Salem on the Thames: Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College 9781644691007

Citation preview

SALEM ON THE THAMES

Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College

Antisemitism in America Series Editor Eunice Pollack (University of North Texas, Denton, Texas)

SALEM ON THE THAMES

Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College

Edited by RICHARD LANDES

BOSTON 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Landes, Richard, 1949- editor. Title: Salem on the Thames : moral panic, anti-zionism, and the triumph of hate speech at Connecticut College / edited by Richard Landes. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Series: Antisemitism in America | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2019039413 (print) | LCCN 2019039414 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644690987 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644690994 (paperback) | ISBN 9781644691007 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Connecticut College. | Education, Higher--Political aspects-United States. | Zionism--United States--Public opinion. | Hate speech-United States. Classification: LCC LC89 .S25 2020 (print) | LCC LC89 (ebook) | DDC 378.746/5--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039413 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039414 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-64469-098-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-64469-099-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-64469-100-7 (adobe pdf) Book design by PHi Business Solutions Limited. Cover design by Ivan Grave. Published by Academic Studies Press. 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] w w w.academics tudiespress.com

Credit: Elisheva Horowitz

Contents

Prefaceix Richard Landes Introduction  1 Asaf Romirowsky Andrew Pessin’s Facebook Post during Operation Protective Edge 5 Condensed Timeline 8 PART ONE When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime Richard Landes 1 The Post: On Truth and Metaphor 2 The Shameful Dishonesty of It All: An Annotated Chronology from the Perspective of the Victim  3 The People: McCarthyism, New London Style PART TWO Studies in Pessinology 4 Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency Ashley Thorne 5 “I Was Rude, You Were Evil”: Reflections on Academia, Liberalism, and the Betrayal of Andrew Pessin John Gordon 6 The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagues Fred Baumann

17 19 34 72 97 99 114 138

viii

Contents

PART THREE Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats Richard Landes 7 What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us 8 Reflections on Academia and Freedom: The Case of Connecticut College, Spring 2015 9 Pessin, Ironic Prophet: The Liberal Emperor’s New Clothes of Humanitarian Racism

171

173 186 195

Bibliography201

Preface RICHARD LANDES

I

first met Andrew Pessin as a result of his ordeal at Connecticut College in the Spring of 2015. As soon as I heard about it in the national media, it struck me as ominous: Professor with Zionist sympathies ridden out of his community on an ideological rail, tarred and feathered with accusations of hate speech, by a coalition of “progressives” with a Muslim student and Muslim professor leading the attack. After speaking with him and reading the material I made available at my blog, and analyze here, it became clear this was a major study in the failure of what one might call the cultural Maginot Line against fascism.1 At the same time, it’s been important for me to imagine Andrew before I met him, before his colleagues threw him under the social-justice juggernaut, back in the good old days when he was still riding high. Here one finds a remarkably gifted and versatile individual, a great teacher and colleague, a sharp thinker with a finely tuned sense of the sound and the absurd, and a talented, insightful, novelist. He was in every sense, a local star, who appeared on David Letterman, the author, among other things of The 60-Second Philosopher: Expand Your Mind on a Minute or so a Day!, and Uncommon Sense: The Strangest Ideas from the Smartest Philosophers. Just in sheer intellectual terms, Connecticut College, in their rush to judgment, trashed a rare resource, and deprived the larger community of an important, creative voice. Who knows, for some that may have been the point. I wrote this based on materials given to me by Pessin and others, in order to represent what was not made available. It describes what happened, in detail, from his perspective. Given that his p­ erspective was precisely what no

1

For further examples specifically documenting attacks on Israel-supporters, see Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech and BDS, ed. Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar (Bloomington ID: Indiana University Press, 2018). There are, of course, wide ranging examples of non-Israel related incidents. See chapter by Ashley Thorne in this volume.

x

Preface

one of consequence allowed to become known at the time, even as his college community was putting Pessin through a terrifying ordeal, it seemed most valuable—and fair—to expose the Connecticut College community to what they had done, viewed through the eyes of its victim. It is my fervent hope that this book will be available at the ConnColl bookstore, and widely read on campus. How often do we get the opportunity to read the voice of our unjust victim? At a certain point, Andrew and I stopped talking about these matters in any detail. I assumed he signed an agreement with his university that forbade him, some kind of non-disclosure agreement. Given that he was simultaneously dealing with deeply troubling personal and family matters (to be identified in what follows), I could hardly begrudge him having given up the right to talk about what had happened in order to have the breathing room to recover. So as the detailed conversations we had previously had ceased, I realized I was on my own. Naturally when I began to work on this book I invited him to contribute to it. I was not entirely surprised when he politely declined. As I wrote, I tried to avoid getting too close to the players. I don’t, for example, know who is who, between A, B, C, and D, in the Philosophy department. After initially trying to reach the Dean and the President without success, I have not sought to turn this into a piece of investigative journalism. Consider these the reflections of a medievalist, who pieces together a picture from fragmentary evidence. In this case, the evidence (see Pessin Archive) seems overwhelming in favor of Pessin’s reading, with very few anomalies from the “other side” to challenge this plain meaning. Any closer, more personal investigation would mean fieldwork in pervasive cognitive dissonance and “self-justifying retrospective narratives” that proliferate as a result (e.g., p. 59f.). Enough and too much. By the standards of moral and intellectual integrity that have, over the past five centuries, created the modern social miracle of academia, i.e. an institutional framework built around speaking freely, this was a shameful episode. No one behaved well, not even Pessin. Bluntly put, the Connecticut College community was put to a major moral test in the Spring of 2015, and it failed miserably. It’s not often one can make a case study of such a “cross-the-boards” failure, a kind of “Emperor’s New Clothes” scenario. They certainly deserve close examination. But rather than revel in the moral degradation of people we criticize, we need to reflect on the larger, more specific but less personal themes: whence the cowardice—individual and, so astonishingly, collective? Why the failures? What the rationalizations? Granted, when I first spoke to Pessin back in April of

Preface

2015, he was angry and wanted to settle scores; and I shared his sense of grievance. But I was always amazed at Pessin’s remarkably kind personality, his willingness to empathize with people who had wronged and betrayed him, to cut many people, even Khandaker, slack. He wanted his righteousness back more than he wanted to punish those who took it from him. Honor vengeance is not in his bones. So, in writing, I preferred to present the case in all its gory intellectual detail, not sparing some of the more egregious behavior (attackers, philosophy faculty, top administrators), but trying to avoid as much as possible, specific personalities. If this incident is to teach us anything, it is as analysis, not gossip or score settling. If in the process of keeping my distance, I have gotten people “wrong,” described them inaccurately, even made mistakes about their actions and the course of events, I apologize and welcome substantive correction to the record. On the other hand, I am fairly certain that no unfair damage I may do to them comes anywhere near the unfair damage they did to their colleague, Andrew Pessin. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2019, an exchange happened at the Washington Mall, between some Catholic High School students, some wearing MAGA hats, and at least two “constituencies” present—a group of Black Hebrew Israelites, and a group of Native Americans. Video footage appeared showing a student wearing a MAGA hat, smiling at a native elder. Framed with a narrative which identified the smile as a taunt aimed at the elder, the brief video went viral, inciting a wave of horrified outrage from various figures— including in the highest levels of public discourse—some of which bordered on hate speech. Reza Aslan, the Muslim religious scholar, tweeted a photo with the question, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” A pop culture contributing writer at Vulture magazine, spoke of “the hysterical rage, nausea, and heartache this makes me feel. I just want these people to die. Simple as that. Every single one of them. And their parents.”2  And, it turns out, this was yet another staged emergency into which good people jumped with both feet. The larger video evidence, while not decisive in any way, and often inaudible, does not support the narrative that so incensed so many. In this nationwide case, the corrections came quickly, much faster than with Pessin. Even progressive publications addressed the worrisome signs 2 John Levine, “Vulture Writer Who Wished Death on Covington Students Fired From Job at INE Entertainment,” The Wrap, January 21, 2019; https://www.thewrap.com/vulture-­ writer-on-covington-students-i-just-want-these-people-to-die-simple-as-that/.

xi

xii

Preface

of online bullying and misinformation, and the disturbing nature of a triggerhappy moral outrage.3 And yet, others persisted in believing what the video had shown them. The visceral dynamics that smashed into Andrew Pessin’s intellectual career in the spring of 2015 are still with us, if anything, immensely exacerbated by the advent of the Trump administration. Americans/Westerners increasingly inhabit narrative camps so at odds with each other, that we have internalized the clash of civilizations. “My side, right or wrong; the other side cannot be right.” For some, the fact that these students supported Trump put them beyond the pale, and made them the villains of any tale one could possibly tell; for others, the students could only be innocent victims. That’s what empiricism is supposedly for, why “due process” is fair, why reasoning from evidence counts. It’s what permits us not to demonize each other and fall into the widening gyres of war and devastation. It’s what makes democracy possible. I publish this collection of writings, then, above all as a guide to avoiding this madness of our times, and as an opportunity to turn to sanity through honest analysis. Ultimately, only honest self-criticism can make the difference. James Fallows, at the end of his careful analysis of the “Confrontation at the Mall,” quotes C. S. Lewis on the key issue: how does one respond to evidence that the “other guy” was not as bad as he or she at first seemed: Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?   If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally,

3 Conors Friedersdorf, “Social-Media Outrage Is Collapsing Our Worlds,” Atlantic, January 22, 2019; https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/outrage/579553/. Caitlin Flanagan, “The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story: And the damage to their credibility will be lasting,” Atlantic, January 23, 2019; https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/ article/581035/?__twitter_impression=true.

Preface we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.4

At ConnColl in the Spring of 2015, hatred won out, and Pessin was sacrificed, as have been many others before and since. In the 2020s, can we turn this around? Let us begin by offering those who were every bit as bad as they seemed, the participants in the hate-fest, the opportunity to rethink what they did. I have structured the book as follows: 1) In Part I, I present a.  a chapter on the exegetical issue, perhaps more detailed than most readers would normally read, but one that lies at the heart of the intellectual travesties involved. b.  A long annotated chronology that tells the story as it happened, with annotations concerning Pessin’s point of view. c.  A discussion of the key actors in the drama, not as specific individuals, but as (self-fashioned) caricatures—the post-colonial Muslim scholar of Islam, the SJP inspired Muslim student, the radical left revolutionaries, students and profs, the administrators and faculty trying to virtue-signal their commitment to social justice.­­ 2)  The reflections of a number of the people involved in this incident, or well enough informed to shed important light on what happened. a.  Ashley Thorne puts the Pessin Affair in the context of “staged emergencies,” or moral panics that seize campuses and impose a moral discourse which mass shames and excludes certain targeted, ideologically deviant figures. b.  John Gordon, a professor at ConnColl on the verge of retirement, who defended Pessin, reflects on both the astonishing nature of his colleague’s responses, and on the broader academic betrayal of the kind of progressive concerns that engaged so many of us in the ‘60s and ‘70s. c.  Fred Baumann, a secular Jewish colleague at another university, analyzes the response of Pessin’s (largely Jewish) colleagues in the 4 James Fallows, “Confrontation at the Mall,” Atlantic, January 21, 2019; https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/01/imagining-injustices-confrontation-mall/580888/.

xiii

xiv

Preface

Philosophy Department and more broadly the Jews on campus to the events, interrogating their (often unspoken, occasionally denied) awareness that these events and their responses match so many earlier cases of hostility: “Sacrificing one’s own for the larger good, namely continued tolerance [to the rest of the Jews] by a hostile ruling authority, is a tough choice, but sometimes it may have to be made.” d.  Three pieces by me, including a talk I gave at Connecticut College in the fall of 2015.

Introduction ASAF ROMIROWSKY

T

his compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who became a target for antiIsrael students and faculty, as a result of a Facebook post he published during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza (known as Operation Protective Edge), on the actions of the Islamist-terrorist group Hamas. Pessin was attacked by one of his own students, an SJP leader, who accused him of having “directly condoned the extermination of a people,” based on a deliberate misreading of Pessin’s Facebook post. The accusation, however, swayed both students and colleagues, and Pessin soon found himself the object of a witch-hunt, in which his attackers accused the administration of “institutional racism” for not firing him. His isolation and vulnerability were intensified by the school’s small size—almost 1,900 students and about 200 faculty. Overall, the Pessin affair is emblematic of a growing and insidious trend in academia today. College campuses have become platforms for those who disparage Israel, as seen in the different human rights, anti-globalization, and anti-imperialism groups that have adopted the Palestinian cause. But as with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, the hateful, conspiratorial view of malevolent Jews and (now) Israel, propounded by the far left and by radical Islam, has become the core of a new anti-Semitism, which has gained a shocking traction in the academy. These trends have been magnified as a result of identity politics, which has clouded reality and prevented younger generations from distinguishing between facts and opinions. Indeed, thanks to the intensity of feelings that cannot—must not—be questioned, opinions have become facts. The Pessin story exemplifies this process, especially in the way his attackers pressured the school to endorse their identity-based feelings and views as reality.

2

Introduction

To those who embrace progressive identity-politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict embodies every ailment of Western society, especially as it relates to that Western invention, “human rights.” The Palestinian cause, already become a cause célèbre of the humanities and social sciences in the late twentieth century under the influence of Edward Saïd’s post-colonial denunciation of “Orientalism,” has become the main focus of the wildly successful identity politics of the twenty-first century. Thus, anyone sympathetic towards Israel breaks the post-colonial rules. Supporters of Israel and Israelis themselves have little to no chance of getting a fair or dispassionate hearing or treatment in the academic arena. Pessin, for example, was outflanked by people who claimed to represent academic freedom (to say what they feel) while silencing Pessin for his “hateful” speech. So strong was this dynamic, that both the administration (president on down) and Pessin’s fellow (identified) Jews still on campus urged him not to defend himself and his post from the misrepresentations of his attackers, lest he anger them further. Catch-22. The modern notions of free speech and academic freedom flow from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which argued that free speech originates in society’s desire to discover the truth, and it therefore must tolerate a wide range of opinion. By suppressing what may be a correct opinion (e.g., germ theory), society loses the opportunity to exchange an error for truth. But banning a false opinion, Mill maintained, also means losing something almost as precious—a clearer perception of truth that is produced by its clash with error. If no foes are available to put one’s ideas to the test, Mill urges inventing arguments against one’s own beliefs. But post-modern academia has dispensed with such tests of its own beliefs: in the name of a concern for the feelings of all those “marginalized and underrepresented voices” that cry out to be heard, it suppresses the often empirically solid claims of one side as unacceptably offensive, and privileges the emotional reactions of the other, however offensive, as a new kind of factual reality. The Pessin Affair presents a case study of the clear lack of balance in current academic discussions concerning the conflict now taking place in the area from “the River to the Sea.” So-called scholarship has been replaced by propaganda, which studiously avoids examining, much less condemning, terrorism or jihadism. Such an atmosphere enables intolerable ideas to become accepted as norms, and marginalizes sane responses of disapproval. No scholar, apparently, wants his colleagues calling him a racist Orientalist and an Islamophobe.

Introduction

Today, those identifying as activist scholars in North America and Europe insist—as does Jeremy Corbyn—that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and accusing her of genocide against the Palestinian people, is legitimate criticism (it feels right), and not anti-Semitism (the Livingstone Formulation). Any supporter of Israel who objects to this twenty-first-century avatar of anti-Semitism is racist and just trying to silence the legitimate criticism. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban noted when the first accusations that Zionism=Racism hit the UN in 1975: There is no difference whatever between antisemitism and the denial of Israel’s statehood. Classical antisemitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination.

As the popularity of the boycott movement’s crusade against Israel has grown, some American Jews on the left have joined forces with this effort to place their fellow Jewish Zionists beyond the pale, as people who cannot/ should not be debated due to their abominable views. Moreover, an insidious double standard is applied: Jewish organizations like Hillel must include anti-Israel voices or be deemed intolerant or racist; whereas no one demands that the pro-Palestinian side hear any Zionist voices. Thus “good” Jews should engage in dialogue with BDS representatives or other Palestinian advocates no matter how extreme their demand (e.g., the ethnic cleansing of Israel), but no BDS advocates should have to listen to “bad” Jews, who defend Israel’s actions and challenge the Palestinian narrative. To even allow such a challenge would violate the “anti-normalization” demands of groups like the SJP and MSA, who insist that no Muslim or Arab engage in any way with poisonous Israelis or even Jews, lest it encourage compromise and co-existence, when “true justice” demands the restoration of a wholly Muslim Palestine. Even interfaith dialogues have been criticized. And now, a few leading American Jewish intellectuals have adopted the rhetoric and methods of BDS—moral outrage at unacceptable pronouncements, against normalization with those so stigmatized—but they apply it only to their own (bad) fellow Jews. Heaven forbid they should express disapproval of Palestinian statements or deeds. Pessin’s experience conforms to a wider pattern on North American campuses where pro-Palestinian sympathizers, whose ranks include some

3

4

Introduction

prominent Jews, have abused the collective memory of the Holocaust. They have broken Cynthia Ozick’s cardinal rule that “Jews are not metaphors— not for poets, not for novelists, not for theologians, not for murderers, and never for anti-Semites. …” They have dismissed anyone who invokes the Holocaust to defend Israel as “Holocaust-consumed,” and then turn Israelis into the new Nazis. Historically, Jews have been subjected to segregation, ostracism, and boycotts; indeed, the boycott movement is only the latest avatar of this millennia-long hate fest. Those sponsoring it are more interested in hurting Israel (and its supporters), if not obliterating it altogether, than in promoting human rights. Were it otherwise, they would be demanding boycotts of the numerous Middle Eastern dictatorships that are guilty of the genuinely horrendous atrocities against their own peoples. But then, how many times have the streets of European capitals filled with indignant progressives, enraged at the massacres of civilians in Syria, Iraq, and Sudan? Pessin was not the first, nor will he be the last, victim of the SJP and BDS. And academic discourse in the public sphere will continue to degenerate under the demands of identity-politics, not only where Israel is concerned, but across a wide spectrum of issues and fields in the social “sciences” and the humanities. This book, however, is dedicated to turning the Pessin Affair into a turning point. By studying the affair in its painful (and to the ConnColl community, deeply shameful) detail, anyone interested in the health of the public sphere in the West in the twenty-first century can learn much about how a travesty like the one that occurred during the Spring semester of 2015 at Connecticut College could have happened, and what we all need to do, in individual and institutional ways, to stem this tide of intellectual disintegration. It may take courage, but at least it need not take shedding blood to stand up for intellectual and moral integrity.

Andrew Pessin’s Facebook Post during Operation ­Protective Edge

A

ndrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, August 11, 2014, Facebook entry later taken down in the face of misinterpretation, transcribed by me. Includes comment section, lost when Pessin took down the post, restored from a screen shot later.

6

Andrew Pessin’s Facebook Post during Operation ­Protective Edge

I’m sure someone could make a cartoon of this, but one image which essentializes the current situation in Gaza might be this. You’ve got a rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape. The owner, naturally keeps the thing in the cage, but being kind-hearted or something, regularly feeds it, waters it, takes care of its health needs, etc. But liberal hearted world is outraged at the cruelty of keeping in in the cage, keeps pressuring the owner to let it out. Every so often the man relents under pressure, opens the cage a crack, and the pit bull comes roaring bounding out, snarling, going for the throat. A short battle ensues, the pit bull gets put back in … and almost immediately liberal world pressure starts complaining about the cruelty to animals and insisting he open the cage. Gaza is the cage because of its repeated efforts to destroy Israel and the Jews. (1990s suicide buses anyone? how quickly we forget.) The blockade is not the cause of the current conflict. It is the RESULT of the conflict and cannot retroactively become its cause. The same is true of Judea and Samaria, the result of the Arab enmity toward Israel and not its cause. Anyone who fails to recognize that clear and obvious fact is demanding the release of a rabid pit bull. You may call for this release because you are yourself a rabid pit bull protesting your co-specimen’s detention, or because you are a well-meaning liberal hearted animal rights person. But you are demanding the same thing. (And I wonder how heartily you’d demand this if the rabid pit bull was to be released in YOUR neighborhood.) Comments: Nicole ***: Wasn’t too keen on your metaphor as I think a dog like that should be put down. But I understand your point and it’s all true. They can’t be trusted and that why there’s blockades. Terrorists should be put down as well, just like the dog. August 11, 2014 at 3:38 am Andrew Pessin: I agree nicole—but a lot of people out of (misplaced) kindness to the dog wouldn’t put it down … August 11, 2014 at 6:22 am *****: I like the metaphor. Perhaps to address Nicole’s point, we can think of Gaza as a group of dogs in one cage. with most of them ***** possibly being healthy/nonviolent. Killing ALL of the dogs seems wrong, since there might be a healthy one in the bunch. August 11, 20114 at 9:08 am

Andrew Pessin’s Facebook Post during Operation ­Protective Edge

Nicole ***: I said terrorists. I meant Hamas and not all Palestinians. August 11, 2014 at 9:08 am *****: Right, I know you weren’t suggesting killing innocent Palestinians. My point is just that it’s difficult to target terrorists when they are living among the innocent.

7

Condensed Timeline Jan 22, 2015 Philosophy Professor Andrew Pessin participates in a public faculty panel discussing the Charlie Hebdo massacre earlier that month. Jan 24 Student Lamiya Khandaker emails Pessin objecting to his Hebdo remarks. Jan 25 Pessin replies to Khandaker. She did not respond. Feb 2 Aparna Gopalan, the Opinions Editor of The College Voice (the student newspaper), publishes an editorial including criticism of Pessin’s Hebdo remarks. Feb 18, late Khandaker emails Pessin again, this time objecting to his Facebook post from the previous summer (2014), claiming that it refers to Palestinians as “rabid [pit] bulls.” Feb 19 Pessin responds promising a more substantial response. Khandaker writes back at 10:01 am that she wasn’t interested in any response he might make about his “political views.”

Condensed Timeline

Feb 20, 5 pm Pessin responds to Khandaker explaining that the post was about Hamas, apologizing for any inadvertent unclarity, and informing her that he had deleted the post. She does not reply. Feb 22 Pessin learns that Prof. Sufia Uddin, faculty advisor to Khandaker and Director of Global Islamic Studies program, was circulating his post far and wide. Feb 22 Pessin’s house explodes from a gas leak. His attackers were fully informed of these circumstances but proceed anyway. Mar 1 Dean of Faculty Abigail Van Slyck emails Pessin about concerns about his post. Mar 2 Pessin emails Van Slyck about Khandaker, urging Muslim Student Ikbel Amri to circulate his now removed Facebook post on his international Facebook network. Mar 2 The College Voice publishes three letters from students affiliated with GIS, accusing Pessin of inciting hatred, racism, and genocide. In violation of professional ethics, the Voice did not provide Pessin with a response. Mar 2, late night Pessin informs Van Slyck that from fear for his safety he would not be coming to campus the next day. Mar 3 Pessin meets with Faculty Ombudsperson English Prof. Courtney Baker and Dean Van Slyck, shares his earlier correspondence with Khandaker and Uddin. Dean Van Slyck informs Pessin of a group of students who had filed a “bias incident” complaint against him.

9

10

Condensed Timeline

Mar 4 Obeying the Dean, Pessin meets with 8 or 9 students, along with Dean Van Slyck and others. Dean Sarah Cardwell asks Pessin to resign as faculty advisor to the Honor Council. Connecticut College issues a press release announcing the launch of its new major in Global Islamic Studies. In response to someone who had posted a criticism of her March 2 letter on the Voice website, Khandaker posts an angry profanity-filled reply, later illicitly removed. Pessin emails a collective missive to the philosophy majors and minors. Mar 5 A meeting is held to plan an Open Forum after Spring Break in response to the incident. The planning committee consists nearly entirely of the students and faculty leading the campaign against Pessin. Pessin’s colleagues in Philosophy send an email to students criticizing Pessin’s post and explanations as failing to meet “department standards of inclusiveness.” They further warn Pessin against emailing the students collectively. Mar 6 Pessin publishes a letter of apology which, at the prompting if Van Slyck, did not contain any self-defense in which Pessin insists that he was misinterpreted. Mar 7–22 Spring Break Mar 8 Pessin’s coerced and censored apology appears in the Voice online edition. Mar 18 Online petition denouncing Pessin and demanding acts against him by the administration.

Condensed Timeline

Mar 19 Pessin makes a plea to Dean Van Slyck about the frightening comments on the petition and how physically threatening it was to him and his family. The ­administration did nothing. Mar 20 Pessin informs Dean Van Slyck that he has taken down his Facebook page. Mar 21–22 Zuraw-Friedland changes the title of her petition to “that the College issue a public statement declaring that it does not condone Prof Pessin’s racism and dehumanization.” Mar 23 Pessin, accompanied by an advisor, meets with President Bergeron and Dean Van Slyck, during which it became clear the President had only read the first paragraph of the post. She urges Pessin to remain silent, promising to handle the situation herself and granting him a medical leave effective immediately, to last until January 2016. Mar 23, evening The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) sends a formal statement to the faculty listserv condemning speech “filled with bigotry and hate particularly when that speech uses dehumanizing language and incites or celebrates violence.” Mar 24 Inside Higher Ed and NPR contact and interview Pessin. Mar 25 Numerous other departments begin releasing statements condemning Pessin’s post. News of the affair spread to the philosophy listservs and blogs, with very negative coverage.

11

12

Condensed Timeline

Mar 25 The administration sponsors an Open Forum, canceling and rescheduling other college events, presided over by a President who still had not read the full post. Zuraw-Friedland alerts sympathetic media to cover the event. Mar 26 Bergeron creates a “Dean of Equity and Inclusion,” and appoints three “interim” Deans. More departments releases condemnatory statements. The Student Government Association pushes through resolutions explicitly condemning Pessin. Mar 27 More departments release statements, students pressure faculty members to sign. Dissenting voices who support Pessin report heavy intimidation. Mar 29 Volume of hate mail and threats to Pessin increase. Spencer Pack emails first public dissent, supported by Jeff Strabone, John Gordon, and Perry Susskind. Mar 30 Racist N-word graffiti appears in a campus bathroom. The administration cancels all classes for another general school meeting, deemed “mandatory attendance.” Mar 30 Pessin emails Zuraw-Friedland requesting she take down her petition, which had sharply increased hate speech. Apr 1 A revised petition, now listing Gopalan as sponsor replaces the first petition. Apr 2 The administration tells Pessin to refrain from communicating any further with the students.

Condensed Timeline

Apr 8 David Bernstein, “The Hypocrisy and Dishonesty of Attacks on Connecticut College Professor Andrew Pessin.” The Washington Post. Apr 9 An online petition is posted supporting “Free Speech and Professor Pessin.” (It eventually received over 10,700 signatures.) Apr 13 David Bernstein publishes a second article in in The Washington Post, proving the dishonesty of Pessin’s critics and the accuracy of Pessin’s claims. Apr 13 Khandaker posts in the Voice a second letter, complaining about the backlash she had received for publishing her original letter. Apr 16 In response to the Bernstein articles, student (and original accuser) Zachary Balomenos publishes in the Voice an apology to Pessin, acknowledging that he’d been misinformed about the contents of Pessin’s post. He was the only one— person or organization—to do so. Apr 18 Students defending Pessin files several Honor Code violations against Gopolian for publishing fake news. Apr 19 The administration appoints Gopalan a student member of the new “Bias Task Force.” Two of the three faculty members on the task force were from the Global Islamic Studies program. Apr 24 The Dean of Equity and Inclusion announces the Melrod Lecture on Jewish Studies.

13

14

 Condensed Timeline

Apr 27 Gopalan publishes editorial advocating using the news media as a weapon. Apr 30 Someone reposts on the Voice website Khandaker’s angry reply from Mar 4, subsequently deleted. May 3 Professors Pack and Strabone, who defended Pessin, get called into the Dean’s Office to hear Uddin’s complaints. May 5 Zuraw-Friedland publishes an editorial where she admitts her lack of journalistic integrity, but did it because she felt “in her gut” that it was right. May 7 Comments critical of Zuraw-Friedland on the Voice website deleted multiple times. (Eventually someone managed to re-post them.) May 8 Education Prof. Sandy Grande promoted to Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. May 12 Prof. Jefferson Singer is named new Dean of the College, over the other finalist, Prof. Candace Howes. May 14 History Prof. David Canton is promoted to continue on as Dean of Equity and Inclusion. The administration thus endorsed his anti-Israel programming as interim Dean.

Condensed Timeline

May 2015 (unclear date) Khandaker is given a “Scholar Activist” Award by the Dean of the College, “in recognition of concerns of social justice through research and scholarship during the Spring of 2015.” May 17 President Bergeron praises the College’s Honor Code at commencement, and the College’s “culture of student accountability.”

15

CHAPTER 1

The Post: On Truth and Metaphor … our shared commitment to the principles of a liberal arts education: inquiry, analysis, and respectful discourse. —Dean of Faculty Van Slyck, memo to the faculty, April 14, 2015 The ideals of integrity, civility, and respect for the dignity of all human beings provide the foundation for how students, faculty, and staff should interact and learn from each other. Integrity: Our students exemplify honesty, honor, and respect for the truth in all of their conduct. Civility: Our students are just and equitable in their treatment of all members of the community and act to discourage and/or intervene to prevent unjust and inequitable behaviors. Respect: Our students show positive regard for each other, for property, and for the community. —Student Handbook (2014–15) on the Honor Code, 16–17

T

here are many values Connecticut College rightly chooses to uphold. “Inclusivity” and “diversity” are among them, as are “free speech” and “intellectual integrity”—values that prize open-minded inquiry and analysis, honesty, acting justly and fairly. And deeply embedded in this intellectual and moral world of academia, we find the value of intellectual or exegetical modesty, the willingness to acknowledge a mistake when confronted with evidence, and to change one’s mind. In principle, there is no reason that the values of justice and equity should clash with those of integrity and intellectual modesty. On the contrary, this combination allows for marginalized and underrepresented voices to speak,

20

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

and those with legitimate cases to appeal to the democratic public sphere’s sense of justice. Granted, sometimes, one has to shout. But deliberately creating “fake news,” should call those appeals into doubt. Of course, respect for the truth, fairness and due process, requires hearing both sides of the story. And yet, at Connecticut College, in the Spring of 2015, the entire school, led by the newly appointed President, turned on one of the faculty, accused him of hate speech and incitement to genocide, without even asking him what he meant when he wrote the offending words or reading the entire text. With very few exceptions, no one acted “to discourage and/or intervene to prevent unjust and inequitable behaviors,” even though, previously, this professor had been one of the upstanding members of his academic community. At the heart of the matter is the “text.” To be sure, a text can often be read differently in different contexts. Some readings are superficial, some are deeper, some superficially deep. Some literal, some figurative, some radical, revolutionary, some more conservative. There is the author’s meaning, and there are diverse readers’ meanings. Andrew Pessin’s Facebook post could perhaps be read in an offensive way, particularly when read incompletely and taken out of the original context. And that was how individuals, hostile to Pessin’s Zionist politics, read them, and— here is the issue at the heart of this study—convinced almost the entire college community, including his colleagues and alleged friends, to so read them. In a convulsion of exegetical malice, they accused Pessin of describing the Palestinian people as rabid pit bulls and calling for their extermination. Those same words could, however, also be read in another way, his intended way, which bore little resemblance to the offensive way, indeed it made an altogether different moral case which, during the massive campus controversy, was never voiced. Chapter 2 will address the role the college’s administration played in keeping the correct reading out of the discussion. Understanding the difference between these opposing readings is essential to a search for both truth and fairness. Therein lies the difference between Pessin the racist and Pessin the critic of racists. It is the difference between his calling for the extermination of a people and his calling for the defeat of an organization that calls for the extermination of a people. To understand what his post actually said, we should begin with a review of the first five minutes of Exegesis 101. Original context, including historical circumstances, contemporary events, the author’s other immediately preceding writings, is essential to understand an author’s meaning, as is reading the text completely and carefully. To be sure, a

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

post-modern school considers the author “dead,” thereby liberating the text from too narrow a meaning, but generally that concerns a) actually dead authors, and b) authors of such transcendent art that their texts have meanings even they did not fully grasp. In this case, a) the author was alive, and b) the “new” reading was in direct contradiction—and profoundly hostile—to what the author explained was his intent. Pessin published the post on August 11, 2014. The post began by telling readers that it is about the “current situation in Gaza,” that is, the war between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel, in full swing at the time. In the weeks leading up to August 11, the media and blogosphere were filled with chatter on casualty counts, civilian casualties, (dis)proportionality, the use of human shields, media bias, the Israeli blockade on Hamas, etc.1 Nearly every one of Pessin’s Facebook posts from July through August of 2014 explicitly addressed Hamas and its activities during the war, its operations, its tactics, its manipulation of the media, and so on. Between July 23 and August 10, he wrote ten posts explicitly about Hamas. On August 11, he put up seven more posts about Hamas. Like the previous 10, all were explicitly about Hamas, except for one. That was the one Pessin’s attackers presented to the public in isolation from the 16 surrounding posts, all explicitly about Hamas.2 Much of the world was demanding an end to the Israeli blockade on Hamas. The post argued that Israel justifiably maintained its defensive blockade on the basis of Hamas’s long history of violence against Israel and Israelis, its current violence, and, given its express genocidal ideology, its promise of continued violence. Pessin used the metaphor of a rabid pit bull in a cage. That rabid pit bull, in the metaphor, was Hamas, and the cage, the blockade. It is unmistakable that the pit bull represented the violence that was emanating from Gaza. To anyone reading the post when it was written, during the Hamas-Israel war, when Hamas was raining 150 missiles a day on Israeli civilians, emerging from cross-border tunnels with weapons blazing, and killing Israeli soldiers, it would be obvious that Hamas was the source of Gazan ­violence. Those reading the post six or seven or twelve months later should have asked whom they thought was the source of violence in Gaza—Hamas or the general 1 Landes, “The Media’s Role in Hamas’ War Strategy,” American Interest, August 5, 2014; https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/08/05/the-medias-role-in-hamas-­warstrategy/. 2 Pessin wrote numerous additional posts about Hamas in the following days.

21

22

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

civilian population? To Pessin, it was clearly Hamas. In his other Facebook posts he regularly distinguished sharply between Hamas and the civilian population, with multiple posts criticizing Hamas for its exploitation and even sacrifice of the Gazan population, using them as human (civilian) shields and noting both Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties by warning the population and Hamas’ orders forbidding flight. Indeed, as of August 11, 2014, that distinction should have been clear to everyone every day, because the media were closely and badly monitoring the ratio between militant and civilian casualties.3 Anyone who inferred that the pit bull referred to the whole Gazan (or Palestinian) population either deliberately distorted the post or, perhaps, his or her own racist perceptions led them to assume that the entire population of Gaza enthusiastically supports a paranoid death-cult with its genocidal ideology and reckless behavior that deliberately endangers them. But for Pessin, who is not a “racist” about the Palestinian people, the pit bull was always, and could only be, Hamas. That this was Pessin’s view was readily discernible to any fair-minded reader. He chose to leave his Facebook page up and intact for a month into the affair, apparently until threats to his family’s safety led him to remove it, so anyone could have perused all those other posts. The “cage” was, of course, the Israeli blockade, which was made clear in the text. Israel imposed the blockade specifically on Hamas, not the civilian population. Israel withdrew its population and troops from Gaza in August 2005, imposing the blockade to defend itself only after Hamas violently and illegally seized power in Gaza in 2006–7.4 Though the blockade changed over 3 Jodi Rudoren, “Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict,” The New York Times, August 5, 2014; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/ world/middleeast/civilian-or-not-new-fight-in-tallying-the-dead-from-the-gaza-conflict. html; Polina Garaev, “‘Smashing a Peanut with a Hammer,’: Foreign journalists on international coverage of Gaza fighting,” Ynet, August 7, 2014; http://www.ynetnews.com/ articles/0,7340,L-4555756,00.html; Oren Koestler, “Reporters have finally found Hamas. What took so long?” New Republic, August 11, 2014; http://www.newrepublic.com/ article/119046/gaza-war-media-coverage-lacked-reporting-hamas-fighters-tactics; Richard Behar, “The Media Intifada: Bad Math, Ugly Truths About New York Times In Israel-Hamas War,” Forbes, August 21, 2014; http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2014/08/21/ the-media-intifada-bad-math-ugly-truths-about-new-york-times-in-israel-hamas-war/; 4 They literally, and proudly in front of the camera, threw people—homosexuals, PLOniks— off of 10-story buildings. Hamas had murdered thousands of Israeli civilians by means of suicide/homicide bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s and it began firing rockets into Israel shortly after its coup in Gaza. Both Israel and Egypt sealed their borders with Gaza at that time ( June 15, 2007), refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas rule.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

time, since about 2010 it has restricted only military and “dual-use” materials (although much dual-use material that gets through the blockade is diverted for military purposes). Indeed, Israel permits hundreds of trucks daily to import thousands of tons of civilian goods, on which there are no restrictions. Notably, even throughout the 2014 war, Israel provided humanitarian aid, medical care, electricity, fuel, water, and so on every day to the civilian population of Gaza.5 The blockade, the “cage,” is on Hamas. The pit bull is Hamas. The comments appended to the post were also grossly distorted. Students claimed, in a March 2 College Voice letter, that commentator Nicole said the “dogs” should be put down, and that Pessin responded, “I agree,” leading the students to charge that Pessin called for genocide. What Nicole actually wrote, in commenting on the dog metaphor, was that “Terrorists should be put down, just like the dog,” to which he responded, “I agree.” The analogue to the “dog,” in the metaphor, are the terrorists, i.e. the internationally designated terrorist organization, Hamas. That was how Nicole understood it, and it was that to which Pessin explicitly agreed. It should have been clear to anyone who read the entire text including the comment thread. Apparently, most of the protesters had not read the whole text, because those leading the campaign against Pessin circulated the post without the comment thread that would have helped clarify its meaning, while publicly misrepresenting its contents. In Pessin’s actual post, the phrase the “pressure to let it out” of the cage refers to the relentless international (and internal) pressure on Israel to relax or end the blockade on Hamas. Its coming “roaring out,” “short battles ensuing,” etc., refer to the three significant wars between Hamas and Israel since the Hamas coup, in 2008–9, 2012, 2014. “Gaza” is both the region being blockaded and a synecdoche for its ruling power, Hamas. “Co-specimen,” in the phrase—“You may call for this release because you are yourself a rabid pit bull protesting your co-specimen’s detention”—refers to those who sympathize with Hamas, with its politics, its goals, its tactics— which, as the Connecticut College community was soon to discover, includes people who cross many racial, ethnic, national, and religious boundaries. 5 Israel continued to do this even as Hamas on multiple occasions deliberately shelled the crossings through which this civilian aid was transferred into Gaza, not to mention the power plant that provided Gaza with electricity. “Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Continues,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 27, 2014. Accurate figures provided. https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/ foreignpolicy/peace/humanitarian/pages/israeli-humanitarian-aid-continues-10-jul-2014. aspx.

23

24

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

The metaphorical “well-meaning liberal-hearted animal rights person” refers to anyone ignorant of the history of, and reasons for the blockade, and who therefore mistakenly sees the blockade as the (legitimate) cause of Hamas’s violence rather than the (legitimate) consequence of it. “1990s suicide [bombed] buses” were Hamas’s signature tactic. And so on. Nearly every line of the post refers directly to Hamas and the Israeli blockade. Clearly the post was never about Gazans or Palestinians in general, though some apparently wanted it to be. Possibly it was ambiguous, if taken out-ofcontext. But in context, it is unambiguously, incontrovertibly about Hamas.6 The point of the post, in its full context, was that anyone demanding that Israel end the blockade on Gaza is demanding that it end its restraint on an organization devoted to inflicting violence on Israeli civilians. Whether the demand is made by a member or supporter of Hamas or by people who think they are sympathetic to the plight of Gazan civilians, the demand is the same. The metaphor was clearly a rhetorical device that makes the point more vivid, highlighting the absurdity of demanding that Israel relinquish its defensive blockade on Hamas.7 It doesn’t matter how much one cares for a rabid dog, one cannot morally demand that someone release such a danger upon himself. Many who protested Pessin’s posts claimed that they objected not to the content of the argument, but to its language—claiming that it dehumanized, if not the Palestinians, then Hamas. In truth, the metaphor, despite its central image, did not dehumanize anybody—not even Hamas or its members.8 Pessin was clearly using a metaphor. The metaphor doesn’t assert that Hamas members are rabid dogs; it doesn’t even compare them to rabid dogs. It suggests that the threat Hamas poses to its victims is comparable to the threat 6 As Chapter 2 will show, even those who ran the campaign against Pessin always knew the post was about Hamas, but let—or misled—others to think it was about Palestinians in general. 7 Indeed, the post begins “I’m sure someone could make a cartoon of this …” Pessin was trying to create a simple image that would vividly make the point. Were he able to draw, he has told me, it would have been a cartoon, and the word “Hamas” would have been on the side of the dog, making everything clear. Doubtless, it would have been seen as a rather mainstream political cartoon. 8 Indeed, some people (including an economics professor at the college) held that the post was equally offensive whether it was about Palestinians or Hamas. Such a view seems profoundly out of place in any community governed by “diversity” and “tolerance.” If someone said something nasty about the Nazis, would anyone—other than an ardent Nazi-sympathizer— exclaim, “How dare you speak of the Nazis that way!” People committed to diversity and tolerance would ordinarily condemn the terrorist group that explicitly rejects those values rather than the person who condemns that group for rejecting those values.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

that a rabid dog poses, for example, in its persistence, ferocity, and ultimate non-negotiability. To suggest that the threats are comparable is no more to compare the person to the dog than to say that “3 stands to 6 the way 4 stands to 8” is to equate or compare 3 to 4. Moreover, the metaphor isn’t about Hamas members. It isn’t personal. It is about the organization. That is why the metaphor is singular. Suppose, despite the above discussion, that the metaphor had compared, not the organization, but Hamas members to rabid dogs, with respect to the nature of the threat they pose. Even so, as one student wrote to Pessin: comparison is not equation. To compare someone to an animal in some respect is not to equate the person with that animal. It is not to suggest the person isn’t a human being.9 It is not to suggest that the person is undeserving of the considerations appropriate for persons. Indeed, it is patently clear that Hamas members have many non-canine traits, including those of being persons who perform conscious, deliberate, and rational actions for which they may be held morally accountable, just like other persons. And as many of Pessin’s other Facebook posts showed, he does hold Hamas members to be persons who are morally accountable for their actions. That is (obviously) to humanize them. In fact not to hold them accountable for their actions would be to dehumanize them and constitute a kind of reverse “humanitarian racism.”10 Indeed, as more than one commenter noted, it’s an insult to rabid dogs to compare Hamas to them, since the rabid dogs do not have moral choice.11 Again: Comparison is Not Equation. Perhaps there is something problematic with comparing people to animals (assuming that’s what the metaphor did)? One faculty member—a philosopher—felt so and informed Pessin categorically in an email (reproduced in this volume) that “[c]omparing people to animals is really problematic in any

9

Any more than any metaphor using an inanimate object would imply that the person is inanimate. When Romeo observes that “Juliet is the sun,” he probably isn’t thinking of her as a large ball of blazing hot light. 10 Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Beware the Humanitarian Racist,” Ynet, January 23, 2012; http:// www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4179427,00.html. 11 Noted by David Bernstein, “The hypocrisy and dishonesty of attacks on Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin,” Washington Post, April 8, 2015; https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/08/the-hypocrisy-and-dishonesty-of-attacks-on-connecticut-college-professor-andrew-pessin/?utm_term=.8917f5516a03.

25

26

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

c­ ontext.” The intellectual collapse here—the cognitive arrest—reveals the heart of the problem. Where to Begin Here? Religion scholars teach of the scriptural tradition of using animal metaphors and similes. The Hebrew patriarch Jacob is no zoo-keeper when he describes his sons (and thus the tribes to descend from them) in terms suggestive of a menagerie;12 when Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd … who lays down his life for the sheep,”13 he is not speaking as a farmer; and when the Qur’an notes of one who follows his desires that “his example is like that of the dog: if you chase him, he pants, or if you leave him, he [still] pants,” it is not saying something “really problematic,” but offering spiritual insight.14 Literature scholars, too, teach of the long literary history of animal metaphors and similes. For just one example (of hundreds), does the google search of “Shakespeare animal metaphors” reveal that the Bard was a rampant dehumanizer who deserves our universal condemnation or one of our greatest poets? When King Lear’s Edgar describes himself as a “hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey,” was he biologically confused, or perhaps just self-aware? Similarly, let the serious students of biology answer this for us: do we now judge Darwin’s famously detailed comparisons of the anatomy, behavior, psychology, and overall cognitive capacities of animals and humans to be offensive dehumanizations of our entire species, or rather revolutionary discoveries of some important—wait for it—truths?15 And what do anthropologists say about the very long history of different peoples associating themselves with animals? That it’s a common human practice to dehumanize ourselves? On a contemporary note, mainstream media freely discuss “lone wolf ” terrorism: in 2015 (for a time-relevant example) the newsmagazine The Week even illustrated a cover story on “lone wolf ” jihadis with a cartoon of a snarling wolf stalking a mall, and the widely syndicated award-winning cartoonist Steve Kelley depicted possible terrorists slipping into the country as a hungry wolf. 12 “Judah is a lion cub … Issachar is a strong-boned donkey … Dan will be a serpent on the highway … Naphtali is a hind let loose … Benjamin is a predatory wolf … Joseph is a firstborn bullock …” (Genesis 49, Deuteronomy 33:17). 13 John, 10:11. 14 Qur’an, 7.176. 15 Just one quote: “[T]he difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind,” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Detroit: Gale, 1974), 122.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

Certainly no one thinks that The Week and Steve Kelley believe that these terrorists are somehow not human beings, morally responsible for their actions. They may have been critical of the terrorists but they weren’t dehumanizing them in so representing them, any more than a mother dehumanizes her child when she calls his room a pigsty and her teenager, therefore, a pig. And in fact when someone says you are as clever as a fox, as delicate as a butterfly, as cute as a kitten, as strong as an ox, or a tiger in bed, they may even be ­complimenting you. Ironically, in recommending a lawyer to Pessin early on, someone, unaware of the details of the affair, actually praised her by explaining that in the pursuit of justice, she was a mad pit bull. Imagine that. In short, animal comparisons, positive and negative, metaphorical and literal, are not merely historically and contemporaneously pervasive, but often insightful, valuable, essential to lively speech, and overall simply—normal. It isn’t subtle to say “comparison is not equation.” It’s obvious. What is it then about the topic of Israel that makes otherwise smart people—with self-righteous arrogance—make coarse and blatantly false generalizations such as, “animal comparisons are problematic in any context”?16 This is the problem examined throughout this volume: otherwise decent people behaving indecently. Good people gone wild. To review: Pessin’s post is about an organization, not people, and certainly not a people. It is an organization that does not represent any race or ethnic group or religion, even though it claims to represent true Islam. In fact, many Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims oppose Hamas. It seized power in Gaza ­violently and illegally, still has not held any elections since seizing power, and is not recognized as legitimate by the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and numerous other entities, so one cannot even say it is the elected representative of Gazans. 16 Bret Stephens, “Palestine Makes You Dumb: To argue the Palestinian side, in the Gaza war, is to make the case for barbarism,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2014; https://www.wsj.com/ articles/bret-stephens-palestine-makes-you-dumb-1406590159.

27

28

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

It regularly arrests, tortures, and summarily executes Palestinians. Its use of funds to build attack tunnels into Israel and magnificent shopping malls, clearly indicate where on its scale of priorities one finds the poorest Gazans (of which there are many), the biggest victims of Hamas wars and the recipient of the least aid. To speak harshly of this organization is therefore not to speak harshly of people or of a people. It therefore could not be to engage in racism or hate speech in any sense. On the contrary. To speak harshly of this organization, defined by its ideology and tactics and behaviors, is to speak harshly of that ideology and those tactics and behaviors. It is to speak harshly of the morally accountable choices that certain people freely make, choices they are free not to make. It is no more racist or hate speech against Palestinians to speak harshly of Hamas than it would be racist or hate speech against the Italians or Germans to speak harshly of the fascists and the Nazis. Nor would it be racist or hate speech against white people to speak harshly of the Ku Klux Klan; anti-Nigerian to speak harshly of Boko Haram; Islamophobic to speak harshly of ISIS. Nor would it be racist or hate speech to speak harshly of the Israel Defense Forces, for that matter, if that’s how you view things.17 Indeed, in the current case it is just the opposite. Certainly, many students’ passion about opposing racism and intolerance and hate speech is admirable. But somehow, they failed to recognize that to speak harshly of an organization such as Hamas is, in fact, to oppose racism and intolerance and hate speech. Consider its blatantly antisemitic charter, which quotes approvingly the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and notes that its goal is to implement the traditional hadith in which Muhammad calls for the killing not of all 17 Suppose Pessin had written the same post about the IDF? Would those who attacked “not his politics” but “his language” have protested such vigorously harsh language about Israelis? In fact, the most slanderous things are regularly said about the IDF and Israelis on campuses all over the country, especially since 2000 and for most of the aughts, with little protest. Considering that the people leading the campaign against Pessin were all vigorously anti-­ Israel, and that the ring-leader was affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine, and had accused Israel of sterilizing its Ethiopian immigrants because of their skin color, and publicly endorsed the view (deemed anti-Semitic by the U.S. State Department) that Israel is like the Nazis, it is unlikely that any of them would have objected had Pessin spoken harshly of the IDF. Indeed, in 2015–16 a student group, Conn Students in Solidarity with Palestine, its faculty advisor being the new Director of Global Islamic Studies, posted flyers denying Jewish peoplehood, accusing Israel of the usual evils and calling for its ­destruction—and the campus was silent. Apparently, they had learned the wrong lessons from the previous year’s events.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

Zionists but of all Jews.18 Or the almost daily antisemitic pronouncements by Hamas’s political and religious leaders and official media,19 including the video of the Dean of Qur’anic Studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, on Hamas’s official Al-Aqsa television channel, defending the murder of “every single Jew” in Palestine, explicitly including children. Students might reflect on Hamas’s children’s television programming, such as a clip encouraging children to grow up and shoot Jews, or the clip of a cute rabbit who plans to finish off the Jews, or the clip featuring young children in military fatigues talking about how they want to join the Al-Qassam Brigades or become engineers so they can blow up Jews.20 Students should learn about its complete rejection of any Jewish political and civil rights in the region, along with the ongoing violent attempts to destroy the only Jewish state in the world. They might also consider the many hundreds of Jewish civilians they openly and proudly boast of (and regularly commemorate) having murdered in the past two decades, including children whom they deliberately target, including American citizens; Jews celebrating Passover seders (the Netanya Passover massacre in 2002); college students (such as the Hebrew University bombing in 2002), and the three teenagers they kidnapped and shot in the head, triggering the 2014 war. Students should also ponder Hamas’s regular statements of praise for other mass murderers of Jews, for example when yeshiva students are gunned down and when rabbis are hacked to death at prayer or when adolescents are stabbed in the neck and senior citizens are stabbed to death.21 This is an ­organization that explicitly rejects dialogue and negotiation in favor of armed “resistance,”22 that runs summer military camps for children,23 that incites and 18 The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, August 18, 1988; http://avalon.law. yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp. See, for example, articles 32 and 7, respectively. On the anti-Semitic and genocidal nature of the charter, see Jeffrey Herf, “Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too-Little-Known Fascist Charter,” American Interest, August 1, 2014; http://www. the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/01/why-they-fight-hamas-too-little-knownfascist-charter/. 19 Simply browse sites such as MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch for hundreds of examples. 20 The Al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., E. U., Egypt, and others. 21 With regard to these attacks on children and senior citizens, in October, 2015, the Hamas Twitter account posted: “The Hamas movement blesses the heroic operations in Jerusalem and hails the heroes who executed them,” https://www.upi.com/Top_News/WorldNews/2015/10/13/Multiple-attacks-prompt-Jerusalem-violence-gun-restrictions-could-e ase/9611444731123/. 22 Charter, article 13, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp. 23 For example, “Hamas trains youth in weaponry and ‎laying ambushes to become ‘liberators’

29

30

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

literally celebrates violence nearly every day,24 that regularly employs genuinely dehumanizing speech (such as their constant, Qur’an-based reference to Jews as the “descendants of apes and pigs”).25 Hamas—The Islamic Resistance Movement—is also anti-Christian and anti-gay, no fan of the status of women in Western cultures, no friend of Shiite Muslims, and hardly committed to liberal values such as freedoms of assembly, speech, religion, press, and democratic elections. Students may well be justifiably supportive of the Palestinian cause, but if they are committed to inclusivity and tolerance and diversity they ought to be opposed to organizations such as Hamas. And yet, for reasons we explore in this volume many people—people who consider themselves serious thinkers and even intellectuals, insisted on reading Pessin as opposing “inclusivity” and “tolerance” rather than as defending those values against an organization that explicitly rejects them: otherwise decent and smart people behaving indecently and stupidly. Good people gone wild. Thus, instead of behaving consistently with their alleged values, students and some faculty members instead condemned Pessin, harshly, for his harsh condemnation of Hamas. Indeed it isn’t even clear that Pessin’s post does speak “harshly” of Hamas. Hamas is an organization that is proud of its violence. Its leaders regularly say that they love death more than life, and dying a “martyr” is a high honor, as per their charter, article 8: “death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of [our] wishes.” They boast of instilling these violent values in their children.26 The posters they produce to celebrate each killed fighter, suicide bomber, and car-ramming or hatchet-wielding or knife-stabbing terrorist always feature their weapons. (See two samples below from the 2014 war.) o‎ f Al-Aqsa Mosque,” PalWatch, January 31, 2015; http://www.palwatch.org/pages/news_ archive.aspx?doc_id=14376. 24 They hand out sweets when Jews are murdered, and Hamas college students were shown celebrating the 2001 Sbarro massacre; Ian Fischer, “An Exhibit on Campus Celebrates Grisly Deed,” The New York Times, September 26, 2001; http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/26/ world/an-exhibit-on-campus-celebrates-grisly-deed.html. 25 This reference is based on three passages in the Qur’an suggesting that at one point Allah turned Jews into apes and swine. There is much discussion of whether these passages refer to all Jews or only to Sabbath-violating Jews, or to evil-doers in general, as well as about whether the text is meant metaphorically or literally. What is not in question is the literal and genuinely dehumanizing way Hamas and similar groups apply the derived phrase to contemporary Jews. See “Animalization and Demonization,” PalWatch; http://www.palwatch.org/ main.aspx?fi=758&fld_id=758&doc_id=1709. 26 Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Hamas Interior Ministry: We bring our kids up ‘on love of Jihad and Martyrdom-death’,” PalWatch, April 14, 2015; http://palwatch.org/ main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=14529.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

In December 2015 they celebrated their 28th anniversary by proudly boasting not about their schools, universities, hospitals, social programs, promotion of culture, the environment, minorities’ rights, etc., but about the many accomplishments since their 1987 founding that matter to them: 16,377 fired rockets at Israel, 86 suicide attacks, 36 stabbing attacks, over 500 border infiltrations, 250 shooting attacks and 26 Israelis abducted, dead and alive.27 At the same time, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal praised the hundreds of stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Jews in the fall of 2015, including those targeting the elderly, children, and babies, calling the murderers “the most exalted and noblest of people” and reminding everyone of Hamas’s belief, since its founding charter, that negotiations are futile and that the proper path forward is only “Jihad, sacrifice, and blood.”28 Pessin’s use of a metaphor that highlights the group’s persistent, ferocious, and declared non-negotiable violence against Jews and Israel isn’t to insult or demean or “devalue” them, the term the college’s philosophy department used when condemning their colleague. It is simply to describe them.

At the Open Forum in March 2015 Katherine Bergeron, the president of Connecticut College, expressed alarm at the “vehemence” of the central image in Pessin’s post. But the image is vehement because it’s an accurate image of Hamas! The president also suggested that it showed “poor judgment,” but failed to explain how depicting a proudly genocidal organization 27 That Hamas is actually not concerned with the welfare of its citizens, but rather pursues its violent jihad against Israel at the cost of the welfare of its citizens, is documented extensively: Hillel Frisch, “Hamas: A Social Welfare Government or War Machine?,” Besa Center, December 1, 2015; http://besacenter.org/mideast-security-and-policy-studies/9483/. 28 Stuart Weiner, “Hamas political leader: Stabbers are ‘the most exalted, noblest of people’,” Times of Israel, December 15, 2015; http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-political-leader-urges-more-stabbing-attacks/.

31

32

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

with an image ­representing violence reflected poor judgment. If one appreciates the force of the argument that Israel is entitled to defend itself, then one must appreciate the force of the threat it faces. If someone were writing critically about Boko Haram kidnapping girls and selling them into sexual slavery, or about ISIS decapitating Christians and burning pilots alive, or about the Nazis forcing naked Jewish women and children to dig their own mass grave and then putting bullets in their heads, who would condemn them for writing “vehemently?29 It was bizarre then for Pessin to be vilified all over campus in the name of “inclusivity and diversity”—when he was clearly defending the right of the democratic nation that endorses those and other liberal values to defend itself from the terrorist organization that explicitly rejects them. It is difficult to explain rationally how Pessin could be vilified for “inciting and celebrating violence”—when he was arguing for the right of that nation to non-violently defend itself (via blockade) from genocidal violence, at the hands of a group that proudly incites and celebrates (and actively perpetrates) such violence. In so doing, not only was incalculable damage done to Pessin, but the college betrayed its own values, and those of the academy at large. How this could have happened is the major question of this volume. Many may not have shared Pessin’s politics—indeed, such disagreement is what makes intellectual life invigorating. But if a campus cares about fairness and truth and integrity, it must pay close attention to what an opponent’s politics actually are. Here it required trying to understand what Pessin was saying in his post. Read in isolation and divorced from its comment thread, the post may have been ambiguous; but ambiguity isn’t racism. Surely, Pessin was not universally excoriated because he inadvertently wrote something that could be read, out of context, as offensive? Readers also have responsibilities. Indeed, among the “social justice warriors” at Connecticut College we expect to find not merely “good readers” but professional readers, scholars, who do exegesis for a living, and who value inquiry and analysis, and respect for the truth, as well as fairness and civility. Honoring all those values takes time, time to read carefully, time to inquire, time to analyze. Yet in spring 2015 many acted like a lynch mob, like characters in The Crucible. 29 Certainly, the philosophy department would not protest, “How dare you demean and devalue the Nazis!” That anyone on a campus dedicated to inclusivity and diversity would take offense at a “vehement” description of Hamas is hard to justify.

The Post: On Truth and Metapho

No one asked Pessin what he meant, that is, for his side of the story, despite the Honor Code’s call for “respect for the dignity” of members of the community and “just and equitable treatment” of all.30 Instead, they accused him of dehumanizing speech and responded to him with dehumanizing behavior. Although they may not be blameworthy for initially misreading the text out-of-context, they should be held accountable for acting on the misreading, perpetrating a collective assault, the public shaming, without the most elementary exegetical diligence expected of a community of scholars and people who claim to make public judgments. In fact, a small subset appear to have deceived others about the meaning of the text. When students came to professors—especially Pessin’s colleagues and friends—crying about how hurt and unsafe they felt as a result of his writings, adults with integrity would have responded, “that’s because you’ve misread it.” Instead, in the massive delusion that subsequently overtook the campus at their instigation, in the spring 2015, they were widely celebrated. What is it about Israel that sets some intellectuals’ moral compasses to spinning?

30 Several faculty members did ask for Pessin’s side of the story, but none of those—the vast majority—who publicly vilified him did so. Some colleagues indicated that they sent notes of concern. Still, even after they were informed of Pessin’s side of the story, they failed to communicate this publicly. Note that Connecticut College has approximately 200 faculty members.

33

CHAPTER 2

The Shameful Dishonesty of It All: An Annotated Chronology from the Perspective of the Victim [T]he chances for truth to prevail in public are … greatly improved by the mere existence of such places [as universities] and by the organization of the independent, supposedly disinterested scholars associated with them … —Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics” (1967) The ideals of integrity, civility, and respect for the dignity of all human beings provide the foundation for how students, faculty, and staff should interact and learn from each other. Integrity: Our students exemplify honesty, honor, and respect for the truth in all of their conduct. —Connecticut College Student Handbook (2014–15) on the Honor Code, pp. 16–17 Politeness avoids controversial issues, lest they provoke violence; civility addresses them without provoking violence. “One who loves correction loves knowledge, but one who hates reproof is a boor …” —Proverbs 12:1

I

t is easy to exhibit integrity, civility, and respect, where there is little disagreement or controversy within a community. It is much more difficult to do so when disagreement and controversy abound. In the spring of 2015, in the face of such disagreement, the Connecticut College community failed miserably to uphold its self-proclaimed values. Virtually the entire faculty and most of the campus were victims of a carefully planned attack aimed at getting rid of one of their more distinguished faculty members, Andrew Pessin. In their zeal to affirm their alleged values, they actually abandoned them; in their zeal to stamp out hate, they became a community of haters. What happened at Connecticut

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

College is a microcosm of events in the current global academic community, and offers important lessons to that community. What follows reviews chronologically the developments on campus that spring. It is laid out according to the attack strategy of the perpetrators. All the documents cited are available, according to date, at the Pessin Archive: http://www. theaugeanstables.com/pessin-archive-introduction-and-linked-chronology/.

CHOOSING THE TARGET Jan 22, 2015 Philosophy Professor Andrew Pessin participated in a public faculty panel discussing the Charlie Hebdo massacre that had occurred earlier in the month. He stressed the problem the massacre raised for moral relativism, in particular the problem of tolerating the intolerant.1 From the audience, Economics Professor Spencer Pack asked about the situation of Jews in France, to which Pessin responded briefly that they were in a particular bind because they were part of a culture that tolerated intolerant groups. It is important to remember throughout this discussion of the impact of the Charlie Hebdo attack on the West, the anxieties about further attacks against anyone deemed an “enemy of Islam.” That’s part of what was so irresponsible about the behavior of the Muslim professor and students involved. Circulating accusations that a certain Zionist professor at ConnColl was advocating the genocide of the Palestinian people in international Muslim social media was a dog whistle to some zealot ready to “kill his Jew.” Pessin certainly felt this. I would argue that the unwillingness of his colleagues and friends to help him suggests they too felt it, and wished to stay out of its cross-hairs.

1

Pessin Archive #4: Notes to Pessin to Pessin’s Remarks of Charlie Hebdo, January 22, 2015.

35

36

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Jan 24 Lamiya Khandaker, a student who had taken Pessin’s course “Introduction to Philosophy” the previous year, emailed Pessin objecting to his Hebdo remarks. She complained that he had overemphasized Jewish victims of hate crimes rather than expressing solidarity with all victims of hate violence. She wrote: “… it is quite disheartening for academics to come to panel discussions only to climb to the top of the totem pole of victimhood.” In concluding, the student wrote: “It was [also] unfortunate when the Israeli government sterilized the Ethiopian Jewish community because the color of their skin was not enough to prove their Jewish identity.”2

Jan 25 Pessin responded substantively. He suggested that she had misunderstood him, since he never even implied that Jews were at the top of the “totem pole of victimhood.” He had spoken briefly about Jewish victims—only in response to the question about them—although, to be sure, the Hebdo panel was partly about Jewish victims, who had been singled out and murdered in a kosher market. Pessin added that he believed that Muslims were by far the greatest victims of terrorist actions worldwide—primarily at the hands of fellow Muslims. He also addressed the student’s casual but grave accusation of Israel, by directing her to a source refuting her claim.

Feb 3 Aparna Gopalan, the Opinions Editor of The College Voice (the student newspaper), published an editorial, which included criticism of Pessin’s Hebdo remarks as hopelessly “mainstream.”3

Feb 18, late Khandaker once again emailed Pessin, now objecting to his Facebook post in summer 2014, claiming that he referred to Palestinians as “rabid [pit] bulls.”

Feb 19, 8:13 am Pessin replied to Khandaker, promising to respond in detail the next day. ­Shortly thereafter—at 10:01 am—she wrote back that she wasn’t interested 2 3

On this issue, see below, 141n9. Pessin Archive #6: Aparna Gopalan on Charlie Hebdo Panel, February 3.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

in any response he might make about his “political views.” She could “anticipate” his response, “differentiating between Muslims at large and “extremists” in Gaza.” But those, she wrote, “are your political views. Not something I would like to take part in exactly.” She added that regardless of how he justified his political views, they were “racist” and “hateful.” These remarks indicate two assumptions: Pessin’s “political views” were beyond the pale of discussion and they involved Islam, even though Islam was not even mentioned in the post. (Later on, Pessin learned that shortly before emailing him, Khandaker had emailed a friend about his Facebook post: “wtf he literally just dehumanized the fuck out of human beings … This man needs to go.”) Voice editor-in-chief Ayla Zuraw-Friedland circulates Pessin’s post on Twitter, without its comment thread.

Feb 19, 8:57 pm Pessin deletes his post along with its comment thread. He keeps a copy of the post text, but doesn’t even look at the comment thread before deleting it. Given how the comments would soon be distorted to make him look terrible, this was a critical mistake.

Feb 20, 5 pm Despite her expressed disinterest in his reply, Pessin naively responded substantively, complaining that her reading of his post as “racist” or “hateful” was unfair; that she had misread both his post and his panel remarks. He explained that his Facebook post was specifically about Hamas and the blockade at the time of the Gaza war, and warned that it was “a serious misrepresentation” to suggest that “it refers to Palestinians in Gaza as ‘rabid (pit) bulls.’” Expressing surprise and sorrow if his analogy had led her and others to their “serious misunderstanding” of the post, Pessin stated that he would be “more careful” in the future. Pessin also noted that this post had “nothing whatever to do with Islam.” He then deleted the post lest anyone else misread it in this manner. Retrospectively, this may have been his first major mistake, done by someone who thought this was containable, when in reality, his critic had every intention of making it a major public event. In doing so, he unwittingly removed key exculpatory evidence from both the comment section and his other face-book posts (see below). In a place with intellectual integrity, this probably should have been the end of the episode: a misunderstanding about a written comment, a ­clarification of original intent, an apology for unintended offense, and a deletion of the

37

38

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

offending post. A civil and respectful response from her might have been: “I am relieved to see that it was a misunderstanding. I still dislike that metaphor—it still feels offensive to me—and I disagree with you that the Israeli blockade is justified, but I am glad to learn that you didn’t intend to express a racist attitude toward Palestinians in general.” But that was not the student’s agenda. On the contrary, he didn’t know yet, but Professor Pessin was a marked man. Pessin and the student could have explored the nature of ambiguity and contextual interpretation, discussed why she thought the post was offensive when he didn’t, explored how respectful they should be of differences of opinion, even about what constitutes offensiveness, gotten clearer on just what hate speech is, and then moved into a civil (if vigorous) debate about the Israeli blockade, the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so on. Pessin and Khandaker could have established a model for how the scholarly community disagrees on heated issues. Of course, that would have been a victory for Pessin and his fantasies of a decent and civil society … and a deeply frustrating experience for Khandaker, on the war path. She was not interested in civil discourse, nor in rational persuasion. Instead, she went on the attack: in her weaponized “intellectual” universe, “this man needs to go.”4

PREPARING THE ATTACK Feb 22 Instead, Professor Sufia Uddin, faculty advisor to Khandaker and Director of the newly established Global Islamic Studies program, widely circulated the first paragraph of Pessin’s post (now taken down) both on and off campus, expressing grave concern about it.5 The deletion only made Pessin look like he had something to hide. On learning this, Pessin wrote to Uddin, expressing his disappointment that she was circulating the post without having spoken to him first, without giving him the chance to respond to her concerns. Pessin then went on to explain again that the post was about Hamas and not about Palestinians in general. He carefully detailed the post’s usage of an analogy/metaphor to ­maintain that “Israel is justified in defending itself from Hamas via blockade.” 4 On the contrasting accounts of the email exchanges by Pessin and Khandaker, see below, chap. 3. 5 Months later, a faculty colleague revealed that Uddin had told him/her around this time that she was planning a “public shaming” campaign against Pessin.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

To claim that he said, “Palestinians should be kept in cages like dogs” was a serious misreading of the post. Ever the mollifier, Pessin closed by apologizing if his analogy had allowed such a misunderstanding and promised to be more careful in his use of language in the future. Protestations of good faith and sensitivity had no impact on Uddin, who would shortly seize this opportunity to turn her colleagues against Pessin. She replied that she found his Facebook “posts” disturbing (NB: in the plural). This strikes Pessin as odd, since none of his many posts on the subject came close to being interpretable in any offensive way. The simple meaning of her remark is that Uddin found his defense of Israel in general disturbing. Substance, fairness, intellectual integrity aside, she was “in the trench” with Khandaker. Instead, Uddin suggested that Pessin engage in a subsequent conversation with the students in a public setting—a follow-up to the Hebdo panel. In retrospect, Pessin should have accepted the challenge. At least he could have gotten his version out in public. But then he didn’t realize how difficult getting his version out would become, how indifferent to it his colleagues would prove. Maybe it was already too late.

Feb 22 Two hours after his exchange with Uddin, Pessin’s house exploded from a gas leak. He carried his three children from a burning house into the freezing snow. During the following week he had to move his family of five into a cramped apartment, through six feet of snow, while dealing with the gas company, insurance, contractors, etc. The family would be out of their home for the next seven months. The trauma of this event, combined with his wife’s ongoing serious illness, and his single-parenting their traumatized small children, left him in a position of extreme vulnerability as events unfolded, a vulnerability Uddin and her troops systematically exploited.

Feb 24 Philosophy Prof. Larry Vogel tells Pessin that Uddin told him she was consulting with and advising the students who are concerned about his post. Uddin came to Pessin’s office and pressed for them to have their public “conversation” about the post before the upcoming Spring Break. He told her that given his present circumstances, doing something before Spring Break was impossible.

39

40

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Feb 25–26 Pessin and his colleagues in the Philosophy Department, Professors Derek Turner and Larry Vogel, exchanged emails about the post. Earlier they had reviewed (and praised) his Jan 25 email response to Khandaker about the Hebdo panel, and he now shared with them his email to Uddin. From this time onward, Turner and Vogel knew the post had been misinterpreted and that Pessin had already clarified, apologized, removed, appeased … and yet in their subsequent public behavior, as with the administration, they never once brought these matters up.6

Feb 27 A student, Ikbel Amri, posted a screenshot of Pessin’s now deleted post on his own Facebook page, apparently in the belief that his own Facebook followers would read it in the offensive manner that Khandaker and Uddin had. Khandaker commented on it there, urging Amri to make it “public,” which he had, across his international Facebook network. (Later Khandaker would delete this comment, and in her April 13 Voice letter present herself as at least initially against circulating the post off-campus.7 Screen shots prove otherwise.) Pessin notified the dean of faculty Van Slyck that students were circulating the post off-campus, into the Arab and Muslim world—with no mention of the fact that he had explained the misreading, apologized, and deleted it ten days earlier. He reported that he found this action threatening: it only takes one person to decide it is his or her day to be a Jihadi, and here they were falsely smearing far-and-wide a Jewish advocate for Israel as an antiPalestinian racist. Given what had happened in Paris the previous month, this was reckless to say the least. Pessin wrote, asking that in their meeting, she discuss with him what recourse he had to prevent these sorts of student attacks on him. There would be no protection, no recourse. The students continued to escalate without any resistance from the administration. 6 7

See the essay in this volume by Fred Baumann for further analysis. “When the initial students found the Facebook post their first instincts were to send it to the media right away, to print it out and paste it all over Blaustein and other academic buildings. But I had asked them not to … My letter to the editor in The College Voice along with the others did not cause worldwide attention to his post.” Pessin Archive #52: College Voice: Khandaker’s Take on her Role in the Controversy, April 15.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Mar 1 Dean of Faculty Abigail Van Slyck emailed Pessin as follows: I write to let you know—if you don’t already—that a FB post of yours from August is making a stir on campus.   Before I go any further, let me also say that I’ve seen the post in question and have nothing to reprimand you for … you are exercising your right to freedom of expression in appropriate ways. Others may find your views upsetting, but that fact alone does not break any laws or abridge any College policies.   I am hoping that you and I can meet tomorrow … It will be important for the Faculty Ombudsperson, Courtney Baker, to join us … As I am sure you know, the Ombudsperson’s role is to make sure we are following our own procedures [including, presumably, the honor code].

Reassuring words, promising developments. The Administration, at least, understood the importance of fair rules … or so it seemed.

FIRST STRIKE: THE NEWSPAPER Mar 2 The College Voice published three student letters about Pessin’s post, all by students affiliated with Uddin’s Global Islamic Studies program (one a recent alumnus), denouncing Pessin’s Facebook post as genocidal hate speech. The editors gave Pessin no warning, nor any offer of a chance to defend himself on the same pages. These egregious violations of everything from the Honor Code to the basic principles of journalism, then triggered the staged emergency that would drive Pessin from campus. In doing so, the newspaper acted as a weapon of war, carrying propaganda targeting an enemy, misinforming and deliberately misleading the community it served, to join in a misdirected hunt for the “haters.” One was by Lamiya Khandaker, presenting herself as the victim of [her reading] of Pessin’s post: “I am infuriated, repulsed and depressed. I feel unsafe.” She accused Pessin of unacceptable hate-speech and racism. Rejecting Pessin’s claim that she had misunderstood, Khandaker asserted the correctness of her reading: the pit bull was an image for the Palestinian people … and

41

42

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

by extension her anger and disgust were fully justified (and should be shared by all good people). The second letter, by students Michael Fratt and Kaitlyn Garbe, both pursuing Arabic Studies, presented the comment thread to Pessin’s Facebook post to indict him for incitement to genocide. One person named Nicole commented on the post suggesting the “dogs” be put down. Professor Pessin responded, “I agree.” Professor Pessin directly condoned the extermination of a people. A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.

What “Nicole” had actually said was that terrorists should be put down. It was that to which Pessin had written, “I agree.” When Fratt and Garbe changed Nicole’s word “terrorists” to “dogs,” they transformed his call for the defeat of a genocidal terrorist group into a call for genocide against Palestinians (the major victims of this group’s violence).8 His comment had not “incited or celebrated violence,” but, on the contrary, called for the defeat of a group that has placed a genocidal text and a warrant for genocide in their founding charter. The misdirection in the hunt for genocidal haters was now complete. At that time, this inversion of Pessin’s meaning was not known to anyone other than the instigators themselves, since when Pessin deleted his post back on February 19 he had also deleted the comment thread, without even retaining a copy. It wouldn’t be until April 12 that the thread reappeared, clearly exposing Fratt and Garbe’s distortions—inversions—but by then the damage had been done. These student letters, misrepresenting the post to the community and displaying actual dishonesty in insisting that Pessin had called for genocide, became the lens through which almost everyone subsequently read the text. That it was being widely misread seems to have occurred to almost no one, although it would have been easy to find this out. They could have read the rest of Pessin’s Facebook posts, all of which were explicitly about Hamas (not Palestinians) and which remained online well into this episode. Or they might have asked Pessin what he’d meant. But no one among the many who were about to vilify him undertook these elementary exegetical steps. The student newspaper played a critical role in the assault. As we’ll examine in Chapter 3, throughout the affair, Editor-in-Chief Ayla Zuraw-Friedland and 8

See discussion above, chap. 1, pp. 27–30.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Opinions Editor Aparna Gopalan violated basic journalistic ethics and the paper’s own explicit code. Still worse, the students’ breach of ethics failed to elicit an immediate (or even eventual) rebuke from the Voice faculty advisor, History Professor James Downs, the supposed representative of adult supervision and journalistic responsibility (honor). The evidence suggests that he may have approved of this behavior as a legitimate form of activism.9 In taking an activist stance, Downs reflected a much more widespread attitude among advocacy journalists covering the ME conflict, and increasingly many domestic issues. In this case, the self-righteous activism substituting for ethical commitment, compromised the academic integrity of Connecticut College, its information poisoned by malicious accusations run without due diligence.

Mar 2, late night With the post circulating on and off campus, with the campus already exploding against him, with a Palestinian flag having been draped near his office with a note mocking him, Pessin informed Dean Van Slyck that out of fear for his physical safety he would not come to campus to teach the next day. Taking the threat seriously, she noted that the administration would alert the New London Police and Campus Security.

BINDING THE VICTIM: THE ADMINISTRATION AND HIS COLLEAGUES URGE APOLOGETIC CAPITULATION Mar 3 Pessin met with Faculty Ombudsperson English Professor Courtney Baker and Dean Van Slyck, and shared his earlier correspondence with Khandaker and Uddin. From this date onward the administration and Professor Baker were aware that his post had been deliberately misrepresented in the Voice. The administration was also aware that Uddin’s and Khandaker’s motivations for their campaign against him involved their anti-Israel animus (see Chapter 3). Yet, like Pessin’s Philosophy colleagues, the administration never publicly mentioned these aspects of the problem. 9

For more on Downs and the paper, see below, chap. 3.

43

44

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Dean Van Slyck also informed Pessin that a group of students had filed a “bias incident” complaint against him because of the post. She acknowledged that a 7-month-old Facebook post about a conflict half a world away did not resemble a “bias incident”—normally that phrase applies to behaviors on campus directed toward individuals on campus—but she could not or would not simply dismiss the complaint. She also could not or would not tell Pessin how it would be resolved or what its potential consequences. Shades of Josef K. She urged Pessin to meet with the students and apologize for his “offensive language.” She also urged him not to defend himself at that meeting, not to explain (yet again) that the post was being misread. “If you say that they are misreading you,” she told him in a burst of appeasement, “you will just anger them more, by blaming them for being offended.” This was a pretty stunning and lethal move on the administration’s part. Rather than dismissing the students’ bias complaint out-of-hand and reprimanding them for their dishonest “activism,” the Dean gave Pessin poisonous advice: don’t defend yourself lest you further anger them. Such “advice” either (implicitly) accepted their anger as legitimate (i.e. the college newspaper’s cogwar attack succeeded), or it expressed such a fear of the students’ anger that she was willing to throw a faculty member of good standing—indeed, one of the stars of her faculty—under the bus in order to appease it. From here on in, Pessin was guilty as charged, and only made things worse by defending himself. With the threat of the bias complaint hanging over him, unclear if he could lose his job, combined with the fear for his safety and that of his family, along with the trauma of his recently exploded house and ill wife—and with literally no support from his colleagues—Pessin concluded that he had no choice but to obey his employment superior. Just tell them what they want to hear, appease them, and perhaps it will all go away, he thought. Right. At this point one might reflect on the misuse of the “bias incident” procedure to apply to an off-campus written opinion. Is permitting such tactics likely to favor the free exchange of ideas on campus—or suppress it? When the faculty all toed the line drawn by dishonest and vindictive students, were they just glad it was not they whose head was on the chopping block? What does the future hold for a generation whose elders are afraid of their youth, in particular afraid of those filled with passionately misinformed intensity? What does it say about a liberal arts college when professors are urged by their superiors not to tell the truth, but to tell students only what they want to hear? Is this consistent with the “inquiry” and “analysis” that Dean Van Slyck would herself praise in a later email? Or did this all run the College

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Honor Code’s stress on integrity and “respect for the truth” through the activist shredder?

Mar 4 Obeying the Dean’s instructions, Pessin met with 8 or 9 students, along with Van Slyck and others. After the meeting, he asked the Dean about the status of the bias incident complaint. She would not say whether or how it would be resolved or what its consequences could be. The threat of that complaint remained for weeks to come. At this point, Pessin should have been thinking about a lawyer. At the end of the meeting Pessin was asked to resign as faculty advisor to the Honor Council by Dean Sarah Cardwell, who oversaw the Council. This request is shocking. After all, Pessin was the only one acting honorably, in the way he had responded to the students’ and Uddin’s initial concerns, while the students publishing those dishonest letters and charging him with a bias incident were behaving dishonorably, both by universal standards and by those of the College. Yet with an unresolved bias claim dangling over his head, Pessin didn’t feel he had much choice. (Shortly thereafter Pessin also withdrew from the April TedX conference on campus, after the student in charge informed him that he had received bullying offensive emails demanding they cut Pessin.) Pessin’s ostracism was now in full swing. On this same day, coincidentally, Connecticut College issued a press release proudly announcing the launch of its new major in Global Islamic Studies headed by Sufia Uddin. The witch-hunt against the lone Jewish advocate for Israel on campus would be that program’s first, spectacularly successful, initiative.

Mar 4 Khandaker posted on the Voice website an angry profanity-filled reply to someone who had posted a criticism of her March 2 letter, a reply which revealed her inability to handle criticism and her raging contempt for those who disagreed with her.10 Perhaps alerted by friends about how badly her 10 For the criticism see John Taylor: http://thecollegevoice.org/2015/03/03/why-hatespeech-is-not-free-speech-in-an-inclusive-excellence-community/comment-page-1/#comment-296766; for Khandaker’s response, Pessin Archive # 17: Khandaker’s Response to Criticism for her College Voice Letter, March 4.

45

46

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

response reflected on her, she, with help from her allies in the newspaper, soon deleted it.11 On this same date, Pessin sent an email to the philosophy majors and minors, apologizing for any discomfort they might be feeling as philosophy students, giving a brief sketch of his intended meaning in writing the post, and including this: What I will acknowledge is that my language in the post invites that [misreading], and I take and took full ownership for that, and in fact both apologized for that and took the post down already two weeks ago when its offensive language was first brought to my attention. Indeed I explicitly condemned and disavowed at that time the view which is now actively being ascribed to me.

His philosophy department colleagues’ response to that letter included the following acknowledgment and dismissal of the injustice done to Pessin by the paper: I am sympathetic with Prof. Pessin’s complaint that the Voice published its letters on Monday without giving him a chance to respond in public. Still, I worry that his wish to contextualize his Facebook post will only exacerbate the animosities by making it seem like he is the victim here. For my part, I hope he will admit the hurt he has inflicted, rethink his use of social media and such inflammatory imagery, and apologize “full stop.” Then, with the good will of the community, we can shift in the direction of discussions about the meaning of inclusive excellence, the nature and limits of free speech, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: something about which Prof. Pessin has a right to his opinions, objectionable though some may find them to be.

The die was cast: Pessin could not be the victim since he was guilty. This correspondence and others with Jews on campus receives a fuller analysis below, chap. 6 (Baumann).

Mar 5 A meeting was held to plan an Open Forum after Spring Break in response to the incident, on the theme of “Freedom of Expression and Community Values.” 11 One wonders at this point, if faculty advisor Prof. James Downs actually legitimated the move, or the students acted independently.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

The planning committee consisted almost entirely of the students and faculty leading the campaign against Pessin, including Khandaker, Fratt, Garbe, Uddin, and others. No one defending Pessin was included. This would be at best a Kangaroo Court, if not a lynch mob. The College Vice President for Communications was also present to deal with potential media.

Mar 6 On the continued strong urging of Dean Van Slyck, Pessin agreed to submit an apology for the wording of his post to the Voice, the very newspaper that had maliciously defamed him. Van Slyck rejected his first draft of the apology, saying (again) that if he defended himself by explaining the misinterpretation of the post, the students would not be satisfied. The text in bold represents the passages in Pessin’s first draft that Van Slyck found unacceptable: I acknowledged that my language carelessly invited a seriously offensive reading, but felt that in fact its actually intended reading bore little resemblance to that offensive reading, for the piece was specifically about Hamas, as anti-inclusivist an organization as they come, and not about Gazan Palestinians at all. But I see now—particularly after a moving conversation with a group of bright, brave, and sincerely wounded Conn students—that that doesn’t matter. The words themselves are damaging and hurtful regardless of whatever message they were clumsily attempting to convey, and for that damage and hurt I am as sincere in my apology as these impressive students were in their pain.   It does matter in another way, however. It’s essential for me to remark that I no way hold and do not condone the rather terrible racist views that have been ascribed to me on the basis of this post, views in fact of the same despicable sort that form the basis of my intended critique of Hamas. But this is not the place (I have learned) to take on this defensive posture. For here and now what matters, only, is the hurt and offense that the words as they are, and as they are read by so many, cause.

Under the continued threat of the unresolved bias complaint, Pessin, again, felt he had to obey. Here was a Catch-22. Forbidden from defending himself from libel lest he upset the libelers—he was essentially compelled to

47

48

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

implicitly affirm the libels as true. And, in an ultimate irony, the administration delivered him bound and gagged to the very newspaper that had falsely accused him without giving him the chance to defend himself. He revised his apology to focus on the language of the post, and omitted any attempt to illustrate its willful misinterpretation. Van Slyck emailed him to express her approval that he had given up defending himself. This placation of the “angry” and prohibition of self-defense reflects a dual collapse of standards. Although Van Slyck probably didn’t use the word appease in the warning that Pessin’s defense would only make things worse (i.e. increase their anger), that was precisely what she was asking. One of Pessin’s colleagues and friends used precisely this same language about appeasing anger: to defend himself would only “exacerbate the animosities by making it seem like he is the victim here.” The logic of appeasement could not be more explicit without open admission: Pessin could not be the victim (i.e. innocent) because that would anger his accusers. This became a key theme to all future public events. In order to appease the attackers, the administration repeatedly insisted that Pessin not tell his side of the story—a silencing that found a chilling counterpart in his colleagues’ lack of interest in hearing his voice. He was not permitted to be heard in the meeting with the students, not in his Voice apology, certainly not at the Open Forum, and even his colleagues denounced him for trying to defend himself.12 The administration—despite being fully informed of his side of the story from the start—at no point ever made public mention of it. They would not let him speak his truth, and they would not speak it on his behalf. And things were still just warming up.

Mar 7–22 Spring Break

Mar 8 Pessin’s coerced and censored apology appeared in the Voice online edition. Pessin, thinking it was over, went back to focusing on his traumatized family’s needs. 12 Pessin Archive #11: Philosophy Department Faculty Emails, March 3–9: Chair to Pessin, March 4, 2:27 pm.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

THE SECOND ROUND OF ATTACK: ONLINE PETITION Mar 18 Pessin had now apologized directly to Khandaker, Uddin, 7 or 8 other students, and publicly in the Voice. His post had been deleted a full month earlier. And yet, #shocker: it turns out these apologies weren’t sufficient to placate his foes righteous indignation. Rather, in a classic honor-shame pattern, the forces marshalled against Pessin took his apology as a sign of weakness—which it was, indeed administrationinduced weakness—and so they escalated: his apology was an admission of guilt! An online petition appeared demanding that the Connecticut College administration explicitly condemn Pessin’s “racist remarks” and “dehumanizing” language. Sponsored by the same Editor-in-Chief Zuraw-Friedland who had used her newspaper to ambush him, the petition quickly spread, garnering hundreds of signatures and very hostile comments from places as far flung and ominous as Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan. The petition again misrepresented Pessin’s post, presented only its first paragraph (and not its clearer second paragraph), then presented his Voice apology as an admission of racism. At no point did anyone seem troubled by the conflict of interest in having the editor of the newspaper sponsor this petition, a clear breach of the paper’s Code of Ethics. Apparently, the halo effect of being a social justice warrior made such combinations of interest entirely acceptable, hence unremarkable except for the ones suffering the consequences of this partisan behavior. The petition further, and apparently without irony, simultaneously (1) insisted that everyone had the right to free speech, (2) demanded the administration use its free speech to affirm the petitioners’ charges, and (3) demanded that the “backlash” against them cease, i.e., they could say whatever they wanted (including misrepresentations, lies, and defamations) without response (backlash). They saw no tension in “demanding” someone else use their “free” speech to agree with them, and to silence those criticizing them. At this point, light began to dawn over Marblehead for Pessin. A full month into the affair he began to realize that he was not in a community of intellectuals committed to an honor code meant to guarantee honesty and fairness. He had kept believing that these were only a few students upset at some language that they had misunderstood, that his colleagues were as committed to collegiality as he was, that the Dean’s advice, however frustrating and ill-conceived, was well intentioned.

49

50

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

This reflects a larger problem which I would place in the context of the new century/millennium. Since 2000, since the explosion of lethal journalism that hit the West, depicting the Israeli Goliath/Nazi vs. the Palestinian David/ victim Jew, the academy had subtly but pervasively shifted ground. Defending Israel became an increasingly difficult and unpopular task, and many assumptions and narratives that should have been challenged on the basis of evidence and intellectual honesty prevailed. What Pessin suddenly realized at this point was that his colleagues, whom he had always assumed shared the same intellectual and moral commitments as he—those of the campus honor-code—were no longer on that page. His Stepford colleagues had become a zombie army. The appearance of this petition, however, finally shook him awake. It became clear that these people had a malevolent agenda and that his colleagues and fellow members of the academic community were incapable of resisting. This wasn’t about reasonable discourse, debate, an honest misunderstanding and a search for mutual understanding.13 It was a campaign to defame and destroy. If Pessin’s multiple apologies, etc. hadn’t sufficed for them, then nothing would. Indeed, every move that Pessin had undertaken to appease them just provided more grist for their mill. The petition itself is something of an intellectual joke. First, what does it mean to demand the administration, rather than the faculty, weigh in on questions such as what is racist? How is this not a power play, misappropriating the institution itself to force an issue most appropriately resolved by academic discussion? These authoritarian tendencies reflect a “Strong Horse” political culture rather than Western academia.14 Academic administrations are to make sure matters run smoothly; they are not authoritarian mechanisms for imposing censorship. One wonders how many of the faculty at ConnColl paused to consider whether they would, should, be comfortable having the administration express institutional opinions on political matters. What a chilling effect on community members who dare speak on controversial matters if their employers could then proclaim what they said to be officially offensive? 13 Zuraw-Friedland’s petition acknowledged this explicitly, expressing outrage that the administration had sought to increase mutual understanding. 14 On Strong-horse politics, see Lee Smith, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (New York: Doubleday, 2010). Note Gopalan’s scorn for the very suggestion that a non-politicized (i.e. uncoerced) discourse is culture-specific to the West: “‘tolerance, diversity and individualism are profoundly European ideas’ were said with straight faces by members of this camp.” Oped of February 3 (above, note 39).

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

To the contrary, it seems wise to establish rules that keep college administrations out of all substantive debates. For what purpose could the students’ demanding an administrative condemnation actually serve—besides attempting to silence, defame, and destroy the career of the person the administration condemns? Consider this part of the Honor Code: identification of violations that undermine the values of the Honor Code: “Written, physical, or verbal conduct that causes a reasonable expectation of fear of harm to any person.”15 Zuraw-Friedland’s petition, libeled a Jewish advocate for Israel as an anti-Palestinian racist, broadcast these accusations to a Muslim and Arab world at large, at a time when lynch mobs against all forms of apostasy and blasphemy proliferated in the Muslim world, and when Jihadi attacks on Western targets were on the increase. It rapidly generated a stream of hateful and hostile messages to Pessin that further deepened his fear for his and his family’s safety. One might even imagine that those threats operated in the back of the minds of many of those faculty members who rushed to condemn him rather than defend him. His colleagues may not have shared his views on Israel, but they ought to have cared that a member of their community had to live in fear for his safety and for that of his children as a result of the deliberate actions of other members of their community. And yet, no one on that campus deemed that petition objectionable, either for demanding administration intervention or for putting a fellow community member at risk of harm. Even more shocking, many community members signed that petition.

Mar 19 Pessin informed Dean Van Slyck about the frightening comments on the petition and how physically threatening this was to him and his family, and implored the administration to do something about it.

Mar 20 Pessin informed Dean Van Slyck that due to fear for the safety of himself and his family he was taking down his Facebook page. He had left it public in the vain hope that his colleagues would consult it before passing judgment on his controversial post. 15 Student Handbook (2014–15), pp. 17, 20

51

52

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Mar 23 Pessin met for the first and only time with President Katherine Bergeron, along with Dean Van Slyck, and accompanied by his advisor (who later became his attorney). At this point Pessin was in a state of near panic. Despite his having informed the administration four days earlier that the petition was generating threatening messages as it spread around the world, and having implored them to help protect him and his family, they had done nothing. Bergeron acknowledged that to date she had only seen the first paragraph of his post, the one quoted in the petition. Pessin provided her afterward, on her request, with the full text of the post (without the comment thread, still missing at this date). Astonishingly, the President had not yet read even the whole twoparagraph post, given the controversy it had created on campus. It was even more shocking because she had already spoken publicly—and critically— about his post several times, and she had publicly praised the students’ defamatory Voice letters, despite the fact that the Dean of Faculty already knew that they misrepresented his post and made key omissions of fact. The President also said that she didn’t know the online petition had comments appended to it, even though Pessin had informed the Dean of Faculty about the many hostile messages four days earlier. (Why would Dean Van Slyck not want Pessin’s side to be known, even to her administrative superior?) Pessin provided the President with a document showing that in its context the post was clearly about Hamas, and told her explicitly what (again) the Dean of Faculty had known since March 3, that he had explained all this to both Khandaker and Uddin as far back as Feb 20/22. Bergeron counseled appeasement to Pessin: remain publicly silent, do not broadcast this information lest it inflame the situation, and she promised that she would handle the situation herself. She said that she would review the materials he gave her and take them into account in preparing her remarks for the upcoming Open Forum. She assured him that she would take care of the online petition against him. Pessin left the meeting feeling relieved, once again trusting in the fair-mindedness of the administration. Had Pessin been less naïve, he would have realized, the administrators had already made up their minds. They felt no need to read the text before, nor did they now. He was guilty. The staged emergency demanded it.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Still, from the stress of the situation and the fear of physical harm, he went on medical leave effective immediately, and did not return to campus the rest of the semester. The President fulfilled none of her promises. The administration, for example, never took any public steps to discourage the defamatory online petition, which remained up at least well into 2016.

STAMPEDING THE CAMPUS: PUBLIC FORUMS, FORMAL DENUNCIATIONS Mar 23, evening The escalation continued. The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) sent a statement to the faculty listserv condemning speech “filled with bigotry and hate particularly when that speech uses dehumanizing language and incites or celebrates violence.” Anyone with even limited knowledge of Hamas’ typical rhetoric might think this was a statement condemning the terrorist group, and more broadly the world of global Jihad. Instead, the statement referred to Pessin’s Facebook post, echoing the language of Zuraw-Friedland’s petition, calling for precisely an authoritarian condemnation. It was, in other words, part of the Orwellian world of “war is peace,” in which the deliberate and dishonest reading of Pessin’s original post had, in the wake of the administration’s insistence that he not defend himself but only apologize, become the authoritative (anti-authorial) reading.16 Bergeron’s empty promises to Pessin came back to haunt him. The first signature on this statement—and, it turned out, its author—was Professor Courtney Baker, the Faculty Ombudsperson. Oddly, rather than help ensure that the College follow its own norms—as was required of an ombudsperson—she led the very process that violated them. As with Uddin in Global Islamic Studies 16 Later many would claim that this (and the subsequent) statements “weren’t about Pessin” (e.g., see below, p. 59). This is not credible. Why would departments spontaneously decide to issue statements that begin by making reference to “the post of a faculty colleague,” condemn the exact sort of language that his post was accused of making, do so immediately after a student petition called upon them to do just that, all as part of a series of community statements including several that mention Pessin by name. John Gordon discusses this feint at length below: “Andy Who?” pp. 131–37.

53

54

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

and Downs as advisor to the student newspaper, positions of authority became additional platforms in the pursuit of a political agenda—in this case, spreading a malicious statement condemning a faculty member with whose politics they disagreed. Pessin immediately contacted Dean Van Slyck to communicate his frustration at having been prevented from defending himself, and to urge the administration to discourage these public statements lest other departments follow suit and produce an impossibly hostile work environment for him: [I] need for this to stop—the bullying/harassment/internet defamation from the students, for one, and this now from the faculty. We suggested holding off for a while on the project of restoring my reputation, part of which would have to involve my ending my silence and actually defending myself. I understand the well-intentioned motivations [sic] of these faculty members, but in their ignorance of my self-defense this continues to create an enormously hostile work environment for me, even despite the fact that I will be taking this [medical] leave. I understand … the President’s desire for me to remain silent and let her handle the situation, but from my perspective this sort of behavior needs to stop. I see it as the direct product of the students’ willful misrepresentation of my post, and its full context … [perhaps] something from your office might encourage other departments to hold off on statements like this. Maybe by informing them that they are not aware of all the facts.

Pessin apparently believed his employers had a moral obligation to him. The administration insisted that Pessin remain silent, but would not offer even minimal discouragement of the onslaught. Either because they sympathized with his attackers’ political positions, or simply feared the massing forces of indignation arrayed against the campus’ lone Zionist—they systematically undermined him and enabled his attackers. Later on, in early April, two faculty members objected to a colleague’s less than civil critique of the faculty’s behavior on the faculty listserv.17 One said, “I don’t think our workplace … should be a hostile environment.” Another said, “I want a work environment where we treat one another with respect.” These were said—without any apparent irony—to, and by, people who had, in fact, actively participated in creating an enormously hostile, disrespectful work environment 17 See below, chapter 5.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

for a colleague. This insular empathy—among us bien-pensants let respect reign—and utter lack of empathy for the victim of their collective aggression despite his being a colleague, reflects the “scapegoating” dynamic that Girard analyzes, in which solidarity is born of sacrificing a chosen victim.18 We are all committed to each other, not the sacrifice. In a replication of the “micro-aggression” crowd protesting the threatening of their “safe-space,” these faculty members had no problem aggressing Pessin, but, when criticized, all of a sudden rediscovered the rules designed to protect their safe environment and self-respect. The remarkable lack of any sense of irony among those so complaining, suggests a paradoxical combination of self-righteousness and fear denied. Perfect scapegoat sacrifice.

Mar 24 Inside Higher Ed and NPR contacted and interviewed Pessin.

Mar 25 Numerous other departments began releasing statements condemning Pessin’s post. Articles came out on NPR and Inside Higher Ed. Student Henry Sinnock posted the NPR article on his Facebook page and add his comment: “Cackling.” His Schadenfreude recalls the response to the internet destruction of a woman who had tweeted a sarcastic comment that had been misread as racist: “God that was awesome.”19 Meanwhile news of the affair spread to the philosophy listservs and blogs. Several philosophy colleagues emailed Pessin to inform him of the very negative coverage they were seeing in the philosophy world. Once launched, these “racist” memes can sweep aside the moral integrity of a whole profession of scholars, even those specifically trained to be skeptical.

Mar 25 Despite being warned by multiple parties that it was a very bad idea (including Pessin’s own lawyer), the administration sponsored an Open Forum. To facilitate maximum attendance, they rescheduled or cancelled various College events. The Forum allegedly was to be about free speech, community values, and underrepresented voices in general, but ended up, exactly as predicted by 18 See below, chapter 7. 19 Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (NY: Penguin, 2015), chap. 4.

55

56

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

those who had warned against it, being in significant measure an anti-Pessin, anti-Israel hatefest. This was aided by the fact that President Bergeron opened the meeting with critical remarks about Pessin’s post, making no reference to the materials he had provided her, nor to the fact that the people leading this campaign had known from the beginning that they were misinterpreting the post, etc. Bergeron instead repeatedly praised the students for exercising their free speech against Pessin, and explicitly noted that she had no objection to the student petition against him, despite being fully aware that it misrepresented his post and his apology, and knowing that it was putting his physical safety at risk. She later posted her remarks on the College website to disseminate her message more widely.20 This behavior raises serious questions: Was Bergeron lying to Pessin when she spoke with him two days earlier offering her support, comforting the sacrifice before dispatching it? Was she a full-fledged advocate of this kind of intellectual terrorism? Or was she afraid of becoming the next target, eager to distance herself from the victim lest she too become the object of the hatred bringing him down? Or was she just a deluded proponent of the new “social justice advocacy” model of academia, in which honor codes, intellectual integrity, and the messiness of a world in which honesty takes precedence over political agendas are all sacrificed for the sake of “doing good”? None of these are good motivations; they all spell disaster for the College and, more broadly, for Western academia. Nor was Bergeron’s open betrayal of Pessin sufficient to satisfy the appetites of the angry students. Clinging to the last shreds of her integrity, she at least refused to comply with the petition’s specific demand that the administration formally condemn Pessin. In return, students assaulted her with profanities: “Fuck you, Bergeron!” they shouted before then going on to rant about Israel’s cruelty in Gaza, chanting “Free Palestine!”, denouncing Zionism and those defending Israel as racist. The radicals called for Pessin to be fired, and the single ( Jewish) student who stood up to defend Pessin was roundly booed. These events receive no resistance or push-back from any of the many administrators on the stage. Those who had read Khandaker’s intemperate rant before it was surreptitiously disappeared by the College Voice staff would immediately recognize the vicious tone of outrage and “moral” indignation. An 20 Pessin Archive #25: President Bergeron’ Opening Remarks at the March 25 community forum.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

angry mob was now in command of public space, and apparently nothing they did could convince the alleged adults to rebuke them. Indeed, their behavior received no resistance or push-back from any of the many administrators on the stage, who simply sat there blank-faced as students verbally assaulted them. On the contrary, pathetically, Bergeron, in a fit of public masochism, confessed her love and admiration for the students’ passion and commitment even as they reviled her. Nor did anyone seem to notice that despite the oft-repeated claim that the issue was not Pessin’s politics but his offensive language, in fact, anti-Israel rhetoric and offensive language dominated the evening’s discussions: a triumph for the intellectual terrorists, a rout of academic integrity. At this Forum Bergeron also claimed that when the post first came to her attention, three weeks earlier, she had set out “to learn more.” Yet only two days before, she had admitted that she had not even read both paragraphs of the post, and to that date she had never spoken to Pessin and was entirely unaware of the conversations he had had with Dean Van Slyck.21 Was Bergeron’s pronouncement just a hypocritical attempt to appear serious (honorable) in front of the news media, and/or was she fully self-delusional? She may have led an institution that values inquiry, analysis, and respect for truth, but her response to the affair reflected none of these. Zuraw-Friedland later acknowledged inviting the press to cover this Forum, thus escalating the campaign against Pessin into the broader media, a move which, in the long run, worked to her disadvantage. The College also chose to allow the press in, when they could have simply made it a closed-door meeting. In fact, the move boomeranged, since actions that seemed heroic within the fetid confines of this woke community looked very different to many on the outside. Unlike those within the community, the media felt it had the obligation to actually consult with Pessin before writing about him. He, in turn, at last freed from the naiveté which had held him in thrall to the administration’s assurances and advice, finally had a venue to begin telling his side of the story.

Mar 26 On campus, however, the anti-Pessin momentum continued to snowball. Bergeron announced that the administration would create a new 21 This is the administrative equivalent of the professorial joke, “Read it? I haven’t even lectured on it.” Read it? Let me finish condemning it.

57

58

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

a­ dministrative position, a “Dean of Equity and Inclusion,” and quickly moved to appoint three “interim” Deans of Equity and Inclusion. More departments released condemnatory statements. The Student Government Association passed resolutions explicitly condemning Pessin as well, violating its own procedural rules (over the objections of some students) in order to do so.22 The revolution proceeded apace, mowing down anyone with scruples who stood in its path. Sadly, the majority of those few with scruples appear to have been students.

Mar 27 The pile-on continued as more departments released statements. The Art Department wanted the statements to be made public to students. Multiple discussions occurred about how and when to share the statements with the students. Reports arose of students pressuring faculty members to sign their department’s statements. (Later, reports arose of faculty members pressuring faculty colleagues to sign.23 Pessin also received around a dozen emails from students complaining about the atmosphere of intimidation on campus in general.) Eventually various student organizations published condemnatory statements as well.

Mar 29 In response to the media coverage of the events, the volume of hate mail and threats Pessin received increased. Religious Studies Prof. David Kim— who at the Open Forum had hugged Khandaker, calling her “my hero!”— announced that The College Voice would run an ad listing all the department statements condemning Pessin. Editors Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan—who had ambushed Pessin in their newspaper, extracted his apology, then misrepresented it in their petition against him—would now publish all the condemnations they had prompted the departments to make against him. The paper had become an organ of revolution.

22 Pessin Archive #28: SGA Resolutions CC 14–15 #21–22, March 26; #29: Student Email to Pessin Describes SGA Meeting of March 26. 23 Later there were reports from several untenured faculty members about the pressure they felt to sign, given their vulnerability. Others, even with tenure, felt vulnerable to the kind of attack that here targeted Pessin.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

It was also announced that a page at the website for the Dean of Equity and Inclusion would be set up to make the denunciations public as well. (This website remained on the College website for over a year, a bizarre sign of the faculty’s enduring folly and the administration’s endorsement—Connecticut College, the twenty-first-century version of the Ship of Fools. By early 2019, it was gone.) Prof. Spencer Pack, one of Pessin’s few faculty supporters, emailed the faculty listserv to express the first resistance to the campaign on campus, explaining why he refused to sign his department’s statement. Over the next few days three more faculty members expressed dissent as well: English Professors Jeff Strabone (untenured) and John Gordon, and Mathematics Professor Perry Susskind. Out of some two hundred faculty, that was it. John Gordon in particular ridiculed yet another element of the dishonesty of the campaign: the oft-repeated (and frankly bizarre) claim that the department condemnations were “not about Pessin.” This obfuscation testifies to the submerged sense among the faculty that something was wrong with what they were doing, alongside a determination to continue committing the wrong. Sensing that if they directly attacked Pessin, their statements might end up looking very bad, especially to outsiders, the authors of statements showed a distinct shift over time, each becoming vaguer, and more generic—“we oppose hate speech”—each less and less directly linked to Pessin and his Facebook post. As Professor Strabone pointed out, if the statements are not about Pessin, they’re empty banalities not worth mobilizing whole departments. If they are about Pessin but not admitting it, they are cowardly attempts to toe the line drawn by the students and their petition while not leaving themselves open to criticism from people outside campus who did not share the collective folly that seized Connecticut College that Spring.24 When I personally asked a faculty member at Connecticut College whom I knew, in late June whether he had been pressured into signing his department’s statement, he replied somewhat indignantly: I was not pressured in the least. The statement is not about Pessin in particular, but about a multitude of incidents on campus that did constitute hate speech, particularly racist graffiti. The only pressure I have received is from people outside the college on behalf of Pessin.25 24 Pessin Archive #41: Faculty Dissent, Jeff Strabone, March 31. 25 Personal email to me.

59

60

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

This is a classic move of turning criticism of intimidation against those with the temerity to raise the subject. It is also an ex-post-facto reconstruction, which I accept that he honestly believed to be true. His department’s statement actually preceded the March 30 incident of the racist bathroom graffiti (see below)— whose status as a hoax was certainly known by June when he wrote me. And his reference to outside pressure as a counter to a question about McCarthyite pressure from within, made a false equivalence between the electric atmosphere on campus and the very real consequences of being “outed” as a racist, and outside letters from people who supported Pessin, whom he could (and did) ignore at will. All in all, it’s a testimony to the self-justifying retrospective narratives that faculty members told themselves and others in defense of their intellectual pogrom. If one has a legitimate claim to make, as Khandaker claimed she did, one ought to be able to make it in accordance with the intellectual and moral norms governing the community. Instead we are presented with an unbroken stream of illegitimate actions at all levels of the campus community: • • • • • • •

• • •

the abused bias incident procedure; the misrepresentations and lies of the student letters and petition; the journalistic malfeasance; the manipulation of comment threads; the faculty ombudsperson leading the lynch mob; the administration repeatedly insisting Pessin not defend himself but rather appease; the President expressing opinions about the post without having read it fully or spoken to him, even as she presented herself to the public as having done due diligence; the student government breaking its own procedural rules; the pretense that the campus response to Pessin had nothing to do with politics, yet included anti-Israelism as a major component; the pretense that these statements were “not about Pessin.”

These are only the clearest signs of the intellectual and ethical degradation at Connecticut College that spring.

Mar 30 Racist N-word graffiti appears in a campus bathroom. The administration reacts by declaring a moral emergency, cancels all classes for another school m ­ eeting,

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

deemed “mandatory attendance.”26 Multiple times, in the media and to the campus, Bergeron linked Pessin’s post to the graffiti, by suggesting (for example) that it showed the “level of harm that incendiary language can have on a community.” It later turned out that the perpetrator was most likely someone from off-campus, and had nothing to do with the campus situation (and probably hadn’t heard of Pessin’s post).27 At no point did the administration apologize to Pessin for suggesting that he was somehow responsible for that graffiti. In their minds, they were just doing their job, fighting hatred. A second public forum was held in which, linking the racist graffiti to Pessin’s “racist” post, students pressed Bergeron hard to get her to condemn Pessin directly.28 Meanwhile, overwhelmed by fear for himself and his family, stunned that the administration had taken no steps to help him, Pessin emailed Zuraw-Friedland directly, asking her to take down her petition because of the hate mail and threats it had elicited. He copied the administration on the email. Dear Ayla, I write you now with a humble request.   Your admirable social advocacy, culminating in your change.org petition, has made a significant impact on campus and beyond. It has produced exactly the kind of campus conversation you say you wanted, in your media interviews. Though the administration, under pressure from many directions, hasn’t quite given you the answer you asked for, they have responded; you have clearly reached their ear, and you have succeeded in persuading nearly every department on campus to issue public statements condemning racist, hate speech. Though the campus community ­obviously has its work ahead cut out for it, I believe you can proudly count your campaign a success. 26 Shockingly, the administration required students to sign in in order to prove they had attended, and later followed up with emails to students who didn’t sign in, reminding them of their Honor Code obligation to inform the administration “whether you were present or why you were not able to attend.” To anyone still doubting the McCarthyite atmosphere on campus, they need doubt no longer. 27 If, as sometimes occurs in these “staged emergencies,” the culprit was carrying out a false flag operation, then he or she may have been acutely aware of the Pessin affair, intending to get just the kind of lumping of the raw racism of the graffito, and the invented racism of Pessin’s post. 28 Pessin Archive #36: College Voice: Campus Forum Leaves Concerns Unaddressed, March 31.

61

62

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime   But perhaps you are unaware of a darker consequence of your endeavors. I am receiving a wealth of hate mail, including threats to me and my family, as a direct result of your petition. You say repeatedly that your interest is in the wider issues, and not about me personally. I am sure you do not seek to inundate me with hate mail and threats to myself and my children.   I humbly request that you now close your petition and remove it from the website before any further damage is done. Each day it remains up, it directly increases the threat faced by me and my children. And I can only hope that is not what you want. Sincerely, Andrew Pessin

She did not reply. She left the petition up, in clear violation of The Student Handbook (2014–15), pp. 17, 20, which defines “written, physical, or verbal conduct that causes a reasonable expectation of fear of harm to any person” as “violations that undermine the values of the Honor Code.”

Mar 31, 8 pm The administration neither responded to this email nor took any public steps toward discouraging this petition. It may, however, have signaled to the petitioners that they needed to do something. So, the next day, the petition was revised to remove Pessin’s name, and to remove the abridged screen shot of his post. But it was still clear to whom it referred and his name appeared throughout the many hostile comments.

Apr 1 The revised petition now listed Gopalan, the opinion page editor of the Voice, as its sponsor. (It would later turn out that Gopalan was its author.)

Apr 2 Pessin emailed Gopalan a polite request to remove the petition completely due to the threat to his family, again copying the administration. After praising the success of their campaign, he wrote:

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al   It is hard for me to understand what more you can want at this point. I continue to receive vicious hate mail, including threats to me and my family, as a direct result of your petition. Each day your petition remains up, it directly increases the threat faced by me and my family. I do not want to believe that you are the kind of person who wants harm to come to me or my children. And for what? For the sake of getting a few more signatures on a petition—about a post from last summer, that has been apologized for to Lamiya, Prof. Uddin, to you and a group of other students, and publicly in the Voice—not to mention deleted already over six weeks ago?   Even more surely, I imagine, you do not want to be held responsible for that harm, should it come from someone who has learned of me from your petition.   I beg you, at this point, in the name of the very values you say you are fighting for: please close this petition and remove it from the website. Humbly, Andrew Pessin

Gopalan did not reply.29 Instead, she and others went to the administration to complain that Pessin was trying to silence them. In their minds, they were innocent and he, guilty. Case closed: let the guilty victim shut up and go. That evening the administration called Pessin to tell him of the student’s complaints—they seem to have had ready access—and asked him to refrain from communicating any further with the students. From pathetic to grotesque. On the one hand, the students deem two painfully obsequious, pleading letters from Pessin an effort to “silence them.” On the other, the administration cowers at their anger, and turns against Pessin in compliance with their demands. Free speech no longer had any place at ConnColl. Nor did empathy or compassion for the (chosen) victim. Apparently too few members of the faculty and administration could appreciate what it feels like to be a Jew, with children attending Jewish institutions, being defamed as an anti-Palestinian racist both locally and globally across the Muslim and Arab world. It takes only one crazy person to decide it’s his or her day to be a 29 The petition remained up at least well into 2016.

63

64

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

glorious martyr and ‘kill his Jew.’30 When their children were dropped off at school or camp every single day, he and his wife were sick with worry at what might happen. He begged the students to remove the petition. He begged for help from the administration, to protect his children. The administration told him to shut up; the students pressed their advantage. Imagine that an African-American who said some harsh things about the Ku Klux Klan found herself being smeared on campus and across the country as an anti-White racist, being verbally assaulted by her colleagues, her life put in danger—and the administration not only praised the people doing the assaulting but then told her to be quiet. Wouldn’t that seem just a bit racist? Indeed, the first part of what I hypothetically described above happened that January at Brandeis, when an African-American student named Khadijah Lynch made disparaging remarks about two police officers (of color) killed by a #BlackLivesMatter “activist.” When fellow student Daniel Mael criticized her in a national publication and she received hostile and threatening mail, he became the object of vilification for invading her ‘safe space.’31 In the skewed world of intersectionality, it’s heads I—those (self-identifying as) marginalized and underrepresented—win, tails you—those (identified as) ­privileged—lose. The Right to a Safe Environment: Students have the right to an environment in which the College takes reasonable measures to offer students protection from foreseeable danger. —Student Handbook (2014–15), p. 9

It’s nice to know that students—in principle—have this right. It would be nice if other community members did as well. Actually, given the massive violations of the Student Handbook’s rules and the Honor Code that proliferated the Spring of 2015, no one but marginalized and underrepresented bullies were safe … a classic setup for fascism.32 30 On the principle of “kill a Jew and go to heaven,” see Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Kill a Jew and Go to Heaven,” Palestinian Media Watch Report, http://www.palwatch.org/ STORAGE/special%20reports/Kill_A_Jew.pdf. 31 Daniel Mael “Once Again, Brandeis Students Master Selective Outrage,” Time Magazine, January 8, 2015; http://time.com/3660475/brandeis-free-speech-selective-outrage/. 32 See, for example, the Pessin Archive #44: Freshman email to Pessin, April 8.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Apr 5 Dean of Faculty Van Slyck put out a note on the faculty listserv criticizing the uncivil remarks of one faculty member who had been one of the only voices of dissent to the department condemnations.33 So apparently the administration could weigh in on the faculty listserv when sensitive feelings were hurt, despite being unable to weigh in with mere words of discouragement when departments were falsely accusing the only Jewish professor on campus who spoke up for Israel of genocidal hate speech.

Apr 8 David Bernstein published in The Washington Post his first article critical of what was going on at the College: “The Hypocrisy and Dishonesty of Attacks on Connecticut College Professor Andrew Pessin.”34

Apr 9 An online petition was posted supporting “Free Speech and Professor Pessin.” (It eventually received over 10,000 signatures), far more than the anti-Pessin petition, testifying to a large body of latent support for Pessin.35

Apr 10 Gopalan’s petition was revised again to include once more the short excerpt from Pessin’s post, excluding the comment thread. Apparently, she was not satisfied with even the minimal amount of anonymity the petition had adopted.

Apr 13 David Bernstein published his crucial second article in The Washington Post, in which he produced the missing comment thread to Pessin’s infamous post. This showed conclusively that Fratt and Garbe had deliberately lied about the 33 Pessin Archive #35: Faculty Dissent John Gordon, March 30. 34 David Bernstein, “The hypocrisy and dishonesty of attacks on Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin, The Volokh Conspiracy,” Washington Post, April 8, 2015; http://www. washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/08/the-hypocrisy-and-dishonesty-of-attacks-on-connecticut-college-professor-andrew-pessin/. 35 Pessin Archive #45: Two Petitions in favor of Pessin, April 9.

65

66

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

comment thread and made clear that the analogue to “the dog” in the post were the “terrorists,” i.e., that the post was indeed about Hamas all along. The only way to insist it was about Palestinians now was to exclude its comment thread. Uddin and her students had of course been widely circulating the post all along without the comment thread. Bernstein concluded, “I think it’s fair to call the allegations against Pessin a hoax.” Bernstein also criticized the initial work of the interim Deans of Equity and Inclusion, who despite claiming that the campaign against Pessin was “not about his pro-Israel views,” had rushed to put together harshly pro-Palestinian programs on campus run not by scholars but by activists. The libelous Fratt and Garbe letter remained up on the Voice website without retraction or correction until at least well into 2016—yet another of Zuraw-Friedland’s and Gopalan’s breaches of the paper’s Code of Ethics and Constitution. Khandaker posted in the Voice a second letter, complaining about the backlash she had received for publishing her original letter. There were a half-dozen misrepresentations or falsehoods in this letter, but perhaps its worst offense was the notion that she could libel a faculty member and then complain about push-back. As the Arabic proverb goes: He hit me, he ran ahead and cried.36

Apr 16 In response to the Bernstein articles, student (and original accuser) Zachary Balomenos published in the Voice an apology to Pessin, acknowledging that he’d been misinformed about the contents of Pessin’s post. There were to be no other public retractions or apologies. No departments or programs or student organizations removed their condemnatory statements from the public website or revised them. Not a single person who had signed the students’ petition or a departmental condemnation apologized to Pessin for suggesting that he had “celebrated or incited violence,” now that it was clear that he was in fact defending the right of Israel to non-violently defend itself (by blockade) from violence. The truth was out there, to quote an old television show—but who cared?

36 For more analysis of this letter, see below, chap. 3.

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

Apr 18 Some did. In response to the Bernstein articles, several individuals began formally reporting the students’ many Honor Code violations to the administration and to Dean Sarah Cardwell, who oversaw the Honor Council. These included the damaging—now nationally exposed—libel of Fratt and Garbe and the multiple violations of Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan in particular, including the latter’s refusals to remove the defamatory petition endangering the safety of Pessin and his family. According to the Honor Code: The College has an obligation to investigate and resolve complaints that may be filed formally, informally, or that may arise in nonconventional settings. —Student Handbook (2014–15) on the Honor Code, p. 16

Cardwell and the rest of the administration chose to do nothing. The people in charge of the implementation of the Honor Code ignored the Honor Code’s obligation on them to investigate all reported violations. The same people who asked Pessin to resign from the Honor Council neither investigated nor disciplined those committing clear violations of the Honor Code.

Apr 19 On the contrary, instead of rebuking and disciplining her, Gopalan was appointed a student member of the new “Bias Task Force”! Two of the three faculty members on the task force were from the Global Islamic Studies program. Thus, several of the people who were running the campaign against Pessin, including one who had abused the “bias incident” procedure initially and repeatedly violated the Honor Code, were now put in charge of bias procedure. Behind the scenes at the trial of Josef K … except that this time, it’s the ­twenty-first century on banks of the Thames River in fair Connecticut.

Apr 24 In response to external criticism, the Dean of Equity and Inclusion website provided information about the deans’ sponsored events and other work, designed to show their fair-mindedness.37 37 Pessin Archive #43: Program of Deans of Equity and Inclusion at Connecticut College during the Pessin Affair, April 6–29.

67

68

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Curiously, the only example of something remotely favorable to Jews at the website listed the Melrod Lecture on Jewish Studies, featuring author Dara Horn on April 16, a talk with no political implications, much less agenda. This was strange because that lecture had been arranged by Pessin long before the Deanships of Equity and Inclusion even existed, and had no particular link to their mission. At the same time, the website failed to include the lecture on “Jewish terrorism,” sponsored by the Government Department, and while listing an event with the peaceful name “Healing through Music,” failed to mention that it featured a Palestinian musician talking about life under occupation and an American musician who did benefits for Gazans sponsored by a pro-BDS organization. Possibly in response to the Bernstein articles that publicly exposed their one-sided anti-Israel programming, the interim deans were trying to clean up their record—to make it look less anti-Israel, less anti-Jewish. Of course, if this whole episode had nothing to do with Pessin’s pro-Israel views but only with the language of his post (as so many claimed), then why was the half-semester of deans-sponsored programming dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, heavily weighted against Israel?

Apr 30 Someone reposted on the Voice website the angry reply Khandaker had made to a critic on March 4, which had subsequently been illicitly deleted.

May 3 Prof. Pack wrote to the faculty listserv calling attention to Balomenos’ apology, and raising questions about how the whole campaign against Pessin had been framed. Prof. Strabone followed with praise for Pessin’s taking responsibility for his words. Uddin complained about both of them to Dean Van Slyck, who obliged her by calling Pack and Strabone into her office to meet with Uddin. That meant that two of the four professors who had risen to the defense of Pessin were called in to the administration for reproach. Interestingly, neither Pack nor Strabone made reference to Uddin in their emails to the listserv, and all Strabone had done was praise Pessin’s apology, so one wonders why Uddin felt the need to have them called in, and, still worse why Van Slyck complied? The administration clearly had no trouble intervening when it wanted to. The question is, why did it behave in such a partisan fashion?

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al

May 5 Zuraw-Friedland published her last editorial, in which she admitted her lack of journalistic integrity, but explained that she did it because she felt “in her gut” that it was right.38 In the same issue, Gopalan published an editorial in which she acknowledged her support for “political coercion” via energizing a mob into activism and “collusion with media.”39 So much for inquiry, analysis, and respectful discourse. So much for civility, integrity, and respect for truth. Proudly proclaimed by the person who used her position on the school newspaper to orchestrate a public shaming based on lies, who then oversaw the McCarthy-like atmosphere of public pressure on people to sign petitions and condemnations, and was then rewarded with the mantle of reforming the bias procedure as she wished. It worked. Is that the model Connecticut College wants for its community?

May 7 Comments critical of Zuraw-Friedland on the Voice website were mysteriously deleted multiple times. (Eventually someone managed to re-post them.)

May 8 Education Prof. Sandy Grande was promoted to become Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. The administration thus endorsed her anti-Israel programming as interim Dean of Equity and Inclusion.

May 12 Psychology Prof. Jefferson Singer was named new Dean of the College, over the other finalist, Economics Prof. Candace Howes. Howes was one of only two faculty members who left a public comment on the students’ online petition so that all could know she had signed.40 Singer, it was reported from two different 38 Pessin Archive #59: Farewell Remarks from Zuraw-Friedland, Editor of Connecticut ­College’s Newspaper, May 5. For further analysis, see chap. 3. 39 Pessin Archive #61: Gopalan, On Reconciling with the Idea of SGA, May 5. For further analysis, see chap. 3. 40 The large majority of other faculty members signed privately but were outed by the students.

69

70

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

sources, used his position as faculty adviser to Hillel to “pressure” (that was the word one source used) Hillel students against publishing a collective letter in support of Pessin. One wonders why he would do that, at least until one learns that Uddin, who, in her “capacity as Director of Global Islamic Studies,” was advising the students running the campaign against Pessin, was also on the search committee for the new Dean. Were both Howes and Singer hoping to win favor with the prosecutor, and thus win the deanship? One also wonders why, if Pessin had to resign from the Honor Council, Uddin did not have to resign from this search committee. Was it because, in the minds of the administration, Pessin was on the wrong side of the intersection(ality) claims and Uddin was on the right side? Impartial equity apparently carries no weight when confronted with social “justice.”

May 14 History Prof. David Canton was promoted to continue on as Dean of Equity and Inclusion. The administration apparently endorsed his anti-Israel programming as interim Dean.

May 2015 (unclear date) Lamiya Khandaker was given a Scholar Activist Award by the Dean of the College, “in recognition of concerns of social justice through research and scholarship during the spring of 2015.” It was as official as her proud display of this award on her LinkedIn page: the administration approved of her politically motivated campaign of misrepresentations and lies (see Chapter 3).

May 17 President Bergeron praised the College’s Honor Code at commencement, and the College’s “culture of student accountability.” Not one of the students leading the campaign was publicly reproached or disciplined by the College, despite their misrepresentations, their nationally exposed libel, their actions putting Pessin and family at risk of harm, their flouting of the newspaper’s Code of Ethics and Constitution. All of these behaviors were blatant violations of the alleged Honor Code, and were explicitly reported multiple times to the administration and to Dean Sarah Cardwell—who then violated the College’s own Honor Code obligation in choosing not to act on them despite their great relevance to campus life:

The Shameful Dishonesty of It Al Because the Honor Code is taken very seriously by students, there is a strong trust between students, faculty and administration. The Honor Code sets the tone for campus life … —College website

Clearly, as the administration chose not to honor the Honor Code, there wasn’t much incentive for students to honor it either. Even more frightening than the thought that the administration actually approved of the maliciously dishonest campaign waged by Uddin and her students, is the thought that the administration believed that they had all acted honorably throughout. And apparently, they did.

71

CHAPTER 3

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style When masses of people are rushing to sign petitions and condemnations, chances are that diversity of perspective, diversity of opinion, freedom of speech and, most of all, freedom of thought, thinking for oneself, are not the highest priorities. And when those are not the highest priorities, chances are that truth isn’t either. Mob epistemology is pretty much an oxymoron.

ON THE MOTIVATIONS OF THE INITIAL INSTIGATORS: KHANDAKER, UDDIN, ET AL.

T

here was much discussion over what the affair was all about. The endlessly repeated claim was that it wasn’t about politics, but about the “offensive language” Pessin used in his post, a claim Khandaker formally made and the faculty parroted. Along with many others, Pessin’s colleagues in the philosophy department endorsed this view, distinguishing in their public assessment between “stating a political view that someone might find offensive and expressing one’s political view in a way that dehumanizes or devalues other people,” and expressly condemning the latter.1 On the contrary, the affair derived from the fact that the initial instigators were motivated in part by an anti-Israel agenda, and some, by an anti-Jewish one as well. To be clear, it is certainly acceptable to have—and vigorously defend, debate and discuss anti-Israel political views. It is not acceptable, however, to omit, misrepresent, and lie to promote those views. It is not acceptable to violate the intellectual and moral norms of the academic community, nor to

1

Pessin Archive #24. Community Statements in Chronological Order March 24-April 26.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

promote a political agenda by bullying, intimidating, defaming, endangering, and destroying those whose political views differ from yours. Yet that is what occurred during the events that can be characterized as Salem on the Thames.

Prof. Sufia Uddin, Director of Global Islamic Studies Professor Uddin’s response to Pessin’s initial email on Feb. 22 began: “Indeed, your Facebook posts were disturbing to me.” Note the use of the plural—posts. In the following weeks Uddin and the others repeatedly insisted that Pessin’s views on Israel were not in question, but that his single post was problematic because of its language. Why, then, was Uddin disturbed by his “posts”? Pessin’s Facebook posts over the past few years expressed mainstream Israel advocacy in which nothing could be interpreted as offensive (unless, of course, one adopted completely the Palestinian irredentist narrative whereby anything that acknowledged Israeli claims was illegitimate). Thus, it may have been that the notorious post was not at the root of Uddin’s distress, but Pessin’s support for Israel. Uddin’s email to Pessin continued: “In fact, I was uncomfortable with the implications of what you said at the [Hebdo] panel.” At the panel the month before, Pessin had emphasized the challenges (and importance) of a culture striving to maintain its liberal, tolerant values even when it contains subcultures that don’t share the liberal and tolerant values.2 The panel was, of course, about a case in which a subculture did not endorse the tolerant, liberal values of the larger culture: in the Hebdo massacre, French Islamists murdered cartoonists and Jews, and the panel took place after reports that some Muslim students in France had refused to observe memorial moments for the victims, expressing solidarity with the murderers instead.3 Although there is much to discuss and debate here, it appears that, like the student Lamiya Khandaker,4 Uddin—head of Global Islamic Studies, and proponent of Muslim culture as “progressive”—found Pessin’s Hebdo remarks objectionable. Pessin had, in fact, made no comments critical of Islam, but 2 Pessin Archive #4 Notes to Pessin’s Remarks on Charlie Hebdo Panel, January 22, 2015. 3 Anthony Faiola, “French Muslims feel deeply torn by viral ‘I am Charlie’ slogan,” Washington Post, January 13, 2015; http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/they-are-notcharlie/2015/01/13/7c9d6998–9aae-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html. 4 In Khandaker’s March 2 Voice letter she clearly found something objectionable about the phrase “sub-cultures of intolerance.”

73

74

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

he had expressed concern about those Muslims who—on the basis of their ­understanding of Islam—believe it acceptable to murder cartoonists and Jews.5 Indeed, Uddin’s remarks at the panel followed a classic pattern of apologetics for Jihad: a lengthy diatribe against the Hebdo magazine for insulting “the Prophet” followed by complaints and concerns about subsequent Islamophobia.6 At no point did she strongly condemn the murders—neither of the cartoonists nor of the Jews (who had not insulted Muhammad except by their continuing disbelief in him). Notably, Uddin informed people that she was addressing Pessin’s Facebook post “in her capacity as Director of Global Islamic Studies.” It is not simply coincidental that the four student letter writers against Pessin were in her Global Islamic Studies and Arabic Studies program. As Pessin’s post had nothing to do with Islam, one must ask why someone “in her capacity as Director of Global Islamic Studies” would feel it her mission to spearhead this campaign against the Jewish professor who defends Israel. Is it that, true to triumphalist Islamic teachings, she found Israel’s existence as a sovereign nation of non-Muslims in Dar-al-Islam offensive, just as she found imagined insults to Muhammad offensive? Indeed, a faculty member reported to Pessin on a conversation with Uddin, in which Uddin admitted that in the campus uproar Islam had been conflated with Palestinian and Arab. The colleague observed that it had—but only by the people attacking Pessin. Pessin’s post was about Hamas. It was taken to be about Gazans, then about Palestinians, then about Arabs, and then about Muslims, and it was only at that level that the Director of Global Islamic Studies addressed it. Yet Uddin, in admitting that this conflation occurred, never went on to recognize that this exonerated Pessin from any charge of anti-Islamic sentiments. And yet, there’s only one way that this conflation can occur: if one considers, along with Hamas—that Islam itself mandates the elimination of all who defy a triumphalist agenda whereby Islam must dominate all other religions. There’s a kind of Islamic egotism at work here: a colleague reflects philosophically on fanatic Islamist murderers and she hears only “anti-Islam.” Indeed, when reflecting on the same event, she prioritizes the condemnation of the 5 6

Pessin Archive #4: Notes to Pessin’s Remarks on Charlie Hebdo Panel, January 22. Joanna Paraszczuk, “Muslim Press Reacts to Charlie Hebdo Attack,” Radio Free Europe, January 09, 2015; https://www.rferl.org/a/muslim-press-reacts-charlie-hebdo-attack/26783014. html. For the negative reactions of various people at Vanderbilt to criticism of Islam in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, see Mark Tapson, “Vanderbilt Professor Under Attack for Criticizing Islam,” FrontPage, January 23, 2015; http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/ mark-tapson/vanderbilt-professor-under-attack-for-criticizing-islam/.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

cartoonists and anyone who criticizes Islam for the role it may have played in inspiring the Jihadi mass murderers, over the condemnation of the m ­ urderers themselves. In and of itself, this Islamic egocentricity is not objectionable: the more diverse we are in our priorities, the better. The point here, however, is the role it played in her campaign against Pessin. She perceived his Hebdo remarks as a criticism of (insult to?) Islam. Did Uddin’s negative reaction to Pessin’s Facebook “posts” derive from her support for the Islamic Resistance Movement (i.e. Hamas), although she could not admit this given her “progressive” self-identification? And even if she does not support or act like the Jihadis who murdered French infidels, does she also find insults to Muhammad and his faith intolerable? Having an academic program in Global Islamic Studies is important, and serious debate and discourse on the subject are essential. But if the character of the program is such that it generates attacks wherever there is a perceived slight against Islam, if academics cannot even mention the rising tide of triumphalist Muslim violence across the world without being attacked as racists, then the program is suppressing scholarly discussion and is serving merely as a vehicle for propaganda and activist militancy—and has no place at an institution of higher learning. Similarly, if that program produces students who attack and intimidate and defame Jewish students and faculty, and anyone who advocates for Israel, then the college needs to think deeply about what is going on there. Yet, as soon as history professor Eileen Kane took over as Director of Global Islamic Studies in the following fall of 2015, she oversaw the founding of Conn Students in Solidarity with Palestine, whose first act was to plaster posters that offended many Jews and Israel advocates all over campus. The group’s actions during 2015–16 led some Jewish students to file a “bias incident” complaint against it—to which the group responded angrily by occupying an administrative building for a week in May 2016. Like the Palestinian Arabs at the United Nations or at the International Criminal Court, Uddin and her Global Islamic Studies has corrupted the very institution that granted her authority, in pursuit of goals that damage the values of those who placed their trust in her. Certainly, an independent commission should be established, charged with examining the curriculum and agenda of the College’s Global Islamic Studies program. I suspect that it would discover, not a scholarly endeavor, but a deeply disturbing advocacy program, not merely for a “progressive” Islam, but also for a triumphalist Islam that knows how to exploit liberal weaknesses.

75

76

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

Lamiya Khandaker, Student Khandaker is a good example of post-modern, intersectional race discourse. In her opening public salvo against Pessin, she explained: People have this misconception that racism and bigotry are direct; that they are in your face; that they are physical acts. No. Racism isn’t explicit. Racism is subtle. Racism is institutional. Racism is systematic. Racism is embedding seeds of hate and bigotry into the psyche of social culture. Racism is only the foundation of what leads to later acts of violence. Racism takes root when we have influential academics in our school who publicly express views of bigotry. Racism is accepted when the institution fails to address the responsibility of academics to watch what they say.

Unpacked, this means that America, having eliminated obvious and direct acts of racism and bigotry (Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, open discrimination), must now go after the more subtle forms that create institutional advantages for some and marginalize others. This subtle racism, “spreading hatred and bigotry into the psyche of the social culture … lays the seeds of later violence.” Khandaker gets an A in Jim Downs’ class, where the admirable goal is “politically radical, mildly indecipherable [discourse] pushing us to dare more.”7 And this was the reigning discourse on campus in the following days. Racism, every progressive’s enemy, was identified with institutional authority and privilege, especially those that “openly” sided with identified victimizers like Israel. Giving voice to the “marginalized and underrepresented” became a widely accepted prime directive. Many of those present at the hate-fest for Pessin for his hateful [alleged] words, will tell you it was only initially about Pessin. It rapidly became a forum for “the stories and experiences of minority students and their experiences of bigotry, discrimination, and racism at Connecticut College … a space for all in attendance to listen to and empathize with their peers.”8 It became the occasion for everyone who had felt mistreated by people more powerful than they. What resulted was a large line of students who expressed their personal feelings and experiences of racism or bias. There was a lot of crying. This was not in any way a conversation, but an airing of grievances that 7 8

See below, 88n20. Pessin Archive #36: College Voice: Campus Forum Leaves Concerns Unaddressed, March 31.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style c­ oncerned not only your post but basically any perceived discrimination or hate people here have encountered. I think this was important and necessary, however it was not a “conversation” as the event suggested.9

Some were justifiable complaints and deserved to be heard, others less justified,10 among which one might include feeling “infuriated, repulsed … depressed … unsafe,” at the [mis]reading of a blog post. But all these complaints were “given voice” at this cathartic event. Khandaker and Uddin had successfully enlisted the enthusiastic support of everyone who felt oppressed. As one sympathetic student wrote to Pessin: As such [your post] has turned into this grand symbol of injustice; any attempts on your part to clarify, apologize or defend have now been turned into another component of racism. One person even said that requiring justification for why something is racist, or qualifying apologies for “racist behavior” are themselves acts of racism.

QED. Checkmate. Intersectionality Live Similarly, when Khandaker wrote her apologia in mid-April, she presented herself and friends as passionate but honest intellectuals struggling with institutional prejudice and racism. This was a group of intellectual young adults in college who understand the definition of racism as a “social structure that yields superiority and privilege for some, and discrimination and oppression for others.” An analogy that justifies an “owner” and a “cage” in a sensitive region where women, children and civilians are known to die in large numbers is a racist analogy regardless of one’s political views. And we engaged with racism through the best outlet possible—our student-run college newspaper.11

Nice move! By invoking a radical zero-sum dichotomy—privilege and superiority automatically mean oppression and discrimination for others—she and her “intellectual young adults” indicted the beneficiaries of a meritocratic 9 Pessin Archive #27: Student email to Pessin on March 25 public forum. 10 On the role of LGBTQ Professor Manion, on including even slight slights (a lobster prank), see Aditi Juneja’s comments: Pessin Archive #50. 11 Letter of April 13.

77

78

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

s­ ystem (like a full professor or a nation that has won repeated wars against a relentless enemy) as racists. From there it’s an easy step to identifying “owners with cages” in a world of civilian casualties, with the perpetrators of those casualties. How many good folk at ConnColl, under pressure from peers to conform, could realize that the most terrible civilian casualties in the region happened next door in Syria and Iraq, where Jihadis weren’t restrained. To point it out, either as a criticism of Arab Muslim political culture or as a mitigating context for Pessin’s post would be … racism. Obviously. And Islamophobia. One of the first journalists to cover the event discovered that Lamiya Khandaker—Uddin’s student and advisee, and lead student instigator—had founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in high school, and that she had used her Facebook page to call for the destruction of Israel.12 Although entitled to her views, it is unmistakable that Israel/Palestine is a major issue for her, about which she is a committed activist. In trying to understand her motives in attacking Pessin, this point should not be minimized. The same journalist also uncovered her complaint about people who protest anti-Semitism. One can only imagine how Jewish students at the College felt, knowing that she was the student government chair of “Equity and Diversity”—an ironic commentary on the state of many campuses today, where the promotion of “equity and diversity” typically includes attacks on campus Jews. Imagine if an African American had complained about racism with respect to police brutality, and Khandaker had commented, “Everything is racist to blacks. w[hat] t[he] f[uck]. It’s pissing me off.” Should such a person serve as student chair of “Equity and Diversity”? Incredibly, despite this well-publicized discovery, there was no campus call to remove Khandaker from her position. On the other hand, when we read Khandaker’s accounts of April 13 Voice letter we find a combination of aggressive victimhood, in which this information about her is somehow unfair, an effort to silence her justifiable indignation against Pessin. Pessin’s responses were offensive. “Dismissive … defensive, unapologetic, and more offensive [than the last].” On the other hand, she treats the revelation that she had a radical anti-Israel, political agenda even before she came to ConnColl as illegitimately victimizing her, a poor 19-year old student. “I 12 Daniel Greenfield, “Criticizing Hamas: The New Campus Hate-Crime,” FrontPage, March 29, 2015; https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/254111/criticizing-hamas-newest-­campushate-crime-daniel-greenfield.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

was stripped of my American identity and reduced to the Muslim activist who had targeted her professor.” What red-blooded American progressive wouldn’t jump to defend her “American” (presumably civic) identity? So while Pessin’s effort to clarify and apologize for unintentionally ­offending—i.e. to get off the hot-seat where she had him—merely increased her determination to take him down, she did not want people to know she was on the warpath. When she said to her friends (who were digging for dirt on Pessin) not to go public, did she mean, as she suggests in the letter, that she wanted to clarify things before doing so (i.e. sincerely ask Pessin what he meant), or to prepare the terrain to better use this potential weapon of cognitive warfare. Before emailing Pessin on February 18, which she later presented as a kind of courtesy notification,13 Khandaker had emailed a friend about his Facebook post: “wtf he literally just dehumanized the fuck out of human beings … This man needs to go.” The lines of the conflict were already laid down. Pessin, in thinking he was in an academia committed to the honor code, was playing in the wrong arena. Instead, Khandaker, who already had her strategy for making sure Pessin went, had laid out the cognitive war campaign with her fellow social warriors: accuse Pessin of “dehumanizing” Palestinians and, staging an emergency, get the campus to publically shame him for hate speech.14 If Khandaker gets “pissed off ” at Jews concerned about anti-Semitism, if she produces (then deletes) angry profanity-laden replies to her critics that breathe the language of “bigotry and hatred,” if she hates Israel so much that she calls for its destruction, if she casually slings racist libels against Israelis for sterilizing Ethiopians, if she considers a lengthy, substantive response disagreeing with her as “dismissive”—it seems reasonable to conclude that Pessin, a Jewish advocate of Israel, embodied everything she despised. In short, despite her allegations that this campaign had nothing to do with his politics, only the language of his post, it was actually about much more than hurtful language … not that many, including—especially—the professors caught on to this. In April, victorious and eager to present herself in the best light, Khandaker insists: “We were not seeking to criticize [Pessin’s] pro-Israel views, but the use of irresponsible language from a philosophy professor.” But already in her March 2 Voice letter she disclosed that she saw his post as applying to her, even though she is not a Palestinian Arab: sharing Uddin’s Islamocentrism, she 13 “I did not engage with him after that until Feb. 18. I thought I would let him know that his use of language was bothering many students. Letter of April 13. 14 On “Staged Emergencies,” see Ashley Thornton, below, chap. 7.

79

80

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

somehow projects Islam—and herself as a Muslim—into Pessin’s post about Gaza. Seeing everything through the lens of the Israeli-Arab conflict, which she apparently perceives largely as a Jewish-Muslim conflict, any defense of sovereign Jewry is interpreted as an offense to Muslims. Her behavior at the March 4 meeting of Pessin with the students who had taken offense at his post further confirmed the political agenda. Angrily waving a stack of papers at him, she said “I’ve printed out everything you’ve written, your Facebook posts, your Huffington Post articles, I know who you are. …” What she held was the modest amount of writing Pessin had done in those venues about the conflict between Israel and her neighbors, the writings of an Israel supporter. As with Uddin, what was disturbing her, angering her, was Pessin’s support for Israel. This point can’t be overstressed. Uddin and her students researched and printed Pessin’s writings on Israel. Nothing in those writings can be even remotely construed as offensive, as his August 11 post was. But rather than recognize these writings as providing the exculpatory context for the racist reading of the August 11 post, they used them as evidence against him: that Pessin supported Israel was itself offensive, and that only intensified their anger. This motivated their “gotcha” moment: they found the one piece of writing that could be misrepresented to a general audience—that could do their dirty work for them. And nearly everyone fell for it. Alas, Khandaker’s behavior during this episode exemplifies a more general trend on campuses across the country, viz. the increasing “coddling [and poisoning] of the American mind,” in the phrase of a widely-discussed article in The Atlantic (which at least one professor was criticized just for assigning to his students).15 Like Khadijah Lynch, Khandaker’s counterpart at Brandeis University,16 she contends that no matter how offensive she is, she must be protected from “backlash.” Just as Zuraw-Friedland/Gopalan’s petition demanded that the “backlash” cease, so, too, Khandaker was angered by the critical response 15 Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Atlantic, September 2015 (after the Pessin Affair); http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/ the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/. Two professors at University of Northern Colorado were brought up before a “bias committee” for assigning the article to students: discussed at length by Jeremy Coyne, “Professors hounded by their university for encouraging debate,” Why Evolution is True (blog), June 23, 2016; https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress. com/2016/06/23/professors-hounded-by-their-university-for-encouraging-debate/. 16 See above, chap. 2, at April 2.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

her attacks evoked and reproached Pessin for failing to “protect” her. This¸ of course, protects students from learning that in the real-world actions have consequences. If you undertake a dishonest or morally repugnant attack, you will be criticized. Indeed, professors should not protect students from critical responses, but provide them. Instead, Khandaker believes that professors should protect students from challenging ideas, from different perspectives, from information that challenges their previously held convictions. What else could a professor’s “role” as a “protector” be?17 In short, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Khandaker was motivated by her powerful antipathy to Israel, her impatience with Jews who complain about anti-Semitism, and her deep-rooted rejection of the possibility that a supporter of Israel, who is also critical of Islamic terrorism, might have anything to teach her. To her, such a professor “has got to go,” even if driving him out broke the rules of academic integrity and trampled on the Connecticut College “Honor Code.” Nonetheless, with full knowledge of all that Khandaker had done, in May 2015, the Dean of the College honored her with a “Scholar Activist” award. Perhaps Khandaker had understood academia well: she apparently understood the administrative mentality better than Pessin; she knew the administration would automatically side with the student, despite all the college’s proclaimed values that she had flouted.

JOURNALISTIC TRAVESTY: AYLA ZURAW-FRIEDLAND, APARNA GOPALAN, AND FACULTY ADVISOR JIM DOWNS The College Voice writers and publications strive to always uphold journalistic ethics. —the College Voice website

The journalistic malfeasance of editor-in-chief Zuraw-Friedland and opinions editor Gopalan suggests that Connecticut College needs to engage in a serious 17 Sadly, the administration’s role in the affair seemed only to reinforce this stance: Pessin was repeatedly told to suppress the truth, and, in an effort to appease the students, the administration repeatedly refused to tell his side of the story. The administration would protect the students from exposure to beliefs they didn’t share, and repeatedly affirmed only what they already believed. It wouldn’t correct them, wouldn’t criticize them, wouldn’t suggest they misunderstood what someone wrote. Above all, the administration would not make them uncomfortable.

81

82

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

discussion about how the newspaper should be run. More generally, the affair offers important lessons about the role of media in anti-Israel activism. Zuraw-Friedman and Gopalan used the campus newspaper to orchestrate their personal campaign against Pessin. Before coordinating the publication of the three letters on March 2, Zuraw-Friedland had circulated them the week before, and Gopalan was among those who had filed the “bias incident” charge against him a few days earlier. Zuraw-Friedland’s omission of the post’s clarifying and exculpatory comment thread on her Twitter feed violated the Honor Code’s demand that students “exemplify honesty, honor and respect for the truth in all of their conduct.” Moreover, publishing the letters in the manner Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan did violates specific clauses of the newspaper’s own Code of Ethics: II. Journalists should be honest, fair … in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Journalists should: a. Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible. b. Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.

Instead, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan ambushed Pessin with the solicited letters, publishing them without warning him or inviting his comment or response in the same issue. They never fact-checked the letters or, more likely, deliberately participated in the Fratt-Garbe lie about the comment thread. Printing the letters without reference to the comment thread is the same “deliberate distortion” of which Zuraw-Friedland was guilty in her earlier tweets. Notably, one College alumnus later retracted his letter, publicly apologized to Pessin, and admitted that he had been misled by the people who had originally solicited his letter. He should be recognized as one of the few heroes of this drama. The newspaper editors continued to play a critical role in controlling the unfolding “discussion.” Public comment threads that criticized them or challenged their narrative were deleted. On March 4, Khandaker weighed in to the comment thread on her March 2 letter with a ranting, cursing response to one of her critics, exposing the intemperate, aggressive person behind the accusations. A few days later it disappeared. Yet, once posted, there is no mechanism for someone to delete a comment. Clearly, someone at the paper did Khandaker a personal favor. Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan must share responsibility for this. On April 30,

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

someone re-posted Khandaker’s deleted comment. Within a couple of days, this re-post was deleted as well, and comments on the letter were closed. From the beginning to the end, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan maintained the pattern of deleting comments critical of their agenda, and generally controlling the comment threads. When alumnus Zachary Balomenos retracted— and apologized for—his original accusatory letter, the comment thread on it (which was favorable to Pessin) was quickly closed down, while the threads of older articles remained open. When Zuraw-Friedland published her final editorial on April 27, a comment was posted that was deeply critical of her. Not only was it quickly deleted, but the person who posted it discovered that his I. P. address was subsequently blocked by the paper! This individual then posted another critical comment about Zuraw-Friedland from another computer, only to have it deleted as well. Meanwhile, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan allowed numerous grossly antisemitic and raving anti-Zionist comments to remain posted all over some of the key articles and letters published earlier. These offensive comments remained on the Voice website at least until the end of 2015. In short, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan manipulated the flow of commentary to protect themselves, their friends, and their agenda—censoring opposing positions, and promoting offensive material by allowing it to remain available for months—the type of material academics at Connecticut College presumably had in mind when they signed their departments’ statements against offensive hate speech.

The Campaign and the Conflict of Interest On March 18, Zuraw-Friedland sponsored the online petition that called on the administration to condemn “Prof. Pessin’s racism and dehumanization.”18 She and the other students used social media to spread the petition internationally, and it quickly garnered hundreds of signatures (along with hundreds of hostile comments) from around the world, including from Arab and Muslim countries. The petition misrepresented Pessin’s Facebook post as racist and genocidal. It presented only the first paragraph of the post, omitting the second paragraph that makes it clearer that the post is about Hamas. It also left out the entire clarifying and exculpatory comment thread to the post, even as it 18 In the April 13 edition of the Voice Zuraw-Friedland claimed that Gopalan wrote the petition although she sponsored it.

83

84

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

­ isquoted the thread. It made no reference to the fact that Pessin had explained m the misinterpretation and deleted the post weeks before. This deliberate distortion, misrepresentation, and defamation violated both the newspaper’s Code of Ethics and the Honor Code of the College. No College administrator responsible for providing Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan with access to so powerful a platform as the press ever admonished them, even after the Washington Post published the original comment thread to Pessin’s Facebook post three weeks later (April 12), proving the malice at the heart of the petition. Nor did the administration protest when these militant students, who had hijacked the student press, left the noxious petition up well into 2016, long after the lie at its core had been exposed. The petition also maliciously smeared Pessin as an anti-Palestinian racist and spread the charge across the Arab and Muslim world. The petition immediately generated hate mail and threats against him and his family, elevating the risk of harm to a member of the Connecticut College community. This was an explicit violation of the College Honor Code clause that forbids “Written, physical, or verbal conduct that causes a reasonable expectation of fear of harm to any person.” Both Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan ignored Pessin’s requests that they remove the petition in light of the danger to which it was subjecting him and his family. With this non-response they were again violating the Honor Code. The administration, which was copied on those emails, responded by asking Pessin not to contact the students. With the administration’s complicity, the students’ violations were legitimized as deeds performed in the name of social activism. These students’ actions constituted a major failure in journalistic ethics. How can the editor-in-chief and the opinions editor take an activist position on an issue that the newspaper is supposed to cover impartially? How could anyone, aware of these students’ bias, trust anything the paper reported on the issue (unless they were Charlie Browns kicking Lucy-held footballs)? How could Pessin expect fair treatment from the paper, when its editors were in charge of the campaign to attack their designated scapegoat? In short, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan used the paper to run their political campaign—a massive conflict of interest, aside from the campaign’s being based on lies. The newspaper’s Code of Ethics states: III. Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. IV. Act Independently Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the ­public’s right to know.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style Journalists should: a. Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. b. Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan’s conduct constituted a travesty of this code.

Lies On April 12, David Bernstein published in The Washington Post proof that the campaign against Pessin was based on a lie. Bernstein discovered and printed the missing comment thread to Pessin’s Facebook post, and showed that Fratt and Garbe had lied about what it contained. By changing commentator Nicole’s word “terrorists” to “dogs,” they transformed Pessin’s reasonable call for the defeat of a genocidal group into a call for the genocide of Palestinian Arabs. The overall comment thread also made it clear that the “dog” in Pessin’s metaphor was Hamas. Now the only way to claim that the post was a racist one about Palestinian Arabs was to conceal or omit the comment thread appended to it. Yet this was exactly what Zuraw-Friedland did. In her Feb 19 Twitter feed she circulated the post without its comment thread. The March 2 letters she and Gopalan published made no mention of the comment thread or, in the case of Fratt and Garbe, lied about it. The petition sponsored by Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan presented only the first paragraph of the post, without the second paragraph or the comment thread—systematic suppression of the evidence that contradicted their claims. They made a mockery of the Honor Code’s demand that students act with “respect for the truth.” Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan left not only Khandaker’s but also Fratt and Garbe’s letters posted on the Voice website for months without a retraction or correction or apology—even after the latter had been nationally revealed to be a libel, even after the alumnus they had duped into writing a letter for their attack had recanted. They thereby flouted the Voice rules: “Admit mistakes and correct them promptly,” and “The Editor-in-Chief shall adhere to all governing laws concerning libel. …” especially when “the misconduct has a direct and distinctly adverse impact on the College community, its members, and/or its objectives.” The “adverse” impact that the Voice letters had on the Connecticut College community was immense, along with the devastating personal and professional

85

86

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

consequences for Pessin. The issue took over the campus for the remaining half of the semester, consuming time, labor, and resources, and causing divisiveness, bullying and racial tensions. It brought national and international disgrace to the College. This was all directly traceable to Zuraw-Friedland’s and Gopalan’s journalistic malfeasance. In their use of the newspaper they exploited “a College-­ sponsored … program” (The College Voice is College-funded), and used their “status as a member of the College community to assist in the commission of an alleged violation.” They flouted the Honor Code, which prescribes that “our students are just and equitable in their treatment of all members of the community,” and “exemplify honesty, honor and respect for the truth in all of their conduct.” Yet, the College took no public steps to reproach or discipline Zuraw-Friedland or Gopalan, despite the fact that many individuals reported these violations to the Honor Council and the College. Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan remained in their positions at the paper to the end of their terms in mid-May 2015. The administration even honored Gopalan by appointing her to a committee to revise the bias complaint procedure! The Kangaroo courts that operated on campus during the spring of 2015 replicated the misdeeds of the school newspaper: they indicted the innocent and absolved the guilty. Here was a society whose magistrates had lost their moral compass, which was admirably articulated in the now impotent Honor Code.

Gopalan’s Admission On May 5, Gopalan published a piece in the Voice in which she reflected on “the events of February, March and April 2015”: The events made obvious the corporate nature of the institution we live and work in, and showed that corporations, no matter their legal status, are not people—they are devoid of the compassion that one expects from a person. This means that to work within a corporate body, one must use tools of political coercion instead of voicing moral outrage. We also learned that the lone student voice doesn’t cohere well because it is prone to getting shut down. But the collective, especially in collusion with media sources that create a PR disaster, cannot be ignored as easily.19 19 Pessin Archive #61: Gopalan, On Reconciling with the Idea of SGA, May 5.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

The many ways in which these students used their newspaper to engage in “political coercion,” rather than rational, civil discourse (“voicing moral outrage”), are stunning, and their lack of compassion as they evaded institutional restraints on their behavior, ironic. The defamatory campaign against Pessin brought about a series of community events led largely by Khandaker, Gopalan and Zuraw-Friedland, that resulted in nearly every department, program and student organization releasing statements condemning Pessin’s alleged “racist” and “dehumanizing” language. The Voice and ultimately the College website printed a list of these statements. The McCarthyite bullying and social pressure to sign these statements—reported by both faculty and students—underwrote a merciless campaign of political coercion. Gopalan did not merely admit to this, she was proud of it. And the College rewarded her for it.

Zuraw-Friedland’s Admission On April 27, Zuraw-Friedland penned her final editorial as editor-in-chief: [The newspaper] has become my way of asking: How can we leave this space better than when we found it? Maybe that carries baggage that begs the question as to whether I have violated standards of journalistic integrity. … I will never claim what I did was “correct,” but I will always stand by the fact that I was doing what I thought was right … Thank you to our adviser, Jim Downs, for convincing me that gut feelings are the truest form of intelligence …

This editorial followed an earlier one in which she wrote: The College Voice faculty adviser, Professor Jim Downs, gave some of the best advice … A newspaper is supposed to be a snapshot of a community moment … It is subject to change. Any given thing that is written in these pages could be completely irrelevant and untrue in the next twenty-four hours.

It’s hard to imagine a mature adult, charged with advising budding journalists and newspaper editors, mouthing such drivel. Granted one might say, snapshot in time, but hopefully with emphasis on accurate snapshot. And the notion that one can freely write whatever one wants (or wishes the snapshot to

87

88

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

look like) and to shrug one’s shoulders philosophically if it turns out the snapshot was untrue the next day borders on pathology. Alas, Downs seems like just the man to say such things. Writing shortly after the American Studies Association (ASA) voted to boycott Israel, he wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which he dismissed old, crotchety professors who complained about the politicization of a professional academic organization along radical political lines as being behind the times, and concluded: “The scholarly profession needs a cutting edge, politically radical, mildly indecipherable [i.e. theory-driven] group of intellectuals to continue to push us to dare more.”20 Sounds like he gave the same advice to his charges at ConnColl: politicize, radicalize, push for more “social justice.” What Zuraw-Friedland apparently took from the newspaper’s adviser is that “gut feelings are the truest form of intelligence” and that it doesn’t matter much what you print because it may well turn out to be “untrue in the next twenty-four hours.” Combine that with her effective admission that she violated “standards of journalistic integrity” in the service of doing what she “thought was right,” and we get a “snapshot” of the dangers on the contemporary campus. You can sacrifice truth and integrity in the service of your personal agenda. You can violate your community’s (and your newspaper’s) explicitly stated norms as long as your “gut feeling” is that what you are doing is right. This apparently includes lying about what the person you are targeting has said, as well as manipulating the coverage of the event—even to the extent of deleting public comments you find unfavorable to your cause. If your target receives hate mail and death threats, there is no need to remove your online petition generating those threats, even after you are informed about them—because you are in pursuit of a higher goal. If, in the process, you destroy the target’s life and career, your mission has been accomplished. Every serious journalist should recoil from this in horror. Although one might expect the College administration also to recoil from this in horror, especially given the impact Zuraw-Friedland’s and Gopalan’s behavior had on the College community, in fact, it chose to ignore the reports it received of their—and other students’—violations of its Honor Code. That is, it ignored its self-imposed obligation to investigate. As Hannah Arendt put it: 20 Jim Downs, “Back to the Future: American Studies’ Noble Dreams,” Huffington Post, November 13, 2014; https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-downs/back-to-the-future-americ_b_6143258.html.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style … the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.21

Of course, it’s the “true believers”—the convinced Nazi and dedicated ­Communist—who have destroyed those distinctions in pursuit of what they, to quote Zuraw-Freidland, “think in their gut is right,” who make us so vulnerable. I pledge to … conduct myself with integrity, civility, and the utmost respect for the dignity of all human beings. I pledge that my actions will be thoughtful and ethical. … —Matriculation Pledge, Student Handbook (2014–15), p. 11

According to the Student Handbook, the matriculation pledge signifies the students’ acceptance of the responsibilities of the Honor Code. Zuraw-­ Friedland’s and Gopalan’s repeated disrespect for the truth, lack of integrity, and many blatant breaches of their paper’s Code of Ethics are all violations of the Honor Code and their pledge to abide thereby. Moreover, consider that: The Honor Code and Student Code of Conduct apply to the behavior of Connecticut College students both on and off campus, including … online or via any other electronic medium … Membership in the Connecticut College community does not exempt anyone from local, state, or federal laws, but rather imposes an additional obligation to abide by all of Connecticut College’s rules. Alleged violations of local, state, or federal laws may be addressed through the student conduct process. Examples of such circumstances include: a. a member of the Connecticut College community is the victim of an alleged violation of the Honor Code and/or Student Code of Conduct; b. the alleged violation occurred at a College sponsored or sanctioned event or program; c. the accused student used his/her status as a member of the College community to assist in the commission of an alleged violation; 21 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1979), p. 474.

89

90

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime d the misconduct has a direct and distinct adverse impact on the College community, its members, and/or its objectives; e. a reasonable belief exists that the alleged or known violation poses a threat to the health or safety of any member of the College community. —Student Handbook (2014–15), p. 14

According to these fundamental precepts, Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan are clearly five for five. And yet, as we have seen in other contexts, the administration here too clearly approved of what was going on, not out of a particular animus towards Pessin—although that may have played a role—but out of a sense that this dramatic, staged emergency was a noble event that transformed the College community into a better place—more sensitive to the concerns of “marginalized and underrepresented minorities,” and more mobilized towards “social justice.” Such beliefs, endorsed without any attention to the ways in which they promoted lynch-mob justice, explain the behavior of President Bergeron at the College commencement on May 17, 2015, where Zuraw-Friedland, Fratt, and Garbe graduated without discipline or reproach. After their semester of blatant Honor Code violations, the president, without any trace of irony, claimed: “I would argue that this [Honor] Code, and the responsibility it produces, is one of the more important things you will take with you from your Connecticut College education.” On the contrary, any serious observer would recognize that at Connecticut College the Honor Code doesn’t matter—especially when you’ve got some gut feelings of hatred for Zionists.

THE ROLE OF THE ADMINISTRATION: PRESIDENT KATHERINE BERGERON AND DEAN OF FACULTY ABIGAIL VAN SLYCK The Connecticut College administration offers a textbook case of how not to handle staged campus emergencies. Every faculty member there should be deeply concerned about the administration’s role in this affair. This year it was Pessin’s Zionism, on these issues, but next year, who knows what privileged sensibilities might be offended. The administration defended Pessin’s right to free speech, if passively. It also guaranteed his job (as it had to, given his tenure), but at the same time it knowingly allowed his work environment to become toxic.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

Supporting his right to free speech did not, however, amount to genuinely supporting Pessin—as the administration sometimes suggested it did—for example, in its responses to the many who wrote in from outside the college to criticize what was going on. Supporting Pessin does not entail defending his right to free speech, i.e. to be a “racist”—but defending him from the charge of racist speech in the first place, as he implored the administration to do from the very beginning. Alternatively, at the minimum—since a case could be made that administrations should never weigh in on the content of such debates22—it should have provided Pessin with the due process he deserved and rebuked the students for their repeated violations of the Honor Code. As Dean Van Slyck wrote in the April 14 faculty memo—with high-minded hypocrisy—“the principles of a liberal arts education [are] inquiry, analysis, and respectful discourse.” Moreover, the Honor Code also demands “integrity” of the students— and everyone in academia—namely, that they “exemplify honesty, honor, and respect for the truth in all of their conduct.” The administration should have weighed in not on the content, but on the process. Instead of encouraging “inquiry, analysis, and respectful discourse,” however, the administration: a) repeatedly pressured Pessin not to defend himself or present his side of the story, while always refusing to present his side for him; b) praised and encouraged and endorsed the “free speech” of Pessin’s attackers (including their misrepresentations, omissions, and lies, about which the administration was fully aware); c) publicly made critical statements about Pessin’s post before reading the entire post or speaking to him or investigating its context; d) made inflammatory charges at the Open Forum without mentioning, much less demonstrating, the “alternative” meaning of the post in context, about which it was aware; e) failed to press the students to remove their online petition against Pessin; instead, explicitly stated at the Open Forum that it had no objection to the petition, despite being aware that it was threatening his and his family’s safety; 22 Pessin made such a case: “McGill University and How Western Civilization May Have Just Saved Itself—From Itself,” Algemeiner, June 6, 2016; http://www.algemeiner. com/2016/06/06/mcgill-university-and-how-western-civilization-may-have-just-saved-itself-from-itself/.

91

92

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

f) refused to dismiss the students’ bias incident complaint against him, at the same time as it violated its own rules by simply dismissing the students’ multiple Honor Code violations, about which they were ­informed; g) supported the deans’ anti-Israel programs by publicly praising their work and then promoting them; h) several times publicly encouraged Pessin’s attackers and reproached his defenders, while never defending Pessin, despite being aware of the truth from the start; i) did nothing to discourage the stream of community statements condemning Pessin, although he had strongly urged them to do so, before they created an impossibly hostile work environment; j) actively endorsed the community statements by posting them on the College website and leaving them there well into 2016. To elaborate on the points raised in f) about the bias complaint: ­Consider Fratt and Garbe’s libel against Pessin. Theirs was a singularly damaging act, echoed in the many community statements that condemned Pessin’s post as “inciting or celebrating [genocidal] violence.” The Honor Council punishes students for acts of dishonesty such as plagiarism, in which the student is the sole victim. Yet a libel that deliberately misquoted a source, and profoundly damaged not only Pessin but the entire Connecticut College community—exposed for fools in the national media—not only went unpunished, but praised! That the president of the college then celebrated the school’s commitment to its Honor Code at Commencement is incomprehensible. There was clearly something very wrong with the way the administration handled appointments throughout the semester, from the new posts (Dean of Equity and Inclusion) to standard ones (Dean of the College). The administration repeatedly allowed situations where people engaged in a deeply divisive campaign were simultaneously in positions of authority over others: search committees, tenure and promotion committees, grant-deciding committees, in the administration, etc. How many untenured professors at Connecticut College (other than the brave Strabone), would feel comfortable expressing any sort of resistance to what happened there, much less any actual support for Pessin, knowing that Uddin might be on their tenure committee next year— Uddin, who has people called in for reproach by the administration whenever they resist her campaign? How comfortable could anyone feel expressing any support for Israel knowing the same, and knowing that the administration

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

has publicly declared that an ambiguous metaphor about a genocidal terrorist group hoping to destroy Israel was beyond the pale of acceptable discourse? It works both ways, of course. When there is a divisive campaign, nobody can trust anybody. How comfortable would untenured faculty feel condemning Pessin, when he, or the handful of faculty, who publicly resisted the mob, might be on their tenure committee next year? Is it any wonder that most faculty members who signed Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan’s petition did so only privately? (Was it cowardice, or just prudence?) There’s safety in numbers of course; hence the great social pressure to get as many people as possible to sign the department condemnations. But eventually those names became public information. If one of those signatories were denied tenure, or denied a grant, and Pessin or one of his few supporters were on the deciding committee, would there not be grounds for an appeal, or a bias complaint? We must also consider what happens to the student-teacher relationship. Zuraw-Friedland and Gopalan outed the faculty who had signed the petition against Pessin in an effort to make students feel more comfortable signing it. Would students now feel pressure to sign because their professor or advisor had? Would Jewish and pro-Israel students now feel uncomfortable because their professors or advisors had signed what they perceived as a hateful, unfair petition?23 Indeed, a week after publicly signing the petition condemning Pessin, a student in his class actually emailed him to talk about his very poor grade on the midterm exam. How was Pessin supposed to proceed? Be firm and risk being accused of retaliation? A number of philosophy majors signed the petition as well, and a couple of them were among the initial less-public instigators of the campaign. Their major requires them to take at least one class with Pessin. Just how were students and professors to relate to each other when there are public condemnations with signatures on them? Would students now have to decide which professors to appease, or whose courses they need to avoid? Or was that already happening all over? Clearly, this threatens the mission of any institution of higher learning, a fortiori a liberal arts college. The solution, of course, is to have rules in place to 23 Given how the professors committed to BDS behave, these are all reasonable concerns: Steven Johnson, “How Should Colleges Respond to Politics in Letters of Recommendation?” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 10, 2018; https://www.chronicle.com/article/ How-Should-Colleges-Respond-to/244767; Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, “University of Michigan and Pitzer College are just the tip of the iceberg,” Jewish News Service, January 22, 2019; https://www.jns.org/opinion/university-of-michigan-and-pitzer-college-are-justthe-tip-of-the-iceberg/.

93

94

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

prevent controversial issues from getting out of control, from becoming profoundly or irreparably divisive, from turning into a matter for mobs. Rules such as integrity, civility, honesty, inquiry, analysis, respect for the truth. It’s called an Honor Code, if only Connecticut College enforced it. Really. So, it’s hard to know how to read the administration’s behavior in the whole affair. Both the Dean and the President declined to meet with me, so I have to assess their frame of mind by their words and behavior during the events in question. My sense is that they were caught in a double-bind. On the one hand, they bought into the widespread atmosphere on campus that prized social justice. Hence the kind of encouragement they gave to “brave” students who stood up for what they believed, who acted from passion, was willingly given. In that sense they probably resonated with Annie Robbin’s formulation of events at the radical “left” blog, Mondoweiss: With all the recent press about allegations of anti-Semitism on American campuses, the news of an outrageously racist Facebook posting by a faculty member at a private college in New London, Connecticut, has thus far escaped national attention. But it’s causing a “firestorm of controversy” at Connecticut College, a small liberal arts college with a mission of “inclusive excellence,” emphasizing commitments to diversity, community service and global citizenship.24

On the other hand, what happens in the hot-house atmosphere of a college that seriously considered turning their teaching over entirely to a social justice agenda, doesn’t necessarily play so well on the outside (including with the parents paying well over $50,000 a year for the privilege of having their children brainwashed by radical activists). So, when the radical agenda went too far and demanded actions that too obviously violated academic principles, the administration balked, evoking the fury of their justice allies. I actually believe President Bergeron meant it when she told the students who were cursing her—“Fuck you Bergeron!”—that she loved them. But, as my father used to say, sincerity is the cheapest of emotions. Here it was meant to show solidarity despite her inability, given her office, to take their radical path. But at the same time, it showed an extraordinary level 24 Annie Robbin, “Philosophy Prof Who Likened Palestinians to ‘Rabid Pit Bull’ Ignites Protest on CT Campus,” Mondoweiss, March 28, 2015; http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/ philosophy-palestinians-ignites/.

The People: McCarthyism, New London Style

of self-debasement and lack of self-respect. Effectively she was saying that despite her limitation in action, she was fully on their side in spirit. Everything else that she did that semester, from tying Pessin’s hands, to appointing and promoting faculty members involved in the assault, to awarding Khandaker, to parading her pride in her college’s honor code, reflect a kind of mindless obeisance to the “truth” of this “anti-racist” campaign. That she looked like a weak-willed, bullied hypocrite to those on the outside, had little impact on her sense of self. Hence, she had no problem using misinformation and PR techniques to manage outside complaints. As for her feelings for her faculty member, Andrew Pessin, they appear to have been entirely lacking. She treated him sympathetically when he was present, but systematically tangled him in the nets of the trap into which he had fallen. He was, from the outset, a man marked for sacrifice. Being nice to him did not in any way prevent participating in his victimization. Were Bergeron and Van Slyck moved by anti-Jewish animus? I’m in no position to judge: they could have done what they did out of a sense that it was “the right thing to do,” and sided with the Palestinian side from purely mimetic motives: “everybody” agrees the Israelis are the bullies and the Palestinians the poor victims.

FREE SPEECH: EVERYONE The Connecticut College community should consider what “free speech” means, and what its appropriate norms should be. Presumably, one wants respectful discourse and debate. Only that can guarantee that people, arrogant in the conviction of their righteousness, not turn public discourse into a crusade against targets who, often enough, are not guilty. In principle, that is how the public sphere at the heart of democracy operates. We do not want to give free rein to those who exploit positions of authority to omit, misrepresent, bully, intimidate, or threaten. We do not want defamation and destruction, even when they come clothed in the garb of social justice warrior. Yet that is what Connecticut College—and many other academic institutions—are tolerating. Pessin received dozens of emails from both students and faculty explaining how they had been intimidated from speaking out against what they saw happening on campus. Several colleagues reported how they had been pressured into signing their department’s statements. The one Jewish student brave enough to speak up for Israel and for Pessin at the Open Forum was booed. At least two students transferred out of the College partly because of the environment of hostility to all but the most submissive Jews.

95

96

When Criticizing Hamas Became a Campus Hate Crime

In such a climate, how free might anyone, especially Jewish students, feel to support Israel, when someone who endorses the right of the only democracy in the Middle East to defend itself from genocidal attacks is smeared as a racist, and his safety put at risk? When an appeal to the students to stop their smear campaign is met only with their complaint that they are being silenced, and the administration insists that Pessin be quiet, what hope is there for anyone else expecting due process? It is hard to imagine a situation in which an ­African-American wrote some harsh things about the Ku Klux Klan and found herself thereby smeared as an anti-White racist, verbally assaulted by her colleagues, her life endangered. It’s even harder to imagine that in such an unlikely case, the administration would praise her accusers and warn her to refrain from complaining about it.

CONCLUSION How could this all have happened? The problem is that, even though it shouldn’t have been about politics, it was highly politicized. As a community supporting free speech in principle, it presumably welcomes diversity of opinion. But when the “marginalized and under-represented” minorities that the progressive community wants to empower as part of the College’s commitment to “inclusive excellence,” seek not to discuss but to destroy, not to participate but to seize power, when their politics lead them to trample the rules that make inclusive excellence possible, the community has a massive problem. To repeat Pessin’s question from the panel on Charlie Hebdo: how does a culture of tolerance (ConnColl/universities) handle a culture of intolerance (radical “justice warriors”)? Apparently, not well. It’s one thing to suffer their assaults, it’s quite another to join them in the name of the very values they at once invoke and trample. Whereas the Honor Code provides a framework, a set of guidelines for how all members of the community should treat each other, at Connecticut College— and elsewhere—militants and the deluded cowards appeasing them, tore it to shreds.

CHAPTER 4

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency ASHLEY THORNE

In the spring of 2015, Andrew Pessin, a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College, found himself unexpectedly in the spotlight when one of his Facebook posts drew the ire of a student at the College. The events that unfolded, leading to his fleeing widespread campus hostility not only from students but professors, were not improvised. Rather, they followed a specific script that has been acted out at colleges and universities over and over again in the last few years. In essence, the Connecticut College community performed a “staged emergency.” A staged emergency is a pattern of reactions to a scandal over a “bias incident.” Generally, it involves righteous anger of a magnitude far beyond the scale of the original offense. Actors whose performance of outrage is insufficiently convincing are in danger of being associated with the targeted bias. All staged emergencies vary in some ways, but in this case there are at least 15 different elements that echo scenes from other campus meltdowns. As with most of the others, it was students who took the lead in manufacturing the controversy and administrators and faculty who indulged and enabled them. These 15 elements make for a theater of the absurd. For the details of Pessin’s story, see chapter 2, “The Process”; here an overview will suffice to show parallels between the Connecticut College story and those of other colleges and universities.

MISREPRESENTATION OF THE OFFENDING DEED Andrew Pessin’s Facebook post of August 11, 2014 reads in part, “one image which essentializes the current situation in Gaza might be this. You’ve got a

100

Studies in Pessinology

rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape.” His analogy was intended as a comment on the terrorist group Hamas but was taken out of context to amount to prejudice against Palestinians. This willful misunderstanding was the crux of the controversy. Lamiya Khandaker, a former student of Pessin’s, in February claimed that the Facebook post from six months ago called Palestinians “rabid pit bull[s].” She told Pessin she found this “racist” and “hateful,” and that she was not interested in his response. Khandaker is a product of an American education system that primes students to perceive racism everywhere—and once they believe they see it, to let nothing get in the way of purging the person responsible. Misrepresentation is the key factor in most campus hoax hate crimes. In 2013, Vassar College student Genesis Hernandez, the sole member of the Bias Incident Response Team, scrawled racist and anti-transgender messages in residence halls and then filed anonymous reports. The high volume of bias reports led the dean of the College for Campus Life and Diversity, Edward Pittman, to email students a note of alarm saying, “This is unacceptable.”1 Hernandez, who is transgendered, withdrew from the college after being identified as one of two writers of the false reports. In November 2015, rumors spread around the University of Missouri that the KKK had been seen on campus, that its members were chanting “white power,” and that they were being protected by police.2 The student body president, Payton Head, gave credence to the rumors by tweeting, “The KKK has been confirmed to be sighted on campus,” and warning students to stay away from residence hall windows. But police found no evidence of any KKK person or activity on campus. Likewise, at Oberlin in March 2013, someone spotted a person who appeared to be dressed as a Ku Klux Klansman. Academic deans and President Marvin Krislov were woken up in the middle of the night to address the situation, and by 5:00 am, President Krislov had canceled classes for the day.3 In their place, the College held a “Day of Solidarity” with a “teach-in” led by 1 Robby Soave, “EXCLUSIVE: Shocking discovery in hoax bias incident at Vassar College.” Daily Caller, November 27, 2013; http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/27/exclusive-shocking-discovery-in-hoax-bias-incident-at-vassar-college/. 2 Blake Neff, “Mizzou Students Hallucinate KKK on Campus,” Daily Caller, November 11, 2015; http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/11/mizzou-students-hallucinate-kkk-on-campus/. 3 Students of the Africana Community, “An Open Letter from Students of the Africana Community,” Oberlin Review, March 6, 2013; http://www.oberlinreview.org/article/open-letter-students-africana-community/.

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

the Africana Studies department, a marching demonstration, and a “We Stand Together” convocation in the chapel.4 It turned out that the person taken to be a KKK member was in fact a student wrapped in a blanket on a chilly evening.5 When Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus” in November 2014, the entire nation reacted in horror. The article by Sabrina Erdely told the story of an anonymous University of Virginia (UVA) student, “Jackie,” being gang-raped by members of a UVA fraternity. UVA President Teresa Sullivan suspended all university fraternities for the rest of the semester. Hundreds of faculty members and students held a protest, “Take Back the Party: End Rape Now!”6 Yet in the weeks and months that followed, the story’s credibility unraveled, and it became clear that the facts could not be corroborated. Rolling Stone retracted the article and Erdely apologized.7 In each of these cases, misrepresenting the facts contributed mightily to achieving the desired message: that hate, bias, or rape are rampant on this campus. At Vassar and in the Rolling Stone article, the absence of real evidence of substantiating the narrative of oppression with facts, meant the activists made them up. People believed the fabricated stories, the fake news, because they fit the overarching narrative they had been trained to presuppose. At the University of Missouri and Oberlin, some combination of imagination and exaggeration seems to have blended to create hallucinations of KKK sightings. And so it was that Khandaker became persuaded that Andrew Pessin’s metaphor for a terrorist organization was really a racist anti-Palestinian rant. Further obfuscation came when two fellow students published an article in The College Voice, alleging that Pessin had agreed with a commenter on his Facebook post that Gazan Palestinians were “dogs” that “should be put down.” Specifically misquoting the text, the students wrote, “A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” But a screenshot of the actual comments thread shows Nicole, the commentator 4

Office of Communications, “Classes Canceled: Monday, March 14, 2013,” Oberlin OnCampus, March 4, 2013; https://oncampus.oberlin.edu/source/articles/2013/03/04/classes-canceled-monday-march-4-2013. 5 Gabriel Trip, “Police Unsure of Klan Garb at Troubled College,” The New York Times, March 5, 2013; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/education/oberlin-cancels-classes-after-reported-klan-sighting.html?hpw&_r=2&. 6 “A Weekend of Protest at UVA as Rolling Stone Rape Story Jolts Campus,” Rolling Stone, November 24, 2014. 7 Ravi Somaiya, “Rolling Stone Retracts Article on Rape at University of Virginia.” The New York Times, April 5, 2015; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rollingstone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html?_r=1.

101

102

Studies in Pessinology

clarifying that she is referring specifically to “Hamas and not all Palestinians,” and that Pessin responded accordingly.8

SOCIAL MEDIA PUBLICITY TO BRING NATIONWIDE PROGRESSIVE “PUBLIC OPINION” TO JUDGE THE SITUATION Soon after Khandaker began speaking with Pessin and others on campus to voice her offense, another Connecticut College student, Ikbel Amri, posted a screenshot of Pessin’s original post on his own Facebook page and made it publicly viewable to his international social network. This jumpstarted the widespread attention that resulted in large-scale backlash against Pessin. Using social media to turn a small or local incident into a major controversy has increasingly been a key tactic of student activists. Payton Head, the same University of Missouri (Mizzou) student who later fueled the false rumor of a KKK sighting, wrote in a September 2015 Facebook post that men in a pickup truck had yelled a racial slur at him as they drove by. His story prompted a wave of protests at Mizzou. In turn, once Mizzou student protesters demanded the “removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president”9 in Fall 2015, dozens of students at other colleges followed suit, taking to social media to voice their own demands and using hashtags such as #InSolidarityWithMizzou and #WeStandWithMizzou.10 With an audience of millions—strangers who have no way of verifying the accuracy or context of these social media posts, but who nonetheless add their voices to the clamor—protests can escalate exponentially.11

BIAS INCIDENT REPORTING On March 3, Pessin learned from the dean of faculty that students had filed a bias incident report against him for the Facebook post. Bias reporting ­mechanisms 8 David Bernstein, “‘Equity and Inclusion’ at Connecticut College (see important update),” Washington Post, April 13, 2015; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/12/diversity-and-inclusion-at-connecticut-college/?utm_term=. ba2818dfd170. 9 Brad Crawford, “Here’s the list of demands from Mizzou’s protesting athletes, students,” Saturday Down South, November 8, 2015; http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/mizzou-football/heres-list-demands-mizzous-protesting-athletes-students/. 10 Lisa Gutierrez, “University of Missouri protests gave birth to dozens more across the U.S., powered by social media,” Kansas City Star, November 24, 2015; http://www.kansascity. com/news/nation-world/national/article46268740.html. 11 Worth mentioning Ronson’s So You’ve been Publicly Shamed.

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

have in recent years become a standard at colleges and universities. Dozens if not hundreds of colleges and universities12 have such procedures in place. Oregon State University, for example, has set a system for submitting “bias incident reports,”13 complete with a 20-page protocol manual.14 Essentially, it is a way for students to report their peers for hurting someone’s feelings. In 2007 and 2008 respectively, William & Mary and Williams College were early adopters of bias reporting.15 While in principle there is nothing wrong with reporting and drawing attention to real instances of bias, the temptation is strong to overstate the problem. As National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood wrote, “When an organization invites people to complain, it has to bear in mind the possibility that the invitation itself can be an inducement to mischief. That puts the burden on those receiving the complaints to be tough-minded. They need to make sure trivialities don’t grow like beanstalks to the clouds of conspiracy. They need to see facts, not just allegations.”16 Unfortunately allegations are often all that is needed to fuel a staged ­emergency.

FORCED APOLOGY AND APPEASEMENT The dean of faculty, Abigail Van Slyck, rather than ensuring Pessin received a fair evaluation during this time, goaded him to apologize to students and not to defend himself. To satisfy her, Pessin met with a group of students in person, wrote an apology email to students in the philosophy program, and sent The College Voice an apology note. For these notes Van Slyck instructed Pessin not to explain he did not mean what they thought, lest he further anger his critics. As college administrators now treat students’ feelings as paramount, someone who offends students is given no benefit of the doubt but is expected only to apologize and appease. 12 Jennifer Kabbany, “Bias Response Teams Illustrate Just How Far Gone Universities Really Are,” The College Fix, August 5, 2016; http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28386/. 13 Oregon State University, “Bias Incident Response,” http://leadership.oregonstate.edu/ diversity/bias-incident-response. 14 Oregon State University, “Reported Bias Incident Response Protocol,” http://leadership. oregonstate.edu/sites/leadership.oregonstate.edu/files/OID/BRT/reported_bias_incident_response_protocol.pdf. 15 Peter Wood, “Williams Chokes Up,” National Association of Scholars, October 7, 2008; https://www.nas.org/articles/Williams_Chokes_Up. 16 Ibid.

103

104

Studies in Pessinology

In October 2015, Erica Christakis, a faculty “master” advising the Silliman house, had written an email to students pushing back against a directive from the Yale administration to avoid culturally offensive Halloween costumes. Christakis wrote that students are adults and should be able to decide for themselves what to wear. Shortly after this, her husband, Nicholas Christakis, also a Silliman master, encountered a group of students upset by the email. They crowded around and shouted at him. One young woman appeared in a video screaming profanities at Christakis.17 Christakis tried to speak calmly with them and respond to their grievances. But they would settle for nothing less than a full apology. His apology for hurting their feelings offended them still more: in the students’ view, Christakis’s refusal to admit the objective nature of their outrage was “an expression of racism.”18 To them the offending party could not be a person of good will. To come to an agreement with the offender in any way would be to betray the cause. The Christakis couple eventually left Yale, in large part due to the administration’s failure to defend them from this manufactured student outrage.19 We can see similar administrative pressure on professors who offend correct opinion at Marquette University, only this time the professor did not yield. In December 2014 John McAdams, tenured professor of political science, was suspended from teaching because he wrote a post on his personal blog about an incident at Marquette. He wrote about how a junior instructor at Marquette, whom he named, refused to allow a student to express his opposition to gay marriage in class. The university told McAdams that in order to be reinstated, he must publicly apologize for writing the post and violating privacy of both the instructor and another graduate student, and take the blame for ­threatening messages they received as a result of the blog’s naming them personally. McAdams declined to do so.20 17 Blake Neff, “Yale Student Shrieks at Prof for Denying Her ‘Safe Space,’” Daily Caller, November 6, 2015; http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/06/yale-student-shrieks-at-prof-for-denyingher-safe-space-video/. 18 Bre Payton, “Watch A Mob of Yale Students Bully A Professor They Say Hurt Their Feelings” The Federalist, September 15, 2016; http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/15/watch-a-mobof-yale-students-bully-a-professor-who-hurt-their-feelings/. 19 Conor Friedersdorf, “The Perils of Writing a Provocative Email at Yale,” Atlantic, May 26, 2016; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/. 20 Sears, Ashley, “Political Science Professor John McAdams Suspended by Marquette University,” Fox6 News, March 24, 2016; http://fox6now.com/2016/03/24/marquette-university-takes-action-in-case-of-political-science-professor-john-mcadams/

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

ONLY ONE SIDE ALLOWED TO SPEAK Throughout the time of coerced apology, Pessin was not permitted to defend himself. At an open forum sponsored by the administration, only voices opposed to Pessin were given a platform to speak. The sole student who tried to defend Pessin was booed. In a chilling display of compliance with this unspoken rule, less than a handful of his colleagues asked Pessin, even privately, for his side of the story, before signing en masse petitions denouncing his “hate speech.” One-sided “open forums” are the norm for events involving student protesters. At Claremont-McKenna College in 2015, when students were passing around a bullhorn and sharing their frustrations about the racial climate on campus, an Asian young woman took a turn with the megaphone. As she began to say, “black people can be racist too,” the other students took the megaphone away from her and quickly changed the subject.21

DEMANDS Students opposed to Pessin circulated a petition asking Connecticut College to officially condemn his Facebook post.22 Demands that an administration demonize or fire a person were the trademark of the fall 2015 wave of protests. During that time, students at 80 colleges and universities submitted such demands,23 often as part of lengthy lists of stipulations which, if implemented, would only worsen race relations on campus.

CONDEMNATION OF THE OPPOSITE/FALSE EQUIVALENCE Sometimes when someone is seen as being on the “wrong” side of an issue, the way his opponents demonize him is to accuse him of supporting the very ideas he was opposing. For example, in 2011, a student group at Princeton Theological Seminary called Seminarians for Life sought to draw connections between abortion and black genocide. They put up posters on campus depicting images of slavery, genocide, and eugenics, and likening these to abortion. Liberal seminarians reacted viscerally to the images rather than seeing the pro-life students’ analogy 21 “‘Safe Space’ Students Silence Asian Woman for Saying ‘Black People Can Be Racist,’” YouTube, November 12, 2015; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8UTj8lQJhY. 22 Pessin Archive #20: Online Petition against Pessin, Posted March 18 (with signers’ comments). 23 Black Liberation Collective, “The Demands,” http://www.thedemands.org/.

105

106

Studies in Pessinology

and their ultimate goal of protecting black lives. The pro-life students were accused of racism when in fact those students were trying to make the point that abortion—which disproportionately affects African Americans—is just as horrifying as race-based killing. But the Princeton Theological Seminary students, faculty, and administrators who gathered for a forum to respond to the posters had already closed their minds to the Seminarians for Life students’ arguments.24 Likewise, the Connecticut College Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) circulated a statement condemning speech “filled with bigotry and hate particularly when that speech uses dehumanizing ­language and incites or celebrates violence.” Pessin had opposed Hamas particularly because the terrorist group generated dehumanizing violence. His statement was actually free from “bigotry and hate,” and the students who argued that it did not matter whether he meant Hamas or Palestinians in general actually defended a deeply bigoted and hateful organization. Rather than engage with Pessin’s actual view, the CCSRE faculty members found it easier to condemn something entirely separate and try to implicate Pessin for views he never espoused. The CCSRE’s was only one of many statements issued by Connecticut College departments and centers against Professor Pessin, including the American studies, anthropology, art, biology, dance, education, English, global Islamic studies, history, music, philosophy, religious studies, and theater departments. The College Voice published 26 such statements, which echoed one another’s language about “dehumanizing speech filled with bigotry and hate.”25

OPEN FORUM WITH THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT At Connecticut College, President Bergeron canceled all other events for the afternoon of March 25, 2015 in order to hold a College-sponsored Open Forum.26 This forum mirrored many similar events, such as the one at 24 Ashley Thorne, “Diversity Vigil at Princeton Theological Seminary,” National Association of Scholars, March 24, 2011; https://www.nas.org/articles/Diversity_Vigil_at_Princeton_ Theological_Seminary. 25 “Department Statements Against Dehumanizing Speech,” The College Voice, Volume XCVII, Issue 6, March 30, 2015; http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=ccnews_2014_2015. 26 Colin A. Young, “Students question administration’s response to professor’s Facebook post,” Free Republic, March 26, 2015; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/ 3272431/posts.

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

Princeton Theological Seminary and others at Williams,27 Oberlin,28 Yale,29 and other campuses. In each case, administrative leaders of the college, such as the president and deans, spoke in solidarity with the protesters in an effort to be seen as being on their side.

STUDENT TAKEOVER At the Open Forum, Connecticut College administrators passively allowed student protesters to berate them, with no remonstration for their uncivil and ungenerous attitudes. President Bergeron even praised the students for their “valor.”30 They answered her remarks by shouting, “F*** you, Bergeron!”31 The scene evokes a similar passivity from those in authority at Swarthmore College. In May 2013 at a Swarthmore College Board of Managers meeting, a student group called Mountain Justice, which advocated that the college divest from fossil fuels, took over the meeting, hijacked the microphone, and began haranguing the room. One student, Danielle Charette, tried to move the meeting back to order. The horde of protesters, however, shouted “Get in line,” and silenced her by clapping to drown out her voice. Meanwhile, Swarthmore College President Rebecca Chopp, sat idly on the front row of the meeting and shrugged when Charette appealed to her to act.32

27 “President Adam Falk Addresses Williams College Community,” YouTube video, 8:34, address responding to racist incidents on campus, posted by “WilliamsExpedition09,” November 14, 2011; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rLbIQah1lM&feature=youtu.be. 28 “Classes Canceled: Monday, March 4, 2013,” Oberlin OnCampus, March 4, 2013; https://oncampus.oberlin.edu/source/articles/2013/03/04/classes-canceled-monday-march-4-2013. 29 Victor Wang and Ye Joey, “Hundreds Discuss Race at Forum,” Yale Daily News, November 5, 2015; http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/05/hundreds-discuss-race-at-forum/. 30 Pessin Archive #25: President Bergeron’ Opening Remarks at the March 25 community forum. 31 See above, chap. 2. 32 Stanley Kurtz, “Swarthmore Spinning Out of Control (With Videos),” National Review, May 13, 2013; http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348110/swarthmore-spinning-outcontrol-videos-stanley-kurtz.

107

108

Studies in Pessinology

REFUSAL OF THE ADMINISTRATION TO DEFEND THE TARGETED ONES Both Van Slyck and Connecticut College president Katherine Bergeron refused to defend Pessin when he appealed to them for some vindication of his reputation. At the Open Forum, President Bergeron publicly praised the students for their expressions of outrage. She agreed with the students that Pessin’s Facebook post was “offending,” and she continued the misinterpretation of it as “referring not just to a political situation but also, by extension, to a whole population.”33 It is becoming the norm for an administration to let the wolves have their prey or risk becoming their next target. When Claremont McKenna College students demanded the resignation of Dean Mary Spellman for her email to a student saying she would work hard to serve “students who don’t fit our CMC mold,” President Hiram Chodosh allowed Spellman to take the heat. Students used hunger strikes and protests to force Spellman’s resignation.

APPEASING/SURRENDERING STATEMENT BY THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT As college and university presidents responded to demands in fall 2015, many made statements promising to satisfy the protesters with new initiatives, hiring patterns, and increased commitment to diversity. In the case just cited at Clarement McKenna, President Chodosh wrote an open letter saying, “I stand by our students. I support their right to speak out forcefully, and want their voices to be heard.” He did not mention Mary Spellman whose voice was thereby silenced.34 Essentially he sacrificed her to preserve himself. Similarly, Amherst College president Biddy Martin, in response to angry student protest, issued a statement saying, “We agree with the students that racism and other deeply entrenched forms of prejudice and inequality continue to affect our institutions and our culture as a whole. And we acknowledge that our efforts to achieve a more inclusive and egalitarian environment are insufficient.”35 She went on to list eight areas where the College would be “stepping up” its efforts. 33 Pessin Archive #25: President Bergeron’ Opening Remarks at the March 25 community forum 34 Hiram E. Chodosh, “Message outlining action steps for diversity support,” Claremont McKenna College, November 11, 2015; https://www.cmc.edu/news/message-outlining-action-steps-for-diversity-support. 35 “President Martin’s Statement on Campus Protests,” November 15, 2015; https://www. amherst.edu/aboutamherst/president/statements/node/620480

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

At the Open Forum at Connecticut College, President Bergeron announced “several concrete steps” she had taken to address the situation.

BUREAUCRACY EXPANSION These steps involved more administration friendly to the radical student demands. President Bergeron created a new administrative position: a dean of “institutional equity and inclusion,” filled in the interim with three faculty members nine days after her announcement on April 3. The College hired this full-time dean in July 2016.36 Bureaucracy expansion is the main way college presidents have appeased protesters. Yale in November 2015 announced it would devote $50 million over five years to hiring more racially diverse faculty members—essentially using racial preferences for employment.37 Brown University went even further, pledging first $100 million, then $165 million, for its “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion” plan.38 The funds are to be allocated to building “diversity in the staff ” and among faculty members; hiring more “staff who are dedicated to recruiting diverse graduate students”; enlarging “research centers focused on issues of race, ethnicity, and social justice”; and expanding administrative programs such as the staff mentoring program.39

PRESSURE TO VILIFY The 26 Connecticut College department statements of condemnation put pressure on everyone to vilify Pessin as a kind of rite. Departments completely unconnected with Pessin and the content of his Facebook post felt the need to join the chorus. A mob mentality seems to have led departments to sense that if they remained neutral, they would be grouped together with Pessin, and that 36 Connecticut College, Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion; https://www.conncoll. edu/equity-inclusion/. The original April 3 announcement is no longer available online. 37 “Yale launches five-year, $50 million initiative to increase faculty diversity,” Yale News, November 3, 2015; http://news.yale.edu/2015/11/03/yale-launches-five-year-50-million-initiative-increase-faculty-diversity. 38 Kate Sinclair, “Student Demands: Who’s Resigned, What’s Renamed,” The New York Times, February 3, 2016; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/education/edlife/student-demands-an-update.html. 39 Brown University, “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University,” February 1, 2016; https://brown.edu/web/documents/diversity/actionplan/diapfull.pdf.

109

110

Studies in Pessinology

a public denunciation of him kept them clear of suspicion. These statements are also a sort of moral self-justification, or virtue-signaling, a way of proving to themselves and anyone paying attention that “we condemn the things that deserve condemnation; therefore we are righteous.” Perhaps the ultimate example of a scholar being condemned by his peers en masse is University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus. Regnerus in summer 2012 published a study on adult children of same-sex couples. The paper met with immediate condemnation by many scholars who did not appreciate its conclusions that same-sex parenting may put children at a disadvantage. Among these scholars was Gary J. Gates, a UCLA demographer, who put together an open letter that was signed by more than 200 researchers. The letter, published by gay rights activist and blogger Scott Rosensweig, targeted the editors of Social Science Research, the journal that published Regnerus’s paper.40 Rosensweig also wrote to UT president Bill Powers to complain. Regnerus’s colleague in the UT sociology department, Debra Umberson, collaborated with three other sociologists at the university and published a searing attack on Regnerus in the Huffington Post.41 The UT sociology department also held a summit on LGBT families and did not invite Regnerus—or any scholars of this subject outside the progressive perspective.42 Apparently diversity does not mean diversity of opinion. In Regnerus’s case, as in Pessin’s, groupthink reigned. It led department after department to pile on. Again, those who join a large group in vilifying someone in this way do so partly from self-preservation—to keep their own names clear of any hint that they too might be guilty of holding a politically incorrect opinion.

CANCELED CLASSES Less than a week after the Open Forum at Connecticut College, racist graffiti using the N-word was found in a campus bathroom. In response to students’ 40 “Bombshell Letter: 200+ PhDs and MDs Question Scholarly Merit of Regnerus Study,” New Civil Rights Movement, June 29, 2012; http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement. com/bombshell-letter-scores-of-ph-d-s-ask-for-retraction-of-regnerus-study/legal-issues/ 2012/06/29/42413. 41 Debra Umberson, “Texas Professors Respond to New Research on Gay Parenting,” Huffington Post, June 26, 2012; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-umberson/texas-professors-gay-research_b_1628988.html. 42 Peter Wood, “The Campaign to Discredit Regnerus and the Assault on Peer Review,” ­Academic Questions 26:2 (Summer 2013).

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

demands, President Bergeron canceled classes for the day in order to hold another forum, a daylong set of events to discuss racism at which attendance was required.43 When she addressed students, Bergeron continued to pillory Pessin. She said it had been a “difficult month,” and implied that the graffiti and Pessin’s Facebook post were in the same category as the bathroom graffiti: “these issues show without a doubt the kind of harm that can be done by language that is bigoted and hateful and what kind of harm they can have in a community.”44 Canceling classes for a day of “dialogue” is a classic element of staged emergencies. Williams, Oberlin, Dartmouth, and numerous others have done the same. Because the reaction time is so swift—usually before many of the facts are known—it is often the case that an entire campus will shut down over an incident that turns out to be a hoax or hallucination. In the case of the graffiti at Connecticut College, the vandalism was found to have been perpetrated by someone outside the campus community,45 thus rendering the hand-wringing about “racism among us” entirely moot.

PRAISE OF ACTIVISM Elevating ideology-based panic over academics to the point of canceling classes is a sign of misplaced priorities. Colleges and universities now praise activism as one of the main purposes of a college education. President Bergeron fed this impulse over the course of the Pessin controversy. Lamiya Khandaker, the student who started the inquisition against Pessin by misrepresenting the facts and pushing others to do the same, received a “Scholar Activist Award” from the Dean of the College, “in recognition on concerns of social justice through research and scholarship during the Spring of 2015.”46 Increasingly college presidents and faculty members have urged students to take up activism as their highest calling. In November 2014, University of 43 David Desroches, “Connecticut College Students Rally, Urge President for Change,” WPNR, March 31, 2015; http://wnpr.org/post/connecticut-college-students-rally-urge-president-change. 44 Kathleen Megan, “Racist Graffiti Prompts Connecticut College to Cancel Classes, Reflect,” Hartford Courant, March 30, 2015; http://www.courant.com/education/hc-racist-graffiti-connecticut-college-20150330-story.html. 45 Tina Detelj, “One person behind racist incidents at Connecticut College,” WTNH, April 1, 2015; http://wtnh.com/2015/04/01/one-person-behind-racist-incidents-at-connecticut-college/. 46 Lamiya Khandaker, LinkedIn, accessed November 27, 2016; https://www.linkedin.com/in/ lamiyak.

111

112

Studies in Pessinology

Maryland president Wallace Loh encouraged students, faculty, and staff to continue protesting the decision in the Ferguson grand jury case. Claremont McKenna president Hiram Chodosh in November 2015 actually invited students to occupy his office.47 President Barack Obama in November 2015 also praised the Mizzou protesters, saying “I want an activist student body just like I want an activist citizenry.”48 Speaking out in favor of a cause is indeed a right of citizens and of students. But colleges get things backwards when they extol activism above learning, especially at the expense of both learning and intellectual integrity. Attending college is a unique time students have in which their main job is to study and understand. They have the rest of their lives to apply their learning. College administrators and faculty members should guide students toward the importance of knowing about the world before seeking to change it.

CONCLUSION The staged emergency at Connecticut College in spring 2015 was more than just placating. It resulted in real consequences: a permanently damaged reputation and career for Andrew Pessin. At many checkpoints along the way, the harm could have been mitigated: if Lamiya Khandaker’s allegations were checked against the facts; if President Bergeron or Dean Van Slyck had given the accusations of bias against Pessin the scrutiny they deserved; if the Facebook post had been allowed to expire or taken down, if the faculty advisor school newspaper had insisted on journalistic integrity; if Pessin’s had been allowed to defend himself publicly; if when students cried in professors offices about the post, the professor had told them they had misread it, if Pessin had been allowed to defend himself publicly—if at any time the college had stepped off the stage of performative self-exculpation, this could have been resolved fairly. Pessin could have with much less drama learned the lesson of the need for greater caution when expressing opinions on social media, and the students could have learned lessons in due process and professional journalism. 47 Ben Boychuk, “Protests by self-absorbed students are out of control,” Sacramento Bee, November 19, 2015; http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/ben-boychuk/article 45514632.html. 48 Arlette Saenz, “President Obama Praises University of Missouri Protesters: ‘I Want an Active Citizenry,’” ABC News, November 15, 2015; http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-praises-university-missouri-protesters-activist-citizenry/story?id=35203826.

Connecticut College Acts Out a Staged Emergency

But the enacted scenes of demands, condemning statements, and appeasement were ultimately intended, not for Pessin’s instruction, but for the actors’ ego. The curtain has now closed on this staged emergency, and will only reopen when Pessin returns to his intellectually and morally devastated campus. This pattern, however, continues to play out on college campuses as long as it is considered a crisis whenever someone raises a hue and cry over perceived bias. Colleges are giving students, faculty, and administrators a free pass to pounce on those who disagree with them. The only way to end the cycle is for college presidents to demonstrate both strength of principle and a reasonable sense of proportion. They must show they know the difference between responsible life and histrionics.

113

CHAPTER 5

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”: Reflections on Academia, Liberalism, and the Betrayal of Andrew Pessin JOHN GORDON For Nat Hentoff

I

I

n the spring of 1967, about to graduate from Hamilton College, I found myself having dinner with, among others, James Perkins, president of nearby Cornell. A subject came up: at the University of North Carolina, an English professor had had his students do an exercise on Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” which is a seduction poem. A local talk-show host named Jesse Helms, later to become Senator from North Carolina, had gotten hold of some of the results and read them over the air, pronouncing them filth. As a result, the UNC administration had “reassigned” the professor. What did President Perkins think of that? My memory of his answer is clear, because it was so what I had not expected to hear. President Perkins thought that the whole thing was rather silly—but that, you know, the professor had really brought it on himself. Jesse Helms and academic freedom were two extremes, and reasonable men would find a reasonable middle ground between them. I remember being reminded of an old Jules Feiffer cartoon, representing President Eisenhower giving his position on school desegregation: “We must guard against extremes on both sides,” said Feiffer’s Eisenhower, “those who want to blow schools up, and those who want to keep them open.”

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

About two years later, a group of African-American students, armed with shotguns, took over a Cornell campus building and issued some (what else? It was the sixties) non-negotiable demands. President Perkins once again did his best to split the difference between the two extremes: those who were threatening the lives of others, and those whose lives were being threatened. The demands were substantially met—just, I now realized, as Jesse Helms’s would have been, had the zeitgeist wind been blowing the other way. The point here is that the whole frenzied Mitlaufer1 stampede now at work stamping out errant thought on our campuses was and is a matter of character, to which ideology is secondary. It is a matter of who will stand up for what they claim to believe in and who will fold under pressure. Had those spirited lads with the shotguns been white racists demanding the expulsion of minorities from campus, and had they been backed up by a significantly noisy part of the campus and a significant number of wealthy alums, President Perkins would have caved just as abjectly, and Newsweek or Time would have had a cover reading something like “Resegregation U.—An Old School Returns to the Old Ways.” Was it ever thus? I wonder. President Perkins’ words startled me, because at the time I believed that educators were by their natures bound to be champions of free expression. Yes, yes: I know how outlandish such a thought must sound to anyone paying attention today. And yes, to an extent my faith in the old ways was wishful thinking, even then: for instance it was not really true, as I had been taught, that Harvard had stood up to Joe McCarthy. Still, I protest: once upon a time, the integrity of academia was something in which a sane young person might believe. A young person such as I then was, for example. I was a faculty brat and am now a (just retired) professor, someone whose entire life has been connected with some college or university. My upbringing was what one would expect: Adlai Stevenson, ban-the-bomb, The New Yorker, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” going to western movies and rooting for the Indians. Campus culture was a refuge from the philistines, who among other odious things were forever trying to break in and tell us what we could and couldn’t think. Had you asked me at age fifteen to list what changes would most make America a better place, abolishing the House Un-American Activities Committee would have led the list. For such as myself, these were brave days for the academic left. 1 I’ve encountered this useful word in discussions of similar cases. It means, approximately, someone who goes along, no matter what.

115

116

Studies in Pessinology

At my own high school a superb teacher was under attack from a local Bircher2 for assigning a book, Barbara Jackson’s Five Ideas Which Changed the World, which included a more or less even-handed account of communism; the school stood by him. With a sequence of assists from the Warren Court, the range of what could be read or taught was constantly expanding. Even beastly old HUAC, it seemed, was fading away, or at least leaving us alone. In 1964, a bunch of Berkeley students, anticipating George Carlin, demanded and, eventually, won the right to say certain hitherto forbidden words, going so far as to print them on placards and carry them around campus. It was called the Free Speech Movement, and it prevailed because everyone was at last coming to agree that free speech was a large part of what a university campus was all about. So what the fuck happened? As of this writing, the world at large seems to be heading toward authoritarian government: was academia the canary in the coal mine? In the Free Speech Movement days there had been a handful of words you officially couldn’t use around the Berkeley campus; today there’s a cartload. Back in 1964 and for a while after, college campuses were actually freer than television: you could express ideas and use language in the classroom that the networks would not have allowed on the air. Now it is the other way around. And that is not because of what the administrations wanted; they had pretty much thrown in the towel around 1964. It is because of what the students (and faculty) (non-negotiably) demanded. So, yet again, WTF? How, and when, did a movement dedicated to ending censorship become a movement dedicated to expanding it? As to the when, everyone will have had their own lightbulb moment: for me it was July 11, 1972. On that date I was asked to sign a petition by a representative of a campus group some of whose members, because they disapproved of Professor Richard Herrnstein’s writings (he was later to be co-author of The Bell Curve), had been following him around in packs, calling him names, blocking his path, and physically threatening him. “What about that?” I asked the man with the petition, expecting some kind of embarrassed concession.” “Aren’t those guys of yours acting like the Brown Shirts? “I think Herrnstein should be shot,” he said. Thus ended the conversation. So: July 11, 1972. Up to that moment, despite an occasional qualm, I could believe that people like him, grad students handing out petitions on behalf of some left-wing cause, qualified as—remember this word?—liberals. Liberals 2

Time capsule note: The John Birch Society was an extremely right-wing organization, prominent in the early 1960’s. They were often called “Birchers.”

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

were tolerant and open-minded; the word, after all, had originally meant something like “generous.” Like (supposedly) Voltaire, they might disagree with everything you said but would defend to the death your right to say it; they certainly did not want to shoot you for it. Similarly, they believed that your private life, in bedroom, study, or whatever, was none of their business; anyone who believed that “the personal is the political”—which is, after all, just another way of saying “everything is crap”—clearly belonged at the most uncool corner of the Gossipy Girls table of the junior high cafeteria. In fact the emergence of that feminist slogan—again, around 1972—was for me an early sign that the times they were a changin’ in a way that maybe they oughtn’t. After all, we took the right to privacy seriously, us liberals did; also the first amendment and the sixth; also the venerable judicial principle that the accused was innocent until proven guilty, and that guilt had to be established beyond a reasonable doubt; “alleged” was not routinely given the scare-quotes treatment. And of course we believed in equality “regardless of race or creed”—once, I swear to God, as an old-timer reminiscing to incredulous youth, a left-of-center shibboleth, spoken with a straight face—with “gender” and “sexual orientation” being added to the list in due course. Well, boy, was that ever then. “Regardless of creed?” some years ago I participated in a departmental job search in which one of the leading candidates was rejected because he was a Mormon. Please believe me when I say it was exactly that naked. One party present suggested that selecting him would be tantamount to hiring a skinhead. And I’m here to report that the gentleman in question had absolutely nothing in common with a skinhead. I mean, he was a Mormon, for Christ’s sake, with a wife and four children. (As best I can figure, the rationale was that he lived out west and believed in some weird stuff. Something like that. Of course, he probably did believe in some weird stuff. It is a condition not unknown among faculty in the humanities.) “Regardless of race?” A few years ago, I was engaged in a more or less public dispute with a faculty member of color, which at one point had become heated enough that the dean of faculty called me in for a chat. There was some polite palaver, but her message was clear: 1. I could expect another round of agitation from my antagonist, and 2. No matter what, fair or not, right or wrong, the administration would side with him, because he was black and I was not, and that was that was that was that. As, indeed, turned out to be the case. Due process? For instance, presumption of innocence? Up to 1972, “victim’s rights” had been one of Nixon’s (And George Wallace’s, and many another of that ilk) law-and-order slogans; it was the liberals who were stuck with the

117

118

Studies in Pessinology

thankless follow-up of pointing out that some of the accused might actually be innocent, that to presume victimization on one side was to presume guilt on the other side, and that to automatically assume guilt as a matter of policy was to welcome a police state of just the sort that America, one had been raised to believe, had been founded to get away from. Today, “victim’s rights” is a watchword of the left, above all the academic left, where “Always believe the victim” is the soundbite of this season and the next, and where accused students are, by federal fiat and, with campus compliance, denied, among other things, basic Sixth Amendment rights.3 And more, and more … once one opens up on these manifold—to coin, I think, a word—illiberalisms, the faucet can get lost in the spate. We invited a middle-range government official to be our commencement speaker because he was black and because Hillary Clinton had strung us along and stood us up at the last minute. (We let her do that to us because she was Hillary Clinton; Jesus, on the way back for his second coming, would have been given a firm deadline.) Then he turned out—this was the Reagan administration; whoever could have imagined?—that he held at an odious view. (On abortion, I think.) So, and I am not making this up, we uninvited him, and replaced him with a faculty member, who urged us all to go on being the idealistic decent people we just so obviously were.4 Oh, and around the same time, a colleague of mine, elsewhere known for her sensitivity to the sensitivity of students’ feelings about all subjects sensitive, addressed, in class, one of her students as “an asshole” “incapable of human feeling,” and kicked him out for questioning her position on the 1969 trial of the Chicago Eight. (How do I know this? Because she boasted about it to me, in the company of a job candidate, who was thereby put in an impossible position.) A visiting instructor was called on the carpet by a dean and three professors because some of the black students in her class complained that she was giving more attention to the Holocaust than to slavery. (Categorical: had the students been white and the professor black, That. Would. Not. Have. Happened.) A student columnist wrote a clumsy parody about the word “bitch,” 3 By order of the federal government, college and university cases involving alleged sexual harassment are now to be decided by the “preponderance of evidence” standard—a coin toss, basically—as opposed to the higher “clear and convincing” standard, let alone “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Among other constitutional guarantees disallowed, the accused is not allowed to confront the accuser. 4 Then we tried to make amends by inviting him to some panel discussion. He was perfectly decent about the whole thing, and some people thought we had redeemed ourselves. Me, I’d say that mistreating a good man is worse than mistreating a bad one.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

and twenty-eight faculty members wrote an outraged petition against him, and one does wonder how many would have signed on had the phrase been “son of a bitch.” Another student wrote an essay to the effect that there might be two sides to the issue of affirmative action, and received a similar gale of outrage. The awkward thing is that many of the people responsible for these ideological double-gainers don’t want to know what they’re doing. They still seek to inhabit a warm personal space where the old reliable usual suspects—Joe McCarthy, HUAC, Richard Nixon, George Wallace and Sarah Palin and, yes, Donald Trump—are on the other, wrong side, and where they still accordingly get to think of themselves as liberals, or “progressives,” or something in that ballpark. So you get a lot of what academics, whatever their other talents, are good at, semantic hijacking, in the service of government by cant. Cant: a move to further restrict campus speech is, I have been told by a colleague, “not censorship—it’s … it’s … it’s limitation of expression.” Another colleague, also (their number is legion) in favor of increased censorship, or limitation of expression or whatever he thought it was, explained to me that on the one hand there was freedom of expression, which was good, to be sure, but on the other there was “The Right to Comfort,” which was also good, so surely reasonable people … and back into Perkinsland. My college, as part of its inauguration, now includes a mandatory loyalty oath. Again, maybe you have to be a certain age to be appropriately boggled by that. Back in the day, loyalty oaths were what Birchers were demanding for—well, for pretty much everything; good guys like the ACLU were resisting on the self-evident liberal principle that one’s personal beliefs were one’s own business. Did I say “loyalty oath?” I’m pretty sure it’s not called that. I’m pretty sure the college calls it anything but that. Because that’s what it is. To be sure, such smiley-face mendacities were and are in the air, off campus as well as on: not “No Smoking” but “This is a Smoke-free Zone. Have a Nice Day.” And it’s probably true that in some ways campuses are just, as usual, going with the flow, particularly with the prosecutorial mood that has held sway since—again—about 1972. Cult. Stud. generalization: up to about then, crime and courtroom dramas, more often than not, wound up with the accused being proven innocent: think Twelve Angry Men, Inherit the Wind, Perry Mason. After that … well, think Death Wish, Rambo, Cobra, Jagged Edge, Dirty Harry sequels … In time, places of education, following suit, became the opposite of the way they had been, or had at least been supposed to be. For alleged infractions involving certain areas (especially race and gender), they chose to presume guilt. So it was that a Vassar student, accused of rape and

119

120

Studies in Pessinology

eventually proved conclusively innocent—lucky for him, or he’d have been, beyond a doubt, by way of preponderance of evidence, legally screwed—was advised by the dean to be grateful for having been taught a lesson. And that the academic survival of a student at the University of Pennsylvania came to hinge on his ability to prove that there were no water buffalos in Africa. (Apparently, there aren’t, but try proving it.) Who in turn, actually, fared better than an old friend of mine, fired for having greeted a newcomer to campus with the words “I’m damned glad to meet you.”5 “I’ve heard a thousand stories like this,” writes a colleague in commiseration. The pattern is always the same. It is always a matter of the many against an individual or a small group, therefore, to begin with, a matter of bullying. The prosecutors are always inflamed by a culture of victimhood licensed by their identity-politics identification as or with one subset deemed ­vulnerable— women, gays, people of color, certain ethnicities or foreigners. Demonstrated innocence—nonexistence of African water buffalo, for instance—is no defense, because the accusers can never be wrong. In fact, the very act of pleading innocent proves one guilty of some “institutional” version of the offense. Their strength is as the strength of ten because their hearts are pure, and besides, didn’t Marcuse or Foucault or Derrida or one of those people show that “truth” is just power plus bourgeois mystification? (Again, academia bears its share of the blame for what has been called the “post-truth” era now embodied by President Trump; it is a textbook case of ends meeting.) And—and this is the real heartbreaker—because they lack character, they will never rally around in defense of the colleague under attack. Never. Never. If you, dear reader, have ever known of a case on campus where the beleaguered individual or group has been defended by a substantial number of professors who found the gang-up unfair or distasteful, please let me know, because I haven’t, and neither has anyone I’ve asked. I would fain believe that it is different for union halls and church congregations and street gangs and bird-watching clubs and civic organizations like the Kiwanis and chapters of Oprah’s Book Club and dens of Cub Scouts and almost any other assembly of people, but on today’s college campuses the default is the one observed in monkey houses: two baboons (males, presumably) get in a fight, the crowd hovers around until the likely winner emerges, then piles on the loser. Because, again, that is one way of always being right. 5 Because the line occurs frequently in the cult classic Animal House, spoken by a character who later tells a lady, with obvious innuendo, that the cucumber he picked up in a grocery store is bigger than hers. Somehow, someone decided the two lines were indistinguishable.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

One relatively familiar example: the “Duke 88”—an assemblage of eightyeight Duke faculty dedicated to encouraging the prosecution of the three students accused of rape—were, it turned out, completely, definitively wrong; they had been had by a buccaneering district attorney named Nifong who had sought to advance himself politically by destroying three innocent men, and so the eighty-eight—a disproportionate percentage of whose membership, it grieves but does not surprise me to note, came from humanities departments, and especially from the English Department assembled by the author of There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too—eventually had no choice but to silently fade into the woodwork. In shame, are you wondering? An occasional twinge, perhaps, of self-reproach? After all, not only had they done their best to ruin innocent lives and made fools of themselves in the process, but had said and written things like “you are, quite sadly, mother of a ‘farm animal.’”)6 I mean, if you had done anything like that, wouldn’t you feel a tad, you know, sorry? Perhaps even inclined to say you were sorry? Now I am going to keep you in suspense. You are going to have to wait a while to find out how many of those eighty-eight publicly expressed regret, and issued an apology about their part in the persecution. (If you want to cheat, the answer is in number V, below.) I’d suggest that in the interim you try to come up with an estimate of what one might normally expect from eighty-eight people of average decency.

II Meanwhile: take this hard truth as a given: if you are a member of a college community and you find yourself in one of these ideologically-tinged tight spots, you simply cannot count on your colleagues. Or, if I may correct myself, you can indeed count on them, either to join in the baboon pile-on, or to hightail it for the tall grass. Ask Andrew Pessin. Ask Andrew Pessin. Given that this is one chapter in a book on the subject of his travails, I’m assuming the reader knows the main story line. It’s his story, of course, but from where I sit (retired professor, Connecticut College), it’s most conspicuously about faculty (adding up, in this case, to a hundred-plus members), lining up, gauntlet-style, to take their shots at one betrayed c­ olleague. 6

Professor Houston Baker, former head of the Modern Language Association and twice guest of honor at Connecticut College, to a mother asking for his help after her son, much abused by Professor Baker and the others, had been exonerated.

121

122

Studies in Pessinology

At Duke, it was all started by a rogue prosecutor behaving out of self-­ interest. At Connecticut College it was a kid—a nineteen-year-old student with an agenda, named Lamiya Khandaker. How do I know she was nineteen years old? Well, listen to her, in an article headlined “Why I Wrote My Letter-to-the-Editor and How a 19-Year-Old Received Backlash”: “I immediately became vilified as the 19-year-old college student … The attempt to dig up dirt on a 19-year-old student … This is what happened to the 19-year-old who published a letter … to the 19-year old who has been vilified …” The point here that she really really does not want you to miss is that she is not only the victim, but a nineteen-year-old victim. She was brave—nay, heroic, because, though to be sure with plenty of backup, she took on someone older than herself; now when some have questioned her behavior she is—whoops—a kid again, being picked on by meanies bigger than her, entitled to all the pity points appertaining thereto. And of course, she is a victim; by virtue of her background she is a member of one of those sacrosanct groups on whom victimhood is apostolically bestowed, and that is all ye know and all ye need know. In that sense, at least, this was a racist act. A male WASP could not have pulled it off. What once upon a time, in the days when liberals were liberal, could have mattered more—a fair hearing for the accused, for instance—was not to be thought of. Welcome to twenty-first-century academia, where politics means identity politics, period, and the victim card is the only card. Let us try to forget that disagreeable fact for a while—forget the excitable (after all, only nineteen-years-old!) Ms. Khandaker and the hundred-plus weak-willed so-called grownups (my former colleagues, sob) who went galumphing after her in that children’s-crusade-in-reverse of theirs. There are actually some issues to be considered other than the age or complexion of the inquisitor: 1. “Pit bulls”: A terrible choice of words. Andrew Pessin withdrew it and apologized for it. (The latter act, as I told him at the time (as it happened, too late), was a mistake, because the people he was dealing with were obviously the sort to take it as a sign of weakness and to ratchet up the assault.) Still, there were reasons, reasons which would in all probability have mattered much less had Ms. K been a Jew going after a Muslim. Pessin is seriously Jewish, and as a gentile looking from outside the fold it has seemed to me neither unreasonable nor paranoid for Jews to feel that the atmosphere has been darkening, probably since around 9/11. (Which was itself, surely, an anti-Semitic action, in part: if you want to kill a lot of Jews, lower Manhattan makes for an obvious target.)

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

Be that as it may, such was certainly the case on August 11, 2014, when Andrew’s Facebook message went out. A military force named Hamas was killing Israeli citizens with rockets. The Israeli Air Force was trying to stop the launches. As always seems to be the case, the launch sites were deliberately positioned in heavily populated civilian areas, so that air strikes were bound to produce casualties among the de facto human shields. The Israelis, as I recall, did what they could, for instance dropping warning leaflets before each attack, but inevitably there were killed and wounded citizens, and this of course had the intended effect of arousing much of what people sometimes call world opinion, including European and American academia. With no particular axe to grind, I remember being struck at the time by what seemed the one-sidedness of how the controversy was going—wondering, for instance, how many Americans would have stood for missiles coming in from an adjoining or nearby territory. (In 1962, after all, we damn near got the world blown up over just that question.) For his part, Pessin was someone who on the one side had friends in the killing areas, and on the other was being told that trying to protect those friends constituted a war crime. This, I aver, would have gotten to many people. Comparing the enemy, under such circumstances, to some kind of brute or predator (“Hack the Hun!”) is the kind of thing that more or less automatically happens, during war— Huns, beasts, animals, jackals, running dogs—or, for that matter, apes and pigs, which is what the Quran calls Jews. (So does Hamas, in its charter document.) And in this case, you had to read through the whole exchange and pay attention to understand that Pessin’s “pit bull” comment actually referred to Hamas, not Palestinians (the word never appeared) or the inhabitants of Gaza, and maybe one reason you had to pay attention was that on the whole we are unused to recognizing such distinctions, since war talk does not as a rule worry overmuch about them: Nazis and Germans were pretty much indistinguishable to the Americans fighting World War II and to movie-makers then and since; likewise Reds and Russkis during the Cold War. If anything, Pessin was being more scrupulous than, based on the record, most of us are inclined to be under such circumstances. Fat lot of good it did him. 2. Hurt feelings. To the extent that Pessin’s persecutors have been able to muster anything at all like a coherent grievance, it is that his words wounded swaths of sensitive souls—not just Palestinians (of whom, in fact, there were few on campus) but anyone else who for whom might be imagined a way of being hurt by extension, or solidarity, or analogy, or just because there was a bandwagon to jump on.

123

124

Studies in Pessinology

But let us say it was so, that Andrew’s Facebook words caused hurt feelings among some in the student body. How, exactly, did that happen? It happened because Lamiya Khandaker, with others, wanted people’s feelings to be hurt, so that she could use the reaction as a flail against the Jewish Zionist Andrew Pessin and then feel good about herself, as the undaunted champion of whatever she obviously feels it is her life’s mission to be the undaunted champion of, not because of what he’d written on August 11, 2014, but because of what he said on January 22, 2015. Andrew’s Facebook material had been sitting quietly in its harmless Internet cubby, being ignored by one and all, because after all who cares what someone was saying about yet another Middle East mess, already six months old? (Anyway, when was the last time you read, or re-read, a six-month old Facebook bit?) But on January 22 there was a meeting about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and the issues it raised about free speech, at which Andrew spoke these words, quoted from the notes: • can you “tolerate” those who don’t want to tolerate you? • can you “coexist” those who don’t want to tolerate you? • how is it possible to affirm your commitment to “individual liberty, freedom, diversity” when sub-cultures within your culture want to overthrow you and your values? • this also shows up “between” cultures—(e. g., how do states go to war justly, morally by their own standards) against non-state entities that don’t play by the same rules (e. g., protecting cultures). There was more along the same line, but this is typical. Ms. Khandaker was present, and evidently she had been having a stressed-out time. She is a ­Muslim, and, in her words, “I feel unsafe when I go out to the local community. I felt unsafe when my quick stop to Shop Rite resulted in dirty looks and couples bringing up the topic of ISIS purposely in front of me.” Most of all, she felt unsafe because of Professor Pessin’s words at the conference, especially the word “culture”: “I did not misunderstand his contribution at the Charlie Hebdo panel when he posed indirect yet problematical questions such as ‘How do we tolerate cultures of intolerance?’” (Her emphasis, needless to say.) This was the casus belli. These words deeply offended Ms. K ­ handaker— “culture,” apparently, being yet another one for the trigger-­warning list. (Sorry to be so culture-clash here myself, but it’s hard to see how any non-fascist person could be offended by them. But then, I’m an American liberal, and Ms. K comes from a culture in which a man was hanged for liking The Satanic Verses.)

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

A person of obvious abilities in this regard, she got in touch with her contacts on the school newspaper and … And, honestly, what is the Bengali word for chutzpah? The child murders his parents and demands lenience from the court on the grounds of being an orphan … The assassin charges the survivors for the price of his bullets … A lady orders hot coffee and sues because the coffee is hot … Khandaker and company do everything in their power to see that words they deem offensive will be retrieved, circulated, displayed, and publicized, so that as many people as possible will have their feelings hurt. Then they proclaim themselves appalled that so many people’s feelings have been hurt. Let us say that you tell me something disparaging about someone else and I tell that person what you said. What are my possible motives? 1. I want to hurt that person’s feelings. 2. I want to cause trouble for you. 3. I am a person of innate nobility, a lover of the truth, being heroic. Even though Ms. Khandaker has left (graduating, sweet God, with something called the “Dean’s Scholar Award”), there are obviously people on campus who believe number 3 here would be the right answer. Anyway, she got her revenge. 3. The graffiti. On March 29 someone found a racist graffiti in a girls’ bathroom. No one knows whether the culprit came from on-campus or off. Anyway, it proved something … well, really bad, and obviously part of a “pattern.” As an American male who has encountered a fair number of gruesome bathroom messages, some of the wishing death or other unpleasantness to people of my race, color, class, presumed sexual orientation, or presumed preference for one sports team over another, I find it difficult to fathom what happened next. Had these people really never had such experiences in their lives? Or could it be that, compared to the ones I’m used to, girl’s bathroom walls are sweeter, because so, sugar-and-spicily, are girls? (But then the graffiti was probably written by a girl, right? Which kind of messes up that whole line of thought.) Whatever, the assumption seemed to be that 1. This was the first time in that anyone had written something obnoxious on a bathroom wall, and 2. It was, somehow part and parcel of the Andrew Pessin affair. It was, in particular, that second leap of faith that made the Hamas comment tumesce, within a bunch of brains, into a genocidal lust, spiritually concentrated in the id of Professor Pessin, to exterminate all manner of groups. Presumably it had to do with the micro-aggression thing we’re going through these days. At Versailles, courtiers could be banished for scraping at someone’s door with the wrong fingernail, and duels to the death fought over preferences in hosiery; so, plus ca change, it goes, I guess: every generation will select, pet, and fondle its own narcissism-of-small-degrees fetishes, its own

125

126

Studies in Pessinology

cordons sanitaires, and blots and smears once taken for granted and blinked or wiped away will be trumpeted until they shake a community. So classes were canceled and breasts beaten and garments rent and assemblies proclaimed and feelings blubberingly gotten in touch with, all because someone with a Magic Marker had been granted the power to shut down the college—something which in my day had required a phoned-in bomb threat at least, preferably just before a hard exam. Had I been him—or, again, probably, her—there would have been no question as to what such a reaction called for. It calls for an encore. Connecticut College, I predict, can expect, and is certainly asking for, an upsurge in provocative bathroom graffiti until the day when it finally grows up and gets over it. Anyway, somehow all these three items—the resurrected Facebook comments of August 11, the Charlie Hebdo remarks of January 22, the graffiti of March 29—became, trinitarily, one. Factor it out, and what it comes down to is an upsurge of very confused collective wrath instigated by what would have normally been taken for a bland and inconclusive rumination on the old liberal dilemma of whether and to what extent enemies of tolerance may themselves be tolerated. (1977: can neo-Nazis stage a march through predominantly Jewish Skokie, Illinois? 1984: can protesters burn an American flag at the Republican National Convention, in sight of delegates some of whom have probably had children killed defending that flag? Yes and yes, in my (liberal) book. Nowadays: Westboro Baptist Church? A hard call, but yes, as long as nobody’s doing any threatening.) Confused—incoherent, actually—it certainly was, but then it was a mob action and mobs are not particular as to which of several provocations, real, exaggerated, or imagined, related or not, get the ball rolling.

III: CORRESPONDENCE I was on sabbatical when all this went down, and my research has accordingly, mostly paleontological. (It has been suggested that, not having been in the midst of it all, “John Gordon couldn’t possibly understand what happened.” But the same might be said for any kind of mob action, and besides, there is something to be said for perspective.) The following, sometimes abbreviated for relevance or annotated for clarity, is a selection of what was coming across the email transom during those shameful days. Names have been eliminated or, in one case, changed, and I have honored requests not to cite or quote. Again: I was largely off campus at the time, so will begin with the testimony of someone who was present throughout:

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil” The whole Pessin affair was bizarre from the start. From afar, it could look like a conspiracy or a campaign, but in reality it was more like a student-led runaway train of mass hysteria. As you know, Pessin had written about the conflict in Gaza using a canine metaphor. Some months later a student saw it and objected to it, at which point Pessin immediately deleted the content. That should have been the end of it. I think the next step was the independent effort by the college paper to punish Pessin for his Facebook post on the grounds that he had used “dehumanizing” language …    At some point the * Department decided it needed to be heard on the matter by passing a departmental statement condemning hate speech. Other students expressed perplexity at my decision. It felt like the students were rapidly turning into a possessed mob straight out of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Yet I don’t believe that anyone was directing the students to do so. The students fed each other’s hysteria …    My resolution with the students made me realize how the College had failed them: the faculty and the administration let the students lead them, instead of the other way around. No one sat down and said, this is not how you run a newspaper. No one tried to reel them back in once the witch hunt began. It was very much the case that the students led the administration. This, too, was Crucible-esque.    Since then, no one even brings it up. It’s as if everyone would rather forget how they acted at the time. The students who persecuted Pessin have graduated; some of the faculty regret their conduct, while others no longer think about it.

As an example of what this particular witch hunt could sound like—well, let me give you some samples from one particularly voluble participant from The College Voice, the paper which orchestrated the campaign against Pessin: Thanks to the money Zionists who have been able to trundle into U.S. national politics (buying Truman’s presidential victory and ideological loyalty, despite his State Department’s dismay) our Congress, medical and academic establishments have increasingly been dominated by Zionist funders.    Could this be why [college] President * and the college’s trustees both have failed to step up and denounce Pessin’s obvious besmirching of the reputation of Connecticut College? Has she, and they received emails urging her/them to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible or else?

127

128

Studies in Pessinology How many university student senators have been bullied by Zionist ideologues and moneychangers into opposing divestment from businesses that facilitate apartheid Israel’s continued illegal colonization of illegal lands?

Well, oy. Gotta love that “moneychangers.” Gotta love “medical” establishments, too. Too many Jewish doctors! (Every time I go in for a checkup, it seems, I am in danger of being Zionized.) “Trundle” is I presume a mistake for “funnel,” and “dismay” an inept approximation of something like “disagreement,” and “Has she, and they received emails” an example of our correspondent’s wobbly sense of syntax. (Also given his level of exactitude, one wonders whether “funders” should be “founders.”) But I admit to being charmed by the quaintly Victorian idea of the president’s “besmirching of the reputation of Connecticut College” (Connecticut College started as “Connecticut College for Women,” and its president is a woman). And Harry Truman, chosen successor to a president sometimes charged with not doing enough to help the Jews of Europe, perhaps due to the anti-Semitism of some in his cabinet, being bought off by all those money-bags Missouri Jews, against a candidate from New York City! How fiendishly clever of them, when we all thought the real money was on Wall Street! But my favorite is the proposal that “many university student senators” have been bullied/bought off by Jews. You’re not going to believe this, but in college I was president of my senior class—that was how I met Perkins—which gave me a fair idea of what student government is worth. And “university?” (Connecticut College is a—how to say this without sounding dumb?—college, but “university” makes it sound more important, therefore more menacing.) Take it from me: student government is, at best, a farce, and no reasonable person would think it worth their while to try bribing any of its members, except perhaps for purposes of carnal knowledge. OK: like Hitler, this guy is funny, until he isn’t. (One thing not funny is his disquieting habit of using the word “elders”—I wonder where he could have gotten that from?—when referring to groups of Jews.) But the main point is: my (ex) colleagues signed up alongside this shit. This stuff was being churned out regularly in the college newspaper, and there they were flaming and flailing around because some kid was allergic to the word “culture,” and, later, about a word on a bathroom wall—that, and about how it obviously just went, somehow or other, to show what raw, rampant Pessinism led to. They were attending to that, but not to what I trust is pretty obviously a species of anti-Semitism. Doubtless some of them will explain to you that, no no no, it’s Zionism, not Jews. Right.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

And with Pessin it was Hamas, not Palestinians. But then that was one distinction and the other is another thing entirely because otherwise that would mean we’d all been throwing tantrums about nothing and really ought to apologize for it, which we won’t, and that would mean we were bad people, which of all the (ever-more) numerous things you can’t think or say is the main one. And there’s another problem. I was an English professor, and the words of the correspondent just quoted automatically remind me of Prospero on Caliban: “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” This writer is one of ours, a product of our education. What does the mind on display show about the education received? On the simplest level, it’s just stupid, and as such it fits an old pattern. Because whatever else it is, anti-Semitism is stupid. Militantly so, in fact, because anti-Semites suspect that Jews are smarter than them, hate them for it, and accordingly make a virtue of their own thickness. (If they want a new banner, I suggest one from the SF writer C. M. Kornbluth: “The Marching Morons.”) Anti-Semitism is nature’s way of letting others know that your brain has turned into a six-pound turd. For one thing, there’s the track record. Take a look at the company it puts you in. If you must, go hate Ecuadorians or Methodists instead and retain a smidgen of self-respect, but honestly, when it comes to Jews, enough is enough. And then there’s the question of what, as well as who, the anti-­Semite is against. If you don’t like Italians, you probably don’t much like public displays of exuberance; if it’s the French, you don’t like snippiness, and so on. If you don’t like Jews, you don’t like, among other things, l­earning—that whole obnoxious smartness thing again. You are perforce against the whole idea of a college. (Or— excuse me—university.) As the person just quoted demonstrates. The person just quoted is by now the holder of a certificate from Connecticut College testifying to his having satisfied the requirements for qualification as someone accomplished in the liberal arts.7 Put that in your pipe and smoke it, U.S. News and World Report. Well. Against considerable competition, Mr. X’s missives were about as sordid as things got, even more than Ms. Khandaker’s, and they just kept coming. Please hold your gorge one more time; here comes another (last, I promise) sample: “All the hallmarks of a dyed in the wool ethnocratic apologist for supremacist Zionist domination ooze glaringly from the text of your perfectly Freudian projection onto the decent targets of your insipid vile of the very qualities your entire act evinces.” 7

The good news, of course, is that he’s gone. Whew. I mean, one of his sources was a history of car bombs.

129

130

Studies in Pessinology

So speaks a Connecticut College Bachelor of Arts. No, I can’t understand it either. To give him his due, the fellow tends to be more lucid in short bursts of rage, where his targets include Benjamin Cardozo, Felix Frankfurter, and Leon Uris, Zionist conspirators all. (How on earth did he overlook Ferrante and Teicher?) But, again: this stuff is funny until it’s not, as shown by another student’s report, written around the same time: I … have been hearing many anti-Semitic comments used to make fun of Dr. Pessin, because of what he said. I am surprised when people say he is lazy for taking time off on Jewish holidays, he wishes all Muslims would die, and the holocaust jokes my peers sometimes make … I am disappointed in my campus for believing second hand, inaccurate information, and using it to shame and prosecute a professor as well as the racist comments students have directed toward Dr. Pessin.

There were lots of such reports, especially having to do with “holocaust jokes.” At least one Jewish student transferred as a result, and who could blame him? It confirms what others have said, what one professor’s email called “a climate of intolerance and intimidation.” Not being around for the show, I re-­ irritated the administration by emailing solicitations for feedback from faculty members, and that was a recurring note. One wrote apologetically that she could not comment because she did not have tenure, another that his department went along in a minimal-compliance kind of way because one or more of their tenure slots was on the line, another that she thought it was the lesser evil compared with the threat of Pessin’s being fired. Typical of several was the response that the writer signed because of career pressure (“pressure” was a frequent word, in these messages), real or perceived but “was ashamed then, as I remain ashamed now, to have signed it.”8 But most of all, they signed their petitions9 because everyone else was doing it too, and because there was an indistinct but definite apprehension that not signing would, as the saying goes, have consequences.

8

Vanity makes me add that the person pronounced herself grateful for my “clear, strong moral leadership in this case”; honesty compels me to add that a number of responses in effect told me where I could stick that clear, strong leadership. 9 It has been objected that the word should not be “petition” but rather something like “statement,” “letter,” or “document.” Whatever.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

IV: ANDY WHO? And then, there were a few who said they had had no intention of censuring, attacking, discomfiting Andrew Pessin. Now, I just wrote that sentence, and I still can’t believe it’s there. It belongs on some alternate plane of reality. Not about Andy? His actions were incessantly in the school newspaper, which can be fairly said to have been running a crusade. Hell, it was in various national publications, some of them (because I did it) distributed around campus. Andrew Pessin was without doubt the main subject of controversy on campus at the time, and he was certainly a major subject of my chats with Dean Van Slyke when I was twice invited to her office. (Typical exchange: her to me: “You’ve gone over the line.” Me to her: “What I did was rude. What you did was evil.” To the best of my knowledge, other summonses to the dean’s office were limited to those who had opposed the petition drive.) Every department—including, most disturbingly, Pessin’s own—emailed a petition, and although they usually refrained from mentioning his name and although some were more weasely than others, it was never not clear who the target was. To no one’s surprise, the man felt it necessary to stop teaching classes in mid-semester and remove himself from campus. You don’t do something like that because of a flood of condemnations that are not about you. A senior administrator said that he hoped to make Andy “whole again.” You don’t say that about someone who hasn’t been chopped up. Well, it’s their story and they’re sticking to it. I don’t understand how anyone could stand to say such a thing, but some did, perhaps because there was no other rationale available that would allow them to live with themselves. In fact, one reason I was invited to contribute this chapter was my email response to someone making just that not-about-Andy case. Quoting her, in her message to another professor: Almost everything you’ve said, however, is based on the faulty premise that we who are writing and signing these letters are still objecting to Andy Pessin’s post last summer … she [the college president] needs to say directly that this has nothing to do with Professor Pessin’s post … I assume you know many of us well enough to understand that we are not trying to scapegoat Andrew Pessin … in fact, I—and I assume many of us—keep wincing at the way this keeps getting constructed as somehow being about Andy’s post. It is not … I assume most of us are not talking about Andy’s post any longer.

131

132

Studies in Pessinology

Count them. Five separate denials, in one email. With apologies for the unavoidable cliché, the lady, methinks, doth protest too much. I replied to this line of iteration. To follow what I wrote, it helps to know that the writer had also made a point of her devotion to Jews. (Methinks …) I have made some minor changes in the interests of clarity.

Dear Colleagues,

1. First, two excerpts: Connecticut College accepts the principles of academic tenure as defined and accepted by the American Association of University Professors and the American Association of Colleges (AAUP Policy Documents & Reports, 2001 Edition p.4) with the exception that at Connecticut College the probationary period in the ranks of full-time instructor and/or assistant professor is seven years except as provided in 1.4.1.2.  Information for Faculty, p. 1010    This report recommends that each institution work with its faculty to develop policies governing the use of social media. Any such policy must recognize that social media can be used to make extramural utterances and thus their use is subject to Association-supported principles of academic freedom, which encompass extramural utterances.    As Committee A previously noted regarding extramural utterances, “Professors should also have the freedom to address the larger community with regard to any matter of social, political, economic, or other interest without institutional discipline or restraint, save in response to fundamental violations of professional ethics or statements that suggest disciplinary incompetence.”    Obviously, the literal distinction between “extramural” and “intramural” speech—speech outside or inside the university’s walls— has little meaning in the world of cyberspace. But the fundamental meaning of extramural speech, as a shorthand for speech in the public sphere and not in one’s area of academic expertise, fully applies in the realm of electronic communications, including social media.

10 The college’s comprehensive rule book.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil” American Association of University Professors, Academic Freedom and Electronic Communication, pp. 50–1    Put these two together, and what they say is that Andrew Pessin’s Facebook reflections, on the Middle East or anything else, were, by our rules, none of our corporate business. People were entitled to respond, preferably as individuals, preferably in the original medium. Departmental pronouncements, clearly intended to intimidate, were and are out of line. 2. The argument is made that, however that may be, Andrew’s Facebook statements became a part of the campus discourse, with results that may have hurt some students’ feelings. Well, yes. They became a matter of campus discourse because one student in particular chose to make them so. If feelings were hurt, it was because she, abetted by a campus culture forever on the lookout for opportunities to affirm its greatness of soul by finding some victim group to noisily identify itself with at, to be sure, no personal cost, wanted them to be. What pain has been caused has been caused by us, not Andrew. 3. With few exceptions, group petitions are for cowards. The one exception that comes to mind from my thirty-five years here is a faculty petition requesting a resignation.11 But that was against a president, one who had long outlasted her welcome, was doing substantial harm, and couldn’t take a hint. It was, kind of, speaking truth to power. These petitions are the opposite. They are gang-ups and pile-ons, acts of bullying the like of which I never before witnessed. 4. Which brings me to the response of my colleague.12 Honestly: how— pick one—a. disingenuous or b. delusional—is it possible for one body to be? The “faulty premise” that these petitions are about Andy? “Faulty premise?” “Faulty premise?” Can I see a show of hands out there from all signers who did not feel that what they were signing was, to some significant extent, “about Andy” and Andy’s statements? (I’m not seeing many. Maybe [the writer’s.]) Is the fact that most of you didn’t name his name—“a certain faculty member,” and all that—really supposed 11 Former president of Connecticut College, dismissed by popular demand; no reason to bring in her name. 12 Author of the preceding letter.

133

134

Studies in Pessinology to have fooled anybody? [The letter-writer] mentions a meeting that’s supposed to have changed everything in that regard, but one does note that the same petitions, in the same language, keep dribbling in. “Not about Andy.” NOT ABOUT ANDY? In 1968, a guy, probably stoned, said to me, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great to wake up next morning and be a spade?” And I thought to myself, “Gordon, that is the stupidest thing you will ever hear anyone say.” Well, I was wrong. It was the second stupidest. Just ask Andy.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

5. And, again, is it possible to have such discussions—or any at all— without playing the ethnic/race/gender/orientation-whatever card? OK: I give. Here goes. I’m not Jewish. My ancestry, as best I know, is Scots/Dutch/Irish/Italian. It’s true that the Scots part came by way of Australia, to which an ancestor had been transported. Does that count as a victim card? But in any case, I’m definitely not Jewish, which is why I can feel free to point out that a certain amount of what’s been going on could well, to some people, fall into the category of anti-Semitism. I don’t really think that’s mostly true,13 but hell: you guys can demagogue the issue, so can the other side. I could for instance point out that a few years ago one unquestionable anti-Semite by the name of Angela Davis was welcomed to campus as a kind of moral paragon, by some of the same people who have signed some of those petitions. But then, of course she was black, female, leftist (also, some of us still think, an accessory to murder, which gave her a certain radical-chic cachet)—and there we go again, with those cards. An African-­American anti-Semite who calls for the destruction of Israel is welcomed with open arms. An American Jew who wants to defend Israel gets the pogrom treatment. Let’s run that past some of our Jewish alum donors and see how it flies. 6. This is not how I think of the issue. It’s actually a pretty debased way of thinking of it. Why? Because: This is a college. A collage, a collectium, a collection of thoughts and thinking, which by the nature of thinking will sometimes be at odds, even hard to stomach. Not a nudist colony. (Not about pigmentation.) Not a Marxist cell. (Not about hewing to the party line.) Not a kindergarten (no telling on someone, running

13 Obviously, later developments changed my mind.

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil” to the principal’s office, for using naughty words.) Thinking is not an epiphenomenon of one’s organic inheritance. If it were, places like this would have no reason for being. Go out and inform the parents paying for tuition that in your considered opinion nothing really matters but the biological givens of birth, that we judge right or wrong by how many pity points someone’s inheritance has earned them. See what happens. This is not a Petri dish. It is a college. A place where thinkers are supposed to be able to say what they think without (speaking of dogs, pit bulls included) being hounded into submission. And yes, feelings will be hurt. So what? Show me a community, college or otherwise, where not hurting feelings is the main priority and I will show you a thought-free dead zone. 7. And, to get people’s attention, it’s just possible that there could be real consequences. Antioch ceased to be, because it sillied itself into extinction.14 And right now we are setting ourselves up to be a) the most expensive college in the world, and b) the Third Reich of Political Correctness. How is that going to play, outside this little bubble of ours? Partial answer: check out the on-line NPR account, then read the string of responses.15 8. A year ago I caused a bit of a stir by saying in public, against the FSCC or AAFF or, I dunno, some other alphabet,16 that its recommendation that ConnColl faculty officially present themselves as moral mentors to their morally challenged charges ran afoul of the obvious fact that there was nothing about being a ConnColl professor which automatically qualified one for any claim of moral superiority, to our students or to anyone else. I said, horrors, that there was no objective reason for considering ourselves ethically superior to, for instance, the day shift at the local Walmart’s. Some people thought I was overstating the case. Boy, did they ever get it wrong. Given the events of the last month, I would kill for a faculty at the moral level—with, say, the average-human level of probity, integrity, and loyalty to one’s colleagues, especially the vulnerable ones, and above all reluctance 14 Apparently it’s since sort of come back. I’m betting that the silliness perdures. 15 Most were highly critical. Since then, all the commentary I’ve seen has, to some degree, opposed the action taken against Pessin. Which might be said to cause a problem or two for those who have described the college opposition (e.g. me) as “contrarian” or “perverse.” 16 The college’s faculty committees are usually referred to by their initials.

135

136

Studies in Pessinology to throw one’s colleagues under the bus when it seemed the smart move—of the local Walmart’s.    Submitted with all respect to my colleagues Spencer Pack, Catherine Spencer17, and to a very very few others,

John Gordon

The response was that my arguments were “silly.” Lionel Trilling spoke of “the moral obligation to be intelligent.” All or almost all of the faculty piling on Pessin were exceptionally intelligent, but they did not, as the old saying goes, use the brains God gave them. They had other things to do. Scholars and intellectuals, they did not take the time or mental energy required to check out the facts and think things through. Few if any of them would have submitted a paper or joined a conference with as little preparation and consideration as they gave to this case. They just signed. St.Augustine says that evil is absence, and in my life that has been true: I can name perhaps three people who have been outright evil, but the great bulk of harm I’ve seen done has been a consequence of sloth, of half-assedness, of OK, why not? And evil is the word. Speaking for myself at least, I have never in my adult life been so close to anything so smelly—so dishonest, vindictive, cowardly, and—yes, because wait till it’s your turn, guys18—stupid. And all because my colleagues were had, by a kid. 17 Two of the good guys. I’m sure they won’t mind my mentioning their names. 18 Don’t think you’re going to get off just by not being Jewish. Everyone’s something. In one of my abortive peace-making efforts, I congratulated a colleague, well-known by all to be a devout Christian, who, living by her faith, was working to encourage campus reconciliation on the Pessin case, as “the real deal—a genuine Christian who walks the walk.” To which, one of the listserv watchdogs: “I would like to bring your attention to … the ethnocentric assumptions, and particularly Christian inflections in some of your comments.” And more: “Several have spoken of gestures such as forgiveness, reconciliation, and even peace as presumed goals that we all share … [but] Forgiveness, reconciliation etc. are longstanding Christian virtues tied to particular discourses that not all of us accept nor even understand. Speaking of them so casually as if we all agreed on what they meant makes me (and others) feel like a trespasser in ‘your community.’” At which point I lost it, in what more than one responder called unwelcome or unacceptable language, and they had a point. (Back to the Dean’s office.) Well, the reader can judge: Oh, for Pete’s sake. Is all this bafflegab just because I called * a “Christian,” therefore—of course, of course—consigning every non-Christian faith to eternal perdition? I take it back. * is or is not a person of faith—no slurs intended here for non-persons of faith—and I have no doubt

“I Was Rude, You Were Evil”

Connecticut College has much to be grateful for—nice place, smart people, honorable traditions. Although to be sure it has also had its follies and missteps—see above—up to now there had apparently been nothing on this level. Now, it would seem to have contracted, in full, the pathogens already circulating on some other campus—Duke, for instance. I want to think of it as the transitory resurrection of HUAC and company, but those guys came from without. We, by contrast, have done this to ourselves. As a senior member of the community, I feel like—what?—say, like a longtime Bill Cosby fan (actually, I was), like a member of a family watching the head of the household blowing the family inheritance on cards and horses, like an American citizen just after the 2016 presidential election. It’s sad—one of the saddest things in life—but some people, and institutions too, truly disappoint. Colleagues and former colleagues, from the heart: you had a lot going for you at this place. You were lucky people. Whatever made you decide to spit on that luck?

V One.



that every other person of every other faith is also a person of faith, and I will obviously die of extreme old age before I can figure out any way to complete this sentence without offending any on-line person whose whole point of existence is to be offended, person of faith or not, because we are all in this “trigger-point” phase where being offended on-line and therefore being licensed to vent your offendedness, thus demonstrating your moral superiority to anyone not thus offended, is the plasma and the elixir and the pith and the marrow of your shrunken, shriveled, brain-dead brains.   Shouldn’t have said that last bit. But still, here is the upshot of the argument I was dealing with: Gordon, greeting colleague; “Peace, sister.” Colleague: “Fuck you and your ‘peace,’ you ethnocentric genocider.” And I’ve known this person for a long time. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had danced naked at Woodstock. Dear Lord, what on earth has made her, and academic matters in general, go so wrong?

137

CHAPTER 6

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagues FRED BAUMANN

INTRODUCTION

T

he case of Andrew Pessin, professor of philosophy at Connecticut College, came to national attention last year. Here’s the story in short, well stated in a Jerusalem Post article: It started with an August 2014 Facebook post written as Israel and Hamas fought their latest war, in which Pessin referred to Hamas as “a rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape.” It wasn’t until March that the comment suddenly resurfaced to ignite a campus firestorm. On March 2, three editorials condemning Pessin were published in the print and online editions of Connecticut College’s student newspaper, College Voice. The op-eds, which started on the front page and covered all of page three and part of page four, accused Pessin of racism and comparing Palestinians to rabid dogs. Not so, the professor insisted. He was talking about the Hamas terrorists who govern the territory, but the Voice reportedly didn’t bother to give him a chance to present his side. Pessin, a heretofore popular philosophy professor, stood accused of peddling “hate speech.” “I feel unsafe,” Lamiya Khandaker wrote, not really explaining how a Facebook post from the previous summer that hardly anyone had noticed suddenly threatened her security. She did note that she had contacted Pessin, who repeatedly tried to explain that she had misunderstood his comments. Khandaker is an activist with Students for Justice in Palestine, an aggressively anti-Israel organization active on campuses ­nationwide.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu Two other students, Michael Fratt and Katilyn Garbe, co-­authored an article falsely alleging that “Pessin directly condoned the extermination of a people.” Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, the Voice’s editor-­in-chief, reportedly authored an anti-Pessin petition, thereby actively participating in the very controversy covered by her newspaper. The Voice also posted anti-Semitic reader comments, which still can be seen. For example, one commenter wrote: “your universities and colleges are owned by Aipac … the zionists [sic] who control America and its foreign policy, apart from its banks, media and movie business.” Another wrote that “student senators have been bullied by Zionist ideologues and moneychangers” and called Pessin “an unapologetically racist bigot who likes the perks of being buddies with Israeli colonists who torture, maim and kill unarmed Palestinianns [sic] with impunity.” In April, George Mason University law professor David Bernstein uncovered evidence that Pessin’s Facebook post had clearly referred to Hamas all along and wrote that “the whole controversy [looked like it had been] ginned up to score anti-Israel political points.”1

Three points need to be made in advance. First, it is hard to figure out how anyone could read Pessin’s post without realizing that it referred to a political entity.2 He was explaining a current political situation, namely the reason for the ongoing Israeli Gaza incursion. Addressing the anti-Israel tone of the world press coverage, he described it as the “liberal-hearted world” being angry at Israel for keeping the rabid pit bull caged. “When it emerges it comes out roaring, snarling and going for the throat and has to be caged again.”3 To read this as referring to anything but Hamas is rationally impossible since it is Hamas that decided on and took the actions that Pessin is describing (in particular promiscuous rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the Negev). Hamas is open about its desire to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.4 Much harsher characterizations than “rabid pit bull” occur to me as appropriate. In 1 Noah Beck, “Pessin Affair Exposes Connecticut College Anti-Semitism,” Jerusalem Post, ­February 3, 2016; http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Pessin-affair-exposes-ConnecticutCollege-anti-Semitism-443747. 2 David Bernstein, see below, finds the image ambiguous and ill-chosen, and Pessin agreed to that himself, but it seems to me that anyone who has ever seen a political cartoon where a side in a dispute is characterized in an image had to know exactly what Pessin meant. 3 See above. 4 Cf. conclusion of Article 7, Hamas Charter: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/ hamas.asp

139

140

Studies in Pessinology

addition, anyone who had bothered to look at Pessin’s Facebook page would have seen that in the ten days preceding the post in question, he had written ten posts about the war, each explicitly about Hamas. That in itself should have been enough to resolve any ambiguity in the mind of a candid reader. Second, Pessin explained what he meant, but apologized for poor word choice and for any bad feelings he might have caused. He made this apology from the very beginning, in letters to each of his critics. He made a public apology on March 8. These apologies and clarifications didn’t help at all; to the contrary. Everything that followed, all the subsequent charges of racism, bigotry, dehumanization, the quasi-public show trial and the ceremonial departmental denunciations, followed that public clarification. The original charges were brought by a student to whom Pessin had long ago explained what he had meant. Not one of his traducers took a blind bit of notice with the exception of one remarkable student who followed up a letter of reproof with one of apology, when he figured out that he had been conned.5 This suggests strongly that the accusers knew from the beginning what Pessin had meant and were not interested in anything but defaming him. So if their purpose was not, as they pretended, to express sincere moral outrage (in which case they would have had properly to accept or at least take account of the explanation and apology), it must have been to intimidate and silence the chief defender of Israel on campus and thus, through his fate, any other potential defenders. Third, if one wonders how come a post from the previous August emerged to traumatize (allegedly) the passionate SJP student who launched the pogrom, the culprit turned out to be the editor of the student newspaper who sent around a shortened version of the original Facebook post. From the beginning, it was a set-up. The uproar that followed attracted national attention. David Bernstein covered it pretty fully in three op-eds for The Washington Post, as did others.6 Gradually, public opinion turned, as it was revealed how dishonest and cruel the attack had been and how base and cowardly had been the institutional response. Professor Pessin took academic leave for two years before returning. But why now return to this sad piece of history? Before I explain, I need to make clear that Professor Pessin was a colleague of mine at Kenyon College, a friend, a leading member of the Jewish community, and was known far and wide as one 5 http://www.theaugeanstables.com/pessin-archive-introduction-and-linked-chronology/. Pessin Archive #54: College Voice: Balomenos Apology to Pessin, April 16. 6 Pessin Archive #30: Articles from the Outside Press about Pessin Affair, March 25 to May 28.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

of the kindest, friendliest, funniest and most decent members of what I have known to be a remarkably nice faculty. My sources for what follows are documents that are in the public domain at the Pessin Archive, and communication I had with Professor Pessin through most of 2015. Connecticut College, like many American research universities and liberal arts colleges, has a lot of Jewish faculty. Some of them were his colleagues in the Philosophy Department. Typically, Jewish faculty is liberal and often “progressive,” if not far left. Israel, now targeted by the Left in increasingly strident and bizarre ways, poses a problem for them, just as it does for Jewish students, who mostly share the same general outlook. So it is worth looking at how a small sample of such individuals behaved in the crunch, when one of their own was dishonestly and basely attacked for the simple crime of defending Israel against those whose openly avowed purpose is to destroy it, and who, to attain their end, use delegitimation tactics of all kinds.7 I hasten to say that I know none of these people and that I do not believe that the sample afforded here does more than provide anecdotal evidence of a general tendency. Nonetheless, on the basis of my own experience, and that of others who have told me about them, I am convinced that what the Jews of Connecticut College felt and did would likely hold true for many Jewish faculty all over this country. My purpose is to recount the facts, as I know them, and then to draw certain tentative, interpretative conclusions. It is not primarily a matter of denouncing some individuals for what looks like base and cowardly behavior but of trying to understand what could have motivated it.

WHAT HAPPENED It started with exchanges of emails between a student, Lamiya Khandaker and Pessin. She complained about remarks he had made at a panel on the Charlie Hebdo massacres. She claimed that Pessin had suggested that “Jews were at the top of the pole of victimhood.” Pessin’s reply is extremely courteous but makes clear that he had said nothing of the kind.8 (He also refers to Khandaker’s claim that “Israel sterilized Ethiopians because their skin color can’t prove their ­Jewishness.”)9 A subsequent response by Pessin to Khandaker’s complaints about 7 http://freebeacon.com/national-security/tufts-university-hosting-islamists-to-train-students-in-direct-action/. 8 Pessin Archive #5: Pessin Email to Khandaker re: Remarks on Charlie Hebdo Panel, January 25. 9 An utterly false and absurd allegation based on stories that the Israelis were giving Ethiopian immigrants long term contraceptive injections without their knowing consent. For an

141

142

Studies in Pessinology

his Facebook post refers to her use of words like “racist and hateful.” Again, he explains with great politeness, that she has misinterpreted a reference to Hamas as a reference to the Palestinian “race.” It appears from Pessin’s reply that Khandaker has already told him that she is not interested in any reply he might make.10 After this prelude the real show began with letters to the editor of the Voice, the student newspaper. On the basis of what were not just misrepresentations but lies about what Pessin had said (cf. above, the citation from the Jerusalem Post), the editor-in-chief of the college paper, who had set the whole business going, started an on-line petition calling on the administration to “condemn Prof. Pessin’s racism.” That generated hundreds of hateful comments and voluminous hate mail and threats, not just against Pessin but his family as well. On top of that, again in response to the demands made by the on-line petition, nearly every department and program on campus, joined by many student organizations, released public statements condemning Pessin’s allegedly racist post, which, they said, had “incited and celebrated violence.” The administration, helpfully, posted all of them on the College’s website (where they remain as of this writing). The overall impression one gets reading the departmental statements is of the kind of Stalinist or Maoist “self-criticism” session where everyone piles on to save their own skins. Some denunciations, e.g., the G ­ overnment Department’s, seem more dutiful and tepid; others, like the History Department’s come out snarling and go for the throat. Thus, overnight Pessin had become the archetypal Jewish villain, the Shylock, the Leo Frank, and the howling mob was no more open to any kind of reasoning, much less philosophic logic, than lynch mobs usually are. So, wisely, he took a leave of absence. When news of this spread beyond the fever swamp Connecticut College had become, Jews around the nation and the world rallied. Pessin received hundreds of supportive emails, Jewish journalists contacted him for his side of the story, and a petition in his support got more than 10,000 signatures. Many of us wrote letters to the College administration and dozens telephoned. But on campus, it was a very different story. account of the issue see, on the accusatory side (nowhere near allegations of ‘­sterilization’): Talia Nesher, “Israel Admits Ethiopian Women Were Given Birth Control Shots,” Haaretz, January 27, 2013; http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-admits-ethiopian-women-were-given-birth-control-shots.premium-1.496519 and, rather more nuanced and informative: Tamar Sternthal, “Let’s Get the Facts Straight About Ethiopian Jews and Contraception,” Algemeiner, February 7, 2013; http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/07/letsget-the-facts-straight-about-ethiopian-jews-and-contraception/. 10 Pessin Archive #7: Pessin Emails to Khandaker re: Facebook Post, February 19–20.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

There are 200+ faculty at Connecticut. Four spoke up in Pessin’s defense. Four. A non-Jew, John Gordon, did so in an especially straightforward and uncompromising manner.11 Two of the four were Jewish. Students, some of them Jews, wrote supportive emails but admitted that they were too intimidated to speak up in his defense on campus.12 After all, no one wants to be called a racist, no matter how absurd the charge. It is, after all, the Left’s chosen WMD, and it devastates. Some faculty also told Pessin privately that they had been pressured to sign their departmental denunciations. Unmasked anti-Semitism made its appearance on Yik Yak but also (see above), in the comments threads on the student newspaper. At an open forum, two students spoke up on his behalf and were booed. The Jewish student later told Pessin that he left the forum immediately, shaking from the hostility he had felt coming at him in waves. This is the sort of thing Orwell described in 1984 as “the Two Minute Hate.” Meanwhile, Pessin’s department colleagues were not exactly stepping up to the plate either. Some are Jews or have a Jewish spouse. As Pessin described it to me, they were always friends who largely agreed on social and political matters in a left-leaning way. They were not as pro-Israel as Pessin, but despite that, over the years they debated matters amicably. Furthermore, they knew that when all this broke, on February 22, 2015, Pessin was dealing with the convalescence of a seriously ill spouse, the destruction of his house by an explosion caused by a gas leak, and consequently, the care of a couple of pretty disoriented and upset small children. One would have thought his colleagues would have had plenty of reasons, just plain human decency reasons, to rally around. In reality, when the storm arose, their silence was deafening. They didn’t call Pessin privately nor did they give any sign of public support. Three days later, on February 25 one colleague (hereafter known as “A,” and who speaks of his “pretty extreme holocaust-based zionistic [sic] education”), contacted Pessin to report that students were circulating a screenshot of the notorious Facebook post.13 In response, Pessin sent him and another colleague his correspondence with the director of the Global Islamic Studies program in which he made clear that the post was being misrepresented, and in which he apologized for the inadvertent ambiguity that may have given offense.14 Pessin also said in that correspondence that he had deleted the post. But there were none of the 11 Pessin Archive #35: Faculty Dissent, John Gordon, March 30. 12 Here is a sad anonymous letter from a student apologizing for having been too frightened to say anything publicly: Pessin Archive #44: Student email to Pessin, April 8. 13 Pessin Archive #13: Philosophy Department Faculty Emails. 14 Pessin Archive #9: Pessin Email to Sufia Uddin (GISP), February 22.

143

144

Studies in Pessinology

ordinary manifestations of solidarity, or even of sympathetic concern, that one might expect departmental colleagues to show. Recall, these were more than colleagues, Pessin had thought; they were his friends. Still, never fear, they were to be heard from soon enough. The occasion was a letter that Pessin had sent to the departmental majors and minors, two days after the college paper had published a series of denunciatory letters,15 and the uproar was at its height. Many of them were students Pessin knew well and was on excellent terms with. He thought that he needed to explain his position to them, ­especially since the Voice (whose editors, recall, were among the leaders of the campaign), had not offered Pessin the opportunity to reply to their charges. He wrote: Dear fellow philosophers Let me start by apologizing to you for any discomfort you might be feeling as a philosophy student as a result of the Voice this week. At some point I will produce a rather full response. … What I will say to you now is that the post in question was presented entirely out of its very relevant context—including that it was written last summer during the war between Israel and Hamas, and was part of a series of posts about Hamas—and in fact is being seriously misrepresented. (What I will acknowledge is that my language in the post invites that misrepresentation, and I take and took full ownership for that, and in fact both apologized for that, and took the post down already two weeks ago when its offensive language was first brought to my attention. Indeed I explicitly condemned and disavowed at that time the view which is now actively being ascribed to me.). … But for now I ask merely that you reserve judgment, that you consider that the post is specifically about Hamas and not about “Palestinians.” In general, and that when you have all the facts before you (the date and context of the post, the intentions of the author, the acknowledgement/apology for the loose language which invites misreadings, and that the fact that it was taken down two weeks ago immediately when the offensiveness was communicated) you can then reasonably reach whatever conclusions you think are right.16

As the above makes clear, Pessin, nobly and somewhat naively, seemed to think that it still made sense to appeal to rationality, good sense and decency, 15 Pessin Archive #10: College Voice Attack, March 2: Letter 1; ibid., #11 Lamiya Khandaker College Voice Attack, March 2: Letter #2, Michael Fratt and Katilyn Garbe. 16 Pessin Archive #15: Pessin to Philosophy Majors and Minors, March 4.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

in the middle of a witch hunt. Again, one might have expected his colleagues to rally around. Not exactly. “A,” having seen that note to the students, wrote an email saying that he was not “totally comfortable” with Pessin’s response, because the comparison of Gaza to a rabid pit bull “is dehumanizing, period.” The point could have been made otherwise, so the reference was, he thought, gratuitous. The cat emerges from the bag however, in the last paragraph which confesses “I am also feeling increasing pressure … to respond in some way, with a public reaffirmation of the department’s commitment to inclusivity.”17 He ends with “I think a lot of damage has been done to our department.” This is the theme which dominates this professor’s other emails. Thus “I’m really concerned about what it might mean, both for you and for the department, if you respond more publicly (say in the College Voice) in the same way that you’ve just responded to me.” Pessin will “have to think hard about how it will look in this particular case” if he does so and he describes Pessin’s perfectly straightforward and indeed transparently obvious point as an “elaborate rationalization.” “It’s likely to make things worse,” he writes. This from someone who says he is “totally sympathetic” to the actual point that was being made. The substantive objection made here, namely “dehumanization” became a major theme of the chorus of department statements, and it made for an easy transition to the racism charge. But here “A” already knew that Pessin had been referring to Hamas and not the Palestinians, knew that Pessin had said so already, and surely must have known that the use of animal imagery in political polemic is absolutely standard when talking about very bad people. (Was he really so universally sensitive as to object to Churchill describing Mussolini as Hitler’s jackal?18 If so, one would expect him to have had many opportunities in the past to raise the same objection to the use of animal imagery by all kinds of political partisans. Notable among them are the Muslim enemies of Israel, who describe Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs.19 More domestically there is the former Majority leader of the Senate, Senator Reid, who described Republicans as “greased pigs.”)20 17 Pessin Archive #13: Philosophy Department Faculty Emails, March 3–9. 18 E.g. “Minister Winston Churchill’s Broadcast on the Soviet-German War,” British Library of Information, London, June 22, 1941; http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/410622d.html. 19 “Case Study: Portraying Jews as ‘Apes and Pigs’,” PalWatch; http://www.palwatch.org/main. aspx?fi=786. 20 Paige Lavender, “Harry Reid: Republicans Are Like Greased Pigs,” Huffington Post, May 6, 2014; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/harry-reid-republicans-pigs_n_5274164.html.

145

146

Studies in Pessinology

It is hard not to conclude that “A” used the alleged impropriety of the image as a cover for, and rationalization of, his real concern, namely the reputation of the department. This is entirely understandable in view of the current atmosphere on liberal arts college campuses, where to be labeled conservative or politically deviant in any other way is to court leper status. For him, and many others, Zionism is seen as barely tolerated on campus, rather like Jews in the ghettos of Europe. Given that outlook, it might follow that one would rather betray one’s colleague and friend than risk the wrath of the powers that be. Zionists, the conclusion would be, shouldn’t defend Israel vigorously; they are not allowed to hit back.21 Still, after Pessin agreed to apologize openly for the offensiveness of the language while insisting he wasn’t a racist, “A” responded reassuringly: “Thanks, Andy. I really appreciate this. I think this is a fair way to frame things.” However, “A” then turned around and sent his own message to the department’s majors, minors and professors. It went like this: This has been an incredibly difficult week. [Three colleagues’ names] and I have had intense ongoing discussions about how we as a department might respond to Professor Pessin’s Facebook post, to the letters to the editor in the College Voice, and to the response to those letters that Professor Pessin shared with the department yesterday. We will continue that conversation over break, and we may make a more public statement as a department once Prof. Pessin has had the chance to share his own take on things with the broader campus community.”22

Discretion, apparently, was not only the better part of valor but of friendship, collegiality and ordinary decency as well. The note couldn’t have done a (One might also recall David Bernstein’s remark that if anything, comparing Hamas to a rabid pit bull was an insult to rabid pit bulls, who, after all, couldn’t help being either rabid or pit bulls. See above n. 17.) 21 John Stuart Mill had something interesting to say on the subject in On Liberty: “With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation” (http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm.) 22 Pessin Archive #18: Chair of Philosophy Department to Students and Faculty on Pessin Post, March 5.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

better job of distancing the department from Pessin and indeed making clear to the students that he was an embarrassment, a pariah, who would have to be disposed of in as dainty a way as possible. Pessin, a careful reader by profession, noted that “we as a department” suddenly seemed to exclude him, who of course had not been privy to those discussions. He also noted with some dismay that his email was referred to as having been directed to “the department” as well as the students, when in fact, it hadn’t been. Again, the department positioned itself apart from its own member. Nothing appears in here that told the students and the campus that Pessin was being maligned. Surely friends or even just colleagues who value each other would have been expected to notice it and reproach the maligners. Normally concern for the reputation of the department would express itself as straightforward defense against false charges. Nothing appears in here even of general support or that simply urges objectivity and patience. And there is not even the faintest trace of “a fair way to frame things.” On the contrary, the same colleague who had, out of one side of the mouth, assured Pessin that he found his explanation “a fair way to frame things,” continued in this email to a broader audience, by speaking out of the other, more publicly acceptable side. Thus: I feel that both Prof. Pessin’s original Facebook post and the response to the Voice articles that he shared with the department yesterday are inconsistent with the kind of inclusivity that I, personally, want for our department.”23

This is rich. Here “inclusivity” becomes a watchword for an act of exclusivity, of expulsion and excommunication. And of course Pessin’s terribly “non-­ inclusive” post was directed against Hamas, an organization whose idea of “inclusivity” features the killing of all nonconformists, foreign and domestic. “Including” Hamas would mean excluding just about everybody else, including possibly “A” himself. One might wonder what “inclusivity” means here if one didn’t already know that contemporary PC language is Orwellian in that things are described in code, as their opposite. Just as “diversity” has become a code word for unanimity, and “equal opportunity” a code word for group preference and hence unequal opportunity, so too “inclusivity” means exclusion of heretics. It’s the Grand Inquisitor of old, clad in love beads. 23 Ibid.

147

148

Studies in Pessinology

Further, this email makes no mention that Pessin had already clarified, apologized in a number of letters for the post’s wording, had promised to do so publicly, and had deleted it. Apparently even to mention those salient facts would have undermined the real purpose of the message, which was the exclusion of Pessin from the ranks of the good and decent. Additionally one could ask why “A” felt called upon to make his pronouncement in the first place. Why was it up to him and his colleagues to weigh in? “A’s” apparent inconsistency in telling Pessin that he found Pessin’s explanation and his promise to make it public “fair,” and then in issuing this edict of excommunication is merely apparent. Consistently, and as indeed he had warned Pessin he would, “A” seems to have operated out of a kind of panicked expediency. In the name of distaste for “dehumanizing” animal imagery, he and his colleagues threw Pessin to the … well, wolves.24 (As it happens, the first colleague to object to the attack on Pessin, Professor Spencer Pack, accused the faculty of acting like a pack of “wild dogs.” The faculty, though surely insulted, did not get the vapors about it.)25 Another colleague, henceforth “B,” also failed to come to Pessin’s support, though he did it in a much more conflicted and agonized way. He begins in a private email to Pessin with protestations of affection and friendship. He hopes that nothing he says or does will change that. He too, however, finds the post’s language “harsh and inflammatory” even though he identifies himself as “an Israeli Zionist.” Further, he says that what Pessin said “did not exactly model our ideal of philosophical discourse.” He signs it “yours in friendship.” Pessin wrote him an explanation similar to the one the first colleague had received and found fair. “B” responded: “I actually completely accept that reply and have deep sympathy for the point as directed at Hamas … I will definitely stress the three points you make, which I absolutely agree with, given your clarification.”26 Those three points were 1) the post was about Hamas, not Gazans or Palestinians, 2) Pessin had apologized for the language and removed the post as soon as someone had claimed to be offended by it; 3) and there is no pattern of racism in Pessin’s other writings or Facebook postings. But “B’s” public presence didn’t match his private assurances. “B” also emailed the department’s students and his colleagues. But he mentioned none 24 Those who have enough idle time on their hands, are free to count the number of animal images in this essay. 25 Pessin Archive #59: Spencer Pack to Faculty, May 3 with responses from Strabone and Boyd. 26 Pessin Archive #13: Philosophy Department Faculty Emails, March 3–9.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

of the three points he had promised to stress nor did he explain that an ambiguous post is not necessarily racist or why, if it is credibly about an internationally designated terrorist organization, it isn’t racist at all. (Nor did it seem to occur to him that political polemic isn’t and can’t be governed by the highest rules of philosophic discourse.)27 There was no sign of the complex personal considerations he had told Pessin about. Yet it was also “B” who, later, wrote an additional note to the department and its students in which he seeks to “reaffirm friendship,” and urges that “We need Andy Pessin as an active member of our community.”28 Like his colleague quoted above, he still had chosen to appease the powers-that-be, no matter how irrational and unfair they were being, rather than to stand up for his friend. But, in agonizing openly about it (though only in private), he had provided some insight into the phenomenon, so familiar from not just the Jewish but all oppressed communities in the past. Sacrificing one’s own for the larger good, namely continued tolerance by a hostile ruling authority, is a tough choice, but sometimes it may have to be made. This is what the much and largely justly decried Judenräte faced all the time during the Holocaust. What is astounding, or would be to anyone not familiar with the contemporary American campus, is how little it takes to get generally decent people, as this colleague seems to be, to behave in such an unnecessarily base and apparently cowardly fashion. What, exactly, was he afraid of? A third colleague, henceforth “C,” joined in as well: … [A]s a Jewish member of our Department and one who has tried to get our new Hillel House off to a good footing, I feel a special connection to all this. Let me be clear: Prof. Pessin’s Facebook post does not speak for the Philosophy Dept., the Hillel community, or “the Jews.” Nor do I.29

On the face of it, Pessin’s post was about international politics. “C” immediately expected it to be taken as about “the Jews.” Of course, one understands why. Curiously, this is precisely what isn’t supposed to be mentioned by those who insist that their hostility to Israel is mere “anti-Zionism” and heaven forfend they should be thought to be hostile to Jews as such. “C,” it seems, wasn’t buying it at all (nor should he have). But his response was not then, as a Jew to defend Israel, or a Jewish professor who defended Israel from the spurious charge of 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

149

150

Studies in Pessinology

racism, but to abandon Pessin to his persecutors. Of course, if Pessin was to be expelled from the Jewish community he wouldn’t be the first philosopher to have that happen to him. But it is fair to say that the Amsterdam Jews who excommunicated Spinoza had sounder grounds for it than his fellow Jews in the Philosophy Department of Connecticut College. The email continues: I am sympathetic with Prof. Pessin’s complaint that the Voice published its letters on Monday without giving him a chance to respond in public. Still I worry that his wish to contextualize his Facebook post will only exacerbate the animosities by making it seem like he is the victim here. …    A really important “wild card” in all this is how citizens of our community use social media. Though Prof. Pessin took his Facebook [post] down, it is now immortalized because some who feel wounded are spreading a photo of his posting around the internet, eliciting sometimes hateful and threatening responses from all over the world.

“C” then shifts to a somewhat unctuous irenicism: For my part I hope he will admit the hurt he has inflicted, rethink his use of social media and such inflammatory imagery and apologize “full stop.” Then, with the good will of the community, we can shift in the direction of discussions about the meaning of inclusive excellence, the nature and limits of free speech, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: something about which Prof. Pessin has a right to his opinions, objectionable though some may find them to be. …

So Professor Pessin was not the victim here? Was this stance defensible as compulsory; had “C” no other choice? Well, he might have shown the courage to defend his colleague and fellow-Jew. That would not have strained his capacities for rational demonstration. Or he might have asked for a suspension of judgment, a chance for due process, till a calmer mood prevailed. Or he might have just kept silent. But somehow, “C” felt compelled to cleanse himself and other Jews of the accusations made against another Jew—a Jew who happened to be his friend and colleague—by turning against him publicly and disowning him. The saddest thing to me about it, perhaps, is that he thought this would work. It needs to be mentioned that he too subsequently wrote a letter ­implicitly urging that the Department not do what it had already in fact done,

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

namely not “throw Andy under the bus.”30 Again, we find betrayal and futile pangs of conscience, and above all, the forlorn hope that everything could be forgotten and go on as before. It is worth mentioning that all of this was, on the face of it, pretty illogical (e.g., treating the perfectly obvious fact that Pessin’s whole account was of a political situation and referred to political actors, as though it was an “elaborate rationalization” which required huge dialectical skills), and that those being illogical were professional logicians, philosophers. Did they know better and pretended? Did they keep themselves from knowing they knew better? Did they not know better? Who knows? Perhaps they themselves don’t. But one can, and I will, speculate about the process that led them there. To top this part of it off, on March 29, the department, once more loath to be left out in the cold, joined the stampede of official statements by other departments and programs by issuing a public condemnation of speech that “dehumanizes or devalues” people.31 No names were mentioned but they didn’t have to be. While late to take the oath against “offensive language,” they got there in the end. Of course, they appended much exculpatory (or perhaps more truthfully self-exculpatory) praise of Pessin as a colleague and teacher and they insisted that the letter was not about him. This last was utter hypocrisy in that the statement was a response to the editor-in-chief ’s request for institutional denunciation of Pessin. So who else were they talking about? Here then was the official and decisive act of expulsion. Despite the department’s claim that they were staunchly defending Pessin’s academic freedom, the truth was obvious and was meant to be obvious: Andrew Pessin was now officially no longer kosher. The apparent justification is that he had dehumanized Palestinians. The signers knew he hadn’t, all but one had written privately to him acknowledging that, and, as close readers of texts (indeed, as minimally competent citizens), they should have known that from the beginning. Never mind. This scene recalls its archetype in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, where the Christian Patriarch replies to every exculpatory argument in Nathan’s defense: “It doesn’t matter; the Jew burns.”32 30 More precisely, he wrote that a colleague from a different department had urged the Philosophers not to throw Pessin under the bus, though he seemed to share the sentiment. Yet he had done exactly that, both in his own letter and in signing the official department denunciation called for by the on-line petition. 31 Pessin Archive #24: “Community Statements” in Chronological Order, March 24-April 26. 32 Gotthold Lessing, Nathan der Weise, chap. 8; http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/nathander-weise-1179/28.

151

152

Studies in Pessinology

Apparently, these colleagues were not functioning as philosophers this time. In the name of inclusivity, they excluded; they applied the most extreme double standards as to what is permissible political rhetoric; they condemned as meant what they knew was not meant, and they pretended to find elaborately incomprehensible what every sports fan (Go, Camels!—Connecticut College’s alliterative mascot), takes for granted.

JEWS In the case of the third example cited, the Jewish dimension of the colleague’s concern is painfully obvious. It is less so with “A” and “B.” But even in those cases, it is worth asking what could lead Jews and close friends of Jews to abandon the proverbial clannishness for which anti-Semites always blame Jews and which Jews themselves, like any long-persecuted people, have tended to consider a virtue. Why did Pessin’s colleagues throw their professional acumen, their collegiality and their personal friendship to the winds? And why did they toss him off the sled to the predatory pack? In other words, why did these colleagues, comfortable, happy, tenured and privileged, living in a country still governed by the Bill of Rights and at an institution that piously claims to live by the principles of freedom of thought and expression, act like the inhabitants of Chelm during an eclipse?

SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM Anti-Semitism is a misnomer to begin with. It was the way in which Jew-hatred concealed itself as something modern and scientific in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. It is that which allowed Jew-haters of this stripe (animal metaphor? Maybe), to claim disingenuously that they weren’t anti-Semites because they liked most Semites, who are Arab. There are still some such, like a possible source of the notorious former Oberlin Professor Joy Karega’s loony effusions about the Rothschilds and Mossad’s responsibility for 9/11.33 Thus, a certain Dr. Kevin Barrett, another Jew-hater, in the act of defending Professor Karega, wrote:

33 David Gerstman, “Oberlin Professor Claims Israel Was Behind 9/11, ISIS, Charlie Hebdo Attack,” The Tower, February 25, 2016; http://www.thetower.org/3012-oberlin-professorclaims-israel-was-behind-911-isis-charlie-hebdo-attack/.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu I, too, am outraged by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Today virtually all of the world’s Semites are the speakers of Arabic. (“Semite” is a linguistic category, not a racial one.) And I am outraged by the way Arabic Semites have been falsely blamed for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, the murders of innocents by large white paramilitary professionals in Paris and San Bernadino (sic), and many similar false flag incidents. These false flag public relations stunts have triggered the murder of more than 1.5 million people and the destruction of the homes and lives of tens of millions more. THIS is the real, indisputable and ongoing Holocaust; you and your colleagues are perpetrating it right now with your tax money, your silences and your lies. The blood of more than a million innocents is on your hands.34

The reason that rejecting the term “anti-Semitism” for the current ugliness is more than a pedantic distinction is that today’s “anti-Zionism” can be and increasingly has shown itself to be, another such mask for plain old Jew-hatred.35 So, for the sake of clarity, I will from now on talk of Jew-hatred, not anti-Semitism. But how to draw the line between anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred? The previously mentioned three-D standard (demonization, double standards and delegitimation, which when present reveal that “anti-Zionism” has gone over into Jew-hatred) is a good one,36 but it is reasonable to leave a gray area, where carelessness and emotion carry those who are fundamentally not Jew-haters over the line. Still, those who habitually get very exercised about the alleged crimes of the Jewish state often find themselves living across that line. Yet they can use the cloak of “anti-Zionism” to hide from others and perhaps themselves what they have really become. Take the example of a blatant Jew-hater like Oberlin Professor Joy Karega.37 She publicly claimed that 9/11 was the fault of Israel’s Mossad. And, of course, she had to bring 34 Kevin Barrett, “Anti-truther witch hunt fizzles at Oberlin College,” Veterans Today, March 3, 2016; http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/03/03/oberlin. 35 Consider here the recent stir about the Women’s March where the presumably merely anti-Zionist Linda Sarsour was found in perfect solidarity with the Reverend Farrakhan Jew-haters Mallory and Perez. (On the multiple links between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, see below, n. 260, ed.) 36 Natan Sharansky, “3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16: 3–4 (Fall 2004); https://www.jcpa.org/phas/ phas-sharansky-f04.htm. 37 Above, note 199.

153

154

Studies in Pessinology

in the Rothschilds. How was she treated? Where Pessin was innocent of the charges against him, Karega was guilty as can be. But to begin with, not one department I know of at Oberlin said peep. The president of the college publicly defended her in the name of academic freedom.38 The Board of Trustees intervened to suspend her and eventually 174 Oberlin professors did sign a letter criticizing her; eventually she was even dismissed. But the difference between the immediate intensity of the one faculty’s rage against Pessin and another’s deep reluctance to get involved in condemning Karega, as well as the difference between the kind of thing Pessin and Karega, said is too marked not to be significant. What it signifies is both a double standard and a tendency to demonize, and the purpose of both of those is delegitimization, the third of the Ds. What is part of the same syndrome is that, when it comes to Israel and Jews, people lose their minds and become wildly passionate. All the normal conversational rules change or even disappear. That is how the rule about avoiding double standards goes by the boards. How many times have I been told, “yes, but I was brought up to expect better from Jews?” Somehow, Jews matter to gentiles in an extraordinary way. I once heard Elie Wiesel recount that he had told his mentor François Mauriac that “you Christians worship a Jew on the cross. But when the Jew tries to get off you put him back there.” Headlines such as CBS’s “3 Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on” used to describe Jewish self-defense against Palestinian knifers,39 provide plentiful examples of the use of double standards. The assumption that only the Arabs tell the truth and Israel always lies—also easily documentable in current headlines and media accounts—increasingly characterizes the debates. Easily discoverable propaganda lies, lies that have been refuted a thousand times, still live a merry existence in the media and in faculty lounges 38 Colleen Flaherty, “Condemning a Colleague: Oberlin professors condemn a professor’s anti-Semitic remarks on social media; others refuse to do so,” Inside Higher Ed, April 12, 2016; https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/12/oberlin-professors-condemncolleagues-controversial-remarks-others-defend-them. For a further discussion of this incident, see below, chap. 10, 274–78. 39 “Wave of Palestinian Violence Accompanied by Spate of Bad Writing,” CAMERA, October 14, 2015; http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_ article=3132. Then there is the lovely CNN headline about a “bus fire” in Jerusalem as a way of describing a Palestinian murder attack: Shiryn Ghermezian, “Watchdog Groups Blast CNN for ‘Bus Fire’ Headline Following Major Terror Bombing in Jerusalem,” Algemeiner, April 18, 2016; http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/04/18/cnn-denounced-for-failing-tocall-jerusalem-bus-bombing-terrorism/#.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

(like the “cantonization” canard used to discredit Israel’s offer of a Palestinian State at Camp David).40 In private, as Pessin experienced, friends stop acting like friends; decent people stop acting decently; smart people stop thinking clearly. In Pessin’s case, his friends formed their opinion of his post apparently without reading it in whole or in part, and without even asking him for his side of the story. They interpreted it in a tortured and false way, just as Israel’s enemies interpret many Israeli actions.41 What happened at Connecticut College was then more or less what happens every day in the drama that the respectable media play out for their audience. Something is going on, it seems fair to say, that isn’t adequately explained even by the simple binary under which progressives operate and which caricatures Israel as a “white settler” nation. So how did Israel, of all the countries in the world, come to be the arch-­ villain of the progressive world? Are the campuses full of concern about Muslims killing Christians and Yazidis, or, for that matter, Palestinians in Syria? No. About Russians invading the Ukraine? No. But couldn’t progressives care about those? How about Venezuela? Not so much. Here, as elsewhere, it is Israel that is seen as oppressive, for the temerity of defending itself from those pledged to destroy her, just as here it became Professor Pessin, for the temerity of having defended Israel by describing the situation accurately. If one didn’t know, or rather assume, the highest motives of idealistic concern for the wretched of the earth on the part of Pessin’s persecutors, one might easily notice the resemblance between this and a long line of Jewhating incidents. Pessin had better fortune than Alfred Dreyfus or Mendel Beilis, but the music of the pack was recognizable. Increasingly the mask of mere progressive anti-Zionism has slipped and incidents of overt Jew-hatred have multiplied on American and European campuses like Pessin’s.42 Moreover, not just 40 Dennis Ross, “Don’t Play with Maps,” The New York Times, January 9, 2007; http://www. nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09ross.html; Michelle Alexander’s screed in The New York Times has become paradigmatic for “progressive” bias against Israel: “Time to Break the Silence,” January 19, 2019; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/ martin-luther-king-palestine-israel.html. 41 The Guardian’s view on Israel’s democracy: “Killing with impunity, lying without consequence?” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/22/the-guardian-viewon-israels-democracy-killing-with-impunity-lying-without-consequence This editorial is a classic where the Hamas effort to breach the border and kill Jewish civilians is described as peaceful protest. 42 Ruthie Blum, “CUNY Fails to Condemn Anti-Semitic Rally at Hunter College,” The Algemeiner, November 12, 2015; http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/11/12/cuny-fails-to-­ condemn-antisemitic-rally-at-hunter-college/

155

156

Studies in Pessinology

the iconography, but the charges made by “anti-Zionists” more and more have come to rely on standard Jew-hating tropes like various updated forms of the old blood-libel.43 Consequently, it is harder and harder to avoid seeing the old rishes, the old Jew-hatred, changing its clothes once more and seducing precisely those who thought themselves immune to the old bigotries and racisms. It is therefore reasonable to take a stand with the United States Department of State and with Pope Francis, and the University of California,44 in defining as “anti-Semitism” the denial of the Jews’ right to their own country. Anyone who wants a “Palestine Free from the River to the Sea,” wants in effect to turn over six million more Jews to enemies who have either sworn to kill Gary Fouse, “Anti-Semitism at UC Irvine: where is the Jewish leadership?” The Times of Israel, May 26, 2017; https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitism-at-uc-irvine-where-isthe-jewish-leadership/ Sam Sokol, “Report: Oxford students laughed at reports of attacks on Parisian Jews,” The Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2016; http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Report-Oxford-studentslaughed-at-attacks-on-Parisian-Jews-447097#xtor=EPR-1-[Newsletter] Avrahm Berkowitz, “Harvard Law Student Asks Israel Official Why She’s ‘So Smelly’,” Observer, April 20, 2016; http://observer.com/2016/04/harvard-law-student-asks-israeliofficial-why-shes-so-smelly/ David Gerstman, “Oberlin Professor Claims Israel Was Behind 9/11, ISIS, Charlie Hebdo Attack,” The Tower, February 25, 2016; http://www.thetower.org/3012-oberlin-professorclaims-israel-was-behind-911-isis-charlie-hebdo-attack/ Ian Lovett, “University of California Adopts Statement Condemning Anti-Semitism,” The New York Times, March 26, 2016; https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/university-of-california-adopts-statement-condemning-anti-semitism.html. (Cf. also, AMCHA, Campus Initiative, information; https://amchainitiative.org/campus-antisemitism/.) 43 Ziva Dahl, “Vassar Jewish Studies Sponsors Demonization of Israel,” Observer, February 9, 2016; http://observer.com/2016/02/vassar-jewish-studies-sponsors-demonization-of-israel-again/. Duke University Press has published Professor Puar’s book which contends that Israel deliberately maims Gazans. It’s a nice way of explaining why the IDF tries to avoid shooting to kill. And then there was the Swedish version: Donald Boström, “‘Our sons are plundered of their organs,’” (English translation), Aftonbladet, August 26, 2009; https:// www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/a/Rx1n5A/our-sons-are-plundered-of-their-organs and Andrea Levin, “Swedish Blood Libel on Israel Palestinian Organ Theft Spreads”; https:// www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704107204574470712953449876 44 Avi Lewis, “Not recognizing Israel as Jewish is anti-Semitic, Pope says,” The Times of Israel, May 28, 2015; http://www.timesofisrael.com/not-recognizing-israel-as-jewish-is-anti-semitic-pope-says/; US Department of State, “Defining Anti-Semitism,” https://www.state.gov/s/rga/ resources/267538.htm; Robert Mackey, “University of California Links Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism,” The Intercept, March 23, 2016; https://theintercept.com/2016/03/23/university-of-california-adopts-policy-linking-anti-zionism-to-anti-semitism/

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

(Hamas) or to expel (PA) all of them. That amounts to Jew-hatred, no matter how many glib promises are made about the lovely secular bi-national state that will ensue. That sort of thing deserves the same degree of credence as believing that Terezin was a spa that the Führer gave the Jews. It is hard to credit the honesty of those who say it. Martin Luther King was right then: real anti-Zionism is real Jew-hate

BUT HOW CAN THERE BE JEWISH JEW-HATERS? But if anti-Zionism at least merges with Jew-hatred, why are many of the most vocal anti-Zionists Jews?45 By the 3 D definition, which is also the basis of the 2010 US State Department definition of anti-Semitism, plenty of progressive Jews are Jew-haters. But to say this just makes the real question more intense: how can this be? One part of the answer is that Jewish anti-Zionism carried to the point of practical Jew-hatred is itself “a Jewish thing,” hard to explain to non-Jews. Suffice it that when the ghettos opened in the nineteenth century and assimilation became possible, different Jews had different responses. Some stayed orthodox, others assimilated partly or wholly, and still others found the essence of true Judaism in the progressive (usually Marxist) cause of bringing on the Messianic age through revolution. For them, Zionism, as the expression of retrograde Jewish nationalism, was simply the devil, and so, their Jewish chauvinism, still alive even in negation, expressed and still expresses itself as a particular hatred of Zionism and Israel. These ethnic Jews, usually avowedly secular, universalist and atheist, are not, as some accuse them of being, “self-hating” Jews. That phenomenon has existed, in Weimar Germany in particular (e.g., Walter Rathenau and Kurt Tucholsky), but not here. These Jews admire themselves, and in some cases feel that theirs is the true Jewish heritage. The organization Jewish Voices for Peace, a radical Marxist group, is a perfect example of the type.46 45 For instance, the group of anti-Zionist Oberlin Jews, under shifting labels, who wrote a letter in praise of Professor Karega: Staff, “Oberlin Jewish Students: ‘We Greatly Admire’” Joy Karega [Updated], The Tower, March 11, 2016; http://www.thetower.org/2079-oberlinjewish-voice-for-peace-we-greatly-admire-professor-accused-of-anti-semitism/. 46 Hence the bitter old joke “the Trotskys make the revolution and the Bronsteins pay for it.” Grace Paley, “JVP Supports the BDS Movement: The Only Recognizable Feature of Hope is Action[S],” JVPO Website; https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jvp-supports-the-bds-movement/

157

158

Studies in Pessinology

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE “NICODEMITES?”47 What happened at Connecticut College (and elsewhere, as the chapter above by Ashley Thorne attests), is something quite different. Pessin’s colleagues didn’t fit the JVP profile. His discussions with them before this crisis couldn’t have stayed amicable had they done so. They seem to resemble St. Paul’s description of the Laodiceans, lukewarm and perfectly nice, until the crunch comes. And then, like many nice people who aren’t entirely good,48 they sometimes face a crucial choice. In this case, the object of the hunt had been a friend for years. They and their families had dined at Pessin’s house. They had shared office gossip and banter along with serious philosophical talk with him for years. But now, were they to stand in real solidarity with their friend, the real victim, things might have gotten dicey for them. And so, the nice people slink (or even ostentatiously sprint) away to find safety in the mob. Soon they are chanting its slogans. This was what Pessin’s Jewish colleagues seem to have done and what many, many other American Jews do in various ways at various times. They don’t always have to stamp on the menorah; the preservation of a prudent silence whenever SJP builds its apartheid wall or its “check-points” on their campus generally works so far. There are other options, of which more below. But in this case, when acceptance required abandoning their Zionist friends, they did it, rather than suffer the abuse they knew they would face. Or was there perhaps something else they didn’t want to face?

THE EVIDENCE The evidence is clearest in the case of “C.” He speaks openly as a “Jewish member of the Department” and a founder of Hillel House, and he dissociates himself from Pessin explicitly as a Jew. Further, he expresses fear that any attempt on Pessin’s part to explain or defend himself will only “exacerbate” the mob. And he worries that social media will preserve the shameful post and whip up opprobrium forever. So, he asks for a full apology from Pessin in the hope that this will appease the haters and that, the “good will of the community” having been restored, nice discussions of all these difficult issues can occur. 47 A term popularized by John Calvin to mean those who concealed their true beliefs for prudential reasons. 48 Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good (London: Chatto and Windus, 1968), is about the difference and, in the crunch, it turns out to be a very large difference indeed.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

One can’t ask for anything clearer or more honest, in its dishonest way, than that. It doesn’t matter to “C” at all that the attack on Pessin was dishonest, malicious, and hateful, nor that the college community was stampeded by a newspaper that did not offer him the opportunity to respond, nor that victims of such attacks should, even if one doesn’t have the courage to defend them, at least be allowed to defend themselves. Nor does the truth matter to him at all. He apparently assumes that the attack, however unjust it might be, is a) an example of Jew-hatred, b) unanswerable because Jew-hatred is irresistible and feeds on resistance, so that c) the only safe thing for Jews to do is to distance themselves from the scapegoat, signaling all the while that they have nothing in common with him. What exactly was “C” worried about? Where “A” fears for the reputation of the department, “C” worries mostly about the reputation of the Jews. Or maybe also about something deeper? The choicest bit of hypocrisy in this text is the sanctimonious invocation of the “good will of the community.” The premise of this exercise in exorcism is that the non-Jewish community has no good will and can’t be expected to, since any attempt to correct lies and refute dishonest charges can, the author assumes, only produce more Jew-hatred. This is patently a plea to the haters to allow themselves to be appeased by the community’s sacrifice of its erring member and to tolerate the Jews of Connecticut College on the promise of faultlessly compliant behavior in the future. It thus involves a truly impressive piece of deception, by telling the non-Jewish community that Jews trust their good will when in fact the almost explicitly stated premise of the piece is that it is folly to do so. Someone less charitable than I might even find it remarkable chutzpah that “C” dismisses Pessin’s clarifications, apologies, and consequently, the clear malice of those who ignore them and denounce him passionately anyway. But when one is possessed by the desperate need to sacrifice someone, even a colleague, even a friend, for the perceived good of the community, fear rules over any kind of decency. If in the end, the explanation for “C” seems to be primarily at least a kind of desperate prudence verging on the cowardly, and which in his case took on openly Jewish tones. Does it also apply to “B” and perhaps “A,” and if so, how much? Were they “Nicodemites” too? Or were they simply displaying the usual timidity of tenured professors at a liberal arts college, who, like Willy Loman, want not just to be liked but well-liked and whose greatest fear is excommunication from the general ranks of the bien-pensant? Fortunately for anyone in search of more evidence of this sort of behavior, more Jews chimed in. These were official Jews, Jews whose job was to provide

159

160

Studies in Pessinology

spiritual guidance to the Jewish students of Connecticut College, namely the Director of Hillel and the College Jewish Chaplain. As outside pressure in defense of Pessin mounted, with hundreds of letters written and dozens of phone calls, alumni and donors threatening to withhold contributions, one petition with more than 10,000 signatures and another with more than 3,000 weighing in on Pessin’s behalf, the College, faced with a public relations nightmare, called in its Jewish officials. They seem to have loyally reproduced the College’s line of explanation, to the effect that the media was distorting the situation, that all was well for Jews and supporters of Israel on campus, and that everyone was eager to welcome Professor Pessin back. (I got a phone call from a non-Jewish College administrator I happen to know who said something quite similar. I need to say that I have no doubt he was speaking in good faith.) David Bernstein, who (see above) did the most to bring national attention to the affair, did not accept those assurances. Speaking of the Jewish Chaplain in a letter to the Jewish Faculty Roundtable listserve, he wrote: I’m afraid that Aaron Rosenberg … is whitewashing the situation at his college. I won’t go into all the gory details here, but consider Rabbi Rosenberg’s claim that “the college administration has appointed three Deans of Equity who have tried to establish ‘evenhanded’ programs on Palestine and Israel, as well as racism and dehumanizing language.” On the Israel and Palestine front, the deans scheduled three events right away which featured radical anti-Israel activists, none of whom had standard academic credentials to address the conflict. Once complaints were heard that the panels were one-sided, they added two additional events featuring the “Israeli perspective.” … One of them features a JStreet “anti-­occupation” activist, the other features a Zionist academic who votes for the far-left Meretz party. So, at the college, the acceptable range of opinion is apparently radical anti-Israel to far-left Zionist, and that’s considered “­even-handed.”

On a related point, again Bernstein: One of the more disappointing aspects to the whole fiasco is that to my knowledge neither Rabbi Rosenberg nor the Hillel director have publicly spoken up to defend Professor Pessin from the witch-hunt he has experienced, which has included most of the university’ academic departments condemning his speech based on things he never actually said.49 49 Pessin Archive #47: Jewish Faculty/Hillel Exchange on Pessin Affair, April 10–30.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

That is the crux of the matter right there. Neither Rosenberg, nor the Hillel director, Susan Schein, seem to have stood up for Pessin during the affair. When they did respond to Pessin’s complaints about the skewed programming that Bernstein mentions, Rabbi Schein reassured Pessin that the programming would be inclusive and equitable. To prove it, she said she was arranging it with the assistance of “C,” (the colleague who was so worried about what the gentiles would think), and a psychology professor who had signed his department’s condemnation of Pessin. In fact, as they reassured Pessin’s supporters outside the College that all was well or was about to be, the dozens of department condemnations of Pessin and the defamatory student letters all remained up on the College website. Taking them down would have been the most minimal sign of contrition. The failure to do even that speaks for itself. And of course none of the perpetrators were disciplined, even after their falsehoods were exposed nationally, but some were promoted and the student who had started it all (claiming, 7 months after the Facebook post that it made her feel “unsafe”), received the College’s “Scholar Activist” award.50 The College’s honor code which establishes strictures against defaming and lying, and which the student attacks piously invoked against Pessin, even as they violated it themselves, went unenforced. What is one to think about such official Jews? They too were not in the position of the Judenräte of the 1940’s, for whose horrible, life-or-death choices one can have some sympathy. They would seem to have risked nothing except maybe some name-calling by supporting Pessin, or at least deploring the venom with which he was being attacked. So why did they assure everyone that all was well when they never, it appears, asked Professor Pessin himself how things were? And when they had to know that in fact things were not well at all? They were Jews, official Jews, Jews officially there to help other Jews, and they did not stand up for Pessin or for any other Jews who might agree with him or who might, like “C,” feel afraid. Again, this is not an isolated incident. When the previously mentioned Professor Puar produced an absurd rigmarole of charges including, in effect, the blood libel,51 the former head of Jewish Studies at Vassar, asked why he didn’t 50 A “scholar activist” who, as Bernstein observed in the Washington Post, had pooh-poohed concern about Turkish President Erdogan’s repeated Jew-hating remarks with the following: “Everything is anti-Semitic to people wtf. It’s pissing me off.” 51 David Berger, “Academic Prize For Scholarly Form Of Blood Libel,” The New York Jewish Week, September 27, 2018; https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/academic-prize-forscholarly-form-of-blood-libel/

161

162

Studies in Pessinology

protest, challenged the questioner to disprove any of Puar’s charges.52 By comparison, Rosenberg and Stein look good, but only by comparison. What Rosenberg and Stein had been asked to do was to whitewash their employer, Connecticut College, so that Jews and sympathetic non-Jews outside the campus would calm down. (Thanks to Professor Pessin himself there is a term for this sort of thing: Jew-washing.53) Somehow, anyhow, the Jewish aspect of all this had to be concealed. This led Rabbi Rosenberg to the following tortured distinction: Those students who were upset with Andy’s Facebook comments about Hamas, which they mistook to refer to all Palestinians were responding not to Andy being pro-Israel, but to the analogy he used in describing Hamas as rabid pit bulls that belong in a cage.   To Andy’s credit, when he realized that several students were offended by his Facebook post, he apologized and removed it. My concern and the concern of others at Connecticut College is that the media seem to have misinterpreted what occurred and are portraying Connecticut College as an anti-Israel campus, which certainly is NOT the case.54

The self-contradiction couldn’t be clearer. The students were not, supposedly, responding to Pessin being pro-Israel but to his metaphor. So, saying harsh things about people who are out to kill Jews is unjust, indeed racist. So then, it was indeed Pessin’s defense of Israel that caused them to have a cow. Further, as Rosenberg himself points out, Pessin clarified that he was talking about Hamas and not Palestinians as such. But that clarification had no effect at all. Or rather, 52 Ziva Dahl, “Vassar Jewish Studies Sponsors Demonization of Israel … Again,” Observer, ­February 9. 2016; http://observer.com/2016/02/vassar-jewish-studies-sponsors-demonization-of-israel-again/ (The professor in question here was being consistent—though Jewish he is a passionate critic of Israel—but one would think that a Jewish Studies professor might recognize and draw the line at an updated blood libel.) 53 Andrew Pessin, “The Indelible Stain: Jew-Washing, Antisemitism, and Zionophobia,” The American Thinker, January 24, 2016; http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/ the_indelible_stain_jewwashing_antisemitism_and_zionophobia.html. [The term was first coined by Gerald Steinberg and Yitshak Santis, “On ‘Jew-Washing’ And BDS: How Jewish anti-Israel activists are gaining influence among Christian groups,” Jewish Week, July 24, 2012; http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/jew-washing-andbds. Ed.] 54 Pessin Archive #47: Jewish Faculty/Hillel Exchange on Pessin Affair, April 10–30.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

it just fed the frenzy, which it wouldn’t have done had the real issue just been the metaphor. That demonstrated as clearly as anything that the point of the manufactured outrage was to make it impossible at Connecticut College to defend Israel. And the point of that in turn was more easily to delegitimize Israel by making it open to any and all attacks, unimpeded by any possible defender. Somehow, like many of Pessin’s colleagues at the College, it was this fact, the fact of a powerful, self-confident and rather vicious movement that claims openly to be hostile to Israel, the Jewish state, that the Jewish officials desperately wanted not to see. “Jew-washing” is what “Nicodemites” resort to when they are forced to be involved. They look simply like those who lack what the Europeans like to call “civil courage.” But I think there is something else going on.

WHAT MAY BE GOING ON My own background is German Jewish, pretty assimilated but still openly Jewish. I grew up, however, where most of the Jews I knew were the children and grandchildren of “Ostjuden.” There was some muted but real residual mutual resentment between the two strains. My parents thought the American Jews, whose folks had come over from Poland and Russia, looked down on us as not real Jews. There was something to that. And my friends and their parents thought that German Jews looked down on them for not being cultured. It had indeed been true that a lot of German Jews, after World War I, felt embarrassed by the incursion of the “Ostjuden” since it seemed to “exacerbate” anti-Semitic tendencies.55 I want to suggest that something like that is going on among American Jews, with many of them seeing themselves as safe, as long as no one stirs the pot. But they see openly Zionist Jews as the troublemakers, the equivalent of the “Ostjuden” to the German Jews after World War I. But how did that come about? American Jews, speaking broadly, came to the “goldeneh medinah” with the hope that they would be accepted both as Jews and as Americans, thus, by the 55 After I wrote this I found that James Kirchick had thought of the same analogy: James Kirchik, “Bernie Sanders Jewish Problem, and Ours,” Tablet Magazine, April 24, 2016; http://www. tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/200643/bernie-sanders-jewish-problem. He puts it this way: “For many left-wing Jews, distancing oneself from Israel and the American Jewish majority has become a marker of enlightenment and urbanity not unlike the way German Jews looked down upon shtetl Ostjuden from Poland and Russia.”

163

164

Studies in Pessinology

going standards of the regime, as human beings with natural rights. They found acceptance beyond their wildest dreams. Partly out of convenience, partly out of a deep belief that Jewishness was wholly consonant with Americanism, they assimilated, and while many gave up Orthodoxy, they remained both Jewish and American. They gave a certain inflection to their Americanism, however. It was partly a characteristically Jewish one, which remembered that “we were slaves in Egypt,” that recalled the prophets’ denunciations of selfishness and callousness, and that prided itself on what Catholics call a “preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable.” That’s the basis for the late Milton Himmelfarb’s well-known line that Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans. In addition, this inflection was itself inflected by the particularly Eastern European experience of most of them, where the Right was always the home of Jew-hatred and the Left at least nominally universalist. So far so good, right up until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with its “black and white together, we shall not be moved,” music, and that warm sense of mutual belonging that liberal Jews felt in those days. We were, we thought, following the best of the Jewish tradition and being ideal Americans at the same time. After that however, things started to get dodgy for that reassuring synthesis. Black nationalism began to show resentment of what had seemed like, and surely often was, Jewish paternalism in the Civil Rights movement.56 Above all affirmative action quotas (okay, goals and timetables), presented new challenges. Affirmative action, which privileged some minorities but sure looked like the old Czarist numerus clausus to many Jewish organizations like the ADL, started creating discomfort.57 The Jewish community split, between those who stood up for the old synthesis of colorblind rights and those who went with the new progressive line. The former had the embarrassment of seeing themselves move to the Right in the new political alignment and of seeming to have betrayed, for the sake of solidarity with the Jewish people, the great and Jewish cause of universal justice, of 56 Cf. Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews (New York, Touchstone, 1988). 57 For example the ADL’s Amicus briefs in the Defunis and Bakke cases opposed affirmative action. Later however, with other major Jewish organizations, it switched its position. Cf. Jacob Scheer, “The American Jewish Affirmative Action About-Face, Tablet Magazine, July 31, 2018; https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/267470/the-american-jewishaffirmative-action-about-face. (He explains the change rather differently than I would; he thinks it may have to do with wishing to keep down Asian competition to Jewish admissions.)

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

tikkun olam. Those who stayed on the progressive train as it moved away from the old version of Americanism into ethnic and racial particularism—all in the name of the higher universalism—had the embarrassment of having to distance themselves as Jews and in the name of the truer, more universal, Judaism, from Jews and their particular interests. Jews being Jews, there was a lot of angry arguing about it within the community, but at the same time there was a perceptible underlying discomfort about where this all might lead. Both sets of Jews feared that they were trying to span a chasm that was steadily widening; both hoped that somehow they could get back to the safe ground of the 1950’s.58 I recall a speaker from one of the major Jewish organizations coming to my college perhaps 20 years ago, warning of black anti-Semitism in major cities. Many of my liberal Jewish friends simply would not accept that there was a problem. The speaker was surely just cherry-picking a few unfortunate examples, things were changing for the better, it isn’t good to talk about this even to the extent it is true, and anyway, what about conservative Republicans? If they were in denial, it was for a very understandable reason; they didn’t want to be forced to stand alone against the world. And if those on my side of the argument insisted that we had to fight for colorblind principles, it was because we thought that was the only way the old synthesis could be re-established. We feared that the effort to stay loyal to a progressive cause that was moving rapidly away from any trace of the universalism that it still used to justify its all-too-­ familiar particularism, would very soon destroy the very possibility of restoring anything like the world where Jews could easily be both Jews and Americans.59 At the same time, in the Middle East, after 1967 the Arab world seemed to realize that it wasn’t going to be able to destroy Israel once and for all militarily. The 1973 attempt, which came closer than any before, still seems to have been begun with hopes of partial victory more than total triumph. Already after 1967, 58 Whoever still remembers Alan Sherman’s song to a familiar Irish tune, which essentially just listed a lot of Jewish names (e.g., “Stein with an ei and Styne with a y”), will have recalled a perfect example of that confidence. The song told its audience that the Jews were now just like the Irish, then America’s favorite and heavily sentimentalized minority with its first and glamorous President, and that we could celebrate our Yiddishkeit just as they celebrated who they were, because we were all, however quaintly, American. 59 Emma Green, “Are Jews White?,” The Atlantic, December 5, 2016; https://www.theatlantic. com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, “How Jews Became ‘Too White, Too Powerful’ for US Progressive Activism,” Haaretz, January 17, 2019; https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-howjews-became-too-white-too-powerful-for-u-s-progressive-activism-1.6849454.

165

166

Studies in Pessinology

however, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, the Arabs began to attack the legitimacy of the Jewish state by posturing as the victims. Arafat was brilliant at carrying on the old eliminationist program under the mask of victimization. “Palestinian” which had once meant “Jews,” and had been scorned as a term by Arabs who were fighting, they thought, for the Arab nation, now became, by assertion, a distinct nationality with a, largely manufactured, cultural history, so that the focus, which had always been little Israel vs. big Arab world, could become big Israel vs. poor little Palestine. The New Left in America and Western Europe had signaled, by its categorizing of the Palestinians as part of the world of the victimized and colonized, that this strategy could be a winner.60 Indeed it has worked a charm. It based itself on a gross logical contradiction in that the demand for an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and a Palestinian state (the demand that rallied so much anti-imperialist Western progressive support), was never something Arafat and company were willing to settle for. But this contradiction was easily concealable until 2000, because until then Israel had refused to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. And when that contradiction was made patent, when it was Arafat who refused to accept the Palestinian state he had been telling the West he wanted, and when it therefore should have become clear to even the most naive that the whole business had been a charade on the Arab part, and that the old goal of the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a revanchist Arab state “from the river to the sea” had never been lost sight of,61 no one seemed to notice. What had become habitual and increasingly blind partisanship, which saw Israel as the rich bully, made it shockingly easy not just for progressives, but centrists like those at the Economist magazine, to tell themselves that nothing had changed; Israel was still being difficult.62 60 Thus the 1967 National Conference for a New Politics action in siding with the Palestinians against Israel. Cf. Cedric Johnson, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African-American Politics (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press: 2007), 114–115; (https://books.google.com/books?id=TvcrhEelHhMC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=New+Left+Conference++for+a+new+Politics+1967+Israel&source=bl&ots=kcRQ4V0vGA&sig=o4vP76kGENgSYx9Aau-3u8Gpi9U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifwKGN79nLAhULv4MKHf YnAZsQ6AEINzAH#v=onepage&q=New%20Left%20 Conference%20%20for%20a%20new%20Politics%201967%20Israel&f=false. See also Paul Berman, “The Passion of Joschka Fischer,” The New Republic August 27 and September 3, 2001. 61 Cf. Efraim Karsh, “Arafat’s Grand Strategy,” Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2004) 3–11, http://www.meforum.org/605/arafats-grand-strategy. 62 Thus, The Economist, in an unsigned article in its February 1, 2001 issue, about the upcoming Israeli elections after the failure of Camp David whose title blames Israel for “Saying No to

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

In the intervening years, very gradually, the eliminationists, now often speaking as Islamists, began to become more open about their real purposes. Their Western acolytes tamely followed along. A few years ago one began to hear from freshmen confident pronouncements that “the two state solution won’t work.” But that was all right, they would assure me. For, at the same time that the Arabs were becoming more openly fanatical, Western progressives were telling themselves and their recruits (and who knows with what degree of good or bad faith?) that a majority Palestinian state would somehow treat the Jews nicely and all would be well in Martin Buber’s binational state heaven. That is where we are now. For the JVP, radical Marxist Jewish Jew-haters, this posed no problem. But for people like Pessin’s Jewish colleagues the embarrassment had become acute. Not unlike the European appeasers of the interwar period, they had chosen what looked best in the short run, namely loyalty to the secular progressive movement, in the hope that it would preserve the position of Jews in America while allowing them to feel good about themselves morally. And like the appeasers, when things didn’t pan out, they felt they had no choice but to double their bets. As in Vegas and in foreign policy, typically this doesn’t work. Instead, you go bankrupt. As things got worse on campuses and more and more overt anti-Jewish incidents took place, incidents which it became harder and harder to explain away, it must have occurred to them (again with who knows what degree of good or bad faith), that at least they themselves might earn their get-out-ofAuschwitz-free cards. But the price of staying on the progressive train, as it rattled deeper and deeper into the old hate swamps, was becoming increasingly clear and increasingly dire; it meant, they could not help but know, accepting the demand for the end of the Jewish state and, thereby, at a very minimum, the reduction of the situation of the Jewish people to the one it occupied in, say, 1939. Their response was and is a varied one, but the dilemma they all feel is real and increasingly intense. One way out was JStreet, whereby you could signal in two directions, one pro-Israel (though mostly nominally) and one pro-progressive and thus anti-Israel (which was most of the time.) (I need to say that at my Peace,” opined—in utter oblivion of the political effect in Israel of the flat Arab rejection of an offer that most observers had found more generous than Israel could ever have been expected to make—that “Israelis, say long-time observers, have seldom been in a nastier, more bolshie mood.” http://www.economist.com/node/492696.

167

168

Studies in Pessinology

college JStreet on occasion showed its fundamental loyalty to a Jewish state, for which I am very grateful.) But the main way out was that of the narrator of the old verse: “As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish to hell he’d go away.” Or maybe it is more like the murderer I read about in the New York Post many years ago, who, when asked by the judge if he felt remorse, replied “the more I don’t think about it, the more it don’t bother me.” In this situation, considerations of personal safety, ideological commitments, assessments about the real interests of the Jewish people, and, perhaps above all, unwillingness to admit one’s own errors in choosing “solidarity” with the pseudo-universalist Left—an unwillingness that is partly prideful and partly guilt-ridden—all merge into a fairly malodorous and unanalyzable stew. It is thus possible to see the “Nicodemite” Jew, the Jew-washing college official, the colleagues who betrayed their friend, under the general Nietzschean rubric of “human, all-too-human.” One can have understanding, some pity and even some sympathy. But the primary judgment of them has to be that they engaged in behavior that was both contemptible and foolish. And in the end, whatever allowances one wants to make for Pessin’s colleagues as agonized and feeling caught in a dilemma, at the end of the day, you don’t throw your friend under the bus, even if you apologize to him as he is crushed by the wheels. One cannot blame Pessin for writing his colleagues that “I must register my profound disappointment with your collective response, personal, moral, and philosophical.”63 Still, it wasn’t simply lack of moral courage, I suspect, that caused his colleagues to turn away from Pessin, not simply the fear of unpopularity. My guess is that standing up for Pessin would have required his colleagues to give up something very dear to them, namely the belief that the progressive cause was ultimately good for the Jews, no matter what form it took, and the corollary belief that in being loyal to that cause they were fulfilling their duty both as Jews and moral, caring, sharing human beings. To confess to oneself that one has been disastrously wrong about a life choice is hard enough. But when that discovery also means that one’s moral self-image, which comforts us in so much adversity, isn’t real either, it becomes extraordinarily hard to admit. So one rationalizes as much as one needs to, which sometimes is a lot. As a group, those whom these professors and Jewish officials exemplify made a bad bet forty-five or so years ago. I thought it was bad at the time, but 63 Pessin Archive # 13: Philosophy Department Faculty Emails.

The Pessin Case: The Response of Jewish Colleagu

it could have been right. Still, to be paralyzed with fear, guilt, rationalization and indecision so that when the crunch comes, as it did in this case, one simply throws one’s coat over one’s head and flees the scene while reciting pieties, is not justifiable. When I was in junior high school there was a particularly sententious hymn of the old “muscular Christianity” sort, which we were required to sing. It has a fine military rhythm, so, age 13 or so, I liked it a lot. It began: “Once to every man and nation, comes a moment to decide.” It’s the theme of a lot of the classic Western movies of that time, before Hollywood turned to favoring the edgy over the square and the drug-dealing anti-hero over Gary Cooper. Corny as the sentiment may be, it is, alas, true. At Connecticut College that moment unmistakably came for the Jewish faculty and staff, and the decision not to decide was, as the existentialists I read as a teenager insisted, the decision itself, and it was a very bad one. But Connecticut College is American academia, and perhaps much of American Jewry, writ small. If what happened to Professor Pessin has had the effect of waking some from their dream of perfect consonance, and if it will lead some of the equivalents of his colleagues to become more like Pessin and less like the “Nicodemites” he was let down by, he will have suffered to some purpose. Indeed, during the Karega affair at Oberlin, it was encouraging to see a Jewish Marxist political scientist, a China expert called Marc Blecher, speak out. Of course, part of his essay in The Forward64 performed the traditional function of reassuring concerned Jews that all would be well at Oberlin, but at least he admitted that things weren’t all that good at the moment. The outcome of the most recent agonizing in the Jewish community about the discovery that the leaders of the much-touted Women’s March were admirers of the Jew-hating Jews-are-termites Reverend Louis Farrakhan, was also heartening. Progressive Jewish organizations like the National Council of Jewish Women eventually and after much internal debate, broke with the national march’s organization. Whether this is a sign that in the future progressive Jews will be bolder about defending other Jews from increasingly obvious Leftist anti-Semitism, both on campus and off, remains to be seen.

64 Marc Blecher, “Jewish Students, You Still Belong Here at Oberlin! Let Us Prove It to You,” The Forward, March 14, 2016; http://forward.com/opinion/335850/jewish-students-youstill-belong-here-at-oberlin-let-us-prove-it-to-you/.

169

CHAPTER 7

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us*

A

cademics like to think of themselves as autonomous thinkers. As the old joke has it, trying to coordinate them is like trying to herd cats. The very principles of academia—literally the protected realm of free speech—including tenure, give professors enormous privileges, not only the right to speak their minds, but protection from retaliation of those in power whom they displease. Few members of even the most highly developed democracies enjoy such exceptional privileges of freedom to speak out, dissent, criticize, to speak truth to power with relative impunity. Try lining up such individuated folks and get them to all toe the line? Sooner try herding cats. The very fact that Western demotic polities treasure such spaces, speaks volumes about their progressive bona fides: most power elites suffocate dissent. And in principle, that generous investment in a protected space of civil discourse where reasoning (if not Reason) prevails over violent passions, should guarantee some basic results. For example, at a time when anonymous internet sociability can turn ominously feral, one might expect that academics and their institutions would resist such predatory crowd behavior.1 And surely, we might think, a small, cordial, college community, where the philosophy department champions an inclusive discourse, should make everyone feel “at home,” in the search for understanding our world. * This article originally appeared in The American Interest, July 20, 2015; https://www. the-american-interest.com/2015/07/30/salem-on-the-thames/. It is slightly revised here with updated footnotes. 1 Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. The most recent case of this kind of moral hysteria misreading images deliberately manipulated, see the ‘Covington High School Affair’: Caitlin Flanagan, “The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story: And the damage to their credibility will be lasting,” Atlantic, January 23, 2019; https://www.theatlantic.com/ amp/article/581035/?__twitter_impression=true.

174

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

And yet, this is precisely what appears not to have happened this last semester at Connecticut College, an intellectual Arcadia burrowed in the wooded landscape of the North-East corridor. Here an extraordinary tale played out that supported two radically opposite narratives. Active participants saw it as a time of great mobilization, deepening and enlarging of the inclusively excellent community, a revolutionary time of courageous commitment and “healing.”2 Outsiders and the (rare) internal critics, saw a sacrificial act that follows closely—if non-violently—the pattern Rene Girard described as the origin of all primitive religious solidarity.3 Kill an arbitrary, surrogate victim, a scapegoat, and create solidarity among the guilty survivor-participants in that blood sacrifice. Over the course of the Spring semester at Connecticut College, a successful and well-liked professor of Philosophy, Andrew Pessin, got driven from campus based on a malevolent reading of a Facebook post in which he (ambiguously but, upon reflection, clearly) depicted Hamas as a “rabid pit bull.” Spearheaded by a Muslim student and a Muslim professor-led small group of activists, given the run of the school paper, accused Pessin of comparing all Palestinians to rabid dogs and calling for them to be “put down.” Pessin, they claimed, directly condoned the extermination of a people. A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.4

Shock and horror spread through the community, triggering traumatic memories of other such verbal abuse, arousing many “marginal voices” previously silenced, to speak up. A great cry went up against the racists and the hate-­ speakers of all kinds (not just Pessin). But even as the campus came to life and unity of purpose by this human sacrifice, the scapegoat found this “inclusively excellent, safe space” had become an unsafe for him. Despite his family’s medical and housing crisis in 2 Pessin Archive, #23: President Bergeron’ Opening Remarks at the March 25 community forum; #24: The Day: Students question administration’s response to professor’s Facebook post, March 25. 3 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (NY: Norton, 1979). 4 Pessin Archive #11: College Voice Attack, March 2, 2015: Letter #2, Michael Fratt and Katilyn Garbe.

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

February, the March attack went forward relentlessly. By the end of March, the administration had held two all-campus open forums (without him), and every program and department had unanimously published statements denouncing hate speech, often citing “a certain faculty member’s Facebook page.” Overwhelmed by the hostility and the lack of support—only three of over 200 faculty members and administrators checked to find out his side of the story—Pessin took a medical leave of absence, while stampeded faculty stood triumphant. Nor was Pessin the only one silenced: a range of voices got shot down on idiotic principles—“it’s racist to question what I call racist.” Though more animated, the discussion looked and sounded more like mobilization and indoctrination. Indeed, the predictable tragedy of the whole affair was how in the name of such progressive goals, this revolutionary moment actually empowered some of the most anti-progressive forces on campus to marginalize one deeply committed to progressive principles. Once Pessin driven from campus and his supporters silenced, a “Committee for Inclusion and Equity” made up of three deans, planned a series of events that systematically pumped hate propaganda into the campus community, calling it “speaking truth to power.”

WHAT THE PESSIN AFFAIR TEACHES US: A COGWAR ANALYSIS The events of Spring 2015 at Connecticut College constitute an unalloyed if local victory for the forces of Jihad in the West. To most of those prominently involved, especially in fields like Race and Gender, such a claim seems outlandish: in their minds this had nothing to do with Jihad or even with Islamism, but everything to do with human rights and dignity and opposition to racist hate speech. Indeed, some of them might even dismiss the claim as paranoid conspiracy theory.5 That may be true, and they are welcome to their opinion. But if they are wrong and I, right—a possibility to say the least—then the consequences of this victory are most significant and deserve close attention. Anyone familiar with Jihadi cognitive war practices, sees a major demopathic success across the boards, a kind of local “Durban I” alliance between the Global Jihadi Right (GJR) and the Global Progressive Left (GPL), all in the name of a common 5 Pessin Archive #56: Spencer Pack to Faculty, May 3, with responses from Strabone and Boyd.

175

176

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

revolutionary desire to transform the nascent global community. But while both groups claimed victory, events clearly favored the Jihadis.6 • They targeted and discredited the only pro-Zionist professor, one who, in response to the Charlie Hebdo event, asked, “how does one deal tolerantly with intolerant cultures?” • At the same time, they silenced anyone—student or faculty—who might make similar challenges to an emerging new orthodoxy, new paradigm, new grand narrative that unites the GPL and the Jihadis. • They filled the campus with a revolutionary indoctrination that, on the one hand promoted Jihadi propaganda, and on the other, blocked any challenge. • They grafted “Palestinian” aspirations for the elimination of the Jews— another scapegoat sacrifice—onto the quest for racial equality in the US, ramping up the potential for violence (What America needs is an Intifada). • They prepared the ground for a chapter of SJP, Israel Apartheid Weeks, BDS on campus in the coming years. • They subverted an entire faculty, either seducing them into willing cooperation in a demopathic endeavor or intimidating them into silent acquiescence. • They imposed the Islamophobic gag order on anyone who, like Pessin, might criticize the barbarism of Jihad and its promoters, someone who might ask “How does a tolerant culture deal with an intolerant one?” and not answer, “by opening up to and embracing them.” The following reflections offer a brief analysis of the forces at play that enabled this spectacular if minor victory, and what light that sheds on strengths and vulnerabilities of both sides in this wildly asymmetrical conflict. Demopaths and their Progressive Dupes. The people who organized the drive that exiled Pessin from campus were demopaths—those who use democracy to destroy democracy.7 They systematically invoked principles of fairness, empathy, and concern for the “other” when claiming the protections 6 On the “Durban Strategy,” see Gerald Steinberg, “The Centrality of NGOs in the Durban Strategy.” Yale Israel Journal 9 (Summer 2006): 3–20. 7 Landes, “Demopaths and their Dupes,” Augean Stables, 2005; http://www.theaugeanstables. com/reflections-from-second-draft/demopaths-dupes/.

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

of a progressive society for themselves—e.g., protection from dehumanizing criticism—but turn hostile when asked to grant these protections to others. In this case, they claimed a psychic trauma at the very possibility that a professor might have called for genocide, even as they protected, validated and promoted the cause of groups that openly call for genocide. Staged Emergencies as Cogwar Campaign Strategy. What happened at ­ConnColl in the Spring of 2015 was not an isolated incident. These kinds of swarmings, or what Ashley Thorne has called “staged emergencies,” are not uncommon: outraged and wounded voices pile on targets for allegedly “racist” or “misogynist” speech and ostracize them in shame.8 These “emergencies” establish a traumatic crisis that demands “protection” for those afflicted by the alleged hate speech, whose elimination they demand to protect their safe and moral space. John G ­ ordon described the offended demopath, what some critics in the pages of New London’s The Day called “special snowflakes,” and I call Peacock-Rhinos9: [The] on-line person whose whole point of existence is to be offended  … because we are all in this “trigger-point” phase where being offended on-line and therefore being licensed to vent your offendedness, thus demonstrating your moral superiority to anyone not thus offended …10

The technique has worked best so far in the context of gender (misogyny, homophobia) and race. At ConnColl, Jihadis took over and allied with racial grievance. Referring anonymously to Pessin’s possible target for comparison with a pit bull, the Petitioners insisted that even Hamas deserves protection from the dehumanization involved: It is clear that regardless of whom the professor is addressing here, he is indisputably dehumanizing them. Dehumanization is a tool of racism. Dehumanization has been used all throughout human history to justify genocide, colonialism and hatred of many communities.11 8 See below, chap. 4. 9 Richard Landes, “The Pessin Affair and Rhino-Peacocks: The Pre-modern Rhino Hide on the Post-Modern Campus,” The Augean Stables, July 2, 2015; http://www.theaugeanstables. com/2015/07/02/the-pessin-affair-and-rhino-peacocks-the-pre-modern-rhino-hide-onthe-post-modern-campus/. 10 Pessin Archive #42: Faculty Dissent, Perry Susskind, April 1. 11 Pessin Archive #20: Online Petition against Pessin, Posted March 18 (with signers’ comments).

177

178

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

In other words, comparing a Jihadi group that justifies genocide, colonialism and hatred of others to a pit bull, dehumanizes them. It’s hard to imagine a faster path to realizing those catastrophes of hatred, than mainstreaming such groups and silencing their critics. Demopaths Have Weaponized PoMo-PoCo Academic Discourse. As a result, a revolutionary force from within the GPL has joined in alliance with the GJR against American imperial hegemony. Whereas books documenting this alliance get branded “Islamophobic” and “alarmist,” if not “paranoid,” in fact they describe a reality that prominent figures on the Post-Modern-Post Colonial left openly embrace in other venues.12 Among other aspects of this alliance, the GPL serves as a platform and promoter of Jihadi war propaganda, especially when aimed at Israel and the US, as they did, for example at Durban in 2001. That alliance had exceptional momentum in the early aughts, part of a larger global “anti-war” movement with disturbingly martial tones and extraordinary moral ambitions. This “anti-imperialism of fools” welcomed Hamas and Hizbullah into the GPL. Judith Butler did so after the 2006 Lebanon War; and Connecticut College did so in 2015, after the Gaza War: Israel was the colonial oppressor, Hamas the indigenous freedom fighters. In so doing, the GPL allied themselves with the most ferocious imperialists on the planet, Jihadis, in their fight against the monstrous, suffocating hegemon, America and its Israeli lackey (or puppet-master). Nowhere is the GPL/GJR alliance more visible than in their shared view of the conflict between Israel and her neighbors. Here we find few barriers to hate speech; on the contrary, progressives indulge, if not encourage, Jihadi demonizing of Israel. The more radical elements of the GPL fully share the GJR’s identification of the apocalyptic enemy in the final battle: Antichrist/Dajjal. To secular progressives, the apocalyptic enemy is racist, genocidal, Nazi-like Israel; in Jihadi terms, Israel is the entity which must be exterminated for salvation to occur. Destroy Israel for World Peace! Such radicalized and polarized discourse stands little hope of success in strong demotic polities where due process and free reasoning prevail. Thus, both Jihadi demopaths and their Progressive revolutionary allies have to push a case for censorship. They argue that, in certain cases like Islamic extremism, 12 Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (New Jersey: ­Princeton University Press, 2010).

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

one can and should ban “telling the truth,” as “hate-speech.”13 The campaign to suppress criticism of Islam has a broad legal arm and exerts powerful, emotional peer group pressure. Fighting the effort to criminalize or banish criticism of Islam for being “Islamophobic,” or “hate-speech,” especially when offended Muslims identify the crime, is a key component to winning the cogwar for democracy.14 Global Islamic Studies as Beachhead of Jihadi Cogwar. The faculty in the Program in Global Islamic Studies served as the main players in this Jihadi cogwar campaign, with a strong assist from their PoMo-PoCo friends in Race and Gender studies. These new loci of Islamic Studies, often rapidly cobbled together, have begun to replace more traditional Arabic, or Middle East Studies as the rubric under which professors teach and students learn about Islam. ConnColl’s role in events suggests a kind of Ivory Towers in the Sand 2.0. The “Saïdification” of the academy in Middle East Studies described by Martin Kramer in 2001, with its systematic under- and mis-information, now, under the rubric of “global Islamic studies,” gives birth to a generation of activist, revolutionary scholars who, willy-nilly promote Generation Caliphate.15 These indoctrinated performers, who think they’re bringing about a salvific revolution, are turning the Western academy’s Islamic studies from a tower built on sand into a beachhead missile site aimed at their own heart. In the Spring of 2015, they struck Connecticut College with great success. Ferguson-Palestine Nexus. Palestinian Jihadis and their supporters want to graft their war onto the racial conflict in the USA.16 This became particularly evident during the disturbances at Ferguson in the summer of 2014, where Palestinian activists showed solidarity with the angriest elements in the black community, favoring violent resistance, and pushing a lethal narrative designed 13 Henrik Ræder Clausen, “Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Free-Fall,” Gates of Vienna, May 27, 2015; https://gatesofvienna.net/2015/05/osce-in-free-fall/. 14 Paul Marshall and Nina Oshea, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide (NY: Oxford University Press, 2011); Leah Melissa Toomim, Self-Inflicted: Origins of the Term “Islamophobia” and How It is Exploited by the Muslim Brotherhood towards Islamization of the West (2018); https://tinyurl.com/vaoor8q. 15 Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers in Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001). 16 Alex Kane, “The growing ties between #BlackLivesMatter and Palestine,” Mondoweiss, January 26, 2015; http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/between-blacklivesmatter-palestine. Today, there is a move to fund the Islamic Studies Program through the Mellon Foundation that would coordinate with all the other social science departments.

179

180

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

to incite ­violence.17 This alliance spells Nakba for everyone in the USA, including the black community itself. The parallels are uncanny: cries for “dead cops,” cops slain, polarization. And as an intimidated police force retreats in the name of “Black Lives Matter,” the black on black violence rises.18 One sees the ideological elements of the alliance on campuses like Brandeis, where ­Lamiya Khandaker’s alter-ego, Khadijah Lynch tweeted “no sympathy” for the two cops slain while sitting in their patrol car and, when criticized, cried victim!19 We see it at Connecticut College in the strong alliance between the major players in the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) who were the first to issue a statement (March 23) denouncing hate speech in response to “the Facebook post of a member of our faculty.” The link appears in the Global Islamic Studies “pitch”: they teach students like Bo Martin about the (presumably favorable) “impact of Islam on the fight for racial equality in the United States.” The three “Deans of Equity and Inclusion” charged with “educating the campus about how to overcome racism and hatred all came from CCSRE, and many of the speakers brought in come from that field. This alliance is a major entry point for Jihadi war propaganda, and reflects a longtime technique of bonding with radical leftist forces that worked greatly to Khoumeini’s advantage in Iran in the 1979 revolution, and greatly to the disadvantage of the secular communists.20 Western liberal sentiment is extraordinarily susceptible (vulnerable) to this weaponized appeal. Some of the most outspoken liberals/progressives seem incapable of questioning the motives of the Muslims with whom they speak, and attack anyone who does as an “Islamophobe.” Thus, do demopaths 17 William A. Jacobson, “Intifada Missouri—Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge,” Legal Insurrection, October 25, 2014; https://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/intifada-missouri-anti-israel-activists-may-push-ferguson-over-the-edge/. Joshua Muravchik, “The Truth About Black Lives Matter,” Commentary, November 16, 2016; https://www. commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-truth-about-black-lives-matter/. 18 Richard Oppel Jr., “West Baltimore’s Police Presence Drops, and Murders Soar,” The New York Times, June 12, 2015; https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/after-freddiegray-death-west-baltimores-police-presence-drops-and-murders-soar.html?_r=0; Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (Politically Incorrect Publishing, 2016). 19 Alan M. Dershowitz, “A Brandeis Student Refuses to Show Sympathy for Assassinated Policemen—and Her Critic Is Attacked,” Gatestone, December 28, 2014; https://www. gatestoneinstitute.org/4990/khadijah-lynch-brandeis. 20 Eva Rakel, Power, Islam, and Political Elite in Iran: A Study on the Iranian Political Elite from Khomeini to Ahmadinejad (Boston: Brill, 2008).

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

proliferate, who deliberately use democracy (and human rights and egalitarian language) in order to destroy any progressive society so inclined. It is not clear from a distance how many of the major players in high PoMo-PoCo fields like Race Relations and Gender Theory, realize that they are manipulated by Jihadis. The most vocal at the time considered the mere suggestion of bad faith on the part of the students unspeakable, and one of the activists suggested to a critic that he was paranoid to even suggest that. These same people use “Islamophobe” to shield themselves from serious (and worrisome) observations of Islam. As a result, liberal sentiment allows itself to be systematically manipulated into allowing and even encouraging hostile forces on a wide range of fronts simultaneously. As one source put it, human rights organizations that have done yeoman service in the past against tyranny (e.g., vs. USSR), do “not seem able and willing to use human rights as a serious weapon in the battle against the ideology of Islamists and terrorists.”21 A wide range of progressive movements, from the “human rights” NGOs, to peace and conflict studies, to “peace journalism,” seem to have been hijacked in the 1990s and become dysfunctional if not self-destructive in the twenty-first century.22 This extraordinary susceptibility to manipulation by Islamist radicals opposed to human rights constitutes, one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities in the West right now. Campuses are therefore capable of radical politicization in which the fascist forces of group-think take over in the name of anti-racism and anti-hate speech and introduce a discourse that channels into the public sphere and protects genocidal voices like those of Hamas. Any opposition gets shouted down as hate speech, and a conflict-averse academia backs down. The rapidity and unanimity with which the faculty stepped into line against Pessin last Spring, indicates that administration and faculty show alarming weakness when confronting emotional blackmail, and a collective and individual failure of nerve when confronted with a force that threatens everything they hold dear as professionals, but appeals to everything they hold dear as idealists. The only 21 Above, Clausen, n. 13. 22 Gerald Steinberg, “Postcolonial theory and the Ideology of Peace Studies,” Post-Colonial Theory and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, ed. Donna Divine and Philip Salzman (NY: Routledge, 2008), 109–19; http://spme.org/spme-research/analysis/gerald-m-steinberg-postcolonial-theory-and-the-ideology-of-peace-studies-2/4006/; Richard Landes, “Peace Journalism and the Oslo Peace Process: Unintended Contributions to the Oslo War,” http://www.academia.edu/4984787/_Peace_Journalism_and_the_Oslo_Peace_Process_Unintended_ Contributions_to_the_Oslo_War.

181

182

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

non-tenured ­faculty member who stood up to the pressure to sign his department’s statement was Jeffrey Strabone, Professor of English, a remarkably individuated figure (the Tom Bombadil of the tale), who was not subject to the peer pressure that had so many other “cats” toeing the line.23 Most faculty signed just assuming that they, like everyone else, were doing the right thing. Self-styled progressive women played a very prominent role in the persecution of Pessin. All the top administrators at ConnColl were women, including, most importantly both the President (in her first year) and the Dean of Faculty. Among those in the faculty, the majority of the “anti-racist” activists were women, with a high incidence of women from Global Islamic Studies and CCSRE. And finally, among the students, almost all the major players were women, from the major antagonist, Lamiya Khandaker to the editors of the school newspaper and its opinion page, to the major contributors to the written campaign (Ciancolo, Raizen, Garbe). It’s hard to know what this means, except that it may signal that feminist circles show a particular and, given the misogyny of their allies, truly puzzling vulnerability to manipulation by Islamists.24 At ConnColl, Jihadis weaponized a technique pioneered by gender-theory activists: the wounded victim who needs a safe space.25 Only here, the wounded souls are aggressive, and the safe space they demand is one in which no one dare oppose them. Rather than a post-modern utopia, this looks and sounds like a pre-modern patriarchal dystopia. Anti-Semitism: A Significant Factor? Some believed that Anti-Semitism was central to the motivations of Pessin’s persecutors; others insisted, with all earnestness, that, by and large, there was no overt anti-Semitism at ConnColl. One might conjecture, however, that if there is any truth to the student activists’ claims about institutional racism at ConnColl—one of the probably “real” phenomena that they exploited—there’s probably a fair dose of historical prejudice against Jews in that WASP scene. There is much talk about the exchanges on some of the more ephemeral social media, especially yik-yak expressing some fairly raw emotions.26 23 Pessin Archive #41: Faculty Dissent, Jeff Strabone, March 31, 2015. 24 Phyllis Chesler, The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (NY: Saint Martin’s Press, 2006). 25 Judith Shulevitz, “In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas,” NYT, March 21, 2015; https:// www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scaryideas.html. 26 See Bergeron’s allusion: Pessin Archive #14: President Bergeron email to Faculty: “Important Community Conversation,” March 4.

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

John Gordon thought anti-Semitic prejudice far less significant than what he called the “ideological atmospherics,” a powerful force “nowhere more so than in academia.”27 Gordon, I think, refers here to what I call PoMo-PoCo “revolutionary” beliefs that have, via anti-Zionism, allowed the Jewish Antichrist (Israeli Nazi) into the Western public sphere through the back (Left) door. In another vein: What kind of exceptional, ideologically-shaped misinformation had to prevail, so that no one felt any empathy for Pessin, despite his dire straits? When would mercy have not been a more appropriate reaction? And yet, the decision made by colleagues to sacrifice him was almost instantaneous and unanimous. No calls to Pessin for clarification, means no conversations among the faculty about what he thought. From the moment the attacks appeared, no one thought to challenge the narrative. What made them think he deserved this treatment? Was it that he was a “bad,” Zionist, “Afrikaaner” Jew, who finally got caught?28 Perhaps it was also this implacable hostility to Pessin that so impressed Pessin’s Jewish colleagues, that even they broke with him.29 Certainly the entire Israeli-Nazi frame, that feeds the emotional content of so much campus antiZionism, has a hard core of Jew-hatred.30 If those who wish sincerely to overcome their most unconscious prejudices—for example, those dedicated to overcoming their unthinking institutional racism—might just for a moment, consider the profound ways in which anti-Judaism has pervaded Western thinking (and not just).31 Stress Tests for Campuses. Just as we subject banks to stress tests to see how they’d hold up when challenged with a crisis, we should check out our institutions of higher learning to assess their vulnerability to these staged ­emergencies, 27 Pessin Archive #48: Email from John Gordon to David Bernstein on the Events, April 10. 28 John Mearsheimer, “The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners,” Monthly Review, April 10, 2010; https://mronline.org/2010/04/30/the-future-of-palestine-righteous-jews-vs-new-afrikaners/. 29 See below, Fred Baumann’s detailed analysis and exploration of these issues, chap. 6. 30 On the extensive overlap between the anti-Zionism of BDS and more traditional forms of Jew-hatred, see Kenneth Marcus, “Is BDS Anti-Semitic,” The Case against the Academic Boycott of Israel, ed. Cary Nelson and Gabriel Brahm (NY: MLA Membership for Scholar’s Rights, 2015), pp. 243–58; Alan Johnson, “Intellectual Incitement: The Anti-Zionist Ideology and the Anti-Zionist Subject,” ibid., pp. 259–82; Landes, “Anti-Zionism: The 21st Century Avatar of the Longest Hatred,” Fathom, Summer 2016; http://fathomjournal.org/ anti-zionism-21st-century-avatar-of-the-longest-hatred/. David Hirsh, “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: Cosmopolitan Reflections,” Working Papers, ISGAP, 2007. 31 David Nirenberg, Anti-Semitism: The Western Tradition (NY: Norton, 2013).

183

184

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

especially of the Jihadi sort. Just how far has revolutionary PoMo-PoCo penetrated teaching and aligned itself with an aggressive anti-Islamophobia? The results of these stress tests would be useful to administrators interested in assembling counter-forces in case of an attack, as well as useful to parents, wishing to choose a campus that will do best by their children. We need to shore up the cultural Maginot line against the rhinos. Without pushback against the demopaths, these “human rights” advocates who run roughshod over opposition, no place can guarantee modern, free, academic learning, discussion, and research. Civil society needs to identify enemy cogwarriors and verbally blunt their attacks. In the Pessin case, a number of discursive venues seem clear places where the administration could have taken a profitable stand in the name of genuine “inclusive excellence.” • Campus Journalism. Given the extensive violations of journalistic principles, interventions here could have cooled off the “moral emergency” very rapidly and served as an exemplar of fairness and honesty. A change of staff and advisor, and the appointment of fair-minded people ready to cover the story honestly, might have produced the first major blow against “fake news”—and this more than a year before Trump become President. • Due Process. Pessin’s banishment on hearsay, and the appalling fact that so few of 200 faculty members wrote him to hear his side, indicates a profound failure of judgment on the part of both faculty and administration, as individuals and as a group. Literally, judgment was corrupted. What would have happened had they given Pessin a hearing? • Thick-Skin/Thin-Skin. Pessin’s accusers invoked deep hurt at his hate language, but showed no mercy for Pessin’s woes. Their skin was incredibly thin when it came to taking offense, incredibly thick—a veritable rhino’s hide—when it came to giving offense. Citizens who wish to live in a world of free, non-coerced, conversation need a thick skin. They need to not take offense easily, but rather engage in an inclusive discourse of fairness, where they urge others as well to respond substantively and not emotionally. In no situation should people with (exquisitely) thin skins get to abuse others. This discourse should most certainly have arisen when students cried in professors’ offices about the hurt their vicious misreading has caused to their tender souls. • Reflexive Placation. Islamists use manufactured insults to aggress us, and we get angry with those (Israel, Pessin) who won’t submit to their

What Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us

demands. This widespread placation of Muslim anger, for example in the case of the Muhammad images, represents another case of retreating before claims of psychic pain and offense. In Pessin’s case, as with Justine Sacco and Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt, the outrage was over a deliberate misreading of the writings of someone considered “the enemy.”32 Only when we can tell the difference between real pain and staged pain, can we defend a tradition of freedom of speech that needs all those people who wish to live free, to have seriously thick skins when it comes to criticism of themselves. So far this only goes one way—Western privileged ones must be ferociously self-critical—while the critics get to be as brutal as they want, and still not submit to any criticism themselves. The resulting marriage of pre-­ modern sadism and post-modern masochism is catastrophic.33 Only when people can ignore insults and focus on substance, can people hold serious, free, self-­interrogating discussions. We cannot allow people who deal overwhelmingly in the world of giving and reacting to insults, to dominate discourse, especially not in places dedicated to learning. Forewarned is forearmed.

32 Ronson, So You’ve been Publicly Shamed, chap. 4; Robin McKie, “Tim Hunt: ‘I’ve been hung out to dry. They haven’t even bothered to ask for my side of affairs’,” Guardian, June 13, 2015; http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hung-out-to-dry-interview-mary-collins. 33 Michael Moynihan, “America’s Literary Elite Takes a Bold Stand Against Dead Journalists,” Daily Beast, May 5, 2015; https://www.thedailybeast.com/americas-literary-elite-takes-abold-stand-against-dead-journalists.

185

CHAPTER 8

Reflections on Academia and Freedom: The Case of Connecticut College, Spring 2015* 1

A

cademics like to think of themselves as autonomous thinkers. As the old joke has it, trying to coordinate them is like trying to herd cats. The very principles of academia—literally the protected realm of free speech—including tenure, give professors enormous privileges, not only the right to speak their minds, but protection from retaliation of those in power whom they displease. Few members of even the most highly developed democracies enjoy such exceptional privileges of freedom to speak out, dissent, criticize, to speak truth to power with relative impunity. Try lining up such individuated folks and get them to all toe the line? Sooner try herding cats. The very fact that Western democratic polities treasure such spaces, speaks volumes about their progressive bona fides: most power elites suffocate dissent. And in principle, that generous investment in a protected space of civil discourse where reasoning (if not Reason) prevails over violent passions, should guarantee some basic civil results. For example, at a time when anonymous internet sociability can turn ominously feral, and entire lives and careers can be destroyed, one might expect that academics and their institutions would show the most profound and principled resistance to such predatory crowd behavior. And surely, we might think, a small, cordial, college community, where the philosophy department, in the search for understanding our world, champions an inclusive discourse that should make everyone feel “at home …” that would be the last place one would expect such triumphs of fake news to occur. *

Talk on Freedom of Speech in Academia, Connecticut College, November 12, 2015/

Reflections on Academia and Freedo

I’m here to make you feel uncomfortable. And so you should be, after your behavior of last semester. As a preface let me quote Proverbs: “He who loves reproof loves knowledge.” Self-criticism is the lifeblood of the academy, the great strength of modern society, and core of a progressive world view: no self-criticism, no learning curve; and, alas, those incapable of self-criticism need to blame someone else for failure, they need a scape goat, never mind that that victim is not responsible for their failings. In that spirit, let me engage in some public self-criticism. When the CIA first formed after World War II, they sought out the advice of medievalists because, they reasoned, medievalists were trained to reconstruct a situation from fragmentary evidence. I’m a medievalist, and normally I try and reconstruct events so far back in history that no one I’m talking about can contradict me, and only my medieval colleagues can gainsay me. But today I engage in the most perilous act of reconstructing events here at the college and standing before those of you who know far better than I what happened. I’ve done my best to assemble the documents and have them up at my blog The Augean Stables. But if, sometimes, we can see more because we know less, the forest for the trees as it were, there may be a number of ways in which I’ve gotten the story wrong, ways that I’ve misconstrued the behavior or motivations of the actors in the drama, that I’ve missed important elements. So, before I begin giving you a hard time, let me say that I am open to your rebuke, to your challenges to my reconstruction of these events. Let me begin with what you, the students, faculty and administration of Connecticut College, have done. On the basis of a systematically misrepresented Facebook post, some students and faculty accused Prof Andrew Pessin, of “directly condoning the extermination of a people … calling for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” This hateful statement, at least as far as one can tell from the outside, seems to have inspired a wave of condemnations of “hate speech,” that issued in formal declarations from virtually every organization, department, program, desk, at Connecticut College. That list of formal declarations is still proudly posted at your university’s website, many of which refer explicitly to his post and a couple of which identify him by name. The claim was based on two things, 1) the ambiguity of the post’s language; and 2) the spin given it by those who claimed deep injury at its imputed meaning. Reading only the text and no further context, the referent of “the situation in Gaza” which Pessin compared to a “rabid pit bull,” could be the Palestinian people. And readers might reasonably come to the conclusion that he meant

187

188

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

“the Palestinian people,” and that when, in his comment section he agreed with a certain Nicole, that the dogs should be put down, he referred to the Palestinian people. Of course, in a world of scholarly integrity with an instinct for research, such shocking exegetical claims, which if true would indeed be most alarming, would be promptly scrutinized for corroborating evidence. More mature members of the community would have calmly examined the evidence, and, to use the fashionable term, problematized the accusatory reading, and questioned closely those making such grave accusations. And, of course, the most elementary level of examination would have found the reading clearly negated by the evidence. A look at the larger Facebook discourse of Pessin’s page concerning the situation in Gaza, which remained available unedited a month into the affair, until fear for his family’s safety led him to take it down, makes it clear that what drove him crazy was the stunning brutality of the terrorists (Hamas in the lead), not only to Israelis, but to their own people, and the inexplicable fondness of the global progressive left for this kind of revolting and brutal movement. And a single reading of the comments from which his accusers drew their evidence for genocidal intent—“they should be put down”—would have revealed that when asked on the spot to say what he meant by the image of the pit bull, he meant not the Palestinian people, but “the terrorists.” All of this would have taken less than an hour of research, or even, a frank conversation with Andrew, all of whose responses would be corroborated by virtually every sentence he has ever written, on the Middle East, and on anything else: Anyone who knows Andrew knows he makes the basic distinction between a people into which one is born, and a political ideology, which one choses. Defined by where you’re born does not carry the responsibility that a political movement does, especially one with an explicit ideology. It is perfectly legitimate to judge such a movement, and where called for, judge it harshly. And, far from being “dehumanizing,” the comparison of a political movement to an animal has a long and, in some cases, courageous role in the history of political freedom in the West. So the natural thing, in a mature community, would have been for senior members of the community, to calm down the hotheads by rereading the text. Indeed, that might have then led to a demand for responses from those who so deliberately misrepresented Pessin in insisting that he was a genocidal hater. A vigorous exchange in the school paper—or even a moderated website put up for the community’s perusal—would have rapidly led to the accusing party’s

Reflections on Academia and Freedo

loss, and a win for a just, reasoning, empirically based scholarly community. The school newspaper would have passed on to hands more capable of professionalism and basic fairness; and the accusing students discredited for their attempted slander. Granted, that’s not as interesting as what happened, and many here I know think great good came out of the dramatic events on campus. But not every dramatic development is good news. Indeed, that boring—or, for some of us, stirring victory for the civic polity—didn’t happen. Instead, led by aggressive members of the faculty and student body, the outcry against Pessin for this reading created an atmosphere of such hostility that he had to run for cover … and I mean that literally. Even as those leading this charge were energized by a sense of unity and purpose, that feeling was purchased at incalculable cost to Andrew Pessin. Any of us here today cannot imagine how terrifying his experience must have been and wonder honestly whether we could withstand such psychological assaults and betrayals, even by friends. So consider me Andrew’s alter ego, come to rebuke you for your shamefully cruel treatment of him. Not knowing the details, I can afford to be much more vaguely understanding of your foibles. Unlike him, I do not have furious conversations in my head about those of you he thought were a) his friends, and b) people with intellectual and moral integrity. So maybe I can soften the blows as I deliver you my version of what I imagine to be his rebuke. Let’s start with the simplest level of moral failing. There is not a faculty person on this campus who would want to be treated as you treated your colleague, Andrew Pessin. On the contrary, many of you go to great lengths to avoid even being associated with Pessin for fear of even a fraction of the full dose meted out to him. And yet you participated in his exile from a campus where the dominant narrative saw him as a moral monster who made students cry. But even were that true, even had Andy called for the genocide of the Palestinian people, and therefore deserved your harsh judgment, he deserved a fair hearing to find out if indeed that’s what he wrote or thought. If guilty, then your opprobrium would be richly deserved. But, lest the decision issue from a kangaroo court, he at least deserved to be heard. You owed it to your own integrity to have heard both sides before judging him. So he, and civil polities that substitute a discourse of fairness for violence in dispute settlement, deserved more. He and we deserved at the very least that when students with a harsh agenda came to your offices with complaints about him, you find out more before you judge and act against him. He did not deserve

189

190

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

that, in response to the tears of students, you throw him under the bus without even hearing his defense, without yourselves thinking this through. And yet, in all this moral drama, not one of those who signed the petitions or statements called him to ask him what his side was, before you joined forces denouncing his hate speech. In other words, Connecticut College participated in just the kind of ritual that the great sociologist Rene Girard called “the scapegoat sacrifice,” as the origin of all primitive religious solidarity. Kill an arbitrary, surrogate victim, a scapegoat, and create solidarity among the guilty survivor-participants in that blood sacrifice. Today, Connecticut College is just such a community (although, being a post-modern sacrifice, there was no blood, nor was the victim arbitrary), and the solidarity and collective purpose forged by that crime of scapegoating seeks to preserve itself at the price of not hearing from someone like me, someone who disagrees with you, someone who comes to you with words of rebuke. This is the exact opposite of what academic openness means, the opposite of “inclusive excellence” since it excludes criticism. This is part of a collective identity forged in unity, in compliance, in the suppression of diversity. It operates through the fear it instills in its sacrifice of the scapegoat. No one wants to share his fate. Last semester, the only faculty merely to insist on due process for Pessin, were on the verge of retirement; only one untenured professor had the integrity to dissent. I have seen a number of emails from faculty and students alike expressing fear of dissenting from the deeply emotional anti-Pessin consensus. So, one of the sociological/anthropological phenomena with which the Connecticut College community has fresh and intimate experience, is just how intimidation works, just how modern scapegoating and collective verbal violence forces people to step in line. In terms of a precious archive of self-­ reflection on a moment of moral failure, what happened last semester offers a harvest of insights. Let us take the counter-factual course of what might have happened at Connecticut College, had you behaved with more of the kind of gravitas that has created a free academia. If l’esprit de l’escalier is when you realize, as you leave a party and descend the stairs, what you should have said earlier that evening, then let’s do a moral one about last semester. If, after having determined that Pessin meant Hamas, not the Palestinian people, at least some curious members of the community would have taken the investigation to the next obvious question: Was he right to compare Hamas to a rabid pit bull? Indeed, the most disturbing irony of this entire episode, comes from the fact that, not only was the FB posting not the awful, racist, dehumanizing hate

Reflections on Academia and Freedo

speech it was made out to be, but it was precisely opposed to people who, to take the language used by Pessin’s accusers, “call for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” The irony of course, is that just as Pessin does not call for this, the organization he was comparing to a rabid pit bull does. Look at what Hamas says, from its charter to its current crop of preachers, and you find a terrifyingly racist world, where the Quran is used to give divine authority to the belief that Jews are descendants of apes and pigs (unlike Muslims), a world that believes that the time has come for the fulfillment of the apocalyptic hadith about an Endtime battle with evil, in which the Muslims rise up and kill every last Jew, and even the rocks and the trees call out, “Oh Muslim, oh Servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”1 Here we find a world where, constantly subjected to this kind of brainwashing, ¾ of Palestinians polled, hold by this genocidal hadith, a world in which Western children’s shows like Sesame street are appropriated to produce a generation of children who learn to hate Jews, and consider blowing themselves up to kill as many Jewish people as possible, the highest aspiration. Anyone genuinely opposed to racism and violent hatreds could not spend a fraction of their day perusing the kinds of things Hamas preaches in mosques, broadcasts on the air, teaches to its children in schools, without being overwhelmed with disgust at the hatred, the genocidal rage that pervades their discourse.2 And yet, when one reads the texts of Pessin’s accusers, one realizes that they are not, like Pessin, opposed to the racism they denounce. On the contrary, they seek to protect Hamas from the very accusations they hurled at Pessin. The Online Petition even argued that it mattered not whether Pessin meant the ­Palestinians or Hamas: It is clear that regardless of whom the professor is addressing here, he is indisputably dehumanizing them. Dehumanization is a tool of racism. Dehumanization has been used all throughout human history to justify genocide, colonialism and hatred of many communities.

Had anyone been awake at the moral switch at Connecticut College, when this appeared, they would have known that Hamas indeed dehumanizes 1 Sahih Muslim, Kitab Al-Fitan wa Ashrat As-Sa.h [The Book Pertaining to the Turmoil and Portents of the Last Hour], Book 41:6981–85, online: http://www.usc.edu/schools/ college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/041.smt.html. Hamas charter invokes the hadith as a pious wish that the time has now come ¶7. 2 See the material gathered at Palestinian Media Watch: http://www.palwatch.org.

191

192

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

and does so specifically with the goal of justifying “genocide, colonialism, and hatred of many communities.” But instead you railed against Pessin for his sharp criticism of so deplorable a movement. Academic institutions have, at any given time, dozens if not hundreds of real intellectuals, people who research diligently and self-critically, who even though they know they can’t be “objective,” do know it’s their responsibility to be as honest and accurate as possible. In some cases, the institutions are proud of their great minds, in others, embarrassed. In the case of Andrew Pessin, the Connecticut College community has excluded one of its most vibrant and creative minds, a man with a remarkably mature moral understanding of the temptation of getting revenge. And in exchange, they’ve gotten a reign of intellectual intimidation, and the guilty unity of the scapegoat sacrifice. When my talk was first announced, some people objected, opining that I had nothing of value to say about “freedom of speech” or “academic freedom.” But I actually do. A lot. First: scapegoating sacrifices as acted out by Connecticut College last spring are designed to silence free speech. Their purpose is to intimidate dissent into silence. This is what blasphemy codes are about. This is the core of the world of violent imposition of conformity that democracies, and within them, academia, decisively renounce. Second: historically, the violent imposition of conformity often revolved around issues of honor—who had it, who commanded it, who lost it and how they regained it. Lancelot could, in such a world, insist on his innocence in the case of adultery with Guinevere because he had killed everyone who dared accuse him. The rise of the modern civic polity, in which people get to speak freely, derives in no small part from our ability to master the instinct to beat someone up when they say unpleasant things. That means developing a strong enough ego that we can hear criticism, public criticism, without going violent. As the saying goes, “polite, means not saying certain things lest there be violence; civil means saying what one needs to say, and there won’t be violence.” To reach the civil state, we need to build up our egos, to overcome the demand of honor-shame dynamics where it is accepted, expected, even necessary, to shed blood for the sake of honor. This is, I would submit, the core of the progressive credo: empathy, dignity, mutual understanding, positive-sum interactions with the “other.” And none of it possible without the ability to self-criticize.3 3 For more on this, see Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, “Micro-aggression and Moral Cultures,” Comparative Sociology 13 (2014): 692–726.

Reflections on Academia and Freedo

Third: through indulging our children, students (and ourselves), we have let honor-shame dynamics in the back door. Micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, unsafe spaces, all considered enemies of “inclusive excellence,” constitute a ridiculous indulgence of the “right” not to have one’s feelings hurt. To quote the petition’s demand of the faculty: We demand that the entire senior administration of College engage publicly in free speech on behalf of its angered and disquieted community, expressly declaring that it condemns the racist sentiments of the professor and asking that the backlash against students who have publicly identified the professor’s racism for what it was, cease with immediate effect.

In other words, we want the College to exercise its free speech to side with the angered and disquieted community that accuses Pessin of hatred and racism, and shut up anyone who disagrees with their (we now know, false and tendentious) readings of Pessin’s post. I don’t blame the students who wrote this drivel; I blame the grown-ups who should have called them on it. I blame the community that did not call for the petition to be removed, not only because it defamed a member of their faculty, not only because was intellectually manipulative and dishonest, but because it was an embarrassment to the community of scholars responsible for educating these students. I don’t know about you, but when I read 1984 in High School, I thought newspeak worked because of the impositions of Big Brother. Now we know, that at least for a certain amount of time, it can draw supposedly free, critical, minds into its thrall. And that is the core of my message to you today: just how long the “certain amount of time” during which newspeak can dominate the thinking of free people? In my religious tradition, we believe that God does not want to punish the wicked, He much prefers their repentance. What He wants is not to punish someone who sells his brother into slavery and lies to his father about him being dead, and then kills the woman he wronged in order to save his family honor. What he wants is someone who, the second time around, tells the truth no matter what the humiliation he must endure to maintain his integrity … someone who prefers public shame and private integrity to public honor and private guilt. This is now the time for other voices to speak out about what happened last semester … for faculty to do a mea culpa in front of their classes and pursue a research project on how what happened could have happened. Your own

193

194

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

honor code, repeatedly violated last semester, demands you undertake a serious, honest, self-critical investigation. My suggestion: Establish a website in which all the key documents from last semester—the FB posting with comments, the accusatory letters, the online petition—receive scrutiny, in which they receive an extensive commentary by people seized with l’esprit de l’escalier, people who want to understand what happened, and how to stop it from happening again. In the archives of the endless struggle for a decent and dignified society, one that renounces the guilty pleasures of the sacred violence embodied in scapegoat sacrifice, for the sake of genuinely inclusive excellence, this would offer one of the most remarkable and educational dossiers. So, to quote the Christian notion of felix culpa, the fortunate sin of last semester—the moral failure, the missing of the mark, the lack of courage— actually offers the faculty and students and administrators at Connecticut College, an enviable position. Honest self-criticism from them could produce extraordinary learning curves in the life of their institution of “higher learning,” and more broadly in the annals of freedom of speech. If any place could profit from a performance of The Crucible right now, it’s Salem on the Thames. If any student newspaper or student government organization could profit by hosting a searching (and possibly searing) discussion of what it means to run a responsible elected body or newspaper, it’s Connecticut College’s SGA and the College Voice. Imagine the maturity of those who would have gone through that process. Imagine the resilience of the culture with people experienced in defending an open (inclusive and excellent) society. I wish you all the best in these endeavors.4

4

NB: none of my advice was followed #Shocker.

CHAPTER 9

Pessin, Ironic Prophet: The Liberal Emperor’s New Clothes of Humanitarian Racism

I

n his now notorious Facebook post on Gaza’s rabid pit bull—the very one that caused the scandal—Andrew Pessin described the situation as one in which a rabid pit bull goes for the jugular every chance it gets, meaning that Hamas, obsessed as is it with killing Israelis, will take advantage of any occasion to do so, even if it means stepping on their own people to get at “al Yahood” (the Jews).1 In the current context it means that, now that the barrier (aka “Apartheid Wall”) makes suicide terror too difficult, Hamas fires rockets continuously and episodically at Israeli civilians. And proud of it. Most people, having been given the “racist alert” were so shocked at the possible description of the Palestinian people as rabid pit bulls, didn’t read any more than this. But Pessin’s subsequent comments constitute the most interesting part of the post. It describes the people who call on Israel, in the name of humanitarian values, to let the rabid pit bull out of its cage (e.g., end the blockade). He then describes two kinds of people who support that “humanitarian” discourse. You may call for this release because you are yourself a rabid pit bull protesting your co-specimen’s detention, or because you are a well-meaning liberal hearted animal rights person. But you are demanding the same thing.

1

Gilead Ini, “What the Amnesty International Report on Palestinian Violations in Gaza Tells Us,” CAMERA, March 27, 2015; http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=12&x_article=2975.

196

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

This describes perfectly and prophetically, the combination of forces that, seven months later, attacked this post and drove its composer from the “excellently inclusive” campus that ConnColl promoters told everyone they had created, and were somehow defending, by excluding Pessin. It can be understood in terms of the Emperor’s New Clothes, with the small but significant difference deriving from the fact that it’s not a joke about vanity with courtiers praising invisible clothes. Rather it’s an imperial procession of hatred, with promoters duped into thinking they denounce the very hatreds they fuel. On the one hand, the revolutionaries, people like Khandaker (Pessin Archive #10), letter writers Fratt and Garb (#11), and Ciancollo and Raizen (#51), the school newspaper editor Zuraw-Friedland,2 are those who actually do sympathize with the rabid pit bull, Hamas, whom they see as a brave David, resisting Israeli imperialism. Already in High School, Khandaker founded a chapter of SJP (Students for Just Us in Palestine). Once in the spotlight, she hastily took down her Facebook posts to prevent people from realizing/claiming that she embraced hate speech drawn from the same sources as Hamas’ genocidal jihadi ideology.3 These “revolutionaries,” “social justice warriors,” were the tailors of this particular naked procession celebrating hate, orchestrating the collective folly from the student press. On the other, the well-meaners, including the President and Dean (naked emperors), strove as best they knew how, to promote “inclusive excellence” and to oppose “dehumanizing” “hate speech.” This collective delusion first spread among the courtiers (the faculty) and then, among the larger student body (the crowd), by now thoroughly intimidated by the activists who made any objection a target of public derision and outrage, treating any criticism of their campaign of outrage, as a disgusting manifestation of racism. This is classic humanitarian racism.4 On the one hand, humanitarian racists hold whites to high standards, and loudly denounce them for failing to 2 Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, “The Jewish Exception to Free Speech on Campus,” Jewish News Syndicate, July 29, 2016; https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-jewish-exception-to-freespeech-on-campus/#.V5vS1mWd7AB=. 3 Kristin Szremski, “Campus Activism Resources,” American Muslims for Palestine, September  ­ 8, 2014; http://www.ampalestine.org/index.php/component/content/article/9-projects-a-events/595-campus-activismresources. “Campus Activism Track,” American Muslims for Palestine, December 1, 2014; https://web.archive.org/web/20141201172244/; http://conference.ampalestine.org/index.php/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/65-campus-activism-track. On Hamas’ ideology, see PalWatch: http://palwatch.org/ main.aspx?fi=584. 4 Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Beware the Humanitarian Racist,” Ynet, January 23, 2012; http:// www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4179427,00.html.

Pessin, Ironic Prophet

reach the bar they impose. On the other, they treat people of color as having no responsibility for their acts, as if they were forces of nature to be placated, rather than moral agents capable of reasoning. Humanitarian racists uphold these attitudes not in principle—heaven forbid they condescend to the natives!—but in their behavior. As Charles Jacobs discovered in the 1990s, what moves the “human rights community” to outrage is not the suffering of the victim, not even the victim at all, but the perp: White? Outrage! POC? Embarrassed Silence.5 Humanitarian racists present themselves as anti-racists. And yet, for reasons they need to examine, they are extremely reluctant to ask even a fraction of those anti-racist principles from their colored friends, a reluctance disturbingly obvious in their public statements about Farrakhan’s open Jew-hatred. Intersectional theory makes it easy to insist that blacks cannot be racists, or that Semites (Arabs) cannot be anti-Semitic. At Connecticut College in the spring of 2015, this humanitarian racism governed the behavior of the vast majority of campus public opinion. The controversy concerned the conflict between Israel and her neighbors, and the positions of the players all align with HR. In the twenty-first century, autonomous Jews (Israelis) are double white, while Palestinians are double-POC. Thus, a profoundly contorted exegesis claiming hate speech could drive a Zionist faculty member from campus for [alleged] hate speech and provoke a paroxysm of passionate anti-hatred, but not a word was said about the staggering hate speech that fills the discourse of Hamas, and for which Hamas and its promoters need to answer. At ConnColl, it’s doubtful most of the faculty even knew about this, or the fact that Hamas uses the most racist forms of “animal-human” analogy— Jews as apes and pigs.6 Certainly, the readers of the NYT and listeners of NPR, would not know about this unless they read between the lines of their news sources’ elaborate efforts not to inform their readers. Had Pessin a chance to speak, they might have heard something about the demonstrable penchant for the worst kind of hate speech among Israel’s enemies, and the more religious (Hamas), the more hysterical.

5 Charles Jacobs, “Why Israel and not Sudan, is Singled Out,” Boston Globe, October 5, 2002; http://www.theaugeanstables.com/reflections-from-second-draft/human-rights-complexcharles-jacobs-2002/. 6 “Case Study: Portraying Jews as ‘Apes and Pigs’,” PalWatch, http://www.palwatch.org/main. aspx?fi=786.

197

198

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats

But could they have listened? What could they do with that knowledge? Challenge their young firebrand Lamiya Khandaker? No, they gave her a “Scholar Activist Award.”7 How could they have listened when it might mean recognizing that Bibi Netanyahu actually has a moral challenge addressed directly to them.8 Anyway, how could they continue to tower over Pessin morally, in their inclusive excellence? Just as the Global Progressive Left towers over Israel in its moral indignation. Not surprisingly, these dynamics are at play in much of academia today. Indeed, the degree to which Jewish students are silenced and Israel’s critics empowered by BDS activity, led one critic to write of the “Jewish exception to free speech on campus.”9 One need only contrast the treatment of Joy Karega, WOC, at Oberlin College, with Pessin’s treatment at ConnColl. With Karega, we have a stark case. She lives in a feverish world of malevolent Jewish global conspiracy and recycled blood libels.10 Her view of the Jews shares much with Hamas. It takes not exegetical pirouettes here to show the malice and scandalous lack of academic standards in treating evidence.11 And yet, when caught expounding this hate speech, her university defended her right to free speech, none of her colleagues went on record to rebuke her (cf. Pessin’s own department), and not until there was heavy pressure from trustees and alumni, did 174 members of the faculty sign a letter distancing themselves from her rantings. In some contrast to ConnColl and 7 8 9 10

11

Noah Beck, “Pessin Affair Exposes Connecticut College Anti-Semitism,” IPT News, January 20, 2016; http://www.investigativeproject.org/5135/pessin-affair-exposes-connecticutcollege-anti. Benjamin Netanyahu, “PM Netanyahu addresses the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference,” Jerusalem Post, May 22, 2016; https://youtu.be/be0-ilpYQxI. Tammi Ross-Benjamin, “The Jewish Exception to Free Speech on Campus,” JNS, July 29, 2016; https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-jewish-exception-to-free-speech-on-campus/. William Jacobson, “Oberlin College fires Prof. Joy Karega after antisemitic Facebook posts,” Legal Insurrection, November 16, 2016; https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/oberlin-college-fires-prof-joy-karega-after-antisemitic-facebook-posts/. Nor was her conspiracy-mindedness limited to Jews: “3 More Totally Crazy Things Oberlin Professor Joy Karega Appears to Believe,” Tower, March 2, 2016; http://www.thetower.org/3036-3-more-totallycrazy-things-oberlin-professor-joy-karega-appears-to-believe/. For some insight into how much Karega’s attitude permeated the school at the time, many of whom saw Karega as the victim of Zionist racists, see Eliana Kohn, “On Being Pro-Israel and Jewish, at Oberlin College,” in Anti-Zionism on Campus, 373–78. For an analysis of her scholarship, see Cary Nelson, Israel Denial (Indianna University Press, 2019), pp. 288–92.

Pessin, Ironic Prophet

Pessin, there were no faculty eager to jump on the occasion and rally the flag of anti-racism, they waited while their administration bungled it, and friends, family and alumni made it clear this was really not acceptable. But the antiZionist forces were strong nonetheless.12 She was at long last, put on a paid suspended leave, pending an investigation, and, after much due process, fired. Unlike Pessin, a number of colleagues came to her defense. There was no emergency, no hysteria, no collective statements from Oberlin’s progressive faculty denouncing her hate speech. Ironically—irony overflows here—it’s the ConnColl “humanitarians” who treated not just Hamas, but the Palestinians, like a pit bull—don’t criticize, don’t hold them to any standards, don’t upset them, just be nice. Palestinians here (and apparently their supporters, like Khandaker) get treated like a force of nature. Don’t question them, their grievances, their motives, their narrative, their hatreds. Sooner unfairly blame their designated victims than challenge them. I’m not a specialist in political “science,” but isn’t that a formula for the victory of fascists and other authoritarians?13 No wonder people—many people, many progressives, people like Cherie Blair—reason that if the Palestinians hate Israel so much that they’ll send their children to their death in order to blow up Israelis, then Israel must have done terrible things to them. No wonder that the same people, when told that Hamas is part of the larger movement of global Jihad that targets not only Israel but the [rest of the] West, dismiss this as Israeli propaganda. To think otherwise, might confront these humanitarians with the possibility that the source of this perennial conflict is a hate discourse that seeks to finish Hitler’s job, a hate discourse they systematically affirm and disseminate.14 Rethinking the policy of appeasement of the most violent, would mean realizing that in order to bring peace, you might have to hold Palestinians to some basic moral standards … something that Humanitarian Racists, again for reasons that deserve attention, stubbornly refuse to do. As Pessin noted in his remarks on the Charlie Hebdo affair (which got him in trouble in the first place): 12 Colleen Flaherty, “Condemning a Colleague: Oberlin professors condemn a professor’s anti-Semitic remarks on social media; others refuse to do so,” Inside Higher Ed, April 12, 2016; https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/12/oberlin-professors-condemncolleagues-controversial-remarks-others-defend-them. 13 T. W. Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1950). 14 “Palestinian Admiration of Hitler and the Nazis,” PalWatch, https://www.palwatch.org/ main.aspx?fi=655.

199

200

Reflections: Salem on the Thames—Stampeding a Herd of Cats the great challenge for societies committed to liberal democratic values is how to maintain those values, to maximize those values, even toward those who don’t share those values, who are so opposed to those values that they attack them with violence.15

At Connecticut College, in the spring of 2015, those who claimed to espouse those liberal democratic values, utterly failed that challenge. Pessin adds, in a final aside to the second paragraph of his notorious post: (And I wonder how heartily you’d demand this if the rabid pit bull was to be released in YOUR neighborhood.)

Here, we’re at the heart of the problem. It’s one thing to Jew-bait when it’s relatively cost-free. But when you join in the apocalyptic narrative of your enemy, just so you can stand on imagined moral heights and piss on autonomous Jews, when you circulate and adopt Jihadi war propaganda as news, it’s quite another … Because Humanitarian Racists have no idea what goes on inside Hamas’ world of discourse, having been radically uninformed by the sources they trust, they cannot understand that ISIS and Hamas are part of the same global Jihad, and that their collective targets are un-subjected infidels everywhere. Hence Europe’s confusion when it became the object of that suicidal hatred that, till then, they assumed targeted the Jews—deservedly. If the twentieth-century joke about anti-Semitism is “hating Jews more than absolutely necessary,” then the twenty-first-century version is “Anti-semitism indulging in Jew-hatred even when it’s killing you.” It gets worse: When Pessin wrote this last aside, I think he assumed that if the pit bull were to show up on their own communities, people would defend themselves from the kinds of assaults they encourage on Israel. But when that happened to his own community in the coming year, they did not act exactly as Pessin had thought they would. Instead, they followed the advice they so insistently demanded of Israel: they conceded, appeased, and sacrificed key cognitive assets. Ironic tragedy. Whence this blind, mad, rush to “social justice?”

15 Pessin Archive, #4: Notes to Pessin’s Remarks on Charlie Hebdo Panel, January 22.

Bibliography*

16

March 25: David Desroches, “Connecticut College Professor Accused of Racist, Anti-Palestinian Facebook Post,” WNPR March 26: Tina Deteij, “Connecticut College professor under fire for Facebook post,” WTNH March 27: Kaitlin Mulhere, “Fighting Words? A professor compared Hamas to a rabid pit bull. Free speech couldn’t protect him from student vitriol. Inside Higher Ed; Slate March 27: David Desroches, “Free Speech Limits and Racism Highlight Connecticut College Forum,” WNPR March 30: Kathleen Megan, “Racist Graffiti Prompts Connecticut College To Cancel Classes, Reflect“ Hartford Current (with AP) March 30: Daniel Greenfield, Criticizing Hamas: The New Hate Crime on Campus, FrontPage. Greenfield published the same day as Megan March 31: Editorial, “Connecticut College confronts hurtful and racist speech,” The Day Greg Piper, “College cancels classes for racism forum after prof ’s Facebook post on Hamas,” The College Fix April 7: Phyllis Chesler, “Professor Takes Medical Leave After Pro-Israel Facebook Post Leads to ‘Vicious Hate Mail’ Campaign,” Breitbart April 8: David Bernstein, The hypocrisy and dishonesty of attacks on Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin, The Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post April 13: Yvette Miller, “The Witch-Hunt against Professor Pessin,” Aish Julia Bergman, “Conn College professor’s Facebook post gets attention from Washington Post blog,” The Day Vic Rosenthal, “Modern-day Red Guards hound professor,” Abu Yehuda David Bernstein, “Equity and Inclusion” at Connecticut College (see important update),” Washington Post April 14: Julia Bergman, “Conn College professor responds to reaction to Facebook post,” The Day April 15: David Bernstein, Connecticut College Surrenders to the Digital Lynch Mob, The ­Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post April 16: David Bernstein, “Will an apology to Andrew Pessin be forthcoming from Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron?” Washington Post

*

For URLs, see http://www.theaugeanstables.com/pessin-archive-introduction-and-linkedchronology/articles-from-the-outside-press-about-pessin-affair-march-to-april/.

202

Bibliography April 17: “Free Speech Losing to Campus Thought Police,” Investigative Project on Terror April 24: Ari Lieberman, “A Hate Group Leader’s Campaign against a Pro-Israel Prof.,” FrontPage Cindy Mindell, “The Screenshot heard round the world,” Connecticut Ledger April 29: Daniel Greenfield, “Concern Continues Over Philosophy Professor Targeted for Criticism of Hamas“ FrontPage April 30: Ari Lieberman, “Open Letter to Lamiya Khandaker,” FrontPage May 15: Gil Troy, “Ivy Covered Lies: Genteel anti-Semitism is Still Jew Hatred!” Huffington Post May 26: Astrophysicsdude, “Don’t Go to this Antisemitic College that Suppresses Free Speech,” College Confiidential