Some time ago, a book entitled “The professors” (The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America) written by “David Horowitz” was published in the United States. The subject of this book is the introduction of one hundred and one university professors whose crime was to speak about the Holocaust and the Jews in their classrooms and books. In addition to publishing this book, professors at other universities have been warned not to use their work because these people have crossed the red line. In general, when freedom is unlimited, it creates problems that will ultimately limit it. The following text introduces “Professor Gil Anidjar”, one of the one hundred and one professors discussed by the author of the book.
Professor Gil Anidjar
— Assistant professor of comparative literature, Columbia University
— Anti-Israel activist and apologist for Islamic radicalism
— Identifies “good teaching” with pro-Palestinian activism and “dissent”
Professor Gil Anidjar is an assistant professor of comparative literature in Columbia University’s department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. Professor Anidjar’s class, “Semites: Race, Religion, Literature,” parses, among other issues, the use of the term “Semite” and how it has “affected various aspects of academia and individual academics.” There is little doubt about how it has affected academics like Professor Anidjar: for the professor, the term is merely a rhetorical cudgel with which to batter the legitimacy of the state of Israel. For instance, he has claimed in interviews that “the last Semites and the only Semites” are Arabs—an argument that, though demonstrably false, is intended to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Stretching this argument further, Professor Anidjar has contended that “the Arabs have become the race that is still attached to its religion, whereas the Jews have in fact become Western Christians, and therefore are no longer marked, neither by race nor by religion.” The Columbia University administration had no reaction to these crudely racist public remarks from one of its professors.
Implicit in Professor Anidjar’s remarks is that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state, a point reinforced by his frequent tirades against Zionism, which he assails for what he calls its “apocalyptic dimensions.” When speaking about Zionism, as he does in his classes, Professor Anidjar also stresses: “The argument I want to make is that it is absolutely essential to continue to insist on the colonial dimension of Zionism, and colonial in the strict sense, absolutely.” “Israel is absolutely a colonial enterprise, a colonial settler state.” Far more charitable is Professor Anidjar’s appraisal of Islam. When faced with criticism of Islam he has said: “There is, in fact, a level at which I simply lack all understanding,” he has said. “Can anyone seriously claim that the problem with Islamic countries is Islam?”
Professor Anidjar’s animus against Israel finds its most zealous expression in his role as an anti-Israel activist-academic on the Columbia campus. On November 13, 2002—billed as Columbia’s “National Day of Action against Israeli Apartheid”—Professor Anidjar led a campus conference to divest Columbia from any dealings with Israeli companies.
Professor Anidjar draws no distinction between his roles as an academic and activist. An academic, according to Professor Anidjar, is not one who imparts knowledge or guides students in a dispassionate quest for truth, but one who recruits them to his personal political causes. Of one such cause—“Palestinian rights”—Professor Anidjar said on the occasion of a 2005 anti-Israel gathering, “is—or it should be—the struggle of all students and all teachers, of all adjuncts and lecturers, of untenured as well as—believe me—tenured faculty.” Addressing himself to politically like-minded colleagues at Columbia, Professor Anidjar urged them to “Continue to support [radical anti-Israel professor] Joseph Massad and remember Palestinian rights too… Continue to voice your dissent. For that is good teaching.” Professor Anidjar regards his conflation of activism and pedagogy as evidence of his “support for Academic Freedom,” although he did fret, in the course of his high-pitched oration, “I fear I am beginning to sound like a raving lunatic.”
Research: Jacob Laksin, Hugh Fitzgerald
