A Tale of Two Professors

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/07/19/a-tale-of-two-professors/
Posted by Steven Plaut

Academic freedom continues to be destroyed by the tenured Left. Academic freedom today increasingly means that faculty members have the right to agree with radical leftists and Marxists but not the right to disagree with them. And criticism of radical leftist academics is never permitted. It is considered “McCarthyism.” The absurdities surrounding the leftist take on academic freedom have never been so glaring as in a pair of events, involving two very different professors in Israel, both allegedly involved in “sexual insensitivity.”

Ben Gurion University in Israel has long been something of a public laughingstock. Outside its science and engineering departments, it is largely a parody of a real university. It hires and promotes large number of anti-Israel faculty extremists, in many cases people whose academic records consist of nothing more than churning out anti-Israel hate propaganda. The political science department there is without a doubt Israel’s worst; it does not contain a single non-leftist and it fired the one non-leftist who had worked there on grounds of incorrect thinking. It and other departments in the humanities and social sciences at Ben Gurion University see their mission as indoctrinating students into Marxism and far-leftist hatred of Zionism. Ben Gurion University hosts Neve Gordon, the Israeli equivalent of Norman Finkelstein, best known for his campaign for a world boycott against Israel. Gordon has built an academic career upon denouncing Israel as a fascist, apartheid regime, engaged in state terror, a country whose existence Gordon wants ended. Gordon recently hosted a convicted Palestinian terrorist in his own home for several months, to serve as a moral role model for Gordon’s own children.

The tenured extremism at Ben Gurion University has long been defended by the university officials on grounds of “academic freedom.” But that just made the recent firing of professor Yeruham Leavitt all the more outrageous. Leavitt is actually a retired professor who was retained by Ben Gurion University to teach an ethics course to students in the Clinical Pharmaceutical Department. Alas, Leavitt, was guilty of political incorrectness, and was fired for that. The very same President of the University, Rivka Carmi, who defends having dozens of radical tenured traitors on her academic staff, defended the decision to fire Leavitt because he had made “offensive” and “insensitive” statements.

Just what was Leavitt’s horrific crime? In the ethics class the subject of children being raised by homosexual couples came up. Leavitt expressed skepticism as to whether such arrangements are healthy for the children. He also claimed in class that homosexuals who wish to do so can suppress or ignore their sexual urges, much like he himself does when he sees a pretty young coed. The university reacted in a statement,

“The lecturer made a categorical comment on the homosexuality phenomenon. During his hearing, (Leavitt) did not apologize for his offensive comments and even repeated them. Ben-Gurion University sanctifies freedom of thought and expression, but the lecturer blatantly crossed the line.”

Leavitt actually favors airing different views in the classroom. He was quoted in the local press as insisting he is in favor of pluralism and equality. “In my many lectures on medical bioethics I have always tried to instill pluralistic culture while stressing multiple opinions and making them heard in a respectable fashion,” he said. The President of Ben Gurion University issued a public letter in which she defended the firing of Leavitt, making it clear that politically incorrect comments will not be tolerated in Ben Gurion University, but treasonous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic pronouncements are protected speech and students will be tested on them. Even the far-leftist Israel Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which ordinarily does not favor freedom of speech for non-leftists, attacked the University for firing Leavitt.

Leavitt was quoted in the press as saying, “My embarrassing dismissal from Ben-Gurion University constitutes a severe violation of basic rights, including the right to dignity, academic freedom and freedom of expression.”

Now one can agree or disagree with Leavitt’s comments. Sexual psychologists seem to be divided over the matters he discussed. Even if one believes he is wrong, since when is being wrong a basis for firing faculty members? If it were, most of Ben Gurion University would be a ghost town. It should also be borne in mind that he was teaching an ethics course, where ethical debate and controversy are the focus of the class.

Ben Gurion University’s anti-democratic officials claimed that a student in Leavitt’s class had felt offended by what he said about homosexuals. But Ben Gurion University has always refused to take action against any of its many far-leftist faculty members who routinely denounce Israeli soldiers as Nazis, who endorse terrorist attacks against Jews, who call for the extermination of Israel, and who dismiss Jews as moral inferiors. They do so even when many of the students in class are themselves reserves students, and some are people who have lost fathers and brothers in Middle East wars. No one has ever thought that offending the feelings of these people should serve as grounds for dismissal of the tenured extremists.

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For the second of our Tales, let us introduce Eyal Ben-Ari. He is a far-leftist full professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a department famous for employing far-leftist and Marxist anti-Israel radicals. He claims to know something about the sociology of the military. He is an anti-Zionist extremist with a track record of turning out anti-Israel propaganda, such as claims that Israel is an ultra-militarist society. Much of his propaganda is misrepresented as scholarly research. Ben-Ari has also served as a consultant to the Israeli army over the role of women in the military.