Joseph Massad's Tenure and its Implications for Columbia's Liberal, Jewish Student Body

On Monday, when Columbia University granted tenure to Joseph Massad -- the professor of Modern Arab politics whose alleged intimidation of pro-Israeli students likely doomed his first tenure bid in 2005 -- the University jeopordized its long-standing commitment to cultivating and supporting its Jewish student population.

The University has long managed to balance the often-opposing beliefs of its famously pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern Studies department and its substantial Jewish population. The department is currently home to supporters of Palestine such as Rashid Khalidi, Hamid Dabashi, Nadia abu El-Haj, and George Saliba; Edward Said, one of the most prominent American scholars in support of Palestine, taught English and Comparative at Columbia from 1963 until his death in 2003.

The Middle Eastern Studies department thrives in the midst of a student body that Hillel deemed the sixth most Jewish of all those in American private universities. Located a mere four blocks from The Jewish Theological Seminary (where students can complete a double-degree and cross-register for courses), Columbia's Jewish community boasts a thriving Hillel, a Jewish literary journal, and an active chapter of AEPi, the Jewish fraternity. Cafeterias feature extensive kosher options, and it is not uncommon to see throngs of students donning kippahs migrating across campus.

The Jewish community of alumni and current students has previously exercised its will and sheer manpower to prevent anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli opinions from gaining University support. In 2006, Jewish students successfully prevented Ahmadinejad, the famously anti-Semetic Iranian dictator, from speaking, and in 2007, they again protested his visit. Many believe that alumni efforts to prevent the Palestinian anthropology professor Nadia Abu El-Haj at Columbia affiliate Barnard College from receiving tenure caused the University to deny her bid (in her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, Abu El-Haj casts doubt on archaeological evidence used to legitimize Israel as the Jewish homeland).

Some believe that Massad previously failed to receive tenure due to his unflattering portrayal in the student film Columbia Unbecoming (2004), which "gives voice to students who have experienced incidents of academic abuse and intimidation at Columbia University" as a consequence of expressing pro-Israeli sentiment. In the film, Massad calls Israel a "Jewish and a racist state," and a student describes how he once demanded of an Israeli student, "How many Palestinians did you kill?" at a public lecture (the film's website notes that although Massad has publicly stated that he never taught or met the student in question, he also has never denied the claim). The film's fervor can only faintly forecast the outrage the Jewish community could exhibit come fall.

There can be little doubt that many at Columbia, Jewish and otherwise, will be incensed at the newest addition to the tenured faculty. The prospect of lending greater support to a professor who some claim bullied students -- although Massad claimed that he has "been the target of a political campaign by actors inside and outside the university" and successfully proved that "The Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report suffers from major logical flaws, undefended conclusions, inconsistencies, and clear bias in favor of the witch-hunt that has targeted me for over three years" -- is nonetheless unsavory. Regardless of the legitimacy of the complaints lodged against Massad, the insensitivity exhibited in some of his scholarly work could create an irrevocable rift between him and the many Jews, Zionists, Israel supporters, and students who simply believe that Israelis do not deserve to be called anti-Semites, all of whom he is hired, in part, to educate.

Massad does not just critique Israeli policy in Palestine, or even question the legitimacy of Israel's right to exist. Rather, he attempts to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by removing terms like anti-Semitic, Nazi, and Jew from their historical context. In his book, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, and in various articles for publications like The Electronic Intifada and Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Massad argues that the Zionist movement betrays colonialist underpinnings that draw from anti-Semitic rhetoric. He claims that this influence, coupled with the Zionist urge to "transform European (and later other) Jews into European Christians culturally, while continuing to call them Jews", caused a "historical process by which it was to metamorphose Palestinian Arabs into Jews in a displaced geography of anti-Semitism" and to transform "the Jew into the anti-Semite". Massad similarly likens Israelis to their one-time oppressors by comparing Israeli actions in Gaza in 2009 to those of the Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, and by claiming that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was similar to Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

As a student just entering my second year at Columbia, I have no means to evaluate the academic legitimacy of his argument. Clearly, Massad is a distinguished scholar. However, as a student just entering my second year at Columbia, I can evaluate the effect that his inflammatory claims could have on the student body.

By reassigning the term "Jew" to the very people who tirelessly fight to eradicate the world's only Jewish state -- putting aside questions Israel's right to statehood -- Massad flagrantly disregards the ethnic, cultural, and religious sensibilities embedded in that term. It is entirely possible that, in many instances, Palestinians are the victims of Israeli military action, but no amount of theorizing can make them Jews: .2% of the world's population who, despite Western prominence, have experienced inestimable persecution.

Similarly, by calling an Israeli an anti-Semite or a Nazi, Massad shows disrespect for the years of oppression the Jews suffered under the Nazi regime. Hypothetically, the Israelis could be racist or tyrannical, but to deem them anti-Semitic Nazis is to fail to appreciate the Holocaust's lasting impact both on Israel and on the wider Jewish community. These words cannot be simply re-appropriated, no matter what the cause; they connote long-lasting and painful memories.

Undoubtedly, Massad is well aware of his argument's implications both for Israel and the Jewish people. While his novel terminology may win him points in the academic world, he will not deliver his lectures to an empty room. Students will fill those seats, and students do not come tabula rasa. Most have grown up hearing stories of oppression from parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, be it in Vietnam, Lebanon, or Nazi Germany. For these students, a professor's disregard for historical memory transcends mere difference of opinion. On a simple, human level, I, and many others, may accept or appreciate Massad's point, but cannot respect the means with which he makes it -- outside, and according to some, inside the classroom. Such polarizing methodology creates an irrevocable divide between the professor and the students he educates.

At Columbia in particular, such disregard for a religious minority's past undermines the institution's longstanding commitment to diversity and tolerance. In sharp contrast to peer institutions like Princeton or Yale, Columbia lies in the heart of a gritty, vibrant, sometimes-violent city, and its student body reflects New York's diversity. One of the first universities to abolish quotas for Jewish students, Columbia currently boasts 50% students of color in its most recent incoming class.

By granting tenure to one professor -- admittedly a talented, accomplished professor -- Columbia will not erase that history. Its students, Jewish and otherwise, will simply have to remember that even in Manhattan, even at Columbia, Jews and liberals do not reign supreme. We must fight, just as Joseph Massad did, to retain our voices.

Comments

[JUSTANORMALGUY]

WELL BECASUE COLOMBIA IS A PUBICALLY-FUNDED INSTITUTION WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.

WELL IF COLOMBIA UNIVERSITY DOES'NT LIKE IT, WELL THEY CAN GO PRIVATE AND STOP FEEDING WITH THE PIG'S AT THE GOVERNMENT PORK TRAUGH

[Marco75]

Um...Columbia is a private university.

[jollyelle]

Anna,
Get out from under the protection of belonging to exclusive groups and become an independent thinker.
Try starting with a clean slate and instead of clinging to the expected pro-Jewish ideas, react to situations because you are pro-humanity and against oppression no matter what heritage the person possesses.
Those are the true tenets of Judaism. Fighting will never lead to peace.

[jollyelle]

Anna,
Why does it seem so difficult for you to accept the fact that Palestinians have been the victims of an oppressive Israeli military?

[Ergon]

I'd like to reserve a special place for Daniel Pipes Campus Watch and Hillel for poisoning higher education with their McCarthyite Witch Hunts. There, I said it.

[yaman]

"As a student just entering my second year at Columbia, I have no means to evaluate the academic legitimacy of his argument. Clearly, Massad is a distinguished scholar. However, as a student just entering my second year at Columbia, I can evaluate the effect that his inflammatory claims could have on the student body."

Wow, what kind of deceptive play is that. "I am not educated enough to evaluate his argument, however, I will evaluate his argument." The effects that his claims "could have"-- it sounds like sheer speculation about an irrational response to quotations torn out of context.

If you have it in for the guy, just admit it. You disagree with him because you believe it's merely "possible" for Palestinians to be victims of Israel. But now you are trying to masquerade that bias you have against him as an objective rationale disinterested parties should care about? Not gonna fly.

[123978]

part ii
Would it include this silly Kelner who cannot do five minutes' worth of research? Was Kelner aware or is she trying to hide the fact that Massad was actually supported by his liberal Jewish students against clumsy, transparent attacks by right-wing Zionists which disrupted his classes?
By all means, right wing Jews, clear out our schools of anybody who knows how to do their job, just like the idiotic Spanish cleared out all their best and brightest, and let's see how far you get with the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz and Anna Kelner! You are like the Nazis trying to attack Einstein with a democratic but anti-scientific petition from 99 German scientists insisting that relativity is nonsense! Einstein said, if they were really scientists they would understand that 99 or 99,000 doesn't matter. Neither do you understand that your warped sense of proportion is your own greatest enemy.

[KatInPhilly]

Anna - Take a course with Massad, and then come back and report to us your thoughts. After all, you are very privileged to be a student an Ivy League institution, presumably to open your mind to all dissenting opinions, views and analysis, and to have your own viewpoints challenged, if for no other reason to better defend them. If not, why are you there?

Also, your statement that it is entirely "possible" that Palestinians are victims of Israeli military actions is morally offensive, a verbal slight-of-hand designed to convince the reader that their suffering can legitimately be placed in doubt. What kind of racist, denialist company do you think this puts you in?

[eheitner]

The premise of this article is absurd. As a Jewish undergraduate in Columbia's MEALAC department from 2001 to 2005, I was present for the entire "Columbia Unbecoming" tragi-comic opera. When Anna Kelner writes that there were many allegations of bullying made against Dr. Massad, she does not write that they were all shown to be spurious. The one claim she refers to specifically, of a student of whom Massad asked "How many Palestinians did you kill", was not disputed rightly. The student stood up,identified himself as a former Israeli soldier, then first asked Dr. Massad how many of his relatives cheered after 9/11. The exchange did not occur in a classroom.

On the contrary, many, many Jewish, Israeli and other students of Dr. Massad (and the many other professors "Columbia Unbecoming" tried to smear) testified to the consistent efforts Dr. Massad and others made, inside and outside the classroom, to listen to students and take their intellectual growth seriously. They testified to the extreme lengths that Dr. Massad goes through to meet students, talk to them long after his office hours are over, and intellectually guide them. He is an outstanding professor in that regard. You can read some of the testimony, including my own, here;
http://semitism.net/2005/02/15/OLD98/

Dr. Massad was attacked because he provides a trenchant critique of Zionism that Zionist students didn't like. There was no merit to the hysteria then and there is no merit to Anna Kelner's attack now.

[BackToFight]

And that should answer everyone's questions. Anyone else can comment on this issue, including myself, but this person was there.

Funny how she attempts to libel him by documenting his supposed comment to the Israeli soldier, but opted not to mention the disgusting remark made by the Israeli soldier.

[arle]

Thanks for coming forward with the truth.

[arle]

Just another attempt at smearing a man brave enough to speak out against Israel's crimes. You people are doing the /same/ thing to Max Blumenthal and you should be ashamed of the fact that you're destroying Huffington Post by turning it into a warzone when you drop your weapons of mass deception.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/neda-in-palestine-sentenc_b_222854.html

Just look at what was done to the comments section.

[Aziat]

right, criticism of israel is good but support of Israel is bad. Does your hatred of Israel have any boundaries?

[arle]

You can try to "noun verb anti-Semite" this if you want but the rest of the Huffington Post community can see the deceitful and slanderous tactics of the pro-Israel lobby for what they are, right there.

[BackToFight]

She's not supporting openly supporting Israel in this piece, she is attacking an academic, which is a common tactic, unfortunately. She is trying to establish the argument that one should never equate Israel's crimes to Nazi crimes. In doing so she tries to disarm critics of Israel of a very powerful and fact-based observation of Israel's actions towards the Palestinians. The other aspect of her article is to try and re-establish and enforce the myth that Jews are still victims to this day, which also is invalid if you take a time to study the demographics of Jewish people in the world today.

And finally, she is trying to discredit this man in a passive-aggressive manner, by playing the part of victim.

It's not working. Academics are the last hope for the preservation of freedom of speech in this country.

[BackToFight]

Yes. You should fight to quell the minority voice on campus. Once a victim, always a victim I suppose.

This is a very subtle and passive-aggressive attempt at making him a pariah and polarizing him. His lone voice is truly something to fear.