t come by mail”.
Here are part of the court proceedings in English translation. The defenders of Sivan appear later in the text:
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/26/sivan.php
The verdict went against Sivan because the Court judged that F. had only imputed certain intellectual attitudes to Sivan, not specific deeds.
Thanks for the info.
French collaboration under the Nazis is well known, the stink of racism has never subsided after the colonial wars left many immigrants coming to their new homeland. The French made sure they were not welcome. The remarks of Finkielkraut are in line with racism in the French soccer team “Les Blues” and with Marie Le Pen’s political platform. Le Pen’s European partner Geert Wilders is pro-Israel and wants Palestinians transfered out to Jordan.
The so-called New Philosophers made the journey from a totalitarian Left of the 1960s to the authoritarian / fascist leaning Right in a matter of years and authoring a few books on the spinsels of their mind. No wonder you have extremes in French politics. You have the untouchables (elites), the intellectuals, the middle-class and the under-class living in the Paris banlieues. How France corrupted its former African colonies can be viewed in outstanding Al Jazeera documentary: The French African Connection .
○ Finkielkraut: The Haaretz Interview and the Apology – 2005
Finkielkraut founded with Benny Lévy and André Glucksmann an Institute on Levinassian Studies at Jerusalem.
○ Silk-Shirt Prophet Bernard-Henri Lévy Rails at Zombie French Left
By Diane Johnstone | Counterpunch | Nov. 2007 |
I should perhaps add that Finkielkraut has been taken to task for this scandalous interview in Figaro by Daniel Salvatore Schiffer, a Belgian-Italian essayist of Jewish origin. In an article in Le Nouvel Observateur he accuses Finkielkraut of a “flagrant intellectual dishonesty or a strange, not to say pathological, denial of reality”.
http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1227362-alain-finkielkraut-gaza-et-le-figaro-un-discours-grotesque-inique-et-nauseabond.html
My first impulse was not to comment. This is such an insignificant piece which will be thought to be entertaining and insightful by those few who see the world through the leftist, anti-Zionist paradigm. Only the few proud, engaged, and active Zionists like me, and maybe Daniel and Chloe, would take offense at the delegitimization of our views. But behind the bias and the snarky sarcasm lies something more insidious. As a thought experiment, reread the article and substitute Afro-Credit or Femi-Credit to see how this is an attack on those of us who fight discrimination. It is one thing to honestly disagree and to support ones arguments with evidence. It is another to apply ad hominem against sincere and brave people standing up for what they believe in. I do not need to point out the name of the bias that would impugn those who stand up for their Jewish values with the lust for money. As a Life member of the Libertarian party, I am very familiar with those who would use our commitment to free speech and exchange to protect hate speech and discrimination. I will not ignore it. I will stand, point my finger and clearly say: Richard Silverstein – J’accuse!
@ Marc Allan Feldman:
You should’ve obeyed your first impulse!
I would normally never publish such an off-topic, ridiculous comment. But this one is so entertaining & so over the top, I knew it would give many of you a good chuckle, if not a genuine laugh. Enjoy. And no, this is not a spoof. This guy is real (as far as I can tell).
BTW, as for FemCredit or AfroCredit, your dim brain doesn’t understand the plain fact that no one vets candidates (especially not their social media accounts) for their views on feminism, race or civil rights. No one (at least not until now, but that could change given the precedent of Univ. of Illinois) examines Twitter accounts for what faculty candidates have said about women or Blacks. But hey, you’ve now given them the idea. Welcome to the Brave New World that you & yr kind hath wrought.
Finally, should you think you’ve been given carte blanche to open a whole new line of argument in this thread…don’t. Read & respect the comment rules. Your first offense & you’re out.
“no one vets candidates (especially not their social media accounts) for their views on feminism, race or civil rights.”
Sure Richard.
No one, with the minor exception of the entirety of the media as a whole 1000% of the time! I could give you a long list of self interest groups as well. Perhaps you’ve never heard of the NAACP? Or any groups that favor a women’s right to choose? Or those that are vehemently against such rights. I’m glad they do it. And I hope they continue to do so. Why you hold Zionists to a different standard is the issue here. Especially since most Jews understand that if we don’t look out for ourselves, then absolutely NOBODY will do it for us.
@Alexei: A close or even superficial reading of my comment would compel even the most uncharitable reader (not you obviously since you’re both an obtuse reader and worse than uncharitable) to understand that “candidate” meant “job candidate” and that these were candidates for faculty positions since that was the subject of the post.
Are you aware of feminist or civil rights groups who’ve plumbed the depths of social media to dredge up nastiness about faculty job candidates? If so, enlighten us.
Next time (and this holds true for every reader seeking a gotcha! moment here), read the post and links as well before commenting. It will save you looking like a fool & me for having to teach you reading skills.
Brilliant business plan. I must get in on this! When’s the IPO?
@ Walk Tall Hang Loose: What a great idea! Thanks. I’m going right now to pro-Israel neocon hedge fund managers Paul Singer & Seth Klarman for a round of venture funding. I’ll even offer Sheldon & Shmuley a cut of the action! Imagine: pro-Israel vulture, I mean venture capitalism at it’s best.
That was a good laugh.
Thanks!
WOW!
You could write for “The Onion” Mr Silverstein!
[comment deleted: sorry but this is way, way out in left field & far off topic. Not to mention that you’re using anti-Semitic tropes that are offensive. There are certain dog whistle words amidst all prejudicial thought systems and “Rothschild” is one of them. That won’t get published here.]
I found this dignified comment by professor Corey Robin on the McCarthyite list of US professors supporting the BDS movement through Haaretz:
AMCHA, an organization whose self-declared purpose is to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campus, has a list.
A list of 218 professors who have called for the boycott of Israel. Which is somehow a threat to Jewish students on campus.
And they wonder why we call it McCarthyism.
Several folks have suggested that all of us who are academics, from graduate students to endowed chairs, write the organizers of the initiative and urge them to add our names to the list. As an act of solidarity. I think it’s a good idea, so I’m going to do it, and I encourage you to do the same.
Here are the folks and email addresses you should write:
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Lecturer, University of California at Santa Cruz, tammi@amchainitiative.org
Leila Beckwith, Professor Emeritus, UCLA, leila@amchainitiative.org
administrator@amchainitiative.org
Update (11:30 am)
Here’s what I wrote:
Dear Professors Rossman-Benjamin and Beckwith:
I noticed this morning that you listed on the AMCHA website 218 professors who are a threat to Jewish students (“Thank you for your actions to protect Jewish students”). As a practicing Jew, I think your list is abhorrent. As a citizen, I think it’s pure McCarthyism. As an act of solidarity with the professors who have been unfairly maligned by you and your list, I’d like you to add my name to it. Below please find my identification.
Corey Robin