[Marxism] Joseph Massad

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, April 8, 2005
At the Center of an Academic Storm, a Lesson in Calm
By ROBIN FINN

IF intimidation, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Joseph A.
Massad, the Columbia University professor implicated last week by a faculty
panel investigating charges of intimidation of students by pro-Palestinian
professors, is apparently on his best behavior as he sits on his spotless
microsuede sofa a stone's throw from the campus where his classroom conduct
has been denounced as "inappropriate." And where he has received hate
e-mail, including this advice from a fellow faculty member: "Go back to
Arab land where Jew hating is condoned. You are a disgrace and a pathetic
typical Arab liar."

Not a nice thing to say to a Christian fellow who began holding Seders as
an undergraduate in Albuquerque (he had a Jewish roommate).

Who's intimidating whom here? Or, to borrow the title of an article
Professor Massad wrote for Al-Ahram Weekly as the campus brouhaha reached a
boiling point, spurred by "Columbia Unbecoming," a film produced in Boston
by the pro-Israel David Project: "Semites and Anti-Semites, That Is the
Question." Sort of.

According to Professor Massad, any self-respecting scholar of Middle East
studies knows that "Israel is the party most responsible for the oppression
of the Palestinian people." He has issues with the Palestinian national
movement, too.

He seems, if anything, ingratiating, not intimidating. The perfect host,
perfectly attired, right down to the opalescent links binding his French
cuffs. The reading material on his coffee table is decorative propaganda,
apolitical: "The World Atlas of Wine"; a pictorial of a favored
destination, Amberley Castle in Sussex, England; and a catalog in which he
excitedly points out the brass chandelier, a handmade reproduction of
18th-century Islamic/Egyptian design, he recently purchased in Cairo. What
a novelty: a politically pugnacious professor - he insists he won't stand
for anti-Semitism or anti-Palestinianism in his classroom and packs
scholarship to combat both - with a metrosexual gloss.

He maintains that he intimidated no students and is himself the target of a
witch hunt with a Zionist agenda and an aversion to scholarship. He
believes the Columbia administration "pre-judged" him and the faculty panel
bowed to "McCarthyite accusations; the witch hunters are out there, and the
committee threw them a morsel."

"I feel chilled by this," he adds. "I don't know what to do in the
classroom anymore. I can't censor myself. And I will fight back. These are,
in my opinion, forces of darkness, and I and the majority of the faculty
will not let them take over."

Along with academic freedom, he senses his tenure is in jeopardy. He counts
the David Project, the Anti-Defamation League and Campus Watch among his
ideological rivals and says his ties to his mentor, Edward W. Said, whom he
calls "the biggest academic danger to the accepted line of thought of what
Israel is about," are a factor.

"I am simply an entry point for right-wing forces that want to destroy
academic freedom," says Professor Massad, his eyes telegraphing hurt and
anger behind black-framed glasses. "My crime is not only that I'm
Palestinian. What galls them most is that I'm a pro-Jewish Palestinian
critic of Zionism."

But he intends to stay on at the alma mater that hired him in 1999 as an
assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history (this
semester he is teaching two seminars) and gain tenure in 2006-7. He is also
seeking "protection" from the administration in order to reinstate his
controversial course "Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies," the
one nicknamed "Israel Is Racist" by detractors and crashed by hecklers who,
because Professor Massad is a fan of free speech, are allowed to have their
say.

That was the 2002 class where Deena Shanker, a student he does not recall,
says he threatened her with ejection after she asked him if Israeli troops
issued warnings before bombing civilian areas, a claim the report found
credible.

"I have never asked any student to leave a class; I never lose my cool," he
says. "I make it my business not to."

He won't deny that he is a politicized person. Galvanized by Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he junked his plan to study engineering and
switched to political science at the University of New Mexico.

"That was a defining moment for me, because I sort of realized the danger
to Palestinian life," says Professor Massad, whose parents were displaced
in 1948, met in Beirut and raised him in Amman, Jordan. His father was an
administrator with the Italian Embassy and encouraged him to avoid politics
and religion. In Jordan, he attended a French-run school - he is
multilingual - and picked up Americanisms from television shows like
"Dallas," "Kojak," "Columbo" and "The Six Million Dollar Man." He is
moderately embarrassed about listing them.

HIS demibeard is neatly sculptured. His Continental accent is more soothing
than strident. His elaborate freestanding Egyptian water pipe is stoked
with apple-flavored tobacco as a weekend indulgence, accompanied by Cognac,
after dinner parties. Only legal substances are imbibed.

"I'm quite wholesome in my old age," says Professor Massad, 41, single and
suffering from a herniated disk that is, he suspects, a result of
internalizing the stress of the past few months: the intimidation ruckus
and the ensuing testimony before the panel, his father's death in Jordan in
February, assorted slurs and threats.

Professor Massad knows about classroom intimidation firsthand: he was once
kicked out of a seminar at the University of New Mexico, after angering the
professor with an observation about the Pinochet regime, and "begged" his
way back into class by agreeing not to speak unless called upon. He recalls
receiving an A-.

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