February 15, 2005

How Anti-Semitism Spreads into Public Schools

What if the public education bureaucracy of a large city launched a program designed to provide public school teachers with additional knowledge in crucial fields of study? What if it turned to nationally recognized professors from prestigious institutions to teach the teachers? You'd probably think this was a good deal, something helpful to both teachers and students.

What if you then learned that the one of the professors who had been chosen to lead these continuing education classes espoused a racist ideology, or had made public statements denigrating blacks and women? There would doubtless be a huge public outcry against the professor in question and against those responsible for choosing him.

As you might guess, something akin to this has occurred. Today's New York Sun reports that the New York public school system has tapped none other than Rashid Khalidi, director of the embattled Middle East Institute at Columbia University and the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies.

The Sun wrote about Columbia's ongoing troubles with its radicalized Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Program just last Friday, and I commented on it then. Khalidi, whose appointment is in the history department, has been appointed to a panel to investigate charges of anti-Semitism in Middle East studies, a case of the fox guarding the henhouse if ever their was one.

Today's Sun puts it this way:

A Columbia University professor who has called Israel a "racist" state with an "apartheid system," and who has supported attacks by Palestinian-Arabs on Israelis, is scheduled to lecture a group of New York City public school teachers on how to teach Mideast politics to schoolchildren.

Martin Kramer has documented that Khalidi is a foe of the "two-state solution," which would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Indeed, he has called it "utopian."

Here's how the Columbia Spectator described the discussion of a panel at Columbia on which Khalidi was joined by the notorious Joseph Massad of Columbia, another figure at the center of the storm surrounding Columbia's anti-Semitic professors:

Khalidi called the current status quo “the one state solution that dare not speak its name.” He sees Israel as ruling a “state that exists today at the expense of the Palestinians. ” He called the situation “inherently unstable ... [because] it fails to meet the most important requirement: of justice.”

And:

“Israel’s racist character [is] dubbed its Jewish character,” Massad said. According to Massad, Israel refuses to recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return because “they are not Jews.”

“It is a commitment to Israeli Jewish racism that [labelled {sic} the right of return] a demographic threat,” Massad said.

And:

“Let us imagine a world in which a majority ... is no longer committed to Israeli racism,” Massad said.

“A two state solution is up against powerful structures and political realities,” Khalidi said.

So, how does Johnny learn that Israel is a racist state, or that violence against Jews is fine and dandy? The ongoing lecture series described in the Sun gives just a taste of how such hate-filled ideology finds its way into public schools. Remember that many of the teachers hearing the likes of Khalidi lecture most likely know very little about the Middle East, and Khalidi, as the holder of an endowed chair at Columbia, brings great prestige to the program. Filled with such bile, at least some of the teachers are certain to return to their classrooms, where they will, knowingly or unknowingly, become propaganda tools for Islamic militancy.

All this, and I don't even have time to delve into the curricula at colleges of education, where the foundation for even more damage is laid.

— Winfield Myers

| Feb. 15, 2005 | 10:44 AM