Joel Kovel

LEADING CRITIC OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM FIRED AT BARD COLLEGE

Professor Joel Kovel has taught at Bard College for 21 years. He was awarded a Presidential appointment to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies in 1988. In February 2009, Professor Kovel was notified that his contract would not be renewed.

Why?

In recent years Kovel has become a leading critic of Israel. His book Overcoming Zionism and numerous articles call for a One State solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. His termination is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations. Rather, as Professor Kovel?s statement and the chronology of events (pasted below) show, the refusal to renew his contract after two decades was a political decision stemming principally from differences between Kovel and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. The political nature of Kovel?s termination was manifest in the discussion of a faculty evaluation committee.

Bard?s move comes after the University of Michigan Press censored Kovel?s book from its list, capitulating to an attack campaign by Zionist groups. Public outcry forced UMP to restore the book to its list, but they then terminated their long-standing distribution contract with Pluto Press, the Kovel?s publisher.
We call on you to help widely publicize this assault on academic freedom and free speech. Please forward this information and Professor Kovel?s attached statement widely. Also, write Bard President Leon Botstein and Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitrou demanding Professor Kovel?s reinstatement. We want to let Bard College know that this termination will not go unnoticed or be accepted.

Leon Botstein
president@bard.edu
President of the College;
Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities
Office of the President
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504

Dimitri Papadimitrou
dpapadimitrou@bard.edu
Executive Vice President
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504

Please send a copy of your letter to info@codz.org

Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
Honorary Co-Chairs:
James Abourezk, Kathleen Chalfant, Richard Falk, Ghada Karmi, Michael Ratner, Howard Zinn

STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE
And
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

Introduction

In January 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts.The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7, I received a letter from Michèle Dominy,Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.

This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (The Enemy of Nature).However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process, which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.

A brief chronology

• ? 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism.In October, my article, ?Zionism?s Bad Conscience,? appeared in Tikkun. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein?s office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine.

• ? 2003. In January I published a second article in Tikkun,??Left-Anti-Semitism? and the Special Status of Israel,? which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as ?Distinguished Professor.?

• ? 2006. I finished a draft of Overcoming Zionism. In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protesters, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship"between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up on campus.

• ? 2007. Overcoming Zionism was now on the market, arguing for a One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, Martin Peretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the Los Angeles Times. Peretz is an official in AIPAC?s foreign policy think-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee?though this latter fact was not pointed out in the book). In August, Overcoming Zionism was attacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the book?s United States distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to remove it from circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of book-burning. I was disturbed,however, by the fact that, with the exception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from Bard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a professor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why this was so, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its faculty from violation of the its rights of free expression?all the more so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in its Faculty Handbook as a "right .. . to search for truth and understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings without intimidation."

• ? 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was carried off successfully. Concurrent with this, another evaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 and2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go.

Irregularities in the Evaluation Process

The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus? Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal?Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal.This places him on the other side of the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, MI, in October 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position. It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, ?Religion on the Line,? (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations?this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely,Professor Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the College?s Faculty Handbook calls a procedure?designed to evaluate each faculty member fairly and in good faith.?

I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by Dean Dominy?s curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted that there was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a fait accompli. In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the release of this document.

On the Responsibility of Intellectuals

Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in2005 by the Princeton Review as the second-most progressive college in the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts.'" But ?liberal? thought evidently has its limits; and my work against Zionism has encountered these.

A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is this issue more strategically important than in the United States,given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel?s behavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are deeply ingrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not exclusively, in the United States?which culture arises from suppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomes marginalized,and then removed.

To Contact Professor Kovel:
info@codz.org

Obama's War

DN! hosts and interesting conversation on Afghanistan:

Obama’s War: US Involvement in Afghanistan, Past, Present & Future

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/23/obamas_war_us_involvement_in_afghanistan

Stephen Zunes and Khushal Arsala review the history of US intervention in Afghanistan.

Hasan Abu Nimah on the "Peace Process":
"The peace process industry have now transferred their attention to US President Barack Obama. They continue to scrutinize every "helpful" gesture or insignificant "move," reading into them mountains of hope and expectation -- while any much clearer and more pronounced indications that there will be no change of direction in US policy are conveniently ignored or explained away as campaign rhetoric. ... The truth which no one would dare to speak is that Hamas, with its offers of a long-term truce with Israel, and its readiness to recognize the 1967 borders is much more moderate and conciliatory than any significant Jewish Israeli party."

Change I Predicted

Here is the change I predicted on Nov 18:















Robert Fisk on Obama and the new PM of Israel:

Obama was Unconvinced by Bibi’s Desire for Peace

Nearly Six Out Of Ten West Coast Voters Support Taxing And Regulating Marijuana Like Alcohol

National Support For Pot Legalization Grows To 44 Percent

Zogby Poll

The New Frontier

JFK/Gibran Connection?

Wikiquote looks into it:

It has been reported at various places on the internet that in JFK's Inaugural address, the famous line "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", was inspired by, or even a direct quotation of the famous and much esteemed writer and poet Khalil Gibran. Gibran in 1925 wrote in Arabic a line that has been translated as:

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?

If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

However, this translation of Gibran is one that occurred over a decade after Kennedy's 1961 speech, appearing in A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1975) edited by Andrew Dib Sherfan, and the translator most likely drew upon Kennedy's famous words in expressing Gibran's prior ideas. A translation by Anthony R. Ferris in The Voice of the Master (1958) exists that could conceivably have been used as an inspiration, but it is less strikingly similar:

Are you a politician who says to himself: "I will use my country for my own benefit"? If so, you are naught but a parasite living on the flesh of others. Or are you a devoted patriot, who whispers into the ear of his inner self: "I love to serve my country as a faithful servant." If so, you are an oasis in the desert, ready to quench the thirst of the wayfarer.

The title of Gibran's essay has been translated as The New Deal, or The New Frontier.

Mubarak and Gaza

The NYT:

CAIRO - State security came for Philip Rizk on Friday night. He had just finished a six-mile protest walk with about 15 friends to raise support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when he was detained for hours and then hustled into an unmarked van and driven off. He has not been seen or heard from since....

On Sunday, about 50 students and faculty members at the American University in Cairo's campus held a small demonstration calling on the authorities to release Mr. Rizk. The signs they held up said, "Where is Philip?"

The Black Swan

Roubini and Taleb on the economic crisis

Iran's Obama?

Juan Cole on Khatami

No Longer the "Consumer of Last Resort"?

Asia: The Coming Fury

by Walden Bello

This process [export led growth] depended on the U.S. market. As long as U.S. consumers splurged, the export economies of East Asia could continue in high gear. The low U.S. savings rate was no barrier since credit was available on a grand scale. China and other Asian countries snapped up U.S. treasury bills and loaned massively to U.S. financial institutions, which in turn loaned to consumers and homebuyers. But now the U.S. credit economy has imploded, and the U.S. market is unlikely to serve as the same dynamic source of demand for a long time to come. As a result, Asia's export economies have been marooned....

U.S.-East Asia economic relations today resemble a chain-gang linking not only China and the United States but a host of other satellite economies. They are all linked to debt-financed middle-class spending in the United States, which has collapsed....

In China, about 20 million workers have lost their jobs in the last few months, many of them heading back to the countryside, where they will find little work. The authorities are rightly worried that what they label "mass group incidents," which have been increasing in the last decade, might spin out of control. With the safety valve of foreign demand for Indonesian and Filipino workers shut off, hundreds of thousands of workers are returning home to few jobs and dying farms. Suffering is likely to be accompanied by rising protest, as it already has in Vietnam, where strikes are spreading like wildfire. Korea, with its tradition of militant labor and peasant protest, is a ticking time bomb. Indeed, East Asia may be entering a period of radical protest and social revolution that went out of style when export-oriented industrialization became the fashion three decades ago.

The Pentagon as an Engine of Economic Recovery?

How can a country headed into A State of Depression justify spending a trillion dollars a year on an already grotesque defense establishment? I wonder if a standing army doesn't constitute a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the 2d and 3d amendments to the US Constitution.

WINSLOW T. WHEELER, "Why the Pentagon is Not a Jobs Engine: Save the Economy by Cutting the "Defense" [Offense] Budget":

Harvard economist Professor Martin Feldstein has advocated in the Wall Street Journal (‘Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus’, 24 December 2008) the addition of USD30 billion or so to the Pentagon’s budget for the purpose of generating 300,000 new jobs. It is my assertion, however, that pushing the DoD as a jobs engine is a mistake....

Even other economists are sceptical about Feldstein’s numbers. An October 2007 paper from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that each USD1 billion spent on defence would generate 8,555 jobs, not the 10,000 calculated by Feldstein. Given the problems with the F-22 just discussed and the lack of jobs I believe it will generate, even this lower estimate sounds extremely optimistic.

Chalmers Johnson on the Pentagon:

Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global military spending, an amount larger than the next 45 nations together spend on their militaries annually.
...
Our problems are those of a very rich country which has become accustomed over the years to defense budgets that are actually jobs programs and also a major source of pork for the use of politicians in their reelection campaigns.

Given the present major recession, whose depths remain unknown, the United States has better things to spend its money on than Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at a price of $6.2 billion each (the cost of the USS George H. W. Bush, launched in January 2009, our tenth such ship) or aircraft that can cruise at a speed of Mach 2 (1,352 miles per hour).

...

By the time the prototype F-22 had its roll-out on May 11, 1997, the Cold War was nearly a decade in its grave, and it was perfectly apparent that the Soviet aircraft it was intended to match would never be built. Lockheed Martin, the F-22's prime contractor, naturally argued that we needed it anyway and made plans to sell some 438 airplanes for a total tab of $70 billion.

"Obama Admin Will Follow Bush Stance on Hamas Boycott"

Democracy Now! on business as usual at the State Department:

At the State Department Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the Obama administration commitment to follow the Bush administration policy of boycotting Hamas.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “I would only add that our conditions respecting Hamas are very clear. We will not, in any way, negotiate with or recognize Hamas until they renounce violence, recognize Israel and agree to abide by, as the Foreign Minister said, the prior agreements entered into by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority."

The US position has been criticized in part because it refuses to impose the same conditions on Israel. Israel refuses to renounce violence, recognize a Palestinian state and abide by agreements, including a pledge to freeze settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.