New York is walking a thin line on Palestinian Studies
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul did not hesitate when she learned about the recent posting for two faculty positions in Palestine Studies at Hunter College, part of the publicly funded City University of New York. She “directed CUNY to immediately remove this posting,” which she characterized as evoking “antisemitic theories” and “hateful rhetoric.”
The CUNY administration quickly complied, calling the job description “divisive, polarizing and inappropriate.”
The reaction from academic quarters was equally swift. The president of the American Association of University Professors called Hochul’s intervention a violation of “basic principles of academic freedom and governance [that is] never acceptable in a free society.”
The CUNY faculty union’s Academic Freedom Committee likewise condemned the administration’s acquiescence to “political pressure” for violating “the most basic principles of academic freedom.” More bluntly, University of Chicago philosophy Professor Brian Leiter called it an act of “craven cowardice.”
This contretemps raises three distinct questions: Was Hochul’s interference appropriate? In any case, was the job post unacceptably “divisive, polarizing” and problematic? And was it antisemitic?
Here is the language that has been both denounced as antisemitic and defended as academically legitimate: “We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. We seek candidates interested in pubic-facing work.”
The first question is the easiest. Hochul had absolutely no business demanding the removal of the Hunter College job posting. Political interference in curriculum is an unwarranted violation of academic freedom.
As the American Association of University Professors president explained, it is the faculty, not the governor, who are “best placed to judge which courses and scholarship represent the state of knowledge within scholarly disciplines.”
Direct political control of educational content is a feature of authoritarianism, not democracy. To be sure, university faculties can be badly misguided, and citizens have every right to criticize educational policy and complain to public university administrators. But Hochul’s coercion crossed any conceivable line.
That brings us to the second question. Hochul’s intrusion aside, was the job posting as “divisive, polarizing and inappropriate” as the administration claimed?
Taken individually, the listed subjects — including settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide — can be significant areas of inquiry in Palestine Studies. In Leiter’s words, they are “real topics, in relationship to the Palestinians.”
As the CUNY faculty union noted, although the “terms are not uncontested” they are “legitimate scholarly and pedagogical topics,” frequently addressed in many disciplines.
In combination, however, the list comprises a distinctly political agenda, as though the sum of Palestine Studies consists only of Israel’s purported crimes. There is no mention of Islamism, ideology, democracy, Marxism, terrorism or even armed struggle, all of which have played roles in Palestinian life and history.
The statement from the CUNY faculty union, however, asserts that “academic inquiry has no responsibility to be ‘balanced’ or ‘non-divisive.’” That is not exactly right. Academic inquiry does have a responsibility to be open-minded, pursuing truth and insight without regard to predetermined outcomes.
While the job description does refer to “a critical lens,” its patent focus is an attack on Israel, rather than an independent scholarly exploration of Palestinian history and society, in which victimization and dispossession do not tell the whole story.
Lest there be any doubt, the emphasis on “public-facing” work is clearly a thinly coded call for activism.
Of course, Hunter College’s Palestine Studies faculty appointments would not be the first, or even the 500th, heavily politicized positions in contemporary university departments. So, the remaining question is whether the job posting conveyed antisemitism, as some have claimed.
Former CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, for example, said that “the posting peddles antisemitism by demonizing the Jewish state of Israel.” A Palestinian Studies course “completely about alleged Jewish crimes,” he continued, is “akin to courses offered in the Nazi era which ascribed all the world’s crimes to the Jews.”
There are serious problems with the job listing, but Wiesenfeld went too far. The Nazis attributed wholly imaginary crimes to Jews, while accusations such as apartheid, although often profoundly exaggerated, are at least based, in the words of CUNY political science Professor Corey Robin, on “historical phenomena.”
Nazi analogies are invariably overstated, whether aimed at Israel, as in the rampant “genocide” charges, or its critics, but that does not absolve the Hunter College job listing from its obvious bias.
The concatenation of accusations against Israel, and the absence of anything denoting scholarly objectivity, communicated the intended message that successful applicants will be expected to engage in anti-Israel advocacy.
To recap: Hochul was just wrong to intervene in Hunter College’s curricular decision. Period. Nonetheless, the job posting itself sent an unmistakable political signal that “public facing” hostility toward Israel was a requirement for the position.
Antisemitism is a difficult charge to prove, but any embedded bias has no place in responsible academics, no matter how obliquely it is expressed.
Hunter College’s faculty positions in Palestine Studies remain to be filled. The CUNY administration should take this opportunity to ensure that the job requirements are revised to prioritize scholarship over activism.
Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
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