DancesWithCamels

In my ongoing attempts to find PhD programs that would best fit my research interests, I came upon a panel discussion that took place on September 7, 2006 at UC Berkeley which, incidentally, is the university at which I want most to study. The title of this event was Berkeley Teach-In Against War, its topic, the Second Lebanon War. The “teach-in” was video recorded and posted on the Internet. The written description of the videos first gave me pause. It reads:

Concerned about the devastation currently being inflicted on the people of Lebanon and Palestine by the Israeli Military Forces and with the very limited and biased reporting on these conflicts presented by most American media networks, we have organized a teach-in on the UC Berkeley campus in order to give students, faculty, and the Bay Area community at large a chance to gain a greater understanding of these events and to participate in an open discussion on their significance for both Americans and the people of the Middle East.

Although the above description makes the promise for an “open discussion,” the panelists did not provide an environment suitable for such discussion. This issue of academia and activism is a delicate and important matter. The image of stuffy professors sitting in ivory towers with only the company of their books is an image many try, and for good reason, to smash. I have learned from my studies of gender and feminisms that feminist scholarship, according to Chandra Mohanty, “is a directly political and discursive practice in that it is purposeful and ideological.” The same thought can be applied to a range of academic disciplines. It is important for scholars to acknowledge their personal political beliefs and when asked specific questions to represent their opinions but without preventing students from forming opinions of their own. In this “teach-in” there was no room for such development.

The purpose of this blog entry is not to dispute the content of the presentations. Though, I have reservations about them all with the exception of the moderator Saba Mahmood’s. Instead, I’d like to highlight what I consider to be a glaring example of a crisis in academia by critiquing the methodology of one of the panelists.

The name Judith Butler is a staple in my academic repertoire. Her contribution to feminist, gender and queer studies, although controversial, has unquestioningly advanced these fields of study and I for one am a grateful beneficiary. Butler has described herself as an anti-Zionist Jewish American and believes that pro-Israeli groups manipulate academic freedom. Admittedly, this argument might be seen as the mirror opposite of my own, but again, it is not her views I am choosing to critique here but her methods of expressing them.

Butler begins her presentation with the following remarks:

I’ve been asked to discuss the situation with respect to Israel. I was absent at the meeting which this assignment was made (laughter from the audience). I’ve not been sleeping very well since that time (laughter from the audience)… I’m in a quandary about how to begin and it would seem that one way to begin is to think about the dominant media representation of events in which Israel is considered as a sovereign country with unproblematic borders and boundaries and that these boundaries were transgressed and there soldiers who were abducted and that Israel in justification breeched those same boundaries in order first to try and receive those lost soldiers and then secondly to try and root out Hizballah, a group described as terrorist who is responsible for that breech of sovereignty and that abduction. It became clear, I think, within days that the first aim, the retrieval of the soldiers, was supplanted by a second aim, the destruction of Hizballah, or the destruction of the power of Hizballah who threaten the national security of Israel.

Thus, the tone for her speech was set. It told listeners outright that she was incapable of presenting this topic in an unbiased way. The academic crisis I mentioned pertains to the politicization of Middle Eastern Studies to such an extent that it is no longer the intention of some scholars to attempt to present events and facts impartially. Rather than encouraging students to think critically about very complex issues by examining the wide range of perspectives and then forming their own opinions, they are told what to think.

It should be the responsibility of academics to try to be honest about how they feel without limiting students. I can empathize with Butler’s reluctance to discuss the Israeli perspective. I would also hesitate to present a view from a perspective I fundamentally oppose. However the best scholars are those that can empathize, not sympathize, with their subjects. How else can we possibly understand why people do what they do? Even if something is contrary to my personal belief-systems, I try to understand them. It’s not that Butler is not capable of empathy, she wrestles with Zionism and Israel in her own work, but in a setting whose purpose is to encourage critical discussion she should allow students the opportunity to wrestle themselves. Saying such things as, “I’m in a quandary about how to begin and it would seem that one way to begin is to think about the dominant media representation of events in which Israel is considered as a sovereign country” is a disservice to students. She failed to present the debate.

Butler closed her presentation with a description of “true” Jewish values in an attempt to perpetuate her view of Israel as amoral and fundamentally opposed to Judaism. The bottom line is that this was not what she was asked to present on. These points would be poignant in a different “teach-in” and should be addressed in an appropriate context. But in this situation it just highlights the flippant disregard some scholars harbor toward differing opinions and their hesitancy to step into that risky, uncomfortable place of thinking about a subject from a different perspective, which seems to me to be the best way to continue to challenge and strengthen one’s own scholarship. Not doing so and using a panel discussion as a platform to promote a political agenda is not only insulting and irresponsible, but lazy.

Butler alone should not be criticized for her presentation. One wonders why she was asked to present the Israeli discussion if she was knowingly unable to do so without bias. Or, why wasn’t another scholar present to foster a more balanced debate? The entire “teach-in” was told from the perspective of one political side. There was no opportunity for a well-rounded, well-represented discussion—this is a failure of academia.

View and listen to Judith Butler’s presentation