RUTHFULLY YOURS

Morton Schapiro is president of Northwestern University.

College presidents have always received a lot of mail. But these days we get more than ever. Much of it relates to student unrest, and most of the messages are unpleasant.

Our usual practice is to thank the sender for writing and leave it at that. The combination of receiving more than 100 emails and letters a day and recognizing that the purpose of many writers is to rebuke, rather than discuss, leaves us little choice about how to respond.

But that certainly doesn’t mean we don’t think long and hard about the issues being raised. Some writers ask why our campus is so focused on how “black lives matter.” Others express a mixture of curiosity and rage about microaggressions and trigger warnings. And finally, what about those oft-criticized “safe spaces”? On this last topic, here are two stories. The first was told to me privately by another institution’s president, and the second takes place at my institution, Northwestern University.

A group of black students were having lunch together in a campus dining hall. There were a couple of empty seats, and two white students asked if they could join them. One of the black students asked why, in light of empty tables nearby. The reply was that these students wanted to stretch themselves by engaging in the kind of uncomfortable learning the college encourages. The black students politely said no. Is this really so scandalous?

I find two aspects of this story to be of particular interest.

First, the familiar question is “Why do the black students eat together in the cafeteria?” I think I have some insight on this based on 16 years of living on or near a college campus: Many groups eat together in the cafeteria, but people seem to notice only when the students are black. Athletes often eat with athletes; fraternity and sorority members with their Greek brothers and sisters; a cappella group members with fellow singers; actors with actors; marching band members with marching band members; and so on.

And that brings me to the second aspect: We all deserve safe spaces. Those black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace. There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn’t one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn’t have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place.

Now for the story from Northwestern. For more than four decades, we have had a building on campus called the Black House, a space specifically meant to be a center for black student life. This summer some well-intentioned staff members suggested that we place one of our multicultural offices there. The pushback from students, and especially alumni, was immediate and powerful. It wasn’t until I attended a listening session that I fully understood why. One black alumna from the 1980s said that she and her peers had fought to keep a house of their own on campus. While the black community should always have an important voice in multicultural activities on campus, she said, we should put that office elsewhere, leaving a small house with a proud history as a safe space exclusively for blacks.

Christina Paxson is president of Brown University.

New students are entering colleges and universities at a time of fierce debate about whether institutions of higher education are becoming places that stifle speech in the interest of protecting students from ideas and perspectives they don’t want to hear. In the clash over freedom of expression and the supposed coddling of American college students, safe spaces and trigger warnings are held up as the poster children of overprotective universities.
In the setting of private institutions, this is not a First Amendment issue. Private colleges and universities could restrict the expression of ideas and beliefs within their campuses, if they chose to do so. But most private colleges and universities wisely do not make this choice. Instead, colleges and universities protect the rights of members of their communities to express a full range of ideas, however controversial.

That is because freedom of expression is an essential component of academic freedom, which protects the ability of universities to fulfill their core mission of advancing knowledge. Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at a factory. As scholars and students, our responsibility is to subject old truths to scrutiny and put forward new ideas to improve them.

At universities, we also advance understanding about issues of justice and fairness, and these discussions can be equally, if not more, difficult. From the earliest days of this country, college campuses have been the sites of fierce debates about slavery, war, women’s rights and racial justice. These discussions create rocky moments, and they should.

If we don’t have these debates — if we limit the flow of ideas — then in 50 years we will be no better than we are today.

I don’t share the view that American college students want to be protected from ideas that make them uncomfortable. Just the opposite. Over the past few years, our students have addressed topics that make many people very uncomfortable indeed — racism, sexual assault, religious persecution. These are some of the toughest problems facing society today, and we do not shy away from them.

As for “safe spaces” — the term is used in so many different ways that it is impossible to discuss it without being precise about its meaning. The term emerged from the women’s movement nearly 50 years ago to refer to forums where women’s rights issues were discussed. Then it was extended to denote spaces where violence and harassment against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community would not be tolerated, and then extended yet again to mean places where students from marginalized groups can come together to feel comfortable discussing their experiences and just being themselves.

If this is what a safe space means, then, yes, Brown has them. Proudly.

Gulmurod Khalimov, the new ISIS military commander whom the U.S. just days ago announced a $3 million bounty for, was trained by the State Department in an anti-terror program as recently as 2014 while serving in the security service of Tajikistan.

He replaces former ISIS commander Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Umar al-Shishani, who was also trained by the United States as part of the Georgian army and who ISIS claimed was killed fighting in Iraq this past July.

The State Department confirmed Khalimov’s U.S.-provided training to CNN in May 2015:

“From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program,” said spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala.

The program is intended to train candidates from participating countries in the latest counterterrorism tactics, so they can fight the very kind of militants that Khalimov has now joined.

A State Department official said Khalimov was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and related issues.

Unironically, the State Department spokeswoman said that Khalimov had been appropriately vetted:

“All appropriate Leahy vetting was undertaken in advance of this training,” said spokeswoman Jhunjhunwala.

At that time, Khalimov appeared in a video threatening the United States:

“Listen, you American pigs: I’ve been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims,” he says.

Then, he threatens, “we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”

Khalimov and Batirashvili are hardly the first terrorist leaders operating in Syria to have been trained by the United States.

Staffer likened Israelis to Nazis, called for slaughter of activists who seek to prevent ritual killings of animals

A Belgian Muslim official who compared Israel to Nazi Germany and the Islamic State is no longer employed as a minister’s adviser on tolerance.

He works for a minister in the government of one of the three autonomous regions that make up the federal kingdom of Belgium.

Bart de Wever, the mayor of Antwerp, which is the capital of Belgium’s Flemish Region, in July told the Joods Actueel Jewish monthly he finds Kobo’s appointment “troubling” also because Kobo, according to de Wever, recently published a tweet about the shooting of police officers in the United States in which he wrote “a shot for a shot.”

De Wever said it means Kobo justifies the shootings as retribution for perceived police brutality, especially against blacks.

Several years ago, before the onset of the Arab Spring, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis suggested that Israel’s future in the Middle East was more secure than many assumed. In measurable ways, the nearer Arab and Muslim states were sinking into ever deeper political, social and economic dysfunction and despair, while Israel, for all its innate tensions and divisive culture wars, was politically and economically sound and socially cohesive.

It was an argument about the way these nations conduct themselves: By conscious choice, the wealthiest Middle Eastern economies rely on oil for their prosperity, whereas Israel relies on technological innovation as its single largest export. As technological advances slowly but surely sideline Middle Eastern oil as a keystone of the global economy, economies that rely on little else will sink further, he argued, while Israel, which has transformed itself into an engine for those very advances, will only rise.

The history of the past few years has largely borne out this assessment.

Israel’s strength set against an imploding Arab state system – indeed, Israel’s strangely separate life in a region that is increasingly seen as an exporter primarily of its own social and religious imbalances – is quietly but decisively transforming the Jewish state’s place in the calculations of both friend and foe.

It has turned some erstwhile enemies into allies in potentia, and forced Israel’s most bitter foes, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, to develop a new apologetic discourse that seeks to explain to ordinary Lebanese or Gazans why the ideology of permanent war against the Zionists justifies their current and future suffering.

Meanwhile, regional and global actors with less emotional investment in Zionism — countries like Greece, India, Russia, Cyprus, China, and even distant Honduras — have all taken dramatic steps to upgrade economic and defense ties with Israel, in no small part out of a clear sense of these growing disparities in power and prosperity in the region.

And, of course, America noticed.

Fourteen years ago my life changed forever as I arrived in the United States, holding tightly to hope and a promise.

That promise was freedom and a dream of a better life.

I entered this beautiful country as a documented immigrant at the age of 18 in August 2002, almost one year after 9/11. After surviving 15 years of oppression under Sharia in Iran, I felt older than my years. I had seen too much and I knew all too well the suffering of those who were subjected to Islam. What I had witnessed and experienced had left my soul weary. But in America, I felt safe. I was able to breathe, and I could stop looking over my shoulder and living in fear.

I could now believe in miracles. Here I was, the newest member of the greatest country in the world. It was my rebirth into freedom. I was in a new place that viewed me as a human; someone of value to society. Finally, my life mattered. I was a daughter of liberty; a citizen of the U.S.A.

I’ve never forgotten those who I left behind — and I have dedicated my life to them. How could I turn my back on them, when I know all too well the vicious suffering women endure in Islamic-ruled countries?

At the age of 9, Qur’anic teachings and Islamic traditions forced me into womanhood. My thoughts, my actions and my life were no longer my own. From that moment on, I lost all rights as a person, as my instruction in preparation to marry and bear children became my only purpose in life. No longer would I be allowed in public without my hijab; prayer and submission would dominate my days. The life of a carefree child at play came to an abrupt and sudden end.

For the next 9 years, I would suffer terrible cruelty under Islam. Rape, lashings, arrests and beatings were my life because I was regarded as property to be “handled” rather than a human being to be loved. During those nine years, I was sold into marriage to a much older man who abused me terribly. A bruised body and broken bones became a common reality for me, and there was little I could do to stop it. Divorce was not an option. Islamic law offers women little support in abusive marriages.

The University of Chicago’s recent decision to not condone “safe spaces” on campus earned a round of applause from First Amendment advocates. “Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured: the university,” University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer said. But as the University of Chicago has made substantial strides toward freedom of speech on campus, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has opted to narrow the scope of what can be discussed in the classroom.

Last week, three professors co-teaching a course titled “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” released a statement that addressed students who question man-made climate change. “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” the professors said in a statement obtained by The College Fix. And if you disagree? The professors “respectfully ask that you do not take this course.”

One wonders: If the professors are positive that man-made climate change is occurring exactly in the manner they suggest, then why are they worried about a few students questioning their narrative? Universities are supposed to be places where students can improve themselves and others by debating openly. How does suppressing contradictory views aid that?

University Communications Director Tom Hutton backed the professors’ decision to limit students rather than to encourage free inquiry. “By clearly stating the class focus,” Hutton told The College Fix, “the faculty are allowing students to choose if they wish to enroll in the course or seek an alternative.” On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. And yet, if Hutton’s rationale were to be taken seriously, no student would ever enroll in a course that taught beliefs contrary to his own.

According to an old Israeli anecdote, Charles de Gaulle once complained to David Ben-Gurion, over a glass of (kosher) cognac: ‘Although I am Monsieur le Président, I have to deal with the Prime Minister, and he’s such a potz! You are sooo lucky, Davíd: your Président is just a figurehead; as the Prime Minister, you have all the power…’ ‘Oh, you have no idea!’ said Ben-Gurion with much chagrin. ‘You see, I have to deal with Jews in Israel. That’s currently two and a half million aspiring Prime Ministers and each thinks he can do a better job than I do…’

There are now almost 7 million aspiring Prime Ministers in Israel and about the same number in the Diaspora. And while every Jew thinks s/he can be Prime Minister, some act as if they already are.

Those who closely follow Israeli politics should be familiar with the phenomenon of high-level retired security and military personnel (sometimes even still-serving high-level security/military personnel!) making controversial public statements on political issues. Such statements, often quoted out of context and sometimes creatively ‘interpreted’, invariably cause embarrassment to the country’s political leadership.

The case of the so-called ‘Gatekeepers’ (former chiefs of the ‘Shin-Bet’ Internal Security Service who went public with their own analyses of the situation – mostly critical of Israel’s political leaders) is very well-known – not in the least because they are often cited, both by Israel’s sworn enemies and by various ‘concerned friends’.

What contributes to this situation is the fact that, in Israel, retired security and military ‘celebrities’ very often aspire to (and quite often achieve) top political positions. Out of the six ‘Gatekeepers’, four have been involved in politics after retirement; a fifth (Yuval Diskin) flirted with politics for a couple of years, before deciding to remain just a commentator – at least for the time being; the sixth ‘Gatekeeper’ (Avraham Shalom) is the only one who could never enter politics: hehad to resign from the Service, after allegedly ordering the summary execution of two captured Palestinian terrorists – and thus becoming a political ‘hot potato’.

Given Israel’s fully proportional election system, anyone aspiring to climb the ladder in politics must achieve national (rather than local) recognition. This is particularly important for security chiefs who – until not so long ago – operated mostly in the shadows, away from the public eye. And the sure-fire way to quickly achieve national (and also international) recognition is… to make controversial statements, of the kind that garner media attention and stir the interest of an already jaded public, one that is bombarded with ‘news’ umpteen times a day. Combine that with the Israeli/Jewish penchant for wild exaggeration and bombastic communication (traits that anyone familiar with the country and its people is well aware of) and you’ve got an explosive mixture – at least from a media point of view; a perpetual generator of cheap journalistic ‘scoops’.

The latest such scoop concerns one Tamir Pardo, former head of the Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations). His potential political ambitions are, for the moment at least, unclear. But it’s very early in the day: Mr. Pardo retired from the Institute only in June 2016.

A public speech Pardo made a few days ago contained some controversial remarks. Controversial enough, it seems, to attract the attention of Israeli media and – as always – of various interested parties outside Israel.

The Iranian Press-TV, for instance, stated with some glee:

“Israel heads toward civil war: Ex-spy boss”

The ‘forever-worried-over-Israeli-policies’ US Jewish organisation J-Street lamented:

“Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said that the biggest threat to Israel’s security is the conflict with the Palestinians and not Iran’s nuclear program.”

So what did Tamir Pardo actually say?

Among those diplomats and journalists who don’t simply blame the Arab-Israeli conflict entirely on Israel, the preferred approach is “evenhandedness.” This approach, epitomized by the “cycle of violence” cliché, holds that both sides want peace and are equally to blame for its absence. Remarkably, this view has persisted despite decades of proving wrong in ways that hurt the very countries which espouse it – as demonstrated yet again by newly released documents from the Nixon Administration.

The documents, which Amir Oren reported this week in Haaretz, include redacted versions of the CIA’s daily presidential briefings on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The agency’s cluelessness is mind-blowing.

On October 5, 1973, one day before the war began, the CIA acknowledged that “The military exercises underway in Egypt seem to be on a larger scale and are being conducted more realistically than previous ones,” but nevertheless insisted that “they do not appear to be preparations for an offensive against Israel.” The agency even dismissed an obvious danger sign as a reasonable response to fears of Israeli aggression: “Cairo may have put its air defense and air forces on alert as a precaution against an Israeli reaction to the initial phase of the exercise.”

On October 6, just hours before the war began, the CIA’s briefing was similarly disconnected from reality:

Tension along Israel’s borders with Egypt and Syria has been heightened by a Soviet airlift that is in its second day. Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs seem bent on starting hostilities, but in this atmosphere the risk of clashes is greater than usual. … Both the Israelis and the Arabs are becoming increasingly concerned about their adversaries’ military activities, but neither side seems bent on starting hostilities … A military initiative at this time would make little sense for either Cairo or Damascus.

Once again, the agency seemed to view potential Israeli aggression as the main concern: “Syria’s cautious President [Hafez] Assad appears braced for a possible second blow from Israel rather than seeking revenge for his recent loss of 13 MIGs to Israeli fighters … Nevertheless, the Syrians’ fears could lead to a mobilization of their defenses, which in turn could alarm and galvanize the Israelis. Such a cycle of action and reaction would increase the risk of military clashes which neither side originally intended.”

And once again, it ignored clear danger signs, like the evacuation of Soviet dependents from Egypt and Syria. While admitting that this could be due to “fear of an outbreak of hostilities,” it optimistically suggested that instead, “The Soviets might be using the excuse of rising tensions to reduce their presence without annoying the Egyptians.”

The film was referred to by ‘The New York Times’ as “one of the first close-up view of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

Syracuse University has passed over formally inviting Israeli film director Shimon Dotan to their international film conference “The Place of Religion in Film.”
Dotan had previously been informally invited by one of the events organizers, William L. Blizek, according to The Atlantic. The film Dotan was due to show at the March 2017 conference was his feature-length documentary ‘The Settlers’ which chronicles the history of the settlements, the people who live there and the movement as a whole.

The film itself was referred to by The New York Times as “one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival (and was made with financial support from the Israeli network YES and from the European network ARTE, among others) and opened throughout Israel recently.

However, despite an invitation, and interest on the part of the filmmaker Dotan, he was uninvited to the event due to the “BDS faction on campus.”

The Syracuse University BDS faction made no known statements or threats to Dotan’s possible participation and were perhaps unaware of it all together.

A rejection email Dotan received from Professor Hamner of the Religion Department of Syracuse University stated that the group would make things unpleasant for the Israeli filmmaker and possibly damage the reputation and credibility of the organizers and the event.

The email added that they regretted not having the opportunity to see the film and as such they could not vouch for it.

The film has been highly rated among critics. It mainly focuses on the radical fringe settlers and, according to reviews, is perceived as showing settlers in a negative light.

Dotan said he wants people to understand the reality, in all its complexity. “I don’t think Israel faces a military threat, but I think it does face the threat of disintegration from within… I think there is a threat to democracy and to the moral fabric of the country… I want the film to present a dialogue with the settlers in a way that will enlighten people.”