Anti-Semitism at CUNY? At Brooklyn College? In the Department of Political Science?
Last spring, in response to claims and complaints of several pro-Israel groups, CUNY hired two attorneys, a former federal judge and former federal prosecutor, to investigate alleged anti-Semitism at CUNY.
After six months of investigation—and God knows how many billable hours (partners at the firm where the two investigators work charge up to $1,000 an hour)—the investigators have issued their report. Among their findings: what anti-Semitism there is at CUNY (and some of the incidents documented here are genuinely anti-Semitic) has nothing to do with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Given that accusations against SJP were the main impetus for the complaint—the Zionist Organization of America, along with 35 New York elected officials, called for SJP to be suspended or banned from all CUNY campuses—the report should be viewed as an exoneration of SJP, a student organization that has been constantly and unfairly tagged with the stain of anti-Semitism by pro-Israel groups inside and outside CUNY.
The report also does an excellent job of explaining the difference between being offended and being threatened, and makes the quite reasonable point that giving and taking offense—and learning how to respond to both—is part of the educational process. It also urges people not to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
The report also devotes some discussion to my department at Brooklyn College. I confess that I have mixed feelings about what it says in that regard.
On the one hand, it confirms what I already knew: most of our faculty don’t talk about the issue of Israel/Palestine in the classroom (because it’s usually not relevant to the subject at hand), and those faculty who do talk about it, foster an inclusive environment where a variety of views can be aired. Students feel welcome in the classroom, and free to discuss issues from multiple perspectives.
On the other hand, the assumption embedded in the report—that were a professor to pursue, hard, an argument in class about Israel, that that would somehow be out of bounds—seems wrong to me.
Tomorrow, in class, I’m going to pursue, hard, an argument about Locke and labor. That doesn’t mean the students can’t disagree with me. Not by a long shot: strong arguments often elicit, are designed to elicit, strong responses. But I’m not going to pretend to represent all views on Locke or to act as if they are equally correct.
While I know Israel/Palestine is a far more controversial topic these days than is Locke on labor—there was a time in the academy (at least in political science) when, believe it or not, that wasn’t the case—I still don’t know why I as a professor should approach the topic of Israel any differently.
My job is not to avoid giving offense or to give succor; it’s not to ventriloquize all positions across the spectrum. My job is to teach students how to think, how to recognize an argument for what it is, how to make an argument, how to take it apart, how to think critically. I can’t do that job by pretending that weak arguments are strong or strong arguments are weak. (Notice that nothing in what I’ve said presumes that the cause of Israel is right or wrong.)
There’s also a discussion in the report of how I have handled student complaints regarding this issue. Though the report praises me, as chair, I want to make clear (because the report does not) what it is praising me for: When some students complained to me about the anti-Israel bias of the department, I made clear to them that if they had specific complaints (as opposed to vague premonitions of unwelcome or discomfort) about a professor penalizing students for their views or unreasonably prohibiting students from airing their views (that “unreasonably” is deliberate; all professors have to monitor and control class discussion, and that will mean that some views don’t get aired sometimes, for perfectly legitimate pedagogical reasons), or if there were any promulgation or indulgence of anti-Semitism (as opposed to anti-Zionism) in the classroom, that they should come to me.
In any event, the report should set to rest any notion that political science at Brooklyn College is anything less than a first-rate academic department that takes scholarship, teaching, and discussion of difficult issues seriously.
Here’s what the investigators had to say about my department:
Among the matters that we investigated was an allegation that Jewish students did not feel comfortable taking Political Science courses because of the Department’s anti-Israel bias. We did not find substantial support for the allegation. For the most part, the interviewees said that the Department’s professors facilitated dialogue on the Israel-Palestine issue but did not impose their own views. The issue was not gratuitously raised in the classroom….
Political Science faculty members are clearly sensitive to the issue. The current chair of the Department told us that Hillel students had brought this concern to his attention. The students did not raise particularized complaints, but expressed their general discomfort. He urged them to report any future incident directly to him. The meeting occurred in 2014, and he has not heard similar concerns since then. A pro-Israel professor told us that the head of the Department takes the issue seriously and that he would be “shocked” if there were inappropriate comments in class.
No doubt, some of the concern about the Department stems, not from classroom issues, but from its co-sponsorship of the 2013 BDS forum and a 2014 event featuring Steven Salaita. Some Jewish students and alumni believe that the co-sponsorships evidenced antiZionism, and questioned whether a department should be lending its name to such potentially polarizing events. The Department takes the position that it will co-sponsor any student event that has an educational purpose and notes that it has co-sponsored at least one event that featured a pro-Israel speaker.