Ethnic Studies and Israel

I am cross-posting an article by my friend and ally, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, former professor of Hebrew Studies at UC Santa Cruz and co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, an organization established to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses. The below article in JWeekly focuses on the Asian-American Studies Department at UCLA and one of its controversial professors. This particular department, however, is just part of a larger, overall problem around the nation. 

https://www.jweekly.com/2021/08/04/its-ethnic-studies-in-universities-that-need-watching/

Fousesquawk comment: Unfortunately, the Middle East has gotten its nose under the tent when it comes to Asian-American studies in university departments. Technically, it's considered Asia, so that makes it open territory for pro-Palestinian, pan-Arab, anti-West, and anti-Israel propaganda. And Asian-American Studies is not alone in this regard. Other ethnic studies departments, most notably African-American Studies, have linked arms with the Palestinian cause through the academic twist of intersectionality, which links Israel to most every problem afflicting other people around the world. It is intellectually and logically dishonest, but it has been embraced by most of American academia.

Featured in the above article is UCLA Professor Loubma Qutami. I once attended one of her speaking appearances at UC Irvine. It was the one time, per request of the Muslim Student Union, that campus police actually prevented me from videotaping. They later apologized and promised it would never happen again. 

I would hope that the UCLA Asian-American Studies Department would take a serious look at the rash of anti-Semitism that has broken out on college campuses-including their own- which has now metastasized into society at large, thanks mostly in my view, to the pro-Palestinian movement on campuses across the nation.

For one thing, what passes for scholarship in academia when it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, is largely opinion-based (example: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians) and almost completely one-sided in favor of the Palestinian narrative. The result has been the isolation of Jewish students on campus, and the bullying and intimidation of those students if they are pro-Israel or even assumed to be pro-Israel due to their Jewishness. It is wrong, and it should have been stopped years ago by university officials like UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. That it has not been stopped is a testament to the cowardice of those university officials including Block.