The ordeal J. Lorand Matory
We first took note of Harvard's Professor J. Lorand Matory in "A Faustian bargain." Professor Matory is mightily oppressed by the force of Jewish opinion on campus. He nevertheless somehow dares to speak out against "Israel and censorship at Harvard." Indeed, he dares to speak despite the fact that he does not think logically, write clearly, or know what he's talking about:
[W]hy does the U.S. rightly defend Jewish people’s claims on European bank accounts, property, and compensation for labor expropriated during the 1930s and 1940s, while quashing the rights of millions of Palestinians refugees to lands, houses, and goods stolen as a condition of Israel’s founding in the late 1940s?Amazingly, given the hostility to such views at Harvard, Professor Matory maintains his professorship in anthropology and African and African-American studies.
Earlier this week we noted the free-speech debate at Harvard and cited the fine column by Harvard student Julia Bertelsmann debunking the notion that critics of Israel like Professor Matory live in fear on campus. Now Professor Matory returns with a remarkable account of his continuing struggle to make the campus safe for free speech, and not just what passes for "free speech" (in scare quotes) on campus. Oh, oh:
“Free speech” is a fine principle, but, as a foundation of the University’s business, it is both insufficient and vague.Here Professor Matory captures something of the depredations of life at Harvard for a free spirit such as him:In the Faculty meeting on Nov. 13, I moved “that this faculty commits itself to fostering a civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas.” I intended this motion not as a new law but as an ethical pledge to think and talk about how to fulfill the university’s highest ideals in the context of difficult issues in difficult times. My colleagues voted massively (74-27) to “table” the motion—that is, to end discussion of it and to avoid a vote on it—for various reasons, some of which remain unclear because debate was cut off so quickly.
The major reasons vocalized, however, were that Faculty legislation in 1990 has already affirmed our commitment to “free speech” and that voting down such an inherently reasonable motion would generate embarrassing news headlines. The clear premise was that the majority intended to vote down the motion because it had arisen in the context of what many of my colleagues and I regard as the widespread censorship of dissent about Israel-Palestine on campus and in the nearby bookstores that are an essential part of the intellectual life of the University.
Members of the Harvard Faculty have been hired and made to feel safe while propagating ideas about the allegedly different mental capacities of different sexes and races, about the alleged virtues of torture, about the alleged innocence of white Americans’ treatment of Native Americans, about our black students’ allegedly being the cause of grade inflation at Harvard, and about the allegedly bestial and masochistic qualities of the Palestinian people. And the exponents of such opinions continue to enjoy free speech and the cooperation of their colleagues. Yet dissenting opinions about Israel-Palestine are confined to back-corridor whispers.Bill Katz directs our attention to this latest cri de coeur by Professor Matory. Neither of us is quite sure what Profesor Matory is saying, but I get the sense that nobody knows the trouble he's seen.
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