UC Middle East Studies Professors Throwing a Hissy Fit

The latest issue of Inside Higher Education has a thought-provoking article by Sara Weissman on the issue of professors presenting their personal opinions in the classroom. It comes in the wake of October 7 and the Israeli incursion into Gaza, a topic that has exploded on college campuses. Dr Michael Drake, the former chancellor at UC Irvine and now president of the UC system, is attempting to deal with the uproar on his own campuses by apparently throwing money at it, 2 million dollars to be spent on what appears to me to be more sensitivity training. The term that is being thrown around here is "viewpoint neutral". That has raised the hackles of several UC professors who feel that they will be muzzled in the classroom as opposed to being able to preach the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli narrative.

Dr Drake was chancellor at UC Irvine during most of the years I taught part-time there (1998-2016). I have never met him, but he appears to be a decent man and not an anti-Semite. Yet I was critical of him as UCI chancellor because it was my view that he was not adequately confronting the problem of campus anti-Semitism. So while I give a big yawn to this latest news, many of the liberal, anti-Israel professors under his command, particularly those engaged in Middle East Studies, are raising the red flag. 

As I have pointed out many times in other articles, Middle East Studies is a problem in itself. Far too many campuses have Middle East departments that have been funded and actually established with money donated by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Unsurprisingly, they are nothing more than indoctrination centers for pan-Arab, anti-Israel, anti-West propaganda. A prime example is UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies. (I don't know if they have ever received Middle Eastern money.)

"They also said Dr. Drake’s comments undeservedly called into question the “academic integrity” of UC professors already teaching about the Middle East.

“We insist … that professional historians and those in allied fields trained in the study of the Middle East are best-positioned to determine the curriculum, safeguard rigorous standards of research and teaching, and protect the climate of open discussion and critical inquiry which are the cornerstones of our scholarly community,” the letter read."

Open discussion??!! I have also called into question the academic integrity of (certain) professors teaching about the Middle East, both in the UC system and beyond. I stand by that criticism. Based on that opinion, I consider the contents of the second paragraph above to be a joke.

The linked article mentions some of the UC professors who are alarmed, including my old nemesis at UC Irvine, Mark LeVine. I am no member of his fan club, and he is no member of mine, but his statements quoted in the article, while hardly surprising, are worthy of a response.

"Scholarship is “based entirely on developing a point of view based on evidence and your research and your qualifications and arguing it,” said LeVine, one of the drafters of the letter. Professors should be sharing their perspectives, and “if that understanding is critical of any particular ideology—it could be Zionism, it could be capitalism, it could be communism, it doesn’t matter—you go with your research. That’s why we’ve been hired by UC.”

You know the old expression, "Opinions are like ----s. Everybody has one." I acknowledge that many, if not most professors agree with LeVine. They also agree that they should be free to advance their particular beliefs about the world in the classroom. Full disclosure: I am not a professor; I only possess a master's degree, but I do have about 25 years of teaching experience, and my view is that teachers should teach their topics and leave their own opinions at the door if possible. I should note that my teaching field was English as a second language, and it was fairly easy to keep my views about outside issues private. I grant you it is much more difficult to do that if teaching history, political science etc, but I don't think it is impossible. As for LeVine's examples, there was a time when the field of eugenics was very popular in German universities even before Hitler took power, at which time, it really took off. Needless to say, the professors of that day in Germany were very positive about eugenics, which heavily stressed the "scientific proof" that Aryans were superior to other groups of people, most notably Jews. And they were professors, scholars who did the "research".

We should not assume that just because the man or woman standing in front of the class is a professor, his or her words should carry particular weight. There are more than a few professors in universities around the country who are nothing more than fools. Some people think I am a fool, but they can't base that view on anything I ever said in my classroom.

LeVine continues:

"But “the university is not a space of comfort,” he said. “The university is a space where every premise you’ve ever had in your life should be torn down and you have to be forced to recreate it based on all the new things you learn,” whether that process strengthens or changes a student’s original positions."

How many times have I heard this before? How many times have I heard someone say that Jewish students who support Israel should not be able to feel comfortable on campus? How many times have I seen Jewish students bullied and had their own events disrupted by pro-Palestinian goons on campus?And yet, it is these same people who cry about "triggering", "micro-aggressions", "macro-aggressions" and plead for "safe spaces" when confronted with views that are pro-Israel, pro-America, conservative, Republican, etc. Apparently, LeVine believes that "every premise" that a student brings to the university is a false premise. I disagree.

To sum up, I wish Chancellor Drake well in his effort to bring some reform, if you will, to the UC classrooms, not to mention peace and tranquility. However, I doubt that the concerned professors in the UC system have anything to worry about. They will continue to exercise their "academic freedom" to indoctrinate students in the classroom. After all, this is a monster that has been some 60 years in the making. Nobody is going to change it overnight. But we can start.