Posted: 9/25/2009 11:26:00 AM
Author: Manfred Gerstenfeld, et al.
Source: http://www.jcpa.org/text/academics.pdf
GERSTENFELD'S ACADEMICS AGAINST ISRAEL AND THE JEWS (2007, JCPA) NOW AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE
Published in: JCPA September 21, 2009
Academics Against Israel and the Jews
THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE
The publication two years ago of Academics Against Israel and the Jews, edited by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, has drawn a lot of attention. The book is now available for free on the Internet:
http://www.jcpa.org/text/academics.pdf
Summary
The new century has seen many attempts to discriminate against Israel, its academic institutions, and its scholars in several Western countries. This includes boycotting Israeli universities and academics as well as calling for divestment from Israeli securities. The campaigns frequently use anti-Semitic motifs and sometimes also involve violent anti-Semitic acts.
These actions should be seen in the context of the much broader, multiple, ongoing attacks against Israel and the Jewish people. These initiatives are part of a postmodern global war and often are directly related to anti-Semitism. This global war is multisourced, fragmented, and often diffuse and discontinuous.
The modern anti-Semitism of the 1930s could be compared to many large, centrally managed factories of a toxin-producing corporation. Its chief executive was Hitler and from its tall chimneys anti-Semitic poison spread in large quantities over a wide area. Postmodern anti-Semitism can be compared to the pollution produced by the millions of cars everywhere. These run on fuel that causes poisonous elements to escape in limited quantities through a large number of exhausts all over the world. Today such poison is spread on many campuses.
The discriminatory actions against Israel prove that in many universities, academic freedom is abused as a subtle device to promote extremist ideologies and protect misbehavior. This is one among many reasons why what happens on campus should be subject to much greater external scrutiny. That would likely lead to a long-lasting general reassessment of issues concerning academia such as free speech, academic freedom, uncontrolled campus extremism including incitement to violence, university autonomy, the politicization of science, and the discrepancy in norm between academia and society at large.
Eighteen essays from four continents discuss a variety of cases of discrimination and how Israel and Jews can defend themselves against such initiatives.
Praise for the book
This volume is essential reading for all who care about the future, because it documents a worldwide campaign of disinformation and bigotry about Israel that is directed at university students. Its goal is as clear as it is cynical and dangerous: to mis-educate a generation of future leaders and turn them against the only democracy in the mid-east and the only Jewish state in the world. To combat this evil requires understanding of its sources and scope. Read this book, learn, and go forth and speak truth to bigotry.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University
Anti-Semites succeeded in murdering six million Jews only after significant parts of the supposedly enlightened world accepted as a matter of fact that Jews were dangerous and inferior beings. Genocide became legitimate when this attitude permeated universities, the intelligentsia, and other elites.
Against this historical background, the inroads of the anti-Israeli campaign into the Western academic world are extremely worrying. The infrastructure for future crimes or even genocide is being laid by ideologists at universities of the free world.
We need many people to stand up against the demonizers, the propagators of double standards, and those who delegitimize Israel. Manfred Gerstenfeld and The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs were among the first to address the issue of the new academic discrimination globally. They published the first overview articles on the subject and made available case studies about a number of campuses.
This book is a further milestone in the exposure and analysis of the anti-Semitic forces in their various permutations on Western campuses. I congratulate the JCPA for this initiative.
Natan Sharansky, former Israeli Cabinet Minister, from the foreword
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction 11
Natan Sharansky: Foreword 13
Manfred Gerstenfeld: Academics against Israel and the Jews 17
ESSAYS
Rebecca Leibowitz: Defeating Anti-Israeli and Anti-Semitic Activity on Campus: A Case Study: Rutgers University 83
Noah Liben: The Columbia University Report on Its Middle Eastern Department's Problems: A Paradigm for Obscuring Structural Flaws 95
Martin Kramer: Columbia University: The Future of Middle Eastern Studies at Stake 103
Jonathan Jaffit: Fighting Sheikh Zayed's Funding of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School 108
Leila Beckwith: Anti-Zionism/Anti-Semitism at the University of California-Irvine 115
Leila Beckwith, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, and Ilan Benjamin: Faculty Efforts to Combat Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at the University of California-Santa Cruz 122
Edward S. Beck: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME): Fighting Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism on the University Campuses Worldwide 134
Roz Rothstein: StandWithUs: A Grassroots Advocacy Organization Also on Campus 147
Alain Goldschläger: The Canadian Campus Scene 154
Corinne Berzon: Anti-Israeli Activity at Concordia University 2000-2003 163
Aryeh Green: European Universities and the New Anti-Semitism: Issues, Examples, Prescriptions 174
Ruth Contreras: On the Situation in Austrian Universities 184
Ronnie Fraser: The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain? 198
Manfred Gerstenfeld: The UCU May 2007 Boycott Resolution and Its Aftermath 214
Gavin Gross: Anti-Israeli Activity at the School of Oriental and African Studies: How Jewish Students Started to Fight Back 224
Manfred Gerstenfeld: Utrecht University: The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism, Censorship, and Fear of Muslim Intimidation 236
Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook: Anti-Semitism among Palestinian Authority Academics 242
Ted Lapkin: Academic Anti-Zionism in Australia 250
List of Contributors 259
Index 263
The book can be purchased hard copy at SPMEMart by clicking here.