And Professor Kaplan’s suggestion is to construct a course such that its thematic structure accommodates the interspersing of pro-Palestinian themes into the course. In other words, subordinate the classroom to the political ideology of the teacher, and structure the classroom’s content such that the teacher can advance that ideology in ways that will not be readily apparent to the students. Professor Kaplan legitimizes the use of the classroom as a political bully pulpit to promote the teacher’s political persuasion…the exact opposite of what academic integrity demands.
Tragically, every bit as distressing as Kaplan’s enthusiasm about using the university classroom as a means to surreptitiously advance Arab propaganda and support the Arab war against Israel is her department chairperson’s disingenuous attempt to support her in doing so. Professor Nancy Bentley misrepresents Kaplan’s intentions by asserting that Kaplan did not think that such an endeavor was feasible. But the whole content of Kaplan’s response is how to do exactly that.
Bentley then goes on to say that since the examples given by Kaplan were electives, discussions of the politics of the Israeli-Palestine conflict would never be forced on a “captive audience.”[8] Bentley sees no problem with the politicization of the classroom, expresses no expectation that the teacher will provide competing or conflicting views on the topic, seeks no standard of objectivity relating to the course, and suggests instead that as long as the course is not a requirement it is of no concern that the teacher is abandoning all pretense of academic objectivity.
Bentley, Kaplan, and the other attendees at the PennBDS conference are not only destroying the university from within by conforming to the whims of current academic fashion and subordinating scholarship to their own personal ideologies, they are also supporting the heinous endeavor of Israel’s enemies — the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its Jews — by promoting the faux narrative that justifies that endeavor.
This is not just bad scholarship, this is complicity with evil.
Complicity with evil is evil.
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End Notes
[1] Perhaps the most comprehensive and even-handed analysis of the conference is “The demonization of Israel” by Asaf Romirowsky and Professor Donna Robinson Divine, at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4192178,00.html and http://www.romirowsky.com/11202/israel-demonization.
[2] Others of the same ilk at the conference included:
Bina Ahmed, who has urged anti-Israel activists to “support the resistance.”
Helena Cobban, an anti-Israel blogger and former Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,who has described Israelis as “stupid” and “incapable of empathy and compassion for other people.”
Bill Fletcher, who regularly accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.”
Reverend Grayland Hagler, a Protestant minister, has called for the dismantling of the State of Israel, and who defended and supported the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based charity that was convicted in November 2008 of funneling money to Hamas.
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, a professor at Wesleyan University, who has claimed that Palestinians have the right to use violence against Israel because they are illegally occupied.
Ahmed Moor, a Beirut-based freelance journalist, who advocates support for BDS on the grounds that it will dismantle the Jewish state, and has been quoted as saying: “Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself…BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state.”
Dina Omar, who claims that Israel is “premised on the death of Palestine” and that Israel engages in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, and has been quoted as saying: “As it exists today, Israel being premised on the death of Palestine and privileging Jews over all others is a process of ethnic cleansing.”
Carolyn Boyd, who insists that Israeli policy in the West Bank “recalls the Jim Crow laws of the American South and the discriminatory practices of apartheid South Africa.”
Philip Weiss, a writer and founder of the anti-Israel blog “Mondoweiss,” has alleged that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is a sort of vicarious revenge for the Holocaust, with Palestinians standing in for the Nazis and the “abused becoming the abuser.”
[3] Summarized and reviewed in its pre-publication state at http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2010/11/115-lecture-amy-kaplan-exodus-and.html.
[4] See, inter alia, http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/02/bds-professor-at-penn-explains-how-to.html; http://patdollard.com/2012/02/public-school-teachers-using-classrooms-to-attack-israel/; http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152708#.T0Mxf8VSQ4v; http://news.yahoo.com/did-ivy-league-professor-suggest-including-anti-israel-063009857.html; and the misleading defense of Professor Kaplan by the chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Nancy Bentley, at http://scrollpost.com/blog/2012/02/10/university-of-pa-responds-about-amy.
[5] Transcribed verbatim from the You Tube clip noted above end note #3 and from http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/02/bds-professor-at-penn-explains-how-to.html; and see there for additional comments and critique.
[6] Mahmoud Darwish was an influential Palestinian poet and PLO member who became a national symbol for many Palestinians. His poetry often demonizes Israel and supports terrorism against Israeli and other civilians.
[7] Kaplan was presumably referring to the book “The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist,” by Emile Habiby,whose Amazon description reads:
“Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel…The author‘s own anger and sorrow at Palestine’s tragedy and his acquaintance with the absurdities of Israeli politics (he was once a member of Israel’s parliament himself) are here transmuted into satire both biting and funny” (quoted here from http://news.yahoo.com/did-ivy-league-professor-suggest-including-anti-israel-063009857.html).
[8] For full text of Professor Bentley’s response see her: http://scrollpost.com/blog/2012/02/10/university-of-pa-responds-about-amy
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