The silence of the dons

It is deeply embarrassing for British academia that it has taken the intervention of an American scholar to draw attention to the disgraceful treatment of Dr Miriam Shlesinger and Professor Gideon Toury. As we report today, Stephen Greenblatt, a professor at Harvard University, is leading the protest against the dismissal of the Israeli academics from the board of two scholarly journals run by Mona Baker, a teacher at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury have been dismissed solely because of their nationality.

The fact of the Israelis’ dismissal was noted in a short report in the Times Higher Educational Supplement of June 28. It might be thought that the disclosure of this flagrant assault on academic freedom by a senior scholar at a British university - Ms Baker heads UMIST’s Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies - would have triggered outrage on redbrick campuses and in ivy-clad quads. Not so. Even the authorities at UMIST have run for cover, saying only that they are “dealing internally” with Mrs Baker’s actions.

It has been left, therefore, to Prof Greenblatt, one of the world’s most eminent Shakespearean scholars, to draw attention to this case. As Prof Greenblatt observes in his open letter to Mrs Baker, it is “particularly grotesque, of course, that the journals you run concern translation and intercultural communication”. By excluding scholars simply because they are Israeli, he continues, she has violated “the essential spirit of scholarly freedom and the pursuit of truth”.

Mrs Baker’s actions are part of an organised “academic boycott” of Israeli academics and institutions, a campaign which is trying, among other things, to suspend European Union funding of Israeli universities (though not, of course, the EU’s generous financing of Yasser Arafat). She justifies her dismissal of Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury on the grounds that the behaviour of “Israel has gone beyond just war crimes”. As offensive as her remarks are, she enjoys the freedom to make them. But the action she has taken is morally repugnant and intellectually absurd. Does she propose that scholars from all countries that are judged to behave badly should be excluded from academic life? Should Russian academics be sacked from scholarly journals if Russian troops make further incursions into Chechnya? And what about African intellectuals from states engaged in torture and atrocities?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Israel has been given special treatment. There was a time when South Africa was the chosen enemy of the intellectual Left. Today, it seems to have been replaced by the Jewish state, whose relations with the Palestinian people are regarded by many academics as comparable to apartheid. Israel also performs the useful role of proxy villain for America. As much as British academics tend to hate the United States, many of them hope one day to work there for the higher salaries which American universities pay - the so-called “cash dash” across the Atlantic. How much easier to focus on the alleged wickedness of America’s “client state” in the Middle East. Certainly, few British academics took a stand against Tom Paulin, a lecturer in English at Oxford University, when he said in April that Jewish settlers in Israel “should be shot dead”.

Dons are entitled to their juvenile opinions. What is so depressing about the UMIST case is the fact that those same opinions have been translated into action without a peep of protest from scholars in this country. It is not, perhaps, surprising that Pakistan brought such deplorable pressure to bear on its tennis player, Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi, to end his doubles partnership at Wimbledon with the Israeli Amir Hadad. But it is nothing short of astonishing that the same criteria are now being applied by an academic employed by a respected British university. Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury are scholars who happen to be Israeli. But they have fallen victim to a sub-Marxian world view in which all consciousness is political, and identity is defined in terms of global political struggle, real or imagined.

Not all attacks on Israel and Israelis are necessarily anti-Semitic, although Jewish people, with painful experience over the centuries of exclusion from academic institutions, are understandably anxious and angry about this case. But this is not a controversy specifically about anti-semitism. What is at stake in this case - and Prof Greenblatt deserves praise for recognising this - is the principle of academic freedom which underpins the idea of a university and, as Cardinal Newman wrote, enables such institutions to “educate the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it”. The academics who have remained so silent during this case are the teachers of the nation’s youth, the custodians of the best and the brightest. That, more even than Mrs Baker’s original action, is a cause for the deepest shame.

It's my belief that the exchange and dialog in the scientific community, at the highest level, can help persuade politicians to put their guns back in their holsters. If civility erodes between worldwide scientific communities, we *will* be in deep doo-doo. IMHO, it seems the UK has just put out a clarion call "Let the games begin."

I'm far more pessimistic than you, sadly. I agree with your point in general, but IMHO it's already well past the point where the academic and scientific communities have been willing to engage in truely free exchange and dialog. I believe it's been this way for decades; it's just never mattered as much in the past as it does now. The doo-doo is already starting to overflow the litter box, and nobody besides Americans seem to even care. At best, the enlightened citizens of the rest of the world simply don't give a damn about the Jews, whether they're oppressed or harassed or completely eliminated via genocide. At worst, many of them, especially in Europe, are actively hoping for such things to happen to the Jews, and they are becoming more emboldened by the day, as it's obvious that nobody is going to make any attempt to stop them.

I still believed there was hope, until last night when I came across five different news articles about absolutely savage Mona Baker-esque actions against the Jews in various parts of Europe, all of which occurred in roughly a single 24 hour period. The hate is rising over there, at a rate far faster than Hitler ever achieved, and I believe there are now only two possible final outcomes, even if it might be several years before either of them come to pass:

a) American and Israeli Jews will secretly form an IRA-style paramilitary terrorist group. The remaining Jews throughout Europe will be smuggled huge amounts of weapons, and they will start using them either to defend themselves or as direct retaliation for each anti-Semitic act that occurs in the EU without proper government retaliation against the perpetrators. This, of course, will present a hell of a dilemma for the Administration if the Bush Doctrine is still in place when it happens; what do you do when the main sufferers of terrorism both today and throughout the history of humanity finally say "Enough!" and become terrorists themselves? I have to admit I'd have second, third and fourth thoughts about making any attempt to stop them if I were Bush, regardless of the hypocricy that would be inherent in such a decision.

b) Outright attacks of physical violence, harassment and vigilante murders against Jews will break out across Europe in a wave of anti-Semitic terror somewhere between Kristallnacht and Auschwitz on the Evil-o-Meter. Neither the EU nor any individual nations do anything about it, other than issue a few "tsk-tsk" press releases and maybe make a few token arrests here and there. As a result, the US will eventually be forced to invade Europe and take over all the nations where the growing genocide is taking place, perhaps with help from Israel, perhaps not. (Or, who knows, would Israel launch a missile strike, nuclear or otherwise, on a European nation where Holocaust II was taking place with the tacit approval of the government? There are still 2 million Jews in Europe, after all.) US armed forces would, of course, face essentially zero resistance since about the only military in Europe today is American. We might have to leave the UK alone, though, since they actually have a military ... and nukes.

I know this all sounds incredibly far-fetched and over-the-top today. But I honestly just don't see this snowballing rise of Jew-hate across Europe slowing down under any circumstances. The flood gates have been opened via the inaction and, in some cases, open approval of the European governments for their citizens to oppress Jews. What's going to make it stop? The one thing that might have even the slightest hope of putting an end to it - total capitulation by Israel to Yassir Arafat and his psychotic Palestinian mobs, is never going to happen. There won't even be any real temporary peace between Israel and the Palestinians for at least several years, given the events up to now.

You're quite right, JusticeLives. The games have begun.

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