Cornell Course on Gaza Becomes Center of Controversy
“The classroom itself is shaping up as the next front in these clashes, particularly after the election.”
This is going to become an issue at other schools as well. Teaching about this subject is going to be difficult.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Cornell’s handling of a new course on Gaza could preview campus Israel battles under Trump
Three weeks after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel, a Jewish professor at Cornell University named Eric Cheyfitz offered a “teach-in” titled “Gaza, Settler Colonialism, and the Global War Against Indigenous People.”
Just before the teach-in, the school’s Jewish provost called him and asked if he wanted extra security.
Like other scholars of settler colonialism, Cheyfitz has long viewed Israel since its founding as a colonizer of indigenous Palestinian land, an argument that has gained increasing prominence in pro-Palestinian activism and that supporters of Israel reject. Now, Cheyfitz is turning that teach-in into a full-on course titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” which he’ll teach next term.
And that same provost, who has since become Cornell’s interim president, is opposed to the idea.
“I share your concerns and am extremely disappointed with the [school] curriculum committee’s decision to offer the course and the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” Michael Kotlikoff, the interim president, wrote on Thursday to another Jewish member of the faculty, Menachem Rosensaft, who had complained about Cheyfitz’s course.
The apparent shift in Kotlikoff’s thinking comes after a year in which administrators have been inundated with legal and political pressure — including calls from donors, activists, and students — to protect Jewish and Israeli students. After the Hamas attacks, the start of the Gaza war, and the intense university protests around the issue, administrators have felt pressure to be more assertive in monitoring the campus environment around Israel.
The classroom itself is shaping up as the next front in these clashes, particularly after the election. At Columbia University, prominent Palestinian-American professor Joseph Massad — who has faced scrutiny for appearing to paint Hamas in a positive light and calling images of the attack “awesome” — has also attracted criticism for a course he’s offering on the history of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Comments
I had inorganic chemistry my senior year at Cornell with a Nicaraguan girl who had a class in Nicaraguan “history” right before it. Her family had fled the Sandinistas and she was spitting nails over the bias the professor pushed in the course. I wonder if Israeli students who would take this Gaza course will have their blood pressure elevated to dangerous levels in the same way. Depends upon the student, I guess.
“scholars of settler colonialism”
I’m highly skeptical of the validity of this term. It sounds like propaganda, not scolarship.
The Zionists liberated the land from the British colonizers. If you think that’s hyperbole, read The Revolt by Menachem Begin. I’m about 2/5 of the way through. He details, among other things, British efforts to ensure that a Jewish state would never come into existence and to tolerate (and incite) Arab violence against the Jews so that Britain could retain control permanently by portraying itself as “protector” of the Jewish minority. To that end, Britain needed to ensure that the Jews remained a minority, and barred further Jewish immigration, knowing they were dooming millions to extermination in Europe.
“Cheyfitz has long viewed Israel since its founding as a colonizer of indigenous Palestinian land,”
The Jews have a 4,000-year-old temple that proves that they are MORE indigenous to that land. The Jews were forced out by the Romans and some of the local tribes, and the Palestinians colonized the land later.
The Jews returning to Israel is analogous to the Anasazi returning to the cliff dwellings of Arizona that they were forced out of.
The left wants to continue to pick at these issues. It seems to be more the adult ideologues rather than the students. I go into a CUNY campus regularly and especially after the election, students seem quite subdued and ready to focus on their classes. Not sad, not even thinking about politics at all, they have moved on. But certain administrators are pressing continued “constructive engagement” that nobody seems to want, and that would have been an excuse for leftist gaslighting if the election had gone the way they had hoped.
This is why I no longer donate, attend reunion, and will hang up on the Cornell students who call for donations. They are no longer educating the future scientists, doctors, lawyers, writers…they are forming hate groups.
The Big Red question is what to do about the Leftist takeover with tenured professors of many departments? Many are activists and not scholars. Is there a scholarly review process to throw out the worst? Or, go on a hiring spree to balance them out? Wait a generation to retire or die off?
Another idea is to set up a separate scholar center on campus.