There is a species of radical leftist that believes the main purpose of taxpayer-funded universities is to indoctrinate students in radical left-wing ideology. Such people believe the only legitimate form of scholarly research and teaching is to force upon students the ideas and agendas of the left because only these represent correct thinking.
For them, the highest form of academic inquiry is to engage in one-sided advocacy. They believe faculty members at universities should be hired mainly, if not exclusively, on the basis of their devotion to radical leftist ideology.
They believe classrooms should be arenas in which students are immersed into leftist NewThink.
They believe student grades should reflect the extent to which the student toes the ideological line of the radical left.
They believe academic conferences and research forums should be restricted to those who advocate the left’s political agenda, while non-leftist dissident thought should be suppressed and barred.
Most important of all, they believe those who dare criticize the radical tenured left should be silenced and denounced.
The totalitarian left believes taxpayers are morally obligated to fund the teaching of extremist ideology in the classroom, including by people advocating the demise of those same taxpayers and of their country.
It is the job of citizens, insist the academic leftists, to sit back passively and pay for the far left to operate propaganda centers, while the radicals collect their cushy salaries as payment for advocating their anti-Israel agenda.
It is the job of universities, the tenured left maintains, to criticize (actually to demonize) the state of Israel – just as long as no one is permitted to criticize those critics of Israel.
Nowhere is this ideological extremism so clearly on display as in the Department of Politics at Ben-Gurion University (BGU), a pseudo-academic propaganda and indoctrination center disguised as an academic department. It is not the only such department in Israel or at BGU, but it may well be the worst.
Last year an international panel of experts appointed by the Israel Council of Higher Education (which oversees and funds universities) called for shutting down this BGU department altogether, due to the abysmally low quality of its work its having replaced serious scholarly research with one-sided advocacy.
The far left faculty members in the department denounce Israel in unison, and some call for world boycotts of Israel. In response to the CHE criticism of the departmental obsession with one-side advocacy, BGU hired three new politics faculty members in order to generate diversity and pluralism – but the three new ones are also leftist radicals.
Students in political science classes at BGU who dare to express pro-Israel opinions tell of being penalized and harassed by the faculty. The single non-leftist faculty member who taught in the department was fired a few years back for incorrect thinking.
Diversity and pluralism in the department consist of people of various ethnicities, genders, heights, and weights all advocating leftist and Marxist ideas. Diversity of thought is mercilessly suppressed, and serious academic standards are trashed.
In recent weeks, the totalitarian left has been circling its wagons in solidarity with the Department of Politics at BGU. Leftist-dominated academic associations are flooding the press and the CHE with angry demands to defend the right of the Department of Politics at BGU to engage in “advocacy” and leftist indoctrination.
Recruited by members of BGU’s politics department, foreign members of the academic left and Israeli tenured radicals have been leading the campaign to defend the BGU propagandists.
The campaigners demand that the right of BGU leftists to indoctrinate and propagandize at taxpayer expense be defended against CHE criticism and interference. The defenders of the department insist that “positivism,” i.e. actual scholarly research, is only one legitimate strand of academic activity in political science, meaning they really want ideological indoctrination to be the “alternative” function of academics.
A recent one-sided conference devoted to advocating political advocacy as the proper calling for academia was held at Ben-Gurion University. Participants were greeted by BGU President Rivka Carmi, who regularly insists she is not aware of any one-sided advocacy or indoctrination activities held at BGU. This is the same Carmi whose belief in pluralism was manifested in her firing Prof. Yeruham Leavitt because he dared express a politically incorrect opinion about children being raised by homosexual couples.
And so the Orwellian inversions continue. Under the campaign to defend the right of BGU radicals to indoctrinate students in anti-Israel ideology, pluralism and diversity are achieved by maintaining a department in which only far leftists may teach.
Academic freedom is achieved by suppressing the right to criticize anti-Israel extremists. The highest form of scholarly research is the promulgation of hate propaganda and anti-Zionist advocacy. Diversity of ideas is achieved by suppressing all non-leftist thought.
And the highest form of public responsibility and accountability is when taxpayers are coerced into paying for the inculcation of extremist ideas that the taxpayers themselves reject and abhor.
Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.
Seems to me that the govt is guilty.
How do you combat jealousy? Israeli’s succeed where others fail. And the others are bitter for a) being told the land of Israel is their own, and believing it.
@ James B – Montreal:
Looks like it, doesn’t it James B. It seems like that’s what it will take before the Jews in Israel come out of their comas, rise up, and say, “enought is enough”, start rioting against the Arab murderers, burning Palestinian flags,, screaming “Death to the Arabs”,, beating the hell out to every Arab they can get their hands on, demanding the police crack down on the Arabs instead of protecting them from the Jews, unleash the IDF to bomb those damn Ishmaeliites into the Stone Age, insist that those damn Jewish Leftists in the universities in Israel be arrested as traitors to their country and their heritage,, and elect a government that is willing to tell the rest of the world that since you did nothing to help the Jews when we were helpless, you have no moral right to condemn us for wanting to defend ourselves against those who wish to exterminate us. The Ishmaelites will continue to murder Jews as long as they know they can get away with it. They won’t stop until they are forced to.
Israel has been at war since its founding.
In war times certain liberties must be restricted or denied its citizens in order to prevent traitors from wreaking their destructive ambitions.
Citizens of a country at war who speak out against their country are traitors.
They should be treated as such with as much harshness as the law allows.
Mickey Oberman
As I have humbly written in this blog several times, Israel and Israelis have to be “hit” badly, at least 5,000 – 10,000 dead Israelis until that country wakes up from its Dizengoff Blvd party che sara sara slumber.
The sooner the better. Sad to say it. Hope 10,000 dead is the most it will take.
@ Canadian Otter:
As it is his norm, Dr. Plaut is clear and to the point.
It is with terrible pain that I have to agree with him and you as well as other that placed comments.
And there is more.
Yesterday the gangs we call the “combina” effectively six deeped the Judge Levi Report that provides all the extra legal backing for our claims to our Land.
Netanyahu and the item passing as AG, combined to destroy that hope.
And…
After the terrible reality of the Iranian drone romping about for hours undetected by marine radars, bases radars and the “Iron Dome”, we now hear that “masked” persons, 4 persons, I believe Islamic or similar, subdued the sentinel at a military… base in the North and calmly took off with many weapons and ammo.
I warned about all of that for long and so did others in this Blog.
The Israeli elites are determined to destroy the State and worse.
They must be defeated and that will not happen via their “israeli demokratiah” concocted elections.
The people must freely elect, independently from the controlled combina, a NEW GOVERNMENT system and also elect completely new and true leadership.
Not much time left.
@ Canadian Otter:
dear otter,
if your comment and the link that you have provided are not enough to depress the living daylights out of any israel lover…i don’t know what will.
for me, what is depressing is NOT the brazen and continuous attacks of musloids…
but the lack of response and worse, the shackling of those who can and should respond…
Imagine the following scenario: A nice Jewish school in a town IN FRANCE. Little children are sitting at their kindergarten desks drawing pictures. Suddenly a mob of Arab youths breaks into the classroom shouting SLAUGHTER THE JEWS! ~~~~ What do you think Israel’s response would be? What would the government say? The MKs? The rabbis? The media? We can almost hear the outrage, the condemnations, the demand for a police investigation …~~~ But that event recently happened in an Israeli kindergarten, and has been received with utter indifference. ~~~~ The following article has a brief compilation of constant attacks perpetrated by Muslims on defenseless Jewish men, women and children in Israel. STREET JIHAD IN ISRAEL http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/44468 – Defenseless because police refuse to come to their aid. ~~~ This jihad goes on with complete impunity because Israeli authorities have policies deterring police/IDF from arresting Arabs. And why make arrests, anyway, when the courts will let them go free anyway? Why discharge a weapon to defend Jewish victims when disciplinary measures against officers who discharge a weapon without authorization can include a long jail sentence. ~~~ Arabs riot and lob firebombs at IDF/police and orders are “to disperse” the crowd. But if a Jew dares to murmur a prayer at Temple Mount, police are there in a flash to arrest him and charge him with something.
So it’s not only Israeli intellectuals who are waging war against the Jews, but murderous Muslim mobs under the indifferent eyes of top Israeli authorities – and of Israeli leaders in general.
Translated is–Cultural and economic Marxism!
While Marxists often use the word moral–they are some of the most immoral people–and the policies of Marxism are always immoral and or amoral!
This is where a creative Mossad would come in handy…