SUBJ: Tenure for Columbia Anti-Semite
Anti-Semitic Columbia professor Joseph Massad is on track to get tenure this
spring.
"The Jews are not a nation... The Jewish state is a racist state that does not
have a right to exist."
Massad speaking at Oxford University in March 2002
The author of that sentiment, Joseph Massad, may be the most racist professor
now teaching at a major American university. He has turned his appointment in
Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University into a platform from which to
promulgate anti-Semitism and advocate the murder of innocent people because they
happen to be Israelis.
In 2005 an internal Columbia faculty committee found that Massad "exceeded
commonly accepted bounds" of teaching when he threatened to banish one of his
students, Deena Shanker, from his classroom after she defended Israel.
This academic year, Columbia will decide whether or not to tenure Joseph Massad.
The New York Sun reports that the Columbia faculty committee reviewing his work
will recommend him for tenure. Indeed, there is no doubt that Massad enjoys
overwhelming support among the faculty. While it is true that many Columbia
professors agree with Massad's wish that Israel "should be destroyed," many more
support him on the grounds that a professor must have the absolute right to
write or say anything he wishes -- even statements of hatred for Jews, support
for terrorists, and outright fabrications of fact.
Massad has taken an unscheduled and very unusual leave of absence this academic
year, apparently a strategic move designed to quiet the outrage that his
teaching causes while his friends work to get tenure for him.
Massad's tenure can be blocked by the committee of scholars from other
universities that will soon be appointed by Provost Brinkley to review Massad's
work, by Provost Brinkley, by President Bolinger, or by the Trustees of the
University.
ACTION
------
Please write to the officials of Columbia University listed below. Ask that they
carefully consider the implications of having on their faculty an aggressively
anti-Semitic professor who apologizes for terrorists, a man, moreover, who
invents "facts" with which to defame the Jews.
1. Alan Brinkley, Provost
2. Lee C. Bollinger, President
If you are a graduate of Columbia or Barnard, then also write to the appropriate
official listed below. Your strongest voice in university affairs is always
through the Development office, even if you have not been a large donor. They
know exactly how much you have donated every year since graduation, but all
graduates are viewed as potential donors, and the opinion of a graduate has more
weight than members of the general public.
1. Derek Wittner, Dean of Alumni Affairs and Development at Columbia, or
2. Cameran L. Mason, Vice President for Development & Alumnae Affairs at Barnard
CONTACT INFO
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Lee C. Bollinger, President
Columbia University
2960 Broadway
New York, NY 10027-6902
Phone: 212-854-9970
Fax: 212-854-9973
Email: bollinger@columbia.edu
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Alan Brinkley, Provost
Columbia University
205 Low Memorial Library
Mail Code 4313
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
Phone: 212-854-2404
Fax: 212-932-0418
Email: ab65@columbia.edu
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Derek Wittner
Dean of Alumni Affairs and Development
Columbia University
Interchurch Center
Room 917, Mail Code 7732
Columbia College
New York, NY 10027
Phone: 212-870-2741
Email: daw8@columbia.edu
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Ms Cameran L. Mason
Vice President for Development & Alumnae Affairs Office of Development & Alumnae
Affairs Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
Phone: 212-854-2001
Email: cmason@barnard.edu
Ask Barnard to strongly urge Bollinger and Brinkley to appose tenuring this
outspoken anti-Semite. Even though Barnard does not have direct power over
Columbia tenure decisions, the university is sensitive to the feelings of its
alumnae.
SAMPLE LETTER
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Dear Mr. Bollinger,
Some ideas are so vile and so toxic that respectable institutions should give
their proponents wide berth. Anti-semitism and support for terrorism are two
such ideas.
I write to urge you to think very carefully about the implications of granting
tenure to Joseph Massad, a man who has called for the destruction of the Jewish
State, praised terrorism against civilians provided that the victims are Jews,
frequently compared Israelis to Nazis, and revived the hoary anti-Semitic canard
that Jews are "a 'power-hungry' people.... if Jews do not control the entire
world, at least they control America."
Along with most of the reading public, I am aware that Columbia is considering
giving tenure to an outspoken Jew-hater, a man who devotes much of his energies
to writing popular articles and making speeches demonizing the Jewish State.
Indeed, he is so outspoken that it often seems that his vocation is hating Jews
and defaming Israel, with his Columbia appointment serving merely as a
prestigious soapbox.
Here are some examples of Massad's gross fabrications:
* The Hebrew word zion means 'penis.'
* Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.
* "Jewish colonists were part of the British colonial death squads that murdered
Palestinian revolutionaries between 1936 and 1939."
* The ancient Hebrews did not speak Hebrew, "In fact the ancient Hebrews spoke
Aramaic, the language in which the Talmud was written."
* Jews are not descended from the ancient Hebrews.
* "The Palestinians of today are the descendants of the ancient Hebrews."
* Anti-Semitism in the Arab world is no more than "a Zionist-inspired
propagandistic claim." Recall that Massad's appointment is in Modern Arab
Politics.
The above series of statements are so utterly divorced from any evidentiary
basis that it quite takes one's breath away.
But Massad goes beyond name calling and beyond the racist assertion that, among
all the nations of the earth, the Jewish nation should be singled out and denied
the right to statehood, to advocate the destruction of the Jewish state by
violent means, and to praise the terrorists who work to destroy Israel since, in
Massad's words, "It is only by making the costs of Jewish supremacy too high
that Israeli Jews will give it up."
I cannot imagine that tenuring such a man can be good for the University.
Sincerely,
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
----------------------
More information about Massad can be found at the following
links:
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2203
http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2003_02_05.htm
http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/5003.html
Below is a review of Massad's book, "Colonial Effects: The Making of National
Identity in Jordan," New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 276 pp. $49.50
($19.50, paper).
Massad has done a thorough job of mastering the source material, but his
ideological bias runs deep and devalues the results. Massad portrays Jordanians
as the malleable creatures of others, non-participants in their own national
enterprise who think only the thoughts Westerners imbed in their minds. Or, in
the characteristically obtuse jargon of this book: the "juridical-military dyad
introduced by British colonialism was both a repressive and a productive
success. Today's Jordanian national identity and Jordanian national culture are
living testament to that achievement."
Since these Westerners, like Glubb Pasha, were infected by Orientalist biases,
they imparted an Orientalist mindset to their hapless Jordanian wards, from King
Hussein on down: "Note, how the king's nationalist views ... are in tandem with
Glubb's Orientalist views of Jordanians as Bedouins ... the latter being part of
Glubb's ... de-Bedouinization and re-Bedouinization campaigns in the country."
To believe Massad, Glubb simply de-Bedouinizes and re-Bedouinizes the mindless
Jordanians at will, and King Hussein, without a thought of his own, trails along
as if on a leash. Jordanians, incapable of imagination, are but putty in the
hands of one grand mental manipulator: Glubb Pasha.
Had Massad given the Jordanians their due in the molding of their own identity,
he might have redeemed part of his argument. The "colonial effects" are there;
no one would sensibly deny them. But by inflating them, Massad deflates his own
credibility.
Factual distortion and sheer invention would also seem perfectly permissible in
Massad's account. Three examples of many:
(1) Massad refers to the Israeli raid and "massacre" in Samu' in November 1966.
The Jordanians themselves, however, did not claim that a massacre had been
committed. Samir Mutawi, author of the semiofficial version of Jordan's role in
the 1967 war, wrote that Jordanian troops engaged the Israelis at Samu', and in
"the ensuing battle eighteen Jordanians were killed and many more wounded."[2]
No massacre. A few pages later Massad himself gives similar figures (fifteen
soldiers and three civilians killed). So after throwing in the word "massacre,"
Massad ends up debunking himself.
(2) Massad would have us believe that domestic opponents of the regime alone
assassinated Jordanian prime minister Hazza' al-Majali in August 1960. In fact,
it was masterminded by the intelligence services of the Syrian province of the
United Arab Republic. This was so well known at the time that King Hussein
considered retaliating with a military strike against Syria.
(3) Massad writes of the battle of Karamah in March 1968 that the Israeli army
"could not escape unscathed (as it had during the 1967 war and on many other
occasions). For the first time in its history, it received heavy damages in
personnel and materiel." This is pure bunk. Yes, Israel sustained heavy losses
at Karamah: twenty-eight of its soldiers were killed there. But Massad seems to
have forgotten (or never to have known) that 800 Israeli soldiers were killed in
June 1967, and that 6,000 Israeli soldiers and civilians perished in the 1948
war. Ignorance? Dehumanization? A bit of both? What is certain is that when it
comes to Israeli losses, Massad isn't counting.
Asher Susser
Tel Aviv University