Saturday, June 10, 2006
The Jewish Week has a good recap of the now-failed Juan Cole effort to join the Yale faculty, including a focus on the controversy behind his final rejection: Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale
There's a lot there, but I wanted to just comment on one piece of it:
Referring to the entry in his op-ed for the Yale Daily News, Rubin contends that Cole “accuses Jewish Americans of using the Pentagon as Israel’s Gurkha regiment.” Similarly, Webber and Johnson claim that “according to Mr. Cole, American Jews both inside and out of government are primarily loyal to Israel and subvert American interests for those of the Jewish State.”
“These articles,” said Cole, “attempted to make my critiques of the Likud, on both sides of the Atlantic, look like an attack on American Jewry in general, which is manifestly not the case. For these people, Likud equals Israel equals Jews, so all criticism of revisionist Zionism and Greater Israel expansionism is anti-Semitic.”...
This is the typical Cole dodge. Cole uses the term "Likudnik" as an imprecise smear (he means it as a smear) against anyone to the right of him (a lot of territory). I've commented before on the absurdity of claiming not to be anti-Israel while at the same time smearing the political party Israelis have chosen (at the time) to lead them. Further, most of the people Cole smears in this way ("Likudnik," "neo-con," etc...) couldn't tell you what the party platform of Likud was with a gun to their heads. The idea that they simply accept a line of argument that does not come dictated from Jerusalem never occurs. This is like calling anyone to my left an "ISM-nik" -- descriptive, but so imprecise as to be meaningless. Cole's consistently tendentious pronouncements should be a signal to keep him away from any academic position where he will be sought out for his interpretations of the modern Middle East.
Note this as well:
First, according to the source, most of Cole’s scholarship pertains to the Baha’i faith and is limited to the 18th and 19th centuries, a liability for a professor charged with teaching about the contemporary Middle East.
Second, the source continued, Cole appears to lack in collegiality, as his penchant for combative blog entries and personal spats with detractors might make him an unnerving fixture on Yale.
Finally, Cole’s politics may have played a role, though a less important one than the other two factors, said the source...
Finally, Martin Kramer's comments are, as always, worth a look: Take It Like A Man
Here is news for Cole: Israel has been a state for nearly sixty years. Its founders included victims of the worst antisemitism. But Israelis of both genders earned their statehood not by whining like crybabies, but by fighting "like men" and women against neighbors bent on their destruction. Because Israel is a Jewish state, it remains a lightning rod for genuine antisemites, who do exist outside scare quotes, and who also lurk in the darker recesses of academe. When they make criticisms of Israel that invoke antisemitic themes (such as Jewish mind-control of America), they deserve to be denounced for what they are...
Well, frankly, it looks from the Jewish Week article that there was a lot of campaigning against Cole, although Cole's calling it all orchestrated campaign is surely an overstatement. Not that the journalists didn't have the right to write op-ed piece. And I suppose the letter to donors was all right, if a bit much. I mean, there WAS pressure.
Let's face it, both sides will tend to bring what pressure they can to bear. No point in thinking that that's something we can avoid. I'm sure that Cole wouldn't object to Chomsky's buttonholing committee members at MIT against the hiring of some neocon scholar there.
In any case, Cole is a scholar of 18th- and 19th-century Bahai'ism. He should not have been considered for the post in contemporary ME politics to begin with.
I remember once, in the 1989 or 1990, when a reporter from one of the local New York City television stations interviewed a professor on the occasion of Israeli forces kidnapping some terrorist leader. The reporter was positively fawning, saying the word "professor" as if it were a Royal title. He was even sort of kneeling before him. It was weird to watch. The professor assured the very receptive reporter that the kidnapping was a "black eye" for Israel's reputation. Thing is, I knew that professor. I had been a graduate student at Columbia and had had him for a class. He was a medievalist!
Oops I should make this clearer: He was a specialist in medieval Islamic society. Still, that's not really any better. I wonder who did that reporter's research?
I wonder if Yale's recent brush with admitting a Taliban student has anything to do with this. In other words, Cole might have slipped by more than a bit under the radar if that had not been such a huge news item. It's made more people aware that Yale has issues. Is Taliban man still there BTW? I haven't been paying attention lately - too busy with too many things.
Anyhow, I'm surprised that Yale actually declined to offer Cole a position. I would think his very leftist leanings would have appealed mightily to Yale. Maybe he should try Harvard.
That's a good point. Maybe the committee at Yale was nervous about making a similar mistake twice.
As far as campaigning, Cole's made himself into a highly controversial figure. There's no crying about it now.
We'll probably never know the exact reason he was turned down, but I'm sure the timing wasn't good for Cole with the Taliban thing. Yale didn't need more bad publicity, and this would have been bad.