A Critique of the Kalven Committee Report
Category Archives: Palestine
Stirring the POT (3)
Genocide and the Academic Chairs of Virtue
I had meant “Stirring the POT” to be a monthly series, but my last one was back in March and it’s now July, so I guess the “monthly” promise was destined to be broken.
I wrote my last installment just after the talk I gave on institutional neutrality at APPE, and a couple of months before the one I was then scheduled to give at the Heterodox Academy conference in June. The Heterodox Academy talk ended up being significantly different from the APPE version or the version I put on the blog back in March. At any rate, the third version was the charm. The talk was well attended and went very well. There were a few skeptical or critical questions during the Q&A which I expected, but there was also some significant agreement, which came as a surprise. I’ll save all the squabbling for a separate post. Continue reading
Death to the IDF
On this day, 249 years ago, Americans declared war on Britain, or at least on the British Army. To declare war on an army is to wish death upon it, and to act on that wish.
About a week ago, punk rocker Bob Vylan led a chant at Glastonbury Festival in Britain, wishing death on the Israeli military: “Death to the IDF.” I agree with him. The IDF should be defeated, destroyed, and if necessary, annihilated. It’s an army of aggression, conquest, occupation, torture, and genocide. It has no right to exist, and no right of self-defense. If any organization on the planet deserves death, it’s the IDF. Continue reading
Activism, Trespass, Violence
A little over a month ago, I wrote a post here called “Against Trespass,” intended mostly for campus activists for Palestine. It’s tempting, I argued, to want to engage in forms of direct action that involve trespass, and morally speaking–abstracting entirely from considerations of cost or consequence–it can be justified to do so. But once we re-introduce matters of cost and consequence into the equation, as we have to, trespass strikes me now as mostly pointless and self-defeating. For one thing, more often than not, it puts the activists who engage in it out of commission. For another, it doesn’t effectively do what most needs doing: generate widespread public support for Palestine. So on the whole, it can’t accomplish the good that activists want or need. It’s more likely to subvert it. Continue reading
Against War with Iran
People like to say that Near East politics is complex, but the war on Iran is blindingly simple. Aggression is immoral, as is participation in it. Israel’s war on Iran is a blatantly obvious, incontestable act of aggression, as is US participation in the war so far, along with any further participation. No one has bothered to provide even a semi-plausible justification for this war, no one can, and no one will. The whole thing is insane.
Continue readingValley of the Ghosts
Facebook does this thing where they exhume something you posted on this day, x years ago, just to remind you that you did: “You have memories on this day,” it helpfully intones. Sometimes you want to be reminded, sometimes not, and sometimes you can’t be sure. This one, I guess, falls into the third category. It was the midpoint of a long walk I took on June 10, 2016, which fell during Ramadan, when I was fasting. I was living at the time in Abu Dis in the West Bank, just east of Jerusalem. It was either a day off from teaching, or I was just done teaching, so I started walking, on a whim, from Abu Dis to the neighboring town of Eizariya. Continue reading
Dreaming Murder
Every now and then I’ll run into a Muslim who sees the kuffiyah around my neck and starts up a conversation about Palestine. Much anguished hand-wringing takes place in these conversations, often with quasi-religious overtones, and not a few pious tears are shed. Why don’t “the Muslims” do anything? Why have the Muslim armies not intervened? Where is our Saladin? Continue reading
Kalven’s Complicit Executioners
I’ve previously mentioned that I’ll be giving a presentation on institutional neutrality at the Heterodox Academy Conference in Brooklyn a couple of weeks from now, Tuesday, June 24th. I have yet to write the paper up, but here’s the abstract, below. I’d be interested in/grateful for any comments, questions, objections, etc. I’ll probably be posting on material related to the paper over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Manifesto of the Israeli Embassy Shooter
I’ll have a post here on the Israel Embassy shooting as soon as I can make the time for it, but until then, do yourself the favor of reading the presumptive shooter’s manifesto, published at Ken Klippenstein’s Substack. Though I don’t agree with Klippenstein’s take on the shooting, he’s to be commended for publishing the manifesto, which is more than can be said of the usual defenders of “viewpoint diversity.” Continue reading
Memo to Joe
Imagine dropping Joe Biden right now in the middle of Gaza, and telling him to find his way to the nearest cancer treatment center. It’d be a long, arduous, circuitous trip, because there isn’t one. Thousands of people don’t have to imagine that. They’ve lived it for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency, and have lived a version of it ever since the Israelis imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007, with Joe Biden’s eager acquiescence. In other words, they’ve lived, at Joe’s behest, the Hell that it would universally be thought tasteless to wish on him.
Continue reading
Policy of Truth 