January 9, 2015 UKLI Israel Lawyers’ Trip We are forwarding a message received from the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) which may be of interest: UKLFI and the UK Zionist Federation are organising a special legal tour in Israel from 12-16 February. They have an impressive program (or “programme” as they say over there), including visits to the Knesset, the Supreme Court, Ofer Military Court and Tel Aviv Commercial […] Blog
January 9, 2015 The NYT Publishes “All the News That’s Fit to Print” Except That Which Offends a Muslim Family in Brooklyn French President Hollande has just finished his address to the nation on the tragic finale of the new terrorist attacks expressing condolences to the hostage victims at the Parish kosher butcher shop, condemning anti-Semitism, and of course declaring that France’s latest national horror had “nothing to do with Islam.” In fact, there is no evidence […] Blog Anti-Semitism
January 8, 2015 ISGAP Summer Institute The ISGAP Summer Institute at Hertford College, Oxford, for the Development of Curriculum in Critical Antisemitism Studies Summer 2015 The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an interdisciplinary research center headquartered in New York, is seeking applicants for a two-week intensive workshop-based curriculum development program for professors with full time positions at recognized universities. […] Blog Anti-Semitism
January 8, 2015 Fruits of French-Style Appeasement Last month, France cravenly voted in the UN Security Council for an Arab resolution to recognize the Palestinian Authority as a nation-state without a peace agreement with Israel. Today, an Islamist terror attack on a Parisian satiric magazine killed 10 journalists and two police. It was soon followed by another attack on a synagogue. The […] Blog
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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism 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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism
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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism
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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism
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 […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
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