January 5, 2015 Islamist Nihilism Kenan Malik in the NYT, January 3, 2015, at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/kenan-malik-the-nihilist-rage-of-radical-islam.html?ref=opinion: “In the past, racists often viewed modernity as the property of the West and regarded the non-Western world as incapable of modernizing. Today, it is radicals who often regard modernity as a Western product, and reject both it and the West as tainted goods. “The […] Blog
January 4, 2015 Mael-Strom at Brandeis For an analysis of and interview with Brandeis student Daniel Mael about the unsuccessful attempt to intimidate him into silence for “hurting the feelings” of another Jewish student by arguing with him behalf of Israel, see Sohrab Ahmari, “How to Fight the Campus Speech Police: Get a Good Lawyer,” in the “Wall Street Journal,” January […] Blog
January 2, 2015 The Brandeis Center Holds Second Annual National Law Student Leadership Conference The Brandeis Center hosted its second National Law Student Leadership Conference in Washington, DC on December 29-30. This event took place as part of the Center’s recent law student and public outreach initiatives. Many of the students in attendance were members of their universities’ chapters of the Brandeis Center. Our law student chapter program fills […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog Litigation
December 21, 2014 “Trans-Tolerance,” Israeli-Style? In the 1950s in the volume, “The Radical Right,” Peter Viereck coined the concept of “trans-tolerance” not to praise but to put down American Christians and Jews who crossed sectarian lines and abstained from religious prejudice in order to raise a common banner for—not against—Senator Joe McCarthy. In other words, you did not have to […] Anti-Zionism
December 21, 2014 Federalism for the Holy Land? The NYT is ending 2014 with an editorial—“The Embattled Dream for Palestine” (December 19)—rehearsing the nightmarish political impasse and putting all the blame, as per usual, on Israel. This time the fall guys are Israeli “one state” rightwingers who want to extinguish the dream of Palestinian peoplehood. No mention that Palestinian “one staters” like Hamas […] Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 Global Double Standards It’s unacceptable for Sony Studios to allow audiences to see a comedy making fun of North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, but de rigeur for the Taliban to force Pakistani students to see their teacher burned alive. It’s bad taste for ISIS to behead innocents in Iraq and Syria, but not “terrorist” for Hamas to murder […] Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 Brandeis Center Castigates Harvard Boycott of SodaStream The Brandeis Center strongly condemns Harvard University’s suspension of SodaStream, the do-it-yourself soda and water machine, from campus dining services. It is no more than a clever ploy by supporters of the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement to hurt the Israeli economy, and in no way furthers the proclaimed human rights concerns of the […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 Another Double (or Triple) Standard Pressured by the authorities, Chabad in Australia has snuffed out its 30-year tradition of lighting a 33-foot Menorah in downtown Sydney. Santa Claus may also be put under wraps, but there are no plans to ban the erection of two large Christmas trees. One wonders whether Muslims in Australia will face any such restrictions come […] Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 UC’s Moment of Truth The University of California—once home of the legendary Free Speech Movement—has an academic freedom problem. Earlier this year, we witnessed Nicholas Dirks, Chancellor of UC-Berkeley, co-opt the anniversary of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement to emphasize the limits that “civility” might, in his view, properly impose on freedom of speech. Now comes a new threat to […] Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 Groups Question University of California Over Union BDS Resolution Several groups, including the Louis D. Brandeis Center, have just sent this letter to the University of California seeking answers about the recent vote of the UAW 2865 in favor of participating in the BDS movement. Kudos to the AMCHA Initiative for coordinating this work: Dear Chancellors Block, Blumenthal, Dirks, Gillman, Katehi, Khosla, Leland, Wilcox and […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog
December 18, 2014 Human Rights and Inhuman Interrogation Methods I consider torture—including waterboarding—not only morally but aesthetically revolting. But unlike Jews who miraculously always find their liberal preferences enshrined in biblical and rabbinic precedent, I find nothing in those traditions that directly bears on the question of torture except the Talmudic dictum, “ain adam mesim atsmo,” against self-incrimination. I’ve been more influenced by great […] Blog
December 14, 2014 For Whom the Bell Tolls Some sixty years ago, a group of American intellectuals—many of them Jewish academics including Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Richard Hofstadter—authored “The Radical Right,” bringing social science theory to bear on the attempt to understand and counter McCarthyism. Back then, academe—especially Jewish academe—felt threatened by irrational forces, not within the university, but buffeting it […] Blog
December 13, 2014 Jewish Liberalism–On Campus and Off For my historical thoughts, see the Los Angeles “Jewish Journal” here. Blog
December 3, 2014 Ode to the Anarchists Among Us, Then and Now In the U.S., “anarchist” was once a dirty word. Following the 1886 Haymarket Bombing in Chicago, in which 11 including seven policemen were killed by anonymous bombers, cartoons appeared nationwide of wild-eyed, suggestively Germanic anarchists blowing America to hell. Historians for a hundred years repeated the conventional wisdom that this was an exercise in pure […] Blog
December 2, 2014 Terrorism, “Lone Wolves,” and “Virtual Wolf Packs” Violence to change or impact the existing order may be as old as humankind. In terms of collective violence—let’s use the term “mob” for a phenomenon that may start small but can even morph into a revolution—it has had varied political, economic, and religious-ethnic motives over the course of the last thousand years in western […] Blog
December 1, 2014 Time for Jewish Harvard Grads to “Turn in Their Privilege”? Controversy has been raging for some time about whether white Harvard undergrads–including grandchildren of Holocaust survivors– should “turn in their privilege” and, because of historic (and historical) racial injustice in America, agree to accept second place in the admissions pecking order to African Americans. Even if one accepts this argument, it’s hard to see how […] Blog
November 26, 2014 Time to Divest From Palestinian Terror—Not Israel Recently, UCLA Students organized to protest the decision by the UC Regents to hike tuition, but mostly ignored an insidious behind-the-scenes spectacle. The UCLA Student government voted 8-2-2 to urge UC to divest from companies accused to doing business in the West Bank. Eerily, the vote occurred vituually at the same time that—half a world […] Blog
November 24, 2014 Me and the “I” Word I understand—given many prior posts in which I have criticized the Mideast (not domestic) policies of the Obama Administration—that some, maybe many readers, of this blog may think my prior post was a call to impeach President Obama. When I intend to be critical, I don’t hide it. The post hardly mentioned Obama and did […] Blog
November 23, 2014 How Not to Protect the Constitution When a president usurps power and subverts the Constitution, the U.S. Constitution provides a remedy: impeachment and removal from office. Hyperbolic language calling a president a “tyrant” or “despot” by politicians who lack the courage to impeach because it’s politically inconvenient is demagogic and dangerous. Outside of our constitutional system, in the whirlpool of political […] Blog