Tense meeting confronts alleged anti-Semitism

A Wednesday meeting about maintaining peaceable discussion led to a heated argument at the Center for Tomorrow when the UB chapter of the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East gathered to discuss anti-Semitism at UB for the second time.

The meeting brought together many of the principle figures in a campus drama that stretches back to April 2004, when a lecture by Norman Finkelstein, a controversial pro-Palestinian critic of Israel, incited conflict among students, faculty and the Buffalo community. Debate has circulated from on campus to the pages of the Buffalo News, with professors labeled as anti-Semitic and accusers called oppressive.

SPME organizers said their group is a way to bridge the acrimony between the groups to foster free debate.

However, English professors James Holstun and Bruce Jackson, who brought Finkelstein to UB, said the group threatens to undermine academic freedom.

The SPME is a national pro-Israeli faculty group that seeks to promote "academic integrity and honest debate" regarding the Israel-Palestinian situation by encouraging faculty on both sides of the debate to maintain objectivity when discussing the topic in classes, according to Edward Beck, SPME president and Wednesday's lecturer.

Ernie Sternberg, a UB professor in urban and regional planning, started the UB chapter in response to what he said was a growing anti-Semitic environment on campus. Sternberg said the single event that sparked his action was an April 2004 lecture by Norman Finkelstein, a controversial pro-Palestinian critic of Israel.

"A person was brought in to speak, but all his talk was against Zionism, was hate speech," he said. "But what was really disturbing was that no one distanced themselves from it. Hate speech has to have a place on campus, but it has to be called out as such."

Sternberg said that by not distancing themselves, the sponsors of Finkelstein's lecture - Holstun and Jackson - gave tacit approval to anti-Semitic feelings.

Sternberg said the SPME would help deal with what he called general extremism.

"The meeting was intended to discuss how campuses are dealing with the rise of extremism," he said.

At the meeting, Sternberg said the Finkelstein lecture amounted to simple racism.

"It's shameful that faculty would associate themselves with a speech of ethnic slurs," he said.

During his talk, SPME president Beck said anti-Semitism is a growing problem on campuses - a problem he said is tied to growing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli sentiment among liberal faculty members. He said SPME can help "root out" anti-Semitism on campuses.

"People are afraid to discuss the intifada and support Israel," he said. "Being pro-Israel is seen as lacking on campus."

Beck said this growing sentiment makes debate, and peace, impossible. Anti-Zionist ideas are permitted to be espoused unopposed in college classrooms.

"The vilification of Jews and Israelis defeats the peace process," he said. "By finding and exposing vilification on U.S. campuses, we can achieve peace."

Beck said that the goal of SPME was to prevent hate speech, misinformation and misrepresentation of fact and to maintain objectivity in the classroom.

"We want to prevent omissions of fact that provoke anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism," he said. "We want to promote acts of moral turpitude."

Holstun, who brought Finkelstein to speak at UB, said claims of faculty anti-Semitism are exaggerated.

"There's so little anti-Semitism on campus," he said. "They are trying to create this fictional threat."

He said the idea of examining professors' classes was unfair.

"We don't need a law against this, but it just seems a bit of an intrusion," he said.

Holstun said SPME expects the impossible of nearly all professors: withholding their opinions in lecture.

"Professors espouse positions, engage in argument and debate," he said. "Anyone who teaches in the humanities has opinion."

He said professors are right to give opinion and must be open to opposition.

"A professor must never grade a student down or harass a student because they have a different opinion," he said.

Daphme Zilber, a junior economics major, attended the meeting because she said she had concerns about campus opinion towards Jews. A native of northern Israel, Zilber said she had never experienced anti-Semitism until she came to UB.

"When I came here and I was hated, I was so surprised. There is no occupation in Buffalo. I don't understand it," she said, referencing hostility she said she experienced from students.

She said she had experienced anti-Israeli sentiments in classes.

"Sometimes I am scared to say to faculty I am from Israel," she said.

She said she thought the SPME was balanced in its goals and would be a benefit on campus.

"They are very balanced. Some of the things he said I didn't like, but they are for all ranges of political view," she said.

Paul Ott, a graduate student in the English department, said the Wednesday meeting misrepresented many facts, and the group inaccurately linked pro-Palestinian points of view with anti-Semitism.

"They use tactics where they blur the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It's a front organization with a different political motive," he said.

He said accusations about Holstun's biased teaching were false as well.

"People weren't in the class," he said. "It hasn't produced a formal complaint about Jim or any other professor."