SHUT DOWN THE DISGRACE: STEVE PLAUT
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Letters/Article.aspx?id=286259
Shut down the disgrace
Sir, – The leftist geographer who single-handedly built the politics
department at Ben- Gurion University of the Negev into the worst
anti-Israel indoctrination and propaganda center in the country is
simply is unable to find anything wrong with it (“Prof. David Newman
defends BGU’s politics department against Council on Higher Education
registration ban,” September 24).
In fact, he denies that the department is a totalitarian extremist
advocacy center at all, saying that characterizing it as far-left is
“just not based on reality.”
Newman’s dissimulation is of course familiar nonsense. The simple fact
of the matter is that every single member of the Ben-Gurion University
politics department, including the three new recruits supposedly hired
to create diversity there, are radical leftists. The main activity of
the department is anti-Israel agitprop, as the international panel
appointed by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) also reported.
Departmental conferences there consist entirely of anti- Israel and
Marxist indoctrinations, where no dissident nonleftists are invited or
permitted to speak. And this takes place under the noses of BGU
president Rivka Carmi and other BGU officials, including, of course,
Newman! It is not a coincidence that those rallying in “solidarity” with
this department and defending it against the CHE include communists,
anti-Semites and other anti- Israel bigots.
This is not only the most openly anti-Israel (and sometimes
anti-Semitic) academic department in all of Israel, it is also the least
pluralistic, least tolerant and least diversified. It is also one with
the very lowest academic standards, as the CHE panel found.
No pro-Israel opinion is permitted! A PLO intifada poster used to hang
in the department’s lounge. It is really not an academic department at
all but an anti-Israel activism center.
Students daring to express pro-Israel opinion tell of being harassed.
Academic standards died years ago in the department built by Newman.
The fact the Neve Gordon, Israel’s Norman Finkelstein, was hired and
promoted by Newman on the basis of an “academic record” consisting
almost entirely of churning out anti- Israel hate propaganda illustrates
how academic standards there are dead. Finkelstein was fired by DePaul
University for being a pseudoacademic bigot and hate monger, but then
again DePaul has some academic integrity.
The BGU department’s worst anti-Zionists continue to use the school’s
name while churning out anti-Israel propaganda for Holocaust deniers and
jihadist newspapers. And it is not the only problem department at BGU.
Yes, by all means, it is time to shut down this pseudo-academic
taxpayer-funded disgrace.
STEVEN PLAUT
Haifa
The writer is a professor in the graduate school of management at the
University of Haifa
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