Over a year ago, I wrote about an entry on Zionism for an encyclopedia published under a well-known, trusted imprint: the “Encyclopedia of Race and Racism,” which carries the names of both Macmillan Reference USA (now owned by the Michigan-based Gale, Cengage Learning company) and the Macmillan Social Science Library. At the time, there was quite a storm and the publishers resolved to do something about it. Sadly, their compromise formula makes a bad situation worse, as I explain in this op-ed for the Jerusalem Post.
Ed Morgan is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. In this fascinating column, he relates two recent experiences which persuaded him that rational, informed debate is not always the norm in the ivory tower.
Continue reading ‘Ed Morgan: The “One-State” Crowd Up Close’
Via Engage, which has valiantly marshalled both the arguments and the bodies to confront the UCU’s academic boycott, comes news that court action is imminent.
Continue reading ‘UCU Faces Court Action’
Noel Ignatiev is one the last people you would expect to be authoring an entry on Zionism for an encyclopedia published under a well-known, trusted imprint. But open Volume 3 of the “Encyclopedia of Race and Racism,” which carries the names of both Macmillan Reference USA (now owned by the Michigan-based Gale, Cengage Learning company) and the Macmillan Social Science Library, and you will see that he has done just that.
Continue reading ‘Macmillan USA Encyclopedia Damns Zionism as Racism’
The triangular debate between Norman Geras, Martin Shaw and Engage over the extent to which attitudinal antisemitism is a factor in the academic boycott campaign has continued. I want to weigh in on one point.
Continue reading ‘Genocide Analogies’
Norman Geras has a response here to this debate between David Hirsh and Martin Shaw on whether the eternally proposed academic boycott of Israel would be antisemitic in nature. I’m not going to quote from it because I think that it should be read in its entirety and citing a paragraph might give readers of this blog the impression that they had got the gist of the argument and could move on elsewhere.
Continue reading ‘Norm on the Boycott and Antisemitism’
There is an extremely interesting essay by Perry Anderson here about contemporary Turkish history. It deals at length with the similarities and differences between the genocides of the Jews and Armenians and the different degrees of recognition that they have received since they occurred.
Continue reading ‘Genocide Comparisons’
Ben has already had his say on the Democratiya debate between Martin Shaw and David Hirsh here. I now want to add a couple of thoughts of my own.
Continue reading ‘The Democratiya Debate Redux’
Let me begin with a plug: Democratiya is a superb journal and its latest issue is a veritable bounty of enlightened opinion. Particularly recommended are Michael Walzer’s thoughts on how the left can reconstitute its internationalism.
Now to business.
Continue reading ‘Antisemitism and More: The Democratiya Debate’
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Over at Engage David Hirsh writes,
I believe that there is a problem of institutional antisemitism in the UCU. By this I do not mean that significant numbers of people in the union hate Jews. But I do believe that ways of thinking, norms and practices have developed which allow the union to behave in an antisemitic way and to normalize antisemitic expression.
Continue reading ‘On Institutional Antisemitism’
This is a guest post by Contentious Centrist
Remember this petition, initiated by some Israeli academics and addressed to the government of Israel?
Continue reading ‘Palestinian Academic Freedom’
