Joseph Massad
Kenneth Markus is the former head of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. Below, in Jewish Community and Research, he reports an incident at Columbia University's Barnard College, in which Barnard's Middle East Studies chair reportedly attempted to steer a Jewish student away from a class on Middle Eastern Studies taught by controversial professor Joseph Massad.
http://www.jewishresearch.org/quad_09_11/09-11/OCR_Opens_Investigation_against_Columbia.htm
Apparently, according to what Massad once said at UCLA, a gay student would also feel uncomfortable in his classroom. Below is a Frontpage Magazine piece written by my friend and colleague, Eric Golub.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/02/01/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/
So the chair told the Jewish student that she would feel uncomfortable in Massad's class. Columbia knows that Massad has been accused of being anti-Semitic. Here is the salient point. It appears that the departmental chair knew that a Jewish student would feel uncomfortable in Massad's class. If I were a departmental chair and felt that a student of any religion, race, sexual orientation, etc would feel uncomfortable in a particular professor's class, why would I have that professor on my staff?
Maybe that's a dumb question.
It is a good question.
ReplyDeleteBut consider where it leads.
If a teacher in the religion department taught that Jewish, Christian and Muslim doctrine considers homosexuality to be an offense against God, would it make a gay student feel uncomfortable? If it did, should that class be canceled?
I don't know if Joseph Massad is actually teaching anything that could be described as learning, as an academic discipline. But that is the real question.
If someone is teaching facts, they don't change the class because it makes someone feel uncomfortable. If someone is teaching a controversial viewpoint, it doesn't get suppressed because it makes someone feel uncomfortable.
And if someone takes the class who disagrees, they learn to raise their disagreements in a firm, well-substantiated way. The teacher doesn't single them out for ridicule, but does challenge them on their argument, and the student doesn't runoff whining about feeling uncomfortable. Also, advisers don't try to keep students out of classes because they MIGHT feel uncomfortable.
If that is a real concern, then something is wrong, probably several somethings.
There was a news item in 2005 that a Saudi gave $250,000 to Columbia, around the same time that the same or another Saudi prince gave $20 million to Georgetown and Harvard. There was the notion then that there would have to be a wait and see approach because the schools insisted that the money would not influence them, their choice of teachers, or would produce a more pro-Arab / anti-Israel approach.
ReplyDeleteWhat a surprise that this was the result.
This is one of the prostitute principles; you paid the money, you can do what you want.
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Gary asks:
ReplyDelete"If I were a departmental chair and felt that a student of any religion, race, sexual orientation, etc would feel uncomfortable in a particular professor's class, why would I have that professor on my staff?
Thanswer is: The Saudis are the chair of the Middle East studies departments at the major universities.
Squid
Your source, Squid? Or are we just supposed to take your word for it?
ReplyDeleteafter decades of political correctness, it seems dependent on denegrating another group. I attended UC Irvine in the late eighties and again in the late nineties. I noticed both times that UC Irvine student body is predominantly asian and yet it seems this group never complains or whines about racial injustice, they don't hate other students based on their faith, ethnicity or race. Yet, the Asians academically excel and continue to succeed after they leave UC Irvine. Conversely, a minority of Middle Eastern students continuously persecute the Jewish students at UC Irvine. And from what I read on this blog site, anti-Semitism is accepted at other public and private universities.
ReplyDeleteTaxpayer,
ReplyDeleteUCI is still largely Asian-American, and that is a real positive. It makes UCI a pleasant place to be in spite of certain problems of which i write.
fullerton, if you base your sense of what the world is like on what you read at this blog site, I have some ocean front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.
ReplyDelete