Academics too timid on Palestine? Too dismissive? Too MUCH? Zionist academics are still far more too MUCH

After a brief Twitter spat Saturday, I offer a qualified "yes" to all first and second semi-rhetorical questions, while framing the third within the context of the statement that makes up the second half of the header.

Qualified in that I was talking PURELY about tenured faculty.

I was NOT talking about tenure-track but not yet tenured. I was definitely not talking about including non-tenure track. I absolutely was not including adjuncts.

At a major university? Teaching undergrad classes, actual tenured faculty are what, 10-15 percent of total instructors? See first link below.

That said, at the grad level, they're surely at least one-third. And, that's where you get visibility, anyway.

Within that, professors in the humanities are arguably either:

A. Too timid:

B. Despite all their otherwise professed librulizm, too dismissive of the Palestinian cause.

The main person dismissive of me? A grad student. 

It's true that she has a long road to hoe. But, I wasn't speaking of her.

Being actually tenured is not a guarantee against dismissal, but it does require it be done for specific reasons and include a sort of due process.

As of two years ago, non-tenured faculty were about 75 percent of four-year colleges. So, those teaching at grad level only were probably about 50 percent; maybe more at elite  universities in elite programs.

As for the likes of Steven Salaita?

As I've discussed, he IMO went into hate-speech territory, and second, since his contract had not legally been confirmed (and if it had, it was a new job, and if on tenure track not yet tenured) on legal thin ice.

It is true that, in a case like his, donors may threaten to withhold money. But, as with UT alumni chastising black athletes for refusing to salute "The Eyes of Texas," we have two questions:

1. What percentage of university donations do these people make up?

2. Will they actually stop giving if you call their bluff?

And, per that link, an Illini emeritus professor, and also former president of the American University of University Professors, agreed with me on the legal angle — Salaita had not yet been hired, let alone tenured.

There was otherwise ugliness all around, especially from Bobby Kennedy son Christopher, on the Illini board of regents. Ugliness followed Salaita to American University of Beirut and disputes over his hiring process there. And, that former AAUP prez Cary Nelson is himself a Zionist. On the fourth hand, his book about BDS and related issues on campus claims that many BDSers DO turn anti-Zionism into antisemitism, and that Salaita himself .... at least pushed the envelope. More here.

On the FIFTH hand? Those two reviews of Nelson's book are by Commentary and Tablet, which themselves have motive to smear the entire BDS movement with the worst problems of its worst supporters. After all, Mondoweiss comes immediately to mind of a pro-BDS and anti-Zionist organization that is DEFINITELY not antisemitic. 

On the SIXTH hand?

Having run into a Zionist bullshitter on Twitter last night?

1. The Khazar hypothesis IS at least somewhat real. (Related: language is not ethnicity and Rhineland Jews have little connection to those from the Pale; Jews and goys intermarried in medieval Europe far more than Zionists like to admit; Hanukkah has pagan roots; the Revolt was about religion only, not about Hellenism; and other things.)

2. For both Christian Zionists, Zionists who read beyond the Tanakh and rightist Catholics, Daniel, as well as First and Second Maccabees, are steaming shitpiles of legendary pseudo history.

3. The Maccabees had a strong mix of military luck and good PR scriptwriters.

4. Beyond those links? While Zionists in American academia always call on Palestinian-supporting academics to call out the likes of Salaita, I've little doubt that a Cary Nelson has never called out Bibi Netanyahu.

This is clearly an Idries Shah issue:

First, as I have said here and elsewhere, the enemy of my enemy may simply be an ally of convenience. That's another side right there. I used that exact phrase in a post last fall talking about Twitter cleanup, inspired by Julian Assange issues.

Or, the enemy of my enemy may also be an enemy to me on other issues, or even on the issue at hand, just via a different track. 

To move to the finish line? Assange may well be a good analogy for Salaita. Both with some good initial actions, though carrying the seeds of their own self-destruction from the start. Then, through sniffing their own press clippings too much and other things, they started fertilizing those bad seeds with their own bullshit. 

But, per what I said above, I wouldn't publicly repute a Salaita to a Zionist's face unless they agreed to some of their own repudiation at the same time. And I wouldn't hold my breath over that, given that wingnut Erick Erickson has demonstrably lied about what the AP did and did not know about its (alleged by the IDF) landlord, per AP CEO Gary Pruitt himself.