The pro-Israel campaign against the Palestinian solidarity movement has found its way on to another US campus after two students at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) complained when their lecturer sent out an email juxtaposing images from the Holocaust with images from the Israeli war on the people of Gaza.
Gaza Solidarity is familiar with the images and chose not to post them at the time as we do not believe the comparisons are appropriate. Appalling crimes have been committed by Israel in Gaza, but there are no extermination camps there. And Gaza is not the Warsaw Ghetto, although it certainly is an open-air prison.
But the pictures do sharply point to the tragic irony of the 'Jewish State' built by those fleeing oppression to turn into one of the the world's most oppressive states. The pictures are in no way anti-semitic, and Professor William Robson deserves our support.
By Duke Helfand, LA Times
Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor's decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza offensive.
The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.
The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message -- titled "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis" to the 80 students in his sociology of globalization class.
The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip. It also included an article critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson.
"Gaza is Israel's Warsaw a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians," the professor wrote. "We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide."
Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor's message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university.
In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus' faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.
"I was shocked," said Joseph, 22. "He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn't have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong."
Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.
"That's like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I'm anti-American," he said. "It's the most absurd, baseless argument." more at LA Times
More on US campus battles:
Pro-Israel campaign of hate at Rochester
Zionists vandalise black flags exhibit at Cornell University
SOLIDARITY ACTIONS REQUESTED:
* Email the UCSB Chancellor and responsible authorities on campus to express your outrage and register your protest (see sample letter and email addresses below)
* Sign the petition http://www.petitiononline.com/cdafsb/petition.html
*************************************************
PROFESSOR WILLIAM I. ROBINSON, UC CALIFORNIA (from Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UC Santa Barbara) Posted at Peterborough Coalition for Palestinian Solidarity
Dear colleagues,
UCSB has become the latest front in the war against Academic Freedom.
Professor William I. Robinson, a Sociology and Global Studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been attacked by the Anti-Defamation League and two of his former students. In January of this year, he forwarded an email condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The email contained an editorial by a Jewish journalist condemning Israel's actions in Gaza as well as juxtaposed images of Nazi atrocities with congruent images of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. The email was an optional read for students, intended to spark conversation by relating contemporary events to conceptual ideas discussed in class.
One week later, the ADL wrote him a letter charging him with anti-Semitism and sundry violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct (none of which were coherent claims). Another week passed, and the Academic Senate Charges Officer then notified him that two of the students in the class to which he circulated the email had filed complaints against him.
The complaints are that 1) critique of Israel is evidence of anti-Semitism and 2) the Israeli-Palestinian issue should not be discussed in a class on Globalization.
This case has already escalated way too far. Throughout the process, the Charges Officer violated several elements of the charges procedure, shirked his responsibilities, and ultimately acted as a co-complainant by fabricating charges that were not raised by the students. The charges have reached the Committee on Committees, which is now in the process of convening an ad hoc Charges Committee to assess the complaints against Professor Robinson.
Based on patently absurd and malicious claims, the charges should have been dismissed out of hand from the beginning. Further consideration of the charges by the Academic Senate serves only to sanction politically-motivated attacks on academic freedom. The longer this case is pursued, the worse its chilling effect; it will spread fear among those who wish to present controversial and critical subjects. Even though the original complaint is regarding Israel/Palestine, the rights at stake extend beyond this specific topic. Academic freedom is a right that enables scholars to express diverse perspectives over contentious topics, free from the intimidation of political repression campaigns. If the case against Professor Robinson continues to go forward, it will lead down a slippery slope that may expose academics to repression tactics for addressing controversial issues such as stem cell research, evolution, feminism, LGBT rights, etc. It is incumbent upon members of the UCSB campus and the broader academy to roundly oppose this silencing campaign.
This is an obvious attack on Professor Robinson’s academic freedom, one that ominously recalls similar campaigns against other critics of Israel across the nation. This is part of a broader campaign to automatically vilify and attack any and all critiques of Israel’s policies and practices through unfounded use of the term “anti-Semitic.” A critique of the Israeli state, its policies, and the leaders responsible is not and should not be considered an affront to Jewish people as a collective, the Jewish religion, or Jewish heritage. In fact, conflating the state of Israel with the Jewish people essentializes the assorted political opinions of a diverse religious group by reducing them to the set of policies espoused by the prevailing regime.
For more information on the case, including continuing updates, http://sb4af.wordpress.com.
If you wish to contact the student campaign, please email: cdaf.ucsb@gmail.com.
Thank you for your time,
Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UC Santa Barbara
***
Send an Email:
The e-mail should be addressed to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and cc’d to the following faculty and administrators involved in the case. Please copy and paste the addresses.
The e-mail should be addressed to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and cc’d to the following faculty and administrators involved in the case. Please copy and paste the addresses.
CC: mgscharl@math.ucsb.edu, gene.lucas@evc.ucsb.edu, moliver@ltsc.ucsb.edu, mazer@lifesci.ucsb.edu, joel@geog.ucsb.edu, joel.michaelsen@senate.ucsb.edu,sarah@isber.ucsb.edu , butler@chem.ucsb.edu, scott@theaterdance.ucsb.edu, hcallus@music.ucsb.edu, gaulin@anth.ucsb.edu, spieker@gss.ucsb.edu,stemmer@mrl.ucsb.edu , caselle@lifesci.ucsb.edu, goulias@geog.ucsb.edu, amar@lawso.ucsb.edu, Stephanie.smagala@senate.ucsb.edu , ettenberg@psych.ucsb.edu,hualee@ece.ucsb.edu , mithun@linguistics.ucsb.edu, zok@engineering.ucsb.edu, helen.henry@ucr.edu, cdaf.ucsb@gmail.com
Comments
Post a Comment