Academic politics
Guest post by Judeosphere
Professor Joel Kovel—an outspoken critic of Israel and author of the book Overcoming Zionism—has been dismissed from his position as the Alger Hiss Chair in Social Studies at Bard College in New York state.
Kovel had taught at Bard since 1988. He did not hold tenure, but the Bard administration sent him a letter two weeks ago informing him that they would not renew his contract.
Predictably, Kovel released an OLO (Open letter of Outrage), which states: “This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism.”
However, an article in Inside Higher Education reports:
Others suggest, however, that Kovel was treated the way many non-tenured professors are being treated these days as colleges retrench — and that mixed student reviews of his organizational skills in the classroom may have hurt him more than his politics.
While Bard officials did not respond to inquiries, President Botstein did send Kovel a letter that included in it permission to release it, which Kovel did at this reporter’s request. In the letter Botstein notes that Bard is eliminating a number of part-time positions to try to preserve full-time professorships, and that — had finances remained “flush” — Kovel’s contract probably would have been renewed.
“To take what is self-evidently a result of economic constraint and turn it into a trumped-up case of prejudice and political victimization insults not only your intelligence but the intelligence of your readers,” Botstein writes. He goes on to thank Kovel for teaching at Bard and to say that he was never offended by having someone with his views on the faculty. “I am delighted that you hold views that many consider wrong or dangerous. You are not as controversial as you would like to believe.”
Still, Kovel claims to have ample evidence that he is a victim of a Zionist plot to silence him, noting that:
In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up on campus.
Well, if that isn’t proof of conspiracy, I don’t know what is. But wait, there’s more!
The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus’ Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal-Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East.
Ah, the insidious Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East… You can read here a New York Times profile of the organization and its founder, a Roman Catholic nun:
In the rancorous and relentless debate on the Middle East conflict, Sister Ruth stands as a sui generis player. She has little contact with Jewish advocacy groups, none with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby. She disassociates herself from Christian Zionists of the theological and political right. Even while defending Israel’s defensive measures, including the separation barrier, she openly criticizes its occupation of the West Bank and laments Palestinian suffering.
Lastly, Kovel offers this parting shot:
If the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza.
That statement might have had more impact, were it not for the fact that Bard just announced this week a series of joint programs with Al Quds University. As The Times reports: “Bard anticipates complaints from some American Jews unhappy because Al Quds is a Palestinian institution partly in Jerusalem — which many Jews consider the indivisible capital of Israel — and because Al Quds is no stranger to radical Palestinian politics.”
Indeed, an article in The New York Jewish Week reports:
Some alumni have objected to the venture. Objections have also come from figures outside the Bard community, including Daniel Pipes, the right-of-center scholar who directs the Middle East Forum.
“Al-Quds is a problematic university,” Pipes said, referring to allegations that the school has hosted student branches of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and that campus activities have honored terrorists. “It’s worrisome that there’s this enthusiastic white-washing of Al-Quds.”
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, pointed out that much of the university’s official Web site was devoted to denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem — something he called a lie and a disgrace.
“I expect any university to tell the historic truth about any issue they deal with,” Klein said. “No university should be a propaganda mill to promote a political agenda.”
But the article also notes:
Although Botstein and others at Bard described the venture as non-political, they suggested that improving education among the Palestinians — and exposing them to the values of American academia — would contribute to a future democratic state….“If you can’t engage on an equal basis in education and culture, where is the hope?” Botstein asked after spelling out his own, “impeccable” Zionist credentials. “Where is the future outside of war and violence? That would be my question.”
And The Times adds:
Al Quds expects some Palestinians to resent the endeavor as vaguely colonialist. And the collaboration by two such disparate institutions is bound to be complicated. “In Palestinian schools, students are taught the so-called right answer to every question,” Mukhles Sowwan, who runs the Nanotechnology Research Laboratory at Al Quds University, said. “But real education is more about questions than answers. We need to teach our students how to think creatively and critically, and I hope Bard will help us with that.”
I find it comforting to know that there are academics on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide whose definition of “critical engagement” is quite different from the likes Joel Kovel.
Comments
| 21 February 2009, 8:57 pm |
the last paragraph of the higher education piece is the best part.
they have a program for cooperation with palestinian institutions at bard. prof. kovel, the “pro-palestinian” didn’t bother to even inquire about it.
| 21 February 2009, 9:52 pm |
What, an anti-Zionist academic with delusions of adequacy? Whodathunk?
| 21 February 2009, 10:03 pm |
I imagine that the crowd here would be especially jubilant by who replaced Kovel in the Alger Hiss chair. It was Jonathan Brent, an anti-Communist scholar in the Harvey Klehr mold who has argued for years that Communists in the U.S. were part of an espionage network. Putting somebody like that in the Hiss chair is like a Republican president putting a coal company executive in charge of the EPA. I should also state that for people who are so upset about Chavez and term limits, you might wonder how in the world Botstein set himself up as president-for-life. One student on the Joel Kovel/Bard College facebook sized him up pretty good:
The issue at hand is neither politics nor religion.
Censorship and Discrimination are intolerable in any institution. Their occurrence is even more disgraceful at a school renowned as a haven for liberal thought and intellectual dissent.
However, Professor Kovel’s experiences do not exist in a vacuum. There is a clear history of bias against faculty and students who disagree openly with President Botstein.
The man is an ivy tower despot, more intent on furthering his personal & political agenda and pet projects than the welfare of Bard College, its students, or its faculty.
Further, he is willing to use his unadulterated power as President to malign names and destroy careers of anyone out of step with his “Vision”.
Also, large & small media accept “Letters to the Editor” and Opinion Articles.
The press is often the best way to get questions answered.
Cool.
thanks for this groupl
Mary Reilly
| 21 February 2009, 10:49 pm |
Frankly he should have blamed “The Jews” for secret and inscrutable backroom double dealings, probably using their control of all media and banking to ‘convince’ the Bard board to fire his truth seeking ass.
Smart money says Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com already writing another poison pen screed about this topic for release next week.
| 21 February 2009, 11:50 pm |
I think that my local boys’ school should look to the example of the Alger Hiss Chair and endow a prize in honour of a recently deceased famous old boy. Yes, I think the Alan Nunn-May Prize for Loyalty has a certain ring to it. It could go with the Enoch Powell Prize for Racial Tolerance, the Kenneth Tynan Prize for Clean Living and the JRR Tolkein Prize for Prose…
| 22 February 2009, 3:22 am |
What with Bundist still living in the 1880’s; now we have kmag living in the 1950’s – “What d’you mean HUAC doesn’t exist anymore? But……..but. I need to tell someone about my neighbours; Hallo…….Hallo?”.
| 22 February 2009, 3:44 am |
And Ignorance is Ignorance continues to live with his head up his butt hole. What kind of idiot still believes that Hiss was a victim and that Stalin wasn’t a murderer of tens of millions? Oh, yeah…you.
| 22 February 2009, 6:54 am |
Check out this article by Ron Radosh on this case.
http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/02/19/the-dismissal-of-joel-kovel-sanity-in-academia/
| 22 February 2009, 7:09 am |
Check out facts on Hiss Case before judging.
| 22 February 2009, 7:09 am |
Was Hiss really guilty? Check this out.
| 22 February 2009, 7:58 am |
Check out facts on Hiss Case before judging.
The problem with communist traitors of that era is there are too many cases where innocence was claimed but later evidence showed guilt. Kim Philby was cleared by a statement in the House of Commons by Harold Macmillan. The Rosenbergs didn’t deserve the death penalty, but were clearly guilty, as were the Greenglasses. The best you can say of them was that they were committed to passing major secrets to the Russians, but were prevented by being a shit at it.
Fuchs, Nunn-May? All clearly guilty.
McCarthy ran around shouting that the US government was penetrated by communists, presented little evidence, and blighted innocent lives. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any communist spies.
Hiss was probably ALES. What should have happened in the 1950s was that Philby, Hiss and others who ended up being accused of crimes should simply have had their clearances yanked. No need for trials and accusations: today you have to demonstrate your right to hold high clearances, so mere dubious behaviour is enough. If you want to maintain your access to TOP SECRET compartmentalised information, best not have an affair with a fellow traveller. But clearances were assumed to be for the little people, there was no serious vetting scheme, and people who were clearly bad risks were allowed to retain access.
| 22 February 2009, 8:12 am |
I had a look at the suggested link. Here is an excerpt about Kovel :
“As for Kovel’s record at Bard, I have learned from sources that among other things, he used only his own books in the courses he taught. And as for his scholarly record, his publications include books like Red Hunting in the Promised Land:Anticommunism and the Making of America, which was published by Basic Books in 1994. I have read that book by Kovel, and on the basis of his analysis and argument, I would have hesitated in appointing anyone who wrote such drivel to teach in the humanities, when his own field is that of psychology, and who had previously been a Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College. In this volume, he uses his psychological credentials to essentially argue that those who oppose communism in the United States- the anti-Communists- were essentially mentally ill.
Kovel treats Senator Hubert Humprey, one of the most ardent of the old Cold War liberals and Vice-President during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, and the Democratic Party’s candidate for President in 1968, as one whose anti-communism was “a ritual of male bonding within which the signifier ‘father’ links Hubert Humphrey…Lyndon Johnson and the whole ethos of America as a land where ‘real men stand tall’ and stand together.” Worse even was J. Edgar Hoover, whom Kovel argues was a sexual pervert whose anticommunism “might be interchangeably a womb or anus.”
Going back to our country’s very origins, Kovel wrote that the colonial era Puritans were also anticommunists, who opposed the American Indians who, of course, “were the first communists in America,” and who then became an “object of the first ‘red scare.’” Any good historian knows that the first thing one should never do in writing history is to transpose events of the present into the years of the past, which the profession terms “presentism.” Americans, Kovel continued, are all red-hunters since “the hunt retains a near-sacred character for Americans, as the politics of the National Rifle Association attest.”
Kovel’s book, in fact, make me wonder how someone whose scholarship is so shoddy ever got appointed in the first place.”
| 22 February 2009, 12:02 pm |
Kmag,
Stalin murdered millions from the very moment to the very end of his regime.
The Hiss case has a history that leaves the judgment equivocal.
Not that difficult.
| 22 February 2009, 12:10 pm |
I see kmag is still living the cold war.
No wonder his or her politics are so absurd, their tone, the tone that of the gutter and their judgments on everything pure exercises in the absence of thought. The word “bile” springs to mind. In fact, he contains all the ingredients that his hero McCarthy contained and which were articulated through HUAC. Maybe he’s an antisemite too!
What was that old Ponytails song from the latter part of that era, oh yes, “Born to Late”.
| 22 February 2009, 12:31 pm |
the American Indians who, of course, “were the first communists in America,”
I wouldn’t allow this ignorant jerk to teach primary school history.
| 22 February 2009, 1:02 pm |
In fact, he contains all the ingredients that his hero McCarthy contained and which were articulated through HUAC.
In order for McCarthy to have articulated his views through HUAC, it would have been necessary for McCarthy to have been been a member of HUAC. McCarthy was a senator, which would make involvement in a House committee a little tricky. Hiss was investigated by HUAC (in fact HCUA, but that’s not as easy to say); McCarthy was never a member.
| 22 February 2009, 1:19 pm |
Good for Bard I say. I don’t think the economic cuts excuse is the reason for his termination. Academic hiring and firing is always political especially in the arts/humanities. Thank god the for once we here can agree with the choice of who to fire!
We cannot allow our universities to foster minority opinions. Students are at a young and impressionable stage of life. Liberals like to think that the university is somewhere young people can engage in debate and discussion (like the moonbat from Al Quds quoted in the post, whining about universities being for ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ thinking). Intellectuals are dangerous – all of history proves it – and unchecked ‘research’ leads to communism, islamism and stem-cell research. Students do not have the maturity to question their professors (and in any case, they should not have to question them, should be able to accept everything they say. This is why the universities should be brought under constitutional control so we an ensure that academic staff teach only the mainstream accepted opinions of everyday Americans – and this can be overseen by the government and the church.
I think this is a good sign. Today Bard, tomorrow MIT and CalTech!
| 22 February 2009, 2:11 pm |
xwyz
My, what a little formalist you are.
1. “that his hero McCarthy contained and which were articulated through HUAC.”
Did I say he was a member? Please read more carefully. I’ll try and keep it simple for you,
2. The frenzy whipped up by the Red Scare – a bit like the Green (Muslim) Scare of today – created the environment in which HCUA could operate. McCarthy was instrumental in creating that atmosphere. HCUA “articulated” those values (get it now?).
Apologies if I leave the methodology of positivism behind. But, do try to keep up.
| 22 February 2009, 2:36 pm |
Stalin murdered millions from the very moment to the very end of his regime.
And it was tools like you who helped him murder millions of people from the very moment to the very end of his regime. You must be so proud!
The Hiss case has a history that leaves the judgment equivocal.
Not that difficult.The Hiss case has a history that leaves the judgment equivocal. Not that difficult.
Ignorance: Equivocal only in the heads of leftist tools like you.
If being anti-communist and pro-Israel makes me absurd, so be it. At least, I’m not off my rocker claiming Hiss’s guilt was “equivocal.” And as to bile, you are the one who throws the same old slurs towards anyone who doesn’t tow your party line. How boring you are! You are incapable of posting a comment without insulting someone here. You’re a troll.
| 22 February 2009, 2:59 pm |
kmag
1. Could you please point to anything I have said that is anti-Israel? I support 100% Israel’s right to exist as with any other nation-state, no more nor less. Is that clear?
2. Could you please to point to anything that makes you think that I support either Stalinism or the Soviet Union in general? I oppose totalitarianism in any form, uncluding that of Maoism, Stalinism, etc.
3.As to Hiss and equivocality, please take a look at the literature concerning the debate around his guilt or innocence.
I do apologise if you find my views difficult to conceptualise; but I think you will find the problem is your strict adherence to a Manicheanism that is the very hallmark of Stalinism. Ironic, isn’t it?
| 22 February 2009, 3:01 pm |
“And it was tools like you who helped him murder millions of people from the very moment to the very end of his regime. You must be so proud!”
“You are incapable of posting a comment without insulting someone here”
A little self-reflection is needed I think, don’t you?
| 22 February 2009, 3:03 pm |
And, finally, I am, and have never been, a member of a “party”.
Confusing isn’t it?
| 22 February 2009, 3:15 pm |
I support 100% Israel’s right to exist
Do you support its right to defend itself?
Ah, I didn’t think so.
| 22 February 2009, 3:28 pm |
I support 100% Israel’s right to defend itself.
| 22 February 2009, 3:35 pm |
Could you please point to anything I have said that is anti-Israel?
Sure. After you point to anything that justifies you calling me an antisemite and that McCarthy is a hero of mine. And don’t try to parse it and say you never called me an anti-semite. Everyone is tired of your childish word games.
I support 100% Israel’s right to exist as with any other nation-state, no more nor less. Is that clear?
Someone else aptly described you as an “apologist for islamism.” Apologists for islamism do not support Israel. They may lie and say the do, but they don’t. You don’t. Is that clear to you?
Could you please to point to anything that makes you think that I support either Stalinism or the Soviet Union in general? I oppose totalitarianism in any form, uncluding that of Maoism, Stalinism, etc.
Already been addressed.
As to Hiss and equivocality, please take a look at the literature concerning the debate around his guilt or innocence.
I’ve read it. I would suggest you read it and skip the revisionist versions. However, because of your lack of critical thinking skills, yours is a hopeless case.
I do apologise if you find my views difficult to conceptualise; but I think you will find the problem is your strict adherence to a Manicheanism that is the very hallmark of Stalinism. Ironic, isn’t it?
There is nothing difficult or even interesting about your views. They are merely the same old leftist crap. The fact that you deny Hiss’ guilt is the very hallmark of a Stalinist tool. Your strict adherence to the party line prevents you from seeing the truth 20 years plus after the fall of communism. Sucks to be you.
A little self-reflection is needed I think, don’t you?
You expect to be able to insult people with impunity and then whine when you get it back. Self reflection is exactly what you need, though you’re incapable of it.
| 22 February 2009, 3:39 pm |
To continue the confusion………
I believe that Hamas is an antisemitic organisation. I believe it is supported by two of the most oppressive regimes in the Middle East. I believe the continual bombardment of Southern Israel gives Israel a legitimate right to defend itself. I do not believe Israel is carrying out genocidal policies. I do not believe that that Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto. I believe that much debate around Israel is fused by antisemitic rhetoric and many views expressed in the name of an independent Palestinian state (which I believe should exist alongside Israel) is antisemitic. I think Seven Jewish Children is a good example of this.
| 22 February 2009, 3:47 pm |
And I think kamg is barmy – seriously barmy.
| 22 February 2009, 3:49 pm |
And Ignorance is ignorant. No surprise there.
| 22 February 2009, 3:55 pm |
Kmag,
Repitition. Now, can you speak for a minute on…………..
| 22 February 2009, 4:00 pm |
I assume that your condition will lead you to insist you have the last word!
I find it so amusing that you think I am a liar, ignorant, etc. and yet you cannot resist responding to everything I say…………..I think that you actually think that I take you in anyway serious.
Why not go out for a drink with Nearly Oxfordian, I am sure a grown up will go to the bar and buy you some pop.
Go on, you can’t resist it, have the last word; I really don’t mind.
| 22 February 2009, 4:21 pm |
Kovel should have never been hired in the first place. He was a mediocre
hack given a cushy job by the old Bolshevik network. He was a joke as a scholar and people who quote his LSD writings are usually rabid antisemites.
I am waiting for Mark “Lenin’s Tomb” Elf to write a Joooooish conspiracy post. Elf’s next intelligent comment will be his first. Has anyone seen a picture of the real Elf next to the corpse of Lenin? Has anyone checked
the license of the mortician who let Elf get out of the coffin?
| 22 February 2009, 4:36 pm |
Ignorance is Ignorance:
It’s spelled repetition, Ignoramus. I, not you, will determine whether I post or not. Your childish games are unbelievable. In fact, it is you who lacks all self control and who can only post insults. Everything else you post is pure dribble. You’re a bore.
| 22 February 2009, 5:13 pm |
Ok kmag, let’s talk substance. I will not insult you, and I would like a serious answer to my questions.
As I will indicate, the reality is you have not answered one single one of my comments.
When I explained why I opposed the beheading of apostates as an act of wanton murder – you called me a liar and cited the comment that I am an “apologist for Islamicists”.
When I told you I oppose Stalinism and mass murder, you called me a liar;
When I say Israel has a right to exist you call me a liar.
In each case, you are claiming that what I say is not what I mean; that I am lying. Yet, you produce nothing I have written to support that claim.
Would it not be to both our benefits if you accept in bona fide what I say, and to have a proper and possibly interesting discussion on the points raised.
These are serious questions. I would like to a serious response.
Like me, I assume you have gained absolutely nothing in our posts to each other. Is that not a complete and utter waste of time?
Of course, you could respond with more of the same; but what would be the point of that?
| 22 February 2009, 5:15 pm |
Is anyone here aware of how many academics in the US do not receive tenure?
I believe it is quite a considerable percentage despite the fact that Kovel and Finkelstein imply it is an extremely rare phenomenon?
| 22 February 2009, 6:44 pm |
It really depends on the college or university as to how many receive tenure. At the top private and public universities it is not very easy to get tenure. I interviewed once for a job at Stanford (which I did not get) and I asked about the tenure rate. It was lower than 50% of all tenure eligible faculty who were considered for tenure. At Harvard, no one is actually hired on a tenure-track line – one is hired as an assistant professor and can be promoted to associate professor without tenure. One needs to apply for tenure, and there has to be a tenured position available at the right time. At less selective institutions, it is easier, but it is certainly not a sure thing, and people are denied tenure every year. Kovel himself was not in a tenure-eligible position – he was on a term contract, which a college or university can generally decide not to renew on any basis whatsoever, regardless of what the American Association of University Professors argues should be the policy. Professors at private colleges and universities in the U.S. generally cannot unionize, but they can at public universities – which should theoretically mean they have greater protections. Kovel teaches at Bard, which is a private college. Botstein, therefore, would have the power not to renew Kovel’s contract for any reason he wishes.
| 22 February 2009, 6:51 pm |
An update in response to some of these comments:
(1) Yes, the anti-Zionist bloggers are all over this story. Philip Weiss has already published this commentary: “Drearily familiar litany. This is how the blacklist works: hardly anyone with heterodox views on this issue is supported. We are, by and large, marginalized and given the heretic treatment.”
Also, Noam Chomsky is coming to Kovel’s defense, saying: “Yes, I’ve been following it, and have been in touch with him about how to proceed. I’ll be down there in a few weeks for a talk, which should provide an opportunity.
I don’t doubt personally that the firing was political, but demonstrating it is not so easy. There’s no paper trail, and a lot is secret, as is usual in these cases.”
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=55757456435&topic=7191
(2) As a rule, I think it’s important to examine the facts regarding these tenure disputes on a case-by-case basis. For instance, both Norm Geras and Jeff Weintraub–neither of whom has a high opinion of Norm Finkelstein—nonetheless found the official rationale for his dismissal to be dubious.
On the other hand, Yale’s decision not to hire Juan Cole prompted the usual deluge of anti-Zionist and anti-semitic commentary, despite the fact that, in the view of the Yale administration, Cole did not have academic credentials that made him suited to teaching issues regarding the contemporary Middle East: http://judeosphere.blogspot.com/2006/06/isryale_18.html
As for Kovel, I personally find his “evidence” that his dismissal was politically-motivated to be rather thin–not least because the supposedly “Zionist-controlled” Bard administration established a partnership with Al Quds university, knowing full well that this initiative would provoke an outcry among right-leaning Jewish groups and alumni.
| 22 February 2009, 6:55 pm |
Thanks for this Rebecca. I appreciate the information.
| 22 February 2009, 6:56 pm |
btw Stanford’s loss!!
| 22 February 2009, 7:34 pm |
The Swedish-Russian antisemite Adam Ermash, formerly Jöran Jermas who pretends to be an Israeli named Israel Shamir is publishing during the last few days even two texts of sympathy with Joel Kowel on his website
Tell me who are your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.
| 22 February 2009, 7:35 pm |
Why not go out for a drink with Nearly Oxfordian, I am sure a grown up will go to the bar and buy you some pop.
I asked you a question. You replied. Then you replied in detail. I was prepared to take your word for it, and take you seriously.
Sorry. My mistake. You are a silly prat.
| 22 February 2009, 8:12 pm |
Nearly Oxfordian,
Apologies.
| 22 February 2009, 8:31 pm |
Rebecca, yours is the most sensible post I’ve seen today. It also seems that Kovel’s service may not have been up to the mark; a dangerous thing to neglect when the college is cutting back.
| 22 February 2009, 9:20 pm |
Botstein, therefore, would have the power not to renew Kovel’s contract for any reason he wishes.
—
Don’t forget that Botstein’s autocratic style is second only to Bob Kerrey’s, the war criminal running the New School who was just the kind of politician that Harry’s Place has wet dreams over.
| 22 February 2009, 10:03 pm |
Penny, you do realise that HP is not a person, or even a party?
What, you mean you didn’t?
Oh, wtf, I may as well come clean: it was all done by me, acting on Mossad orders as part of its dirty tricks op against anyone who says anything against Israel. Ve zimply von’t allow such zings to happen.
| 22 February 2009, 10:04 pm |
Right you are, Iib – appreciated!
| 22 February 2009, 10:37 pm |
Penny, you do realise that HP is not a person, or even a party?
—
Oh, you know what I mean. Henry Jackson-worshipping, New Labour, oleaginous investment banker warmongers. That sort of thing.
| 22 February 2009, 10:38 pm |
Oh James, Oh James… your irony is so sublime, so pointed; your sensibilities and moral leanings so exquisite, shivers are running up my thighs.
As a Bard alum, I can assure you that at least since its formal connections with the Episcopal (i.e., Anglican) church were vastly attenuated in the 1930s, following a temporary merger with Columbia University, the prevailing ideology at my alma mater was a damned sight closer to Prof. Kovel’s than to the “mainstream accepted opinions of everyday Americans”, of which James would not seem to hold in such high regard. Although even by Bard’s standards, Prof. Kovel was in the end, a little Too Friggin’ Much.
As for the painfully righteous –if too cutely named– Penny Pemberton, the “autocratic styles” of Presidents Botstein and the New School’s Bob Kerrey are limited to what the Boards of Trustees of both those private sector institutions find acceptable, at whose pleasure alone they continue to serve. Oh, and a good thing Ms. Penny that you probably never got within light-years of the Viet Nam war, lest we should discover whether you too might turn out to be a “war criminal”.
| 23 February 2009, 12:16 am |
As for the painfully righteous –if too cutely named– Penny Pemberton, the “autocratic styles” of Presidents Botstein and the New School’s Bob Kerrey are limited to what the Boards of Trustees of both those private sector institutions find acceptable, at whose pleasure alone they continue to serve.
—
You mean the doormat that Botstein wipes his feet on? That board of trustees?
| 23 February 2009, 1:52 am |
Perhaps I’d suggest that Ms. Penny personally exhort the feet-wipe Bard trustees that they stand up now like they gotta pair (as gender appropriate), hehh? Easily done, simply call up Bard website…
Omigod! I just did that and all of them have Zionist names. Well maybe not quite all, but more than half for sure. That explains the search committee’s instructions to launch a pogrom on poor Prof. Kovel!
| 23 February 2009, 5:31 am |
I knew Kovel way back and he was full of shit then and he is full of shit now.
he is mediocre at best and is very lucky to have had a teaching job for as long as he did.
Like all mediocre Profs who spend more time trying to indoctrinate students than teach them anything substantial he blames others for is own failings.
The fault is not in the Zinosts, brother Joel it is in you.
PS: he held the Alger Hiss chair, which is appropriate. Hiss was a traitor who spied for Stalin and Joel is still a Stalinist.
| 24 February 2009, 11:16 pm |
“Bob Kerrey’s, the war criminal running the New School”
What would we do w/out people like Penny Pennyworth, who so effortlessly (one certainly gets the impression) show us the moral heights? I guess since he supported the war in Iraq, Vaclav Havel is a war criminal too. Or perhaps just a “war criminal.”
[Hoover's anticommunism] “might be interchangeably a womb or anus.” Or a dustbrush, or a soft-drink vending machine. Let a hundred flowers bloom! Some sentences are simply self-indicting, and the fact that that guy could write that and be taken seriously in the humanities at major universities in my country – well, to me it speaks for itself. The question is whether academics are listening, or even know how to.
21 years without tenure?? That should have told him something.
And what’s with the Alger Hiss Chair? For academics convicted of perjury who spied against their country on behalf of a murderous totalitarian regime?