Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Academentia continued

At times, what you read about humanities departments at American universities nowadays makes you wonder whether they have any scholarly standards at all, as long as you subscribe to the orthodoxies-du-jour. Yale may apparently gracefully rid themselves of the "Taliban student", but look who they are thinking of hiring

Meanwhile, Yale faces a new challenge. In the next few days the university may hire Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, to fill a new spot as a professor of contemporary Middle East studies.
Mr. Cole's appointment would be problematic on several fronts. First, his scholarship is largely on the 19th-century Middle East, not on contemporary issues. "He has since abandoned scholarship in favor of blog commentary," says Michael Rubin, a Yale graduate and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Mr. Cole's postings at his blog, Informed Comment, appear to be a far cry from scholarship. They feature highly polemical writing and dubious conspiracy theories.

In justifying all the time he spends on his blog, Mr. Cole told the Yale Herald that "when you become a public intellectual, it has the effect of dragging you into a lot of mud." Mr. Cole has done his share of splattering. He calls Israel "the most dangerous regime in the Middle East." That ties in with his recurring theme that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee effectively controls Congress and much of U.S. foreign policy. In an article titled "Dual Loyalties," he wrote, "I simply think that we deserve to have American public servants who are centrally commited [sic] to the interests of the United States, rather than to the interests of a foreign political party," namely Israel's right-wing Likud, which was the ruling party until Ariel Sharon formed the centrist Kadima Party. Mr. Cole claims that "pro-Likud intellectuals" routinely "use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv."

Last January, Mr. Cole participated in a "teach-in" at Yale that could have been an audition for his possible hiring. According to the Yale Daily News, he told students that U.S. efforts "in helping create a constitution for the 'new Iraq' have increased factionalism." He concluded that "this is a recipe for continued social turmoil and continued global war."

Mr. Cole says that he is often unfairly attacked for being anti-Semitic, when in reality he claims he is only critical of Israeli policy. But Michael Oren, a visiting fellow at Yale, notes that in February 2003 Mr. Cole wrote on his blog that "Apparently [President Bush] has fallen for a line from the neo-cons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon's ass." Mr. Oren says "clearly that's anti-Semitism; that's not a criticism of Israeli policy." (Exit polls showed that 74% of the Jewish vote went to John Kerry.)

Mr. Cole appears to be the only prominent academic in America to have embraced "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a highly controversial paper by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard. Mr. Cole told the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday that the paper argues the "virtually axiomatic" point held by the rest of the world that a "powerful pro-Israel lobby exists." The result is that "U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been dangerously skewed."

But the paper has been roundly attacked for sloppy generalizations. The two authors claim that "neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's support for Israel." Even Noam Chomsky, a far-left critic of Israel, wrote that we "have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion." But Mr. Cole praises the two professors for seeking "to end the taboo [on discussions of the "Israel lobby"], enforced by knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism."

Mr. Cole wants to enforce his own taboos on free expression .In February, he told the Detroit Metro Times that the federal government should close the leading cable news channel. "I think it is outrageous that Fox Cable News is allowed to run that operation the way it runs it," he said in summarizing his view that Fox "is polluting the information environment." He went on to claim that "in the 1960s the FCC would have closed it down. It's an index of how corrupt our governmental institutions have become, that the FCC lets this go on."

Appointing someone as hotheaded and intolerant as Mr. Cole to a prestigious appointment at Yale wouldn't seem to make any sense. The drive to hire him can be explained in part by the same impulses that prompted Yale to admit Mr. Hashemi. "Perhaps the folks who still want to let Taliban Man into the degree program are also thinking Cole would make a great faculty advisor for him," jokes Mr. Tayor, the alumnus leading the NailYale protest.

But that might not be a joke. Many Yale faculty members are deadly serious about wanting Mr. Cole to become their newest colleague, and their views hold great sway. Unlike at Harvard, the university president at Yale has no power to veto the faculty's hiring choice. So even if the admissions department rejects Mr. Hashemi's application for the fall semester, Yale may jump out of the Taliban frying pan and into the Cole fire.

Listen, I defer to nobody in my contempt for Noam Chomsky/Gnome Chimpsky. But at least he was hired and tenured, not for his anti-Israel and anti-USA agitprop, but for his works in linguistics that is fairly generally agreed upon to be groundbreaking. There is no such excuse in the case of this Cole clown.

Racism vs. bigotry

Very few languages have a direct equivalent the English-language distinction between racism and bigotry. French does --- not surprising, considering that the English word 'bigot' is a borrowing from French in the first place. Dutch comes close with 'kwezel', although that's closer to the original French meaning of 'bigot' (an ostentatiously and superstitiously religious person).

But I've gotten in a number of discussions over the years with people who loudly (and wrongly) accused others (in Dutch, in Hebrew,...) of being 'racist' when plainly race was not even remotely the issue. (The closest you can come in Hebrew to the meaning of 'bigotry' is 'kanaut iveret', literally 'blind zealotry'.)

Narrowly speaking, "racism" refers to prejudices against other people based strictly on their biological/ethnic ancestry. The 19th Century proto-Nazi racial theorists such as Gobineau or Houston Stewart Chamberlain were plainly racist, as were essentially all who defended the 'peculiar institution' of slavery in the antebellum South or Jim Crow laws later.

By contrast, "bigotry" refers to prejudices against other people based on factors other than their biological ancestry, such as:

• their religious affiliation (or lack thereof)
  
• their country of citizenship or birth
  
• their region of birth within a common country
  
• their primary language
  
• their social class
  
• their gender and/or sexual orientation
  
• their political affiliation
  
• ...
  

For instance, many East Coasters and West Coasters harbor attitudes about people from the Deep South that are condescending at best and bigoted at worst --- but such attitudes are not based on race but generally on the (real or perceived) deep religiosity and conservatism of Southerners. The enmity between Flemings and Walloons --- based not on any significant differences in ethnicity or general culture but principally on their different languages --- is another example of bigotry that is not racist.

The sort of religious person who believes everybody not of their particular faith to be some sort of hell-bent heathen is plainly a bigot. But so, in their own way, are anti-religious fanatics like Richard Dawkins (or his Belgian wannabe Etienne Vermeersch). Neither type is (necessarily) a racist.

Many people on the political "left" hold startlingly bigoted prejudices about people (mis)identified with the "right" --- and conversely. Usually, these prejudices have little if anything to do with race.

Of course, names for some forms of bigotry have become rhetorical clubs to beat one's opponent to death with. I remember, for instance, when "homophobia" was a clinical term for an actual psychiatric condition --- an obsession with, and fear of, homosexuals fueled by deeply repressed doubts about one's own sexual orientation. Nowadays, anybody who has any misgivings at all about certain attempts to canonize the homosexual lifestyle --- for instance, those who feel tolerance or acceptance should be enough, or have second thoughts about children being raised by two men --- risks being labeled a "homophobe". Or, for that matter, anybody who is less than enamored with certain dysfunctional aspects of black urban culture in the US --- which, as Thomas Sowell persuasively argues, is actually not so much authentically black as an adaptation of the self-destructive "redneck culture" of their erstwhile white oppressors --- or simply cannot stand rap "music", risks being labeled an anti-black racist --- often by people who would not think twice about using crude anti-black stereotypes against blacks that they disagree with politically. On any opponent of unrestricted immigration to the USA or of blanket amnesty and services to illegal immigrants risks being labeled an anti-Latino racist --- disregarding the fact that many legal first-generation immigrants themselves are at best ambivalent about those whom they perceive as 'gate-crashers'.

In a similar way, apologists for radical Islamism and Islamic terror attempt to brand any form of criticism of same as "Islamophobia" --- even criticism on the part of people who, like Daniel Pipes, are at pains to make a distinction between Islam and radical Islamism.

A more jocular/tongue-in-cheek use of the term "bigot" exists, generally referring to 'bigotry' based on such seemingly innocuous factors as one's preferred sports team or computing platform. Every so often, posters on Macintosh (or Linux) forums will accuse obtuse webmasters or IT managers of "anti-Mac bigotry" or "Windows bigotry". (In many cases, webmasters refusing to make their side cross-platform are simply too incompetent and/or lazy to code to standard --- I know plenty such clowns here who loudly rationalize their own sloth by claims about the "marginality" of Macs or Linuxen.)

The related term "zealotry" is generally reserved for people whose greatest hatred is reserved not so much for adherents of a different religion/ideology/... but for their less fanatical fellow travelers. Sweeping in front of my own doorstep, I know quite a few pro-Israel zealots who will consider anybody advocating a course less radical and/or fanatic than their own to be "court Jews", "kapos", "Jewish antisemites" and the like --- and yes, even proud lifelong Zionists like this writer find themselves on the receiving end of such abuse sometimes. Ironically, the most fanatic zealots are often those who choose not to come share our fate --- and I have as little time for such "armchair super-Zionists" as I have for the type of anti-Israel bigot that would impose suicidal moral standards on Israel without having to suffer the consequences of their own sanctimoniousness.

Is antisemitism racist or bigoted? Personally I prefer the term "judeophobia" over the done-to-death "antisemitism", but the answer is: depends. Antisemitism can be a form of racism if it is primarily rooted in hatred for allegedly inferior/degenerate ancestry --- such as Nazi antisemitism. One still does find this type of anti-Jewish racism in some circles (neo-Nazi as well as Arab), but far more common nowadays is antisemitism as a form of bigotry. Anti-Jewish bigots (particularly those on the "left") are often at pains to deny that they hate Jews for being born Jewish ---
they "merely" hate people who 'behave Jewish', who practice the Jewish religion or are otherwise unwilling to assimilate into the majority faith, or who identify with the 'racist'/'oppressor'/... State of Israel... In many instances, the protestations of non-racism may well be sincere at least on the conscious level. Thus one sometimes sees the bizarre spectacle of prominent and outspoken judeophobic bigots ostentatiously participating in Shoah memorial ceremonies or producing art/movies/... commemorating the Shoah.

(As an aside, let me comment on the distinction between cant and hypocrisy. The hypocrite is generally quite well aware of the dissonance between his/her words and deeds, while the peddler of cant is generally him/herself unaware of the chasm.)

Finally, of course, no discussion of bigotry would ever be complete without quoting G. K. Chesterton:

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

Bush, the raging moderate

Thus argues Orson Scott Card. See also this OSC review of three firebrand books.

Howl

American Digest (inspired by a suggestion of Dinocrat) has a hilarious parody on that hipster classic, Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl". Make sure you're not drinking coffee or any other liquids while drinking.

And, found via the comments, IowaHawk did a similar one some time ago.

Reactionary revolutionaries

No Pasaran is all over the freak show in France, where attempts to liberalize hiring and firing regulations for people under 26 are being met with nearly a popular revolt.

The status quo at all costs. Just when did this become a "progressive" cause?

The Euro and American "Left" since 1945

Andrei Markovits, himself an "old Leftist", has a rather interesting overview of the development of what passes for the Left since 1945. Quite interesting reading. (Hat tip: No Pasaran.)

Quote of the day

Todd Seavey in the Wall Street Journal:

Perhaps the greatest evidence that there is little intellectual heft left in the anarchist movement is the occasional protests in Albany, N.Y., where self-proclaimed anarchists turn up to protest budget cuts at state-run schools. It's a satire Burke never could have dreamed of.

Another reason why I loathe Ralph Nader

As if I needed any more. (hat tip: Jane Galt)

Deepak Chopra: off the moral deep end

On a completely different subject, an excellent rebuttal to Deepak Chopra's latest inane exercise in moral equivalence. What makes the rebuttal interesting is that it draws on the same Hindu sources that allegedly inspire Chopra's alleged mind. (Hat tip: Dr. Sanity.)

The year that was

To my readers, a happy ISO year 2006.

Among various "the year that was" posts, Patterico's summary of LA Times bias stands out, both in the level of detail and in the degree to which it is representative of systemic problems with much of the LameStreamMedia. Needless to say, the LA Times reacts by shooting at the messenger.