Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom
One week after renowned legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky was offered the position of dean of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine, Chancellor Michael Drake withdrew the offer, informing Duke Law Professor Chemerinsky he had proved to be “too politically controversial.” Chemerinsky is one of the most eminent law teachers and constitutional law scholars in the country. Author of a leading treatise on constitutional law, he has written four books and more than 100 law review articles. In 2005, he was named by Legal Affairs as one of “the top 20 legal thinkers in America.”
This is the latest chapter in the post September 11 attack on academic freedom under the guise of protecting security. Two weeks after 9/11, former White House spokeman Ari Fleischer cautioned Americans “they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group founded by Lynne Cheney and Senator Joe Lieberman, accused universities of being the weak link in the war on terror; it included the names of 117 “un-American” professors, students and staff members. A few months later, a blacklisting Internet cite called Campus Watch was launched. It publishes dossiers on scholars who criticize U.S. Middle East policy and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Earlier this year, the Bruin Alumni Association at UCLA offered students $100 to tape left-wing professors.
In 2003, the American Association of University Professors recalled the “still-vivid memories of the McCarthy era” and warned of the perils of sacrificing academic freedom in the war on terror. The premise of their report was that “freedom of inquiry and the open exchange of ideas are crucial to the nation’s security, and that the nation’s security and, ultimately, its well-being are damaged by practices that discourage or impair freedom.”
At a 2004 conference on academic freedom at UC Berkeley, Professor Beshara Doumani observed, “Academic freedom in the United States is facing its most important threat since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, government agencies and private organizations have been subjecting universities to an increasingly sophisticated infrastructure of surveillance, intervention, and control. In the name of the war against terrorism, civil liberties have been seriously eroded, open debate limited, and dissent stifled.”
Art. 9, § 9 of the California Constitution, which sets forth the powers and duties of the Regents of the University of California, provides, “The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom in the appointment of its regents and in the administration of its affairs.”
Drake denied he was influenced by pressure from donors, politicians or the UC California Board of Regents. Yet psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus, a member of the search committee, told the Los Angeles Times that Drake told the committee he was compelled to make the decision by outside forces whom he did not identify. Her account was confirmed by a second member of the committee, who talked to the Times on condition of anonymity.
Chemerinsky has handled several cases in the appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, and has testified many times before congressional and state legislative committees, including before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings. Chemerinsky has represented Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent whose identity was revealed by members of the Bush administration; a Guantánamo detainee asserting his right to habeas corpus; a man sentenced to 50 years-to-life under California’s three strikes law; and a person challenging the Texas Ten Commandments monument.
UCI’s November 16, 2006 press release announcing the inauguration of the new law school said, “UCI law graduates will be particularly encouraged to pursue careers in public service, including non-governmental organizations and philanthropic agencies. As part of their training, UCI law students will provide legal services to people who are unable to afford counsel. They also will be encouraged to pursue public interest law through programs focusing on underserved communities.” Chemerinsky is devoted to public service as well as legal scholarship and education. He was elected by voters to be a Commissioner and chaired the Los Angeles Elected Charter Reform Commission; the new Charter was adopted by voters in 1999. He also spearheaded the Los Angeles Independent Analysis of the Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Police Scandal, Prepared at the Request of the Police Protective League, September 2000.
Untold numbers of law students have been helped through law school and the bar exam by Chemerinsky, including National Lawyers Guild Student Vice President Teague Briscoe, who said, “Chermerinsky on Constitutional Law saved my life in law school and I loved him doing the Professional Responsibility lectures but, most of all, I really dug that he was a progressive law prof who defends an unpopular client.”
David Dow, Adjunct lecturer at the Annenberg School of Journalism and former veteran CBS correspondent who frequently interviewed Chemerinksy on legal issues, said, “I can’t imagine any considerations that would outweigh the prospect of launching a law school with an internationally-known, highly-respected, fair-minded expert at the helm. Apart from his legal and professional credentials, Erwin has demonstrated an ability to get along well with colleagues and the community wherever he’s been.” Dow’s words were echoed by Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer, who called Chemerinsky “the nicest person in legal education.” Conservative law professor Douglas Kmiec wrote of Chemerinsky, “there is no person I would sooner trust to be a guardian of my constitutional liberty. Nor is there anyone I would sooner turn to for a candid, intellectually honest appraisal of an academic proposal.”
One of the “controversial” matters Drake cited to Chemerinsky was an August op-ed the professor wrote in the Los Angeles Times criticizing a proposed regulation by then-Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales to shorten the time death row inmates have to file habeas corpus petitions. In an op-ed in the Sep. 14 Times, Chemerinsky explained, “There are more than 275 individuals on death row in California without lawyers for their post-convictions proceedings. The effect of the new rule would be that many individuals, including innocent ones, would not get the chance to have their cases reviewed in federal court.”
Drake’s action, which sends a clear message to academics that they must avoid speaking out or writing about controversial issues, is a threat to academic freedom. As Chemerinsky wrote, “Without academic freedom, the reality is that many faculty members would be chilled and timid in expressing their views, and the discussion that is essential for the advancement of thought would be lost.”
Hundreds of faculty, students and staff at UC Irvine are urging reinstatement of Chemerinsky. In an open letter to Drake, they wrote, “We are disturbed because of the deep violation both of the integrity of the university and of the intrusion of outrageously one-sided politics and unacceptable ideological considerations into a hiring process that should be driven by academic excellence, administrative experience, leadership capacity, and personal integrity.”
Chancellor Michael Drake should immediately reinstate Professor Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the UC Irvine Law School.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com
So far, Sami al-Arian, Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein, a Palestinian, a Native American scholar, and a secular Jewish scholar, all removed tho’ only al-Arian has been actually put on trial, now Erwin Chemerinsky. The latter three have all been pushed out by fearful administrators, not by fellow academics. Dismiss the big names and the smaller ones recognize that they’d best not do critical work, and best not vocalize critical opinion.
Thank you for posting this. Professor Erwin Chemerinsky is a favorite of Air America Radio talk show host Jon Elliott — with good reason — and this issue was just discussed on Jon’s show. More people have to be made aware and to join in speaking out: Chancellor Michael Drake should immediately reinstate Professor Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the UC Irvine Law School.
Our government is engaged in a Global War on Terror.
Terror is a behavior. Everyone is capable of indulging in terrorist behavior. Everyone is therefore under suspicion.
No one can prove that their future behavior will always be innocent. Everyone will always be under suspicion.
Like the snake eating its tail this war will eat us up, one by one, two by two.
Chancellor Drake’s turn will come and he will cry. Like the Germans who shut their eyes to the evils of the Nazis, only when it bites him will he see the snake.
Doesn’t the silencing of intellectuals who might provide a dissenting opinion sound eerily familiar — like 1930s/1940s Germany, the Soviet Union at various times, China under Mao Tse-Tung, and many others?
curmudgeon
i am reclutant to charaterize myself as an intellectual. there are still voices to be heard. mine, yours, sneehan, Kucinich… long list
“Doesn’t the silencing of intellectuals who might provide a dissenting opinion sound eerily familiar — like 1930s/1940s Germany, the Soviet Union at various times, China under Mao Tse-Tung, and many others?”
It’s old-fashioned American stifling — c.f. Kenneth Ackerman’s “Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare and the Assault on American Liberties.”
As a people,w e are always more desperate to conform, to espouse the national faith in slogans, to shout that we’re free while being reluctant to practice freedom.
The politicization and corporatization of the University of California has actually been going on for quite a long time, and actually predates 9/11, though it has been stepped up since.
The control of media and academics by political, state and business forces has been seen before - every single totalitarian state in history first began by exerting total control over the press and the educational system.
In the case of the University of California, the problem really stems from the fact that the UC Regents are political appointees, not academic experts. In fact, this body serves no real purpose whatsoever, and should be done away with entirely.
I have far more faith in individual UC chancellors, who are responsive to their faculty and staff, than in a bunch of appointees who typically have no background in academics, but instead receive their inflated salaries as political payback for supporting CA governors.
(P.S. I am an alumni of the UC graduate school system)
It’s understandable that people associate fascism with top-down events: a Unitary Leader making speeches from a balcony; brownshirt vigilantes bullying targeted classes; jackbooted stormtroopers running roughshod over the citizenry.
And there are certainly manifestations of all of the above in 21st-Century Amerika. But I discern a tragic arc within my lifetime: the Compassionate State perjoratively branded the Welfare State, and every presidency after LBJ systematically dismantling the Compassionate State in favor of the Hollow State. The Hollow State is a nascent Corporate State, a shell into which Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex nestles as if it was born there.
The Hollow/Corporate state by definition rejects the concept that government exists to serve We the People; rather, in Grover Norquist’s infamous metaphor, government is shrunk down to a size suitable for drowning in a bathtub. After all, it exists not to serve We the People, but to control them and parasitically appropriate their assets. Another symptom or condition of the Hollow State is the commodification of everything.
Beginning a few years back, I noticed that the lexicon of corporations had begun to encroach upon non-business entities. For example, the Superintendent of Schools was re-branded the “CEO”, and school principals are labelled “managers” in some venues. Similarly, state agencies changed respectable titles like “Secretary of the Board of Review” to “Program Manager”, or “Director” to “Chief Operating Officer”. These seem like superficial details, perhaps– evidence of every bureaucracy’s desperate need to be perceived as relevant, necessary, professional, and up-to-date.
But I see such changes as further proof that the rubric of finance and business enterprise has been made universal in our toxic culture. And our institutions of “higher learning” have been denegrated and corrupted to more rigorously perform in accordance to the slogan infamously quoted by convicted ABSCAM Congressman Ozzie Myers: money talks, bullshit walks.
I realize that private schools and universities have always struggled with financial difficulties, and have wooed alumni for donations and public support; it’s an ancient tribal ritual. Colleges have eagerly changed their very names in exchange for big bucks, and of course many were founded in the first place by wealthy donors. But the willingness of university administrators to expel “controversial” scholars like Churchill, Finkelstein, Sami al-Arian, and now Chemerinsky evidences an appalling retreat from post-Enlightenment principles of scholarship and the necessity of academic freedom in exchange for lavish bribes disguised as donations and endowments.
It’s all about the benjamins.
then there was the case of dershowitz using his and his jewish friend’s influence to get norman finklestein’s tenure revoked.
read about that here:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/06/3669/
they finklestein and dershiepoopoo, did a debate on the subject of dershie’s new book on amy goodman’s show democracy now, find that here:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/24/1730205
how about norman and sclomo ben ami discussing the history of the palestinians on the same show, find that here:
http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml
one thing you can say for the jews: they may have been gassed by the millions but they still took the time to jot down some notes while it was done and they are now the new brown shirts, even more ruthless, one could argue than the nazis themselves.
just ask the palestinians.
the us should cut the israelis loose and let them deal with their own karmic blow back form all the hate they have put forth in the last 50 years.
your on your own boys!
I think the president of national lawyers guild can do a better job of worrying about other nationally important issues than this case.
It is time they stop scratching each other’s back and concentrate on the public issues of greater significance
I put this up on another post yesterday, but it works here too.
I’d been listening to Michael Parenti over the past couple of months. Parenti was fired, let go, lost his tenure by the trustees of UVM in the early 70s. So maybe you don’t have to look so far off or so far back in history to observe the stifling of dissent.
Parenti espouses at great length about the media. Here’s a paraphrase of his take on the developmental stages of a conventional reporter:
stage one: goes out and investigates something writes expose and the editor says no that’s silly we can’t do that.
stage two: goes and talks to the editor first and the editor says forget it.
stage three: gets the idea and then dismisses it himself.
stage four: no longer gets the idea.
stage five: gets indignant when it’s suggested that there’s influences on him.
I think these stages might affect life in any american “career” however noble, for example, teachers and professors.
“Chermerinsky on Constitutional Law saved my life in law school…”
– “National Lawyers Guild Student Vice President Teague Briscoe, in theabove report.
I can assure readers that Teague Briscoe is far from alone. Federal jurisdiction is as complex as legal theory and practice get. Professor Chermerinsky is Fed jurisdiction’s acknowledged master. His invaluable treatise on this daunting specialty is an invaluable resource that has guided too many students and practitioners to count through its murky thickets. This clearly-written, regularly-updated resource is qualification enough for Professor Chermerinsky to be appointed Dean.
In combinaion with his invaluable and virtually non-stop public interest work, the Professor’s nomination for Dean should be considered little more than a pro forma step prior to his appointent.
That he is not already Dean is, per se, proof that the radical, far right wing is demolishing the very foundations of our academic freedom, which in turn is the cornerstone of our Constitutional liberties.
In sum: Chancellor Drake’s abject prostration before these totalitarian elements is OUTRAGEOUS. If the Chancellor has any respect for himself or the law, he immediately will reverse his decision and re-nominate Professor Chermerinsky for Dean of UCI Law School.
I don’t know anything about the Professor in question, so I don’t have an opinion on this particular case.
I am tired, however, of some professors using the “captured audience” of their classes to try to force their own political views down the throats of their students, particularly when the class in question is supposed to be non-political. I do not see where the professors view on the war in Iraq has anything to do with, say, “food science”.
bligh,
when you teach, who you are comes through what you are teaching (i meant to add) as well as who you are and what you do in your life and activities outside your classroom. As it should no matter what you do unless you are perhaps an automaton. Educated people tend to have strong beliefs on certain matters.
Any student will pick up on where you come from pretty damn quick. To imagine this is not the case seems pretty delusional about what goes on in the cultural and social lives of students.
A professor may not even interrupt her/his class for a diatribe on american society, but most students in the class will know where she/he is coming from.
The argument is that a professor or teacher may lose a career because of that teacher believes, not necessarily what they are teaching. That’s the problem.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has been documenting abuses of science by this administration.
The Union of Concerned site is at:
http://www.ucsusa.org/
They have listed abuses and misrepresentations A-Z at:
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-alphabetical.html
I am so skeptical of this entire government that, if they said the weather was fair, I’d assume we were in the middle of an F5 tornado.
“am tired, however, of some professors using the “captured audience” of their classes to try to force their own political views down the throats of their students”
Funny, when I was in college there was something called “disagreement”, which professors encourage. The belief that somehow students are forced to sit in silence & nod in agreement, that they’re persecuted by left-wing professors, is one of those complete lies which saturates discussion about higher learning. Those who started it — William F. Buckley, first, and then a generation of slavish imitators — just didn’t want to be obliged to evaluate their beliefs critically in the classroom, so they whinged that they were being indoctrinated & persecuted. It was, and remains, complete BS — but they’ve gotten very far on the very profitable, and apparently unkillable, deception.
I have an alternative to Chemerinsky for Chancellor Drake: John Yoo of the UC Berkeley School of Law. He has distinguished himself as willing to write just about any law memo that the establishment will like.
bligh writes:
I don’t know anything about the Professor in question, so I don’t have an opinion on this particular case.
I am tired, however, of some professors using the “captured audience” of their classes to try to force their own political views down the throats of their students, particularly when the class in question is supposed to be non-political. I do not see where the professors view on the war in Iraq has anything to do with, say, “food science”.
—————————–
the two most insightful things he says are:
1. I don’t know anything
2. I do not see
its good to see his is on top of the “professors who bully pulpit their classes” thing
too bad he doesn’t see the “government who bully pulpits the people thing”
carry on macduff
Another disgrace from the political handlers of our public universities.
I profoundly hope that people will turn up the heat on this one. It was a good appointment of a person who has outstanding scholarly credentials and both the willingness and the talent to serve law students and the larger community.
No reason has been given for ‘withdrawing’ the offer. As a taxpayer in the state of California (as well as an alum of the University of California), I’m determined not to sit this one out. I hope that there are others who are willing to spend some portion of their day on the phone with people at UC Irvine.
Here’s on fascist proudly owning up to his bullying –
M”aking Chemerinsky the head of the law school “would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security,” Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091607B.shtml
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how these constipated ratshits see everything in terms of “al-Qaida” . . .?
Bligh wrote, “I am tired, however, of some professors using the “captured audience” of their classes to try to force their own political views down the throats of their students, particularly when the class in question is supposed to be non-political. I do not see where the professors view on the war in Iraq has anything to do with, say, ‘food science’.”
You’d be surprised at how quickly “food science” could turn political:
Dennis Avery has published a controversial book claiming that organic food is worse for you than the stuff produced with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides that are all petroleum-intense products. Avery gets some of his funding from Exxon through the Hudson Institute, according to information at SourceWatch. Avery has now jumped on the Global Warming Denial bandwagon.
It is dangerous to assume that food science, and many other subjects, can’t be taught without examining certain political considerations.
It would be far easier if universities were simply places where the quest for knowledge and truth were conducted in an objective, fair manner. But we live in an age of propaganda and information wars. The organization that bears the name of “Students for Academic Freedom” is not the grass-roots student organization it seems, but is an example of “Astroturf,” a term that uses the analogy of artificial grass to identify those organizations that are made to appear to be grass-roots, idealistic, truthful organizations, but in fact are organizations set up by folks with money and an agenda to advance.
So in fact, even in the Food Science classroom, the instructor who really wants to help his/her students who seek the truth must warn them against the pseudo-scientists and pseudo-scientific research institutes that are funded by corporations and interest groups that have anything but the objective search for scientific truth as their primary goal.
The instructor who does not warn his/her students about these obstacles to truth and authentic research puts his/her students in peril.
As has often been observed by the wise, the most dangerous people politically are those who claim they are not being political at all… for these are the ones who have decided to accept the politics of the status quo without questions, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to whatever agendas might be controlling them. These are the ones who would have us fall asleep when the alarms are ringing all around us.
Consider our current political and world context:
1. We’ve been tricked in to a war in Iraq.
2. The war has been corrupted by cronyism and badly mismanaged. Whistle-blowers in the military and elsewhere in the government are being fired, or denied promotions and advancement. 3. We are dealing with an administration that seems to believe that if they would be doomed to failure if they did only one controversial thing at a time, and the opposition then united against them in the public eye, then they have chosen the strategy of doing as many controversial things at once as they can possibly manage, so that the attention of the public is so divided, there is little hope for the opposition to succeed in opposing, and much more hope for some of their measures to succeed. Renew the Patriot act. Legalize domestic spying. Look for legal loopholes to the Geneva Conventions, so torture can be justified somehow. Gut environmental laws. Politicize the selection of Federal attorneys. Etc.
4. According to recent polls, huge numbers of Americans believe the Bush administration was either complicit in the 9-11 attacks, or knew but let them happen, or is simply covering up things that would look very bad for them. And certain polls indicate that the more those questioned know about the events and contradictions in the official story about 9-11, the more likely they are to question the official account. In other words, there are many who know little, and who tend not to question the official account, but the more those polled know about the official account, the less they are to trust it.
5. The world looks at the US, distrusts our leaders, and feels we’ve caused irreparable harm in the world.
If you work at a university, what do you do? Should you study food science without considering any ways that the current political disorder spills over into food science? Should you stay away from questions of how global warming might affect future food production? If you teach political science or history, or even physics, should you stay away from questions about WTC building number seven and those pools of molten metal at the WTC site after 9-11? Should you keep your students in the dark and ignorant because then they’ll go on believing the official story?
PT-Flyer,
wow, that was great!
“So in fact, even in the Food Science classroom, the instructor who really wants to help his/her students who seek the truth must warn them against the pseudo-scientists and pseudo-scientific research institutes that are funded by corporations and interest groups that have anything but the objective search for scientific truth as their primary goal.
The instructor who does not warn his/her students about these obstacles to truth and authentic research puts his/her students in peril.”
The right’s built up a sort of “Mirror, Mirror” universe through these advertising firms. I knew we were in trouble in the ’90s when Heritage Foundation & AEI types were being invited onto NPR and referred to as “scholars”.
Also I posted this quote from Tocqueville which I think bears repeating:
“The gradual development of the principle of equality is, therefore, a Providential fact. It has all the chief characteristics of such a fact: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.
“Would it, then, be wise to imagine that a social movement, the causes of which lie so far back, can be checked by the efforts of one generation? Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system, and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists? Will it stop now that it has grown so strong, and its adversaries so weak? whither, then, are we tending” No one can say , for the terms of comparison already fail us.”
Which is as much to say that we come into the knowledge that everything we do, teaching food science for example, and how we live is a reflection of our beliefs and by our social nature, political.
When one is not free to speak in the US of A, how is one to believe that one is free to speak in University?
Perhaps, if one thought for a moment, one could see that democracy and capitalist are antithetical.
John Yoo of the UC Berkeley School of Law may be soon charged with crimes against humanity so it does not seem to be a thoughtful choice.
Considering the Repubicraps appointed judges perhaps the legal field just needs to be filled with corporate butt lickers. No need to study morals and law just calculate the payout.
“John Yoo of the UC Berkeley School of Law may be soon charged with crimes against humanity so it does not seem to be a thoughtful choice.”
Why, I am outraged that a public servant, a devoted lawyer, a familly man (even if he doesn’t have one!), a TRUE AMURRICAN, could be so slandered by MoveOn — erm, I mean eh, uhm . . .
Wanna know a secret?
No worries! The fascist always lose. I just can not wait until all hell breaks loose, the Neo Fascist Right started the WAR with the People. We will finish it!
Coffee,,,,,,,,
LITTLE BROTHER & PF FLYER: Excellent postings.
MILES OF MUSIC: I often applaud your comments, but this one took me aback: “one thing you can say for the jews: they may have been gassed by the millions but they still took the time to jot down some notes while it was done and they are now the new brown shirts.” It smacks of a deep prejudice and hardly intelligence or progressive thought to lump ALL Jews behind policy decisions created by neocons both in the US and in Israel. How many Jewish thinkers have and are fighting the overt aggression of militarism? I am not an advocate of ANY patriarchal religion, but my roots are Jewish and I take umbrage with this gross overstatement. An apology is in order? (And I do NOT agree with the treatment of Palestinians, or Israel’s pro-war tactics. Karma is an equal opportunity employer, no one gets a pass.)
Drake is a sycophant, obsequious, coward. He does not deserve his rank. If he cannot be fired, maybe 50 or so law student transfers out of UCI would deliver strong message to the UC regents. I mean, how good can the UCI Law School be with a leader as Drake?
The total UCI student body needs to get involved, as at Gallaudet.
siouxrose:
LITTLE BROTHER & PF FLYER: Excellent postings.
MILES OF MUSIC: I often applaud your comments, but this one took me aback: “one thing you can say for the jews: they may have been gassed by the millions but they still took the time to jot down some notes while it was done and they are now the new brown shirts.” It smacks of a deep prejudice and hardly intelligence or progressive thought to lump ALL Jews behind policy decisions created by neocons both in the US and in Israel. How many Jewish thinkers have and are fighting the overt aggression of militarism? I am not an advocate of ANY patriarchal religion, but my roots are Jewish and I take umbrage with this gross overstatement. An apology is in order? (And I do NOT agree with the treatment of Palestinians, or Israel’s pro-war tactics. Karma is an equal opportunity employer, no one gets a pass.)
—————
i am not speaking of the jewish people here - i am speaking about the israeli state.
an apology, for whom. i am not a racist. i am not against anyone.
the problem, as i have posted often, is that we “cannot talk” about this situation.
whether it be the banking system, the state of israel, the palestinians, the war we face against iran (driven by aipac and the jewish/israeli lobby), the american bias against the palestinians and arabs in general, the worse than apartheid treatment of the palestinians.
so, is it provocative - yes - is it over the top - no.
moshe dayan said in the 60’s the palestinians would “live like dogs” if they decided to stay “in their own homes” - and they have, haven’t they.
let’s be fair. support of israel has brought the republic to the brink of disaster here and i think we need to understand not only american policy but the israeli lobby, generally regarded to be the most effective brutal in the united states, lobby affect on the policy.
the united states should have brought this situation to conclusion/resolution long ago and the reasons they have not are becoming cancerous in their effect and we need to open the door of this conversation.
absurdly, we reject the internationally supervised free elections in palestine and we punish the palestinians for voting “the wrong way”. then, the israeli government takes advantage of the fallout moment and goes and kills a bunch of lebanese, using cluster bombs and depleted uranium, which is by the way siouxrose, a nuclear weapon.
there are constant forays into the west bank and palestine, people are killed, abducted, houses bulldozed - nothing is said. a palestinian child throws a rock at an israeli tank and this is called “an attack”.
noam chomsky, my hero, has stated that the current american regime is like the stalin regime in many ways, as they approach cold war 2 and i think there is a totalitarian heartless policy towards the palestinians that is every bit as serious as the holocaust on the israeli side. a complete and utter disregard for the humanity of the palestinians.
so, siouxrose, i am glad that you are agaisnt it as well, but that is very - dare i say it - racist itself with its disregard for any immediate action to rectify the situation. discomfort with the policy and approval of it are closely related.
i have nothing against regular citizens of any stripe.
i write my posts not to prove anything but to ask people to think about issues that are very real and very dangerous, before it is too late. sometimes that involves stepping outside the box or creating new views.
anyone who intellectually offends jews and the state of israel is not automatically anti-semite.
i am just one person who would like to increase my chances of waking up tomorrow to be with my loved ones without the threat of annihilation hanging over my head. right now that involves a very wacky guy in the whitehouse, a walking heart attack in the bunker and an israeli lobby that is somewhere to the extreme right of atilla the hun.
we need to talk about them all.
i think we agree there.
if my post was not clear about whom i was speaking then i apologize to anyone who didn’t follow me in my meaning. especially if they think i hold shop owners and bus drivers responsible. i don’t.
jewish people are wonderful, kind, and cultured people.
so are the palestinians.
let’s not continue to allow their annihilation to continue.
let us not sit back any longer and watch the techniques of genocide - learned during the holocaust - to flourish in the state of israel.
siouxrose, i am sorry if i offended you.
Marjorie Cohn has provided another example of the increase of fascism in developed countries like America. Canada has the same problem, of course. Wherever you have capitalism, you will eventually get it, I think.
I recall what Howard Zinn said about fascism, namely that it isn’t any particular manifestation of it. It has a range of manifestations. I don’t recall whether he has a handy, easy to remember definition. But I’m pretty sure it would go something like this: When the political class and the capitalist class go off on their own (isolating themselves, planning in secret), usually done (or done in a great leap) when society is in a state of chaos, and come back to the people with a ’solution’ to social chaos, close examination will reveal that their solution includes new rules that replace the old rules “that clearly didn’t work,” but which just happen to be the rules ordinary people might like to have kept, then you have fascism.
It’s simply the rule by special interests or elites. You always have special interests, of course. But in the “politics of escape,” which is William Greider’s description of neoliberalism (which I see as ugly, fully mature capitalism rather than a form of it), corporations are always seeking more freedom and more power, not from tyranny - although to hear them talk about it you might think so - but from regular folks, including the workers who their very businesses depend on. They simply want more freedom at any cost, even if that includes our freedom to be equals with them and even if that includes our freedom to have some say in matters affecting us. If it means we need to become slaves, so be it. That’s fascism.
It’s also a grand, Darwinian game that I call ‘riches for the strongest’, which it would be nice to see folks like Michael Drake ‘not’ playing. Part of playing and winning that game includes making alliances with strong players. I’m fond of telling people that the need is for us to not get caught up in trying to win in that game. The need for us is to recognize that the game needs to end, period.
I suppose there’s other terms for fascism. I have yet to read a few books I recently bought about tax havens, including one by John Perkins (CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN), who refers to the “corporatocracy.” Tax havens are certainly a perfect example of Greider’s “politics of escape.” I have to confess, I’d be delighted to not have to pay all my taxes. Then again, I make so little that it might not make a difference to me.
And a book review I read today in my Toronto Star might interest folks here. It’s by Henry Giroux, an American cultural critic. It’s titled “The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic.”
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/256949
Art. 9, § 9 of the California Constitution is as irrelevant to the Chancellor as the U.S. Constitution is to the Bush administration. In the words of Chicken Little, “The sky is falling.”
And that’s education in California, imagine the quality education one gets in some of the red states.
It’s useful to remember that the latter-day neo-con coup began with California Governor Ronald Reagan and his phony conservatism when he declared war against the peace movement and the Constitution and sent the troops onto the UC campuses in the name of the Constitution.
The Constitution has become too controversial and its defenders, like Chemerinsky, “too liberal”.
Let us pause and contemplate the great contributions of the state of California to the tradition of Constitutional liberalism.
Check out these two books:
“University Inc.” Jennifer Washburn (2005)
“University in Chains” Henry A. Giroux (2007)
Having worked at a Big-10 myself the past decade, it’s become clear to me that the very senior management positions: president, provost, board of regents, large department heads and their immediate underlings, etc. are primarily political in nature.
There is no real ability for staff to “work up” to these levels. There is an inflection point at which no sort of demonstrable productivity, competence, etc. can put you “inside”. Your own work can “push” you up to a certain level. But beyond that, you need to be selected from above — and “pulled” up those final administrative rungs. That last chasm is political, ideological, financial, etc. You need a preexisting source of power/influence.
It’s really representative of the demise of America on a larger-scale. Gone is manufacturing, gone is our Republic, going is IT, and gone is even respect for competence, free-thinking, meritocracy in general.
As others have suggested. It’s a key insight that it is the administrative end of higher-ed which is the instigator of the purge, not other faculty. So it’s essential to understand the primarily political/corporate nature of the modern American university.
All of you - BEWARE OF fellow blogger Bligh.
His arguments in every thread he posts serve to distract his fellow bloggers from the real issue of the article.
He seems to use Swift-boat type tactics.
I could be wrong - but beware.
MILES OF MUSIC: You are very decent and I appreciate that. Just as an American Jew has little input into domestic policy and its foreign “adventures,” I can assure you it’s not racism on my part that I feel I can leverage little impact on Israel. My strategy, and it’s been equivalent to a “calling” for 30 years, has been to raise consciousness so that the demarcations that tend to divide people are themselves transcended. I use metaphysical models to show that music is made of many notes, our world the reflected hue of many colors. These illustrations exist to remind us that diversity is part of the Divine plan. No tribe has the right to kill another, certainly not under the guise of any god’s will.
Ultimately you and I are on the same page. We both believe this world has enough resources and room (at least until the climate destabilization rubric kicked in) to house ALL people, and we both probably agree that the model of rabid capitalism, a vulture that’s denuding every strand in the web of ecological infrastructure(s) has GOT to go.
More than Israel (I can see the degree to which its policy directors do impact US foreign policy) I believe the military-industrial complex and those elites that directly benefit both from war and extracting resources from foreign lands for their own purposes are to blame for what’s going on.
We are taught a very linear cause effect basis for analysis, even in legal terms, there’s ONE guilty party, rather than a multiplicity of causative factors. Israel is ONE of those factors, and yes, this influence SHOULD be rationally discussed; and I agree with you, that the anti-semetic stigma often precludes that. But remember, we are also living in a time when any question to war itself is framed as the ultimate in lack of patriotism. This is why I speak about the allure of Mars, the old god of vengeance and violence, the seduction of the “oily muscle” and the US ampitheatre of wrestling, football, police brutality shows all desensitizing the populace to believe that aggression is not only the norm, but holy, god’s will, etc.
In any case, I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my question. The vast majority of us who submit our time and talent to this forum truly are working towards the same ideals. If we can’t practice tolerance, how can we expect those who lack our awareness to do so? Peace, Sioux
Now folks really…. I agree with some of the articles that are posted - I disagree with some of the articles posted. Same with the posters.
Because I sometimes disagree, I am sometimes met with measured arguments as to where I could be wrong, or met with name calling and warnings that I must be some kind of plant from somewhere. (Bush, Republicans, CIA, NSA, Christian right wingers, ect) If this is true I wish someone would get them to send a check! I’m afraid the truth is not so interesting - raised on a ranch in Colorado, paid my own way through college, father of four, taught to think for myself and ask questions. No apologies there.
Seriously though, it is called a “discussion” for a reason. If no one ever challenged anything someone else asserted- what kind of world would this be. I know it might make some feel better to think that the only ones who would question “x” would be a plant from some nefarious government agency, but where does that put regular people who might disagree? Don’t they have a right to speak also, or is that a right reserved for those that move in lockstep with everyone else?
If the arguments are good they will hold up, with or without me or you.
Best regards to everyone
If you don’t want folks to believe you are a paid shill, do not act like one.
The fascism and mccarthyism are much wider than a few cases.
It’s not the first time, either. When I was an undergraduate back in the early 60s, one of my profs at U of Washington was victimized in the early 50s–called a communist, etc. The difference is that he was NOT canned and not crucified in the media.
In the mid-sixties when Reagan took over as governor of California there was a much subtler witch hunt than what is going on now. Many of us who finished graduate degrees at the public universities in California–or who were teaching in the system–simply left the area for the Midwest and the East Coast. We knew what wasgoing to happen if we didn’t.
As a results of the hamfistedness on the part of university administrations in the 60s, we were able to get sufficient support to constrain them in the 70s and to inaugurate departments of Black Studies, Women’s Studies, Chicano Studies and Native American Studies.
The current witchhunt is designed to eliminate those programs that we fought so hard to bring into being–using the firing of Ward Churchill in particular to degrade and wipe Native American Studies programs–as well as the other minority and, in the case of Women’s Studies, MAJORITY programs off the academic map.
What really burns my ass, as a committed academic, is the gutless wonders who sell out their colleagues even on progresssive sites like this one–in the fatuous belief that it won’t happen to them.
There’s reason to be less concerned about the paid plants, shills, provacateurs, wedge-makers, etc. They must be relatively few in number. There may be more reason to worry about the ordinary folks who parrot Bush’s stuff for free, out of habit, without even knowing it. One might be driven to drivel out of personal monetary gain, and perhaps everyone has his own pricetag.
Check this link out: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/1420209.
Moonraven, you and I have had this discussion before. I’m not exactly sure what “acting like a shill” entails to you. It sounds like anyone that disagrees with you is granted automatic entry to the “Shill Club”.
Well, pardon me for disagreeing. It is my right to state my own
opinion, as it is everyone elses. Personally, I am for any field of study that furthers understanding and advances knowledge. I also happen to think that Ward Churchill is a poor poster child for academic freedom, and probably deserved what he got.
Best regards
bligh,
Maybe the poster who says you guys mostly just parrot the Bush fascist line without being paid was right, and you are not being paid.
As for your opinion of Ward Churchill, as a Native American scademic of course I am offended by your obvious bigotry–but apart from that, you say that he PROBABLY got what he deserved–which means you have NO EVIDENCE of any wrongdoing on his part, nor even a tangential understanding of the issues.
BTW, nobody in academia would consider the phrase “poster child” to be an acceptable synonym for MODEL of academic freedom.
Moonraven,
I am not in Academia, and I thank God for that. My opinion of Ward Churchill has nothing to do with bigotry, I happen to be married to a Creek and my children are mixed race. Of course it is easier to say that than to admit that I may have a point.
Looking at the evidence, including his lying about being a Native American to get the job in the first place, I would say that I would have canned him long ago.
I do not “parrot” anyone, Bush included. I use my own two eyes, two ears, and brain to make my own conclusions. Something that Academia USED to encourage but apparently no longer does. In fact, the offense that I have committed seems to be that I don’t “parrot” you and others on this site, but draw my own conclusions.
Best Regards
siouxrose:
well said.
thank you.
Right: You are not a bigot.
And I am Little Black Sambo.
Academia used to encourage critical thinking–but that was before the neocons took over “higher education” in the US–Lynne Cheney and Co., precisely.
Ward Churchill’s firing is a clear and patent example of the refusal of academic administrations to tolerate–much less support–far less PROMOTE critical thinking in the US.