GROUPTHINK AT HARVARD: RUTH WISSE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520070705111444.html
Last Saturday, at a university-sponsored event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, a group of former students launched a research fund in honor of Martin Peretz, a former teacher in the program and the longtime editor in chief of the New Republic. After the event adjourned, the afternoon turned ugly as police had to protect Mr. Peretz while he walked across campus surrounded by a mob of screaming students.
Mr. Peretz admits that he wasn’t blameless in the controversy. On Sept. 4, blogging at the New Republic’s web site, he lamented that Muslims don’t respond more vigorously to acts of terrorism against their own people:
“Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the proposed Cordoba House mosque] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
For that final sentence, Mr. Peretz apologized and sought atonement. Nonetheless, his column set off a firestorm. The Harvard Crimson reported over 500 protests against the honorary research fund by alumni, students and staff.
Harvard accepted the money to create the fund. Yet a member of the Social Studies Standing Committee extolled the protest, while also declaring that everyone on the committee “was—without exception—appalled by Peretz’s comments.”
Why not, then, organize an open forum where Mr. Peretz might engage with his critics? That, presumably, was out of the question: better to ensure that students know which side “everyone—without exception” is on.
To date, no defense of Mr. Peretz has emerged from within the academy he served so well as a teacher and benefactor.
The first at Harvard to exploit the Peretz case was Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School of Government, who co-authored a book, “The Israel Lobby,” which argues that a conspiracy skews American policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel. Mr. Walt’s blog on the web site of Foreign Policy magazine offers readers a series of Mr. Peretz’s statements “displaying hatred and contempt for Muslims, Arabs, and other minorities.”
But to wish that Muslims would condemn the violence in their midst is not bigotry but liberality, treating others as you would have them treat you.
One student I spoke with offered a quainter interpretation than did so many professors. Hadn’t Mr. Peretz said something true, though far too sloppily?
What about Muslim disregard for Muslim life taken by terrorism? Have Mr. Peretz’s critics tried to show that Muslims really do value the life of their co-religionists? Why were protests trying to shout the problem down? In this student’s view, the pressure for political conformism had combined with a suppressed anxiety about Islam into a toxic mix of hostility against one man.
The student had sought me out to ask whether, as the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature, I might offer an opinion on the flare-up. Of course, donors do not dictate those who hold the chairs they endow; indeed, the Belfer family may regret that Mr. Walt occupies theirs. And I doubt that Mr. Peretz and I have ever voted alike. But whatever qualities of his still excite his former students, I can be sure that they do not include any habit of wrapping himself in the opinion of “everyone—without exception.”
Like him, I too regret that Muslim political culture in the U.S. and internationally is not more confident, positive and life-affirming. Where are the campus protests against Hamas torture and murder of fellow Palestinians, against Muslim suicide bombers in civilian centers of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? A necessary step toward a more peaceful world is, indeed, greater respect of Muslims for Muslim life. Universities ought to be encouraging, not inhibiting, that development.
Ms. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007).
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