Steven Salaita at Brooklyn College

Steven Salaita and Katherine Franke spoke at Brooklyn College tonight; I moderated the discussion. Three quick comments.

First, the event happened. We had an actual conversation about Israel/Palestine, BDS, Zionism, nationalism, academic freedom, civility. Students offered opposing views, tough questions were posed, thoughtful answers were proffered, multiple voices were heard, there was argument, there was reason, there was frustration, there was difficulty, there was dialogue, there was speechifying, there was back-and-forth. There was a college.

Going into the event, the usual voices mobilized against it. Politicians tried to shut it down. Alan Dershowitz complained he wasn’t invited. I told him to calm down: “In all the years that Professor Dershowitz was a professor at Harvard Law School, he and his colleagues never once invited me to speak, so I’m not exactly clear what all the fuss is about.” Outsiders called the political science department to shout at us.

But there was a difference this time: it was all fairly muted. At no point did any of us think that the administration would cancel the event. We’ve turned that corner. Even the usual suspects seem to be getting tired of their schtick. And the reason is that the event did what it was supposed to do: it created a space for conversation. Maybe we’re moving on?

Which brings me to my second point. All of us at Brooklyn College, and in the larger community, owe a debt of gratitude to the Students for Justice in Palestine. This is now the fourth or fifth (probably more) major event of its kind that they have put on at Brooklyn College since the BDS affair. And each time, they’ve managed to offer members of the College—on all sides of the Israel/Palestine issue—and the community a chance to have a thoughtful discussion. Whatever your position is on this issue, there should be little disagreement that SJP has enriched the College. Not because they advocate for justice in Palestine—though they do that, too—but because they have provided us all with a space to stretch our minds.

Which brings me to my final point. Though I was obviously sympathetic to Steven Salaita going into this event, I came out of it extraordinarily impressed by him. Not merely his character—he’s as haimish as can be—but his intellect. He has an extraordinarily agile mind. Within minutes he can move you from Cotton Mather to Franz Fanon, and throughout the ride, you know exactly where you are. You can see why he’s such a good teacher and why his students love him so much: not because he tells you what you know, but because he takes you somewhere you’ve not been. He had a brilliant riff about how it’s an old trope in colonial discourse that the native corrupts the colonizer, that it’s the native that turns the colonizer from someone who’s as pure as the driven snow into the foulest heart. And suddenly Salaita leaped to Spielberg’s Munich, and showed how it illustrated that exact principle.

This is the man the University of Illinois fired. Because, they claimed, he would be a toxin in the classroom. They have no idea what they’ve squandered.

31 Comments

  1. martin November 20, 2014 at 10:12 pm | #

    Thanks you for your defense of freedom of speech.

  2. David November 20, 2014 at 10:30 pm | #

    thank you for the effort to keep us informed, free and interested. I don’t think anyone can ask more from a college.

  3. Jessica A Bruno (waybeyondfedup) November 20, 2014 at 10:31 pm | #
  4. marcy/مارسي newman/نيومان November 21, 2014 at 12:07 am | #

    What a delightful overview of the event. I wish it had been taped and put up on Youtube for others to see. In any case, this is a wonderful glimpse inside the talk.

  5. Critical Reading November 21, 2014 at 12:18 am | #

    They have no idea what they’ve squandered—but sadly they don’t care. University boards and administrations are run by philistines who have no interest in genuine scholarship, research or education.

    • Viva Palestine November 21, 2014 at 2:17 am | #

      To Critical Reading; You meant to say; University boards and administrations are run by Zionist Lobbyists whose mission is to silence any genuine scholarship, research or education. This event have provided everybody a space to stretch their minds, created a space for conversation and a thoughtful discussion; these are attributes which high level Zionist Lobbyists will never comprehend and will never come close to the level of intellect of Steven Salaita. I feel sorry for your name , you should have tried a bit of deep self-reflection before posting.

      • adam3smith November 22, 2014 at 1:15 pm | #

        No. If you click through to the U of Oregon situation, you’ll see that corporate thinking rather than “Zionist Lobbyists” are a much better explanation for the behavior of university administrations. “Pro-Israel” donors, are, of course, a major factor, but I’m pretty confident that if you replaced who has (&gave) the money in this situation, the same admins would try to throw AIPAC off campus and no one would question BDS–and while arguably better for the Middle East, it would be just as bad for academic freedom.

  6. Jake Davidson November 21, 2014 at 12:47 am | #

    Steven was as you described – a brilliant mind. And I’m a little surprised you overlooked Katherine’s magnanimous, generous description of things. But regardless, Corey – you did one hell of an exceptional job navigating this panel discussion. Touched many people in the audience, including myself. Well done.

  7. Andrew Miller November 21, 2014 at 7:41 am | #

    “This is the man the University of Illinois fired. Because, they claimed, he would be a toxin in the classroom. They have no idea what they’ve squandered.”

    This is the only part of this I would have to disagree with you on; they knew exactly what they were squandering. Salaita wasn’t fired because he used bad words on the Internet; he was fired for being an erudite and passionate defender of Palestinian rights who refused to confine his comments to a liberal Zionist framework or meaningless paternosters about peace and reconciliation but instead insisted upon presenting a Palestinian perspective. And as Said noted, Zionism is only tenable when you silence or occlude the Palestinian and have Zionists/Orientalists speak in his stead. Salaita was acting uppity and that’s why he was fired.

    • Vicente M. Diaz November 21, 2014 at 10:54 am | #

      I think Andrew Miller is right on this point. I know Steven, his dossier, and our campus very well (I’m in American Indian Studies at Illinois, and co-chaired the search committee). I’ve come to the conclusion, in the weeks that followed the initial action, that Steven was fired precisely because, as one who is so capable of getting students to think critically — and them loving him for it — he in effect poses a danger for the neoliberal definition of “higher education” that our university envisions for our students. And it’ll only become more pronounced: our new President, for example, referred to our students and faculty as “human capital” over half a dozen times in his hiring announcement speech the other day. Hows that for another “doubling down” on Chancellor Wise’s repeated defense of her action in the name of diversity, inclusivity, and academic excellence? The other addendum to this thread of the Salaita debacle is the laser sharp hit on an American Indian Studies program that models critical native studies in relation to, in this case, settler coloniality and contested claims of indigeneity in Palestine. When one supporter of the administration decries Salaita’s unfitness for a job in American Indian Studies because Steven is not trained in “folklore” one gets the real picture of just what kind of native studies is deemed acceptable around here. Where we in AIS see in Salaita a critical scholar and outstanding teacher our University’s highest leaders and their brown-nosers on campus see him as an uncouth anti-Semite at best whose real danger is the contamination of the supposed purity of the otherwise lucrative pursuit of “academic” truth. Here, of course, “excellence” is measured ultimately in terms of financial and grants management, gifts, donations, and vacuous rhetoric about diversity and knowledge. In this regime, academic freedom and the pursuit of knowledge become, much like indigenous people long under multiple and violent forms of colonialism, the latest instances of collateral damage.

      • J. Otto Pohl November 21, 2014 at 11:06 am | #

        I have a question. Is the move to comparative indigenous studies something unique to your department or is it more widespread? I do some work on indigenous peoples in Crimea and the Caucasus, but I have never heard of them being studied in the context of indiginity as opposed to the Russian Colonial and Soviet contexts. I would like to someday return from Africa to the US and getting a job in an indigenous studies department working on Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks wouldn’t be a bad gig.

    • halginsberg1963 November 21, 2014 at 11:06 am | #

      If Andrew Miller is correct, how sad that Salaita gave his opponents such powerful ammunition to use against him in the form of facially anti-semitic tweets.

      • Andrew Miller November 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm | #

        I don’t know what you mean by facially, but there was nothing anti-semitic about what he said. Outraged, sure. But outrage is the only natural response to the mass murder of your compatriots. Hence being fired for expressing the Palestinian perspective, which is that mass-murdering Palestinians is wrong and deserves the strongest possible condemnation.

      • halginsberg1963 November 23, 2014 at 10:53 am | #

        Andrew Miller – Facially means on its or on their face. Two of Salaita’s most notorious tweets are:

        1) “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.”

        2) “There’s something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/Israel’s aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion.”

        If you aren’t even open to the possibility that people of good faith could perceive those comments as facially anti-semitic, it would seem we can’t have a dialogue.

        Salaita’s words were very poorly chosen (if he is not, as he repeatedly denies being, anti-semitic) and are easily exploitable by Jew haters. Indeed, when I first read these tweets, I was convinced that Salaita was anti-semitic. After reading comments from academics whom I respect like Professor Robin, I am less sure.

        Yes, we need to read the tweets in context and take seriously Salaita’s denials that he is anti-semitic as I have. But, we also need to parse them and to consider the broader environment in which Salaita is publishing them. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/.premium-1.627725

        You can find an explication of my views on this here. http://halginsberg.com/israels-supporters-are-touchy-but-they-have-some-reason-to-be/

  8. J. Otto Pohl November 21, 2014 at 8:09 am | #

    We need somebody to teach the history of Palestine here. Maybe Salaita should apply to Legon?

  9. louisproyect November 21, 2014 at 9:15 am | #
  10. Carl Schieren November 21, 2014 at 10:58 am | #

    Although I could not make BC, I was privileged to attend five of his eight campus visits. All were different, but your description from BC hits the mark of the man and covers the essence of them all. How different he is from the Dershowitz trial lawyer professor who tries to win by bulldozing opposition the way Israelis bulldoze Palestinian homes. His students may go on to make millions. But Salaita is the professor who with his students and audiences explore multiple realities and their contexts to gain a far deeper understanding of our world. He truly does embody what college is all about and will be remembered when the so-called “winners” are long forgotten.

  11. Rosalind Petchesky November 21, 2014 at 11:12 am | #

    Corey – This event succeeded so well not only because Salaita is all the things you say and more, and Katherine is brilliant, but because you did such a fine, principled job of not only facilitating it on-site but also insisting on the department’s sponsorship through all the threats and obstacles. Huge thanks for your appreciation of SJP – since working with them through cuny4palestine, I have learned a lot from these amazing students (at BC, CSI, JJ & Hunter) and, like you, grown to admire not only their political commitment but also their organizational skills and high ethics in the work they do. Your tribute to Salaita is important – let’s hope it’s heard by the IL powers-that-be. He is indeed a very impressive fellow, as much personally, humanly, as intellectually. A great evening! Ros

  12. Rosalind Petchesky November 21, 2014 at 11:13 am | #

    Corey – This event succeeded so well not only because Salaita is all the things you say and more, and Katherine is brilliant, but because you did such a fine, principled job of not only facilitating it on-site but also insisting on the department’s sponsorship through all the threats and obstacles. Huge thanks for your appreciation of SJP – since working with them through cuny4palestine, I have learned a lot from these amazing students (at BC, CSI, JJ & Hunter) and, like you, grown to admire not only their political commitment but also their organizational skills and high ethics in the work they do. Your tribute to Salaita is important – let’s hope it’s heard by the IL powers-that-be. He is indeed a very impressive fellow, as much personally, humanly, as intellectually. A great evening!
    Ros

  13. Costa November 21, 2014 at 12:33 pm | #

    Yes it does seem like a corner has been turned. I got a sense that the ones opposing the event were essentially going through the motions as opposed to actually believing their own spiels. Even Dershowitz has moved from trying to shut something like this down to whining about not getting invited.

    • Andrew Miller November 21, 2014 at 1:27 pm | #

      I think the irony of trying to censor a conference on the censorship faced by pro-Palestinian academics was too much for all but the most fanatical Zionists.

  14. donald November 21, 2014 at 1:16 pm | #

    I’m curious about what he said about the movie “Munich”. I never saw it, but I read Asad AbuKhalil’s scathing review at “The Angry Arab” many years ago.

  15. David Green November 21, 2014 at 4:41 pm | #

    My summary of Israel’s Dead Soul and support for the notion that Salaita was fired precisely because of his view:

    http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/scholarship-dismissal-university

  16. Warren Ingber November 22, 2014 at 12:40 pm | #

    The event was invaluable in many ways – there really is too much praise to go around – but I’ll give one illustration that picks up on Corey’s reference to that trope about the native corrupting the colonizer.

    Steven Salaita’s mention of the trope brought to mind Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” but also (via the reference to “Munich”) a remark of Golda Meir’s. (“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”)

    The Meir quote has become famous or infamous, depending on which camp one finds oneself in or most answerable to. It would probably have surfaced in a “Crossfire”-style exchange of mutually infuriating talking points. I personally doubt that Alan Dershowitz would have missed the association or resisted the temptation to toss out the quote in search of hisses and huzzahs.

    To be honest, I was half-expecting Steven Salaita to do so. But he did not. That sealed my overall impression that his is a different aim. It also marked the occasion as an invitation to those of us who are sick of shrill partisanship to decamp and see things through other eyes, but without foregoing our own knowledge and will to clarity and fairness.

    Common sense can take root in the most inhospitable soil, but not without moments like these. They are precious, and we need more of them. My congratulations to SVP for bringing one about, and shame on those who would keep them from ever happening.

  17. Ash (@ActivistGal_UK) November 22, 2014 at 1:40 pm | #

    By any chance did someone happen to film this and put it up on Vimeo/YouTube? Sounds like an incredible evening.

  18. Corey Robin November 23, 2014 at 3:53 pm | #

    Hi all. I’m going away for a week and will be offline. Since I can’t keep my eye on this thread — unfortunately, it’s only on threads related to Israel/Palestine that I have to make sure things don’t get out of hand — while I’m gone, I’m going to close discussion. I’m sure everyone will have lots to say at some point in the future on some other thread. Corey

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