This article first appeared in New English Review.
Stanford University, like so many others, spent decades
building a reputation as a premier academic institution in the United States.
And like so many others, its actual worth as an educational center has declined
in recent decades due to the usual assortment of left-wing faculty who stress
indoctrination over education. One of the shining lights at Stanford, amid the
negativity, has been the renowned Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank
founded in 1959 by former President Herbert Hoover. Today it boasts people like
Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, and Victor Davis Hanson. Yet predictably, the forces of leftism on
campus are challenging the relationship between the Hoover Institution and
Stanford. This week’s Stanford
Daily, the campus newspaper of Stanford, has an article describing the
issue. In September, 100 faculty members signed a letter
to the university asking Stanford to re-evaluate its relationship with the
Hoover Institution based on their perceived (right-wing) bias.
I am familiar with two of the names on that letter, David
Palumbo-Liu, whose signature is at the top, and Joel Beinin. Both are liberal
activists chiefly known for their pro-Palestinian activism against the Jewish
state of Israel. I myself had the opportunity to see and hear Palumbo-Liu speak at
the University of California at Irvine, where I was a part-time teacher, in 2016.
Ironically, the topic of the event was freedom of speech in the age of Charlie
Hebdo. The event featured several leftist academics who didn’t care much for
Charlie Hebdo’s freedom of speech even after several of them had been
slaughtered in Paris for publishing Mohammad cartoons. Yet, most of them, including
Palumbo-Liu, complained bitterly that they and their fellow-pro-Palestinian
student-faculty activists were the victims of a campaign to silence them.
(Anybody who visits a college campus will soon see that the pro-Palestinian
forces are alive and loud, while it is the pro-Israel activists who have to
fear intimidation and disruption of their events, as I can personally attest
based on years of first-hand experience.) Suffice to say that Palumbo-Liu has a rather
twisted way of thinking when it comes to the question of who should be allowed
to express their views and who should not. In contrast, this is the guy who
caused a controversy on the Stanford campus in 2018 when he was reportedly acting
as front man to give Antifa access
to the campus.
But he doesn’t want the Hoover Institution on campus.
Beinin is a Middle East history professor who is another
garden variety academic hater of Israel. In this
article from Algemeiner (which describes him as a Maoist), we can
perhaps understand why he is so opposed
to the Hoover Institution. After all, it was founded as a voice against
Communism. In addition, he is part of the virtual academic army that always
leaps to the defense of whoever claims their right to say whatever they want
about Israel is being infringed. That includes people like Rutgers professor Jasbir
Puar, who, in 2016, told a Vassar audience that Israel was in the organ-harvesting
business.
But he doesn’t want the Hoover Institution on campus.
I know nothing about the other 98 learned professors who
have added their names to the aforementioned letter. I would bet an in-depth
search would find similar traits among many of them as well as with Palumbo-Liu
and Beinen. At any rate, based on what I know about the above two professors, I
find it ironic that they would object to the Hoover Institution because they
are so “one-sidedly conservative” in their views, when they themselves complain
that they themselves are victims of being silenced for their own views.
The word I believe is hypocrisy.
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