In late 2004, claims of intimidation in the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) of Columbia University hit newspapers around the world after an unreleased documentary Columbia Unbecoming, which purported to reveal incidences of intimidation and anti-Semitism in the classroom. The primary target of the organized campaign was Professor Joseph Massad. Columbia University ultimately formed an ad hoc committee to investigate, which released its report on 31 March 2005. Joseph Massad responds. Read more about EI EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Massad's response to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report
The recent controversy elicited by the propaganda film “Columbia Unbecoming,” a film funded and produced by a Boston-based pro-Israel organization, is the latest salvo in a campaign of intimidation of Jewish and non-Jewish professors who criticize Israel. Professor Joseph Massad, who has been a central target of this campaign, responds, exposing its tactics and explaining that its aim is to stifle pluralism, academic freedom, and the freedom of expression on university campuses in order to ensure that only one opinion is permitted, that of uncritical support for the State of Israel. Read more about Joseph Massad responds to the intimidation of Columbia University
One of the most important changes that the Oslo process brought about was the de facto transformation, indeed the ultimate corruption, of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, from a liberation movement representing the entire Palestinian people, into a vassal regime called the Palestinian Authority (PA), representing only one third of the Palestinian people, writes EI contributor, Joseph Massad. This has had an immensely deleterious effect on refugees and exiles, and Palestinians living inside Israel’s racial “democracy.” Read more about Reducing the Palestinians
“ ‘Joseph, are you still sleeping, it’s 8am already?’ These are the first words I would hear upon picking up the phone three, four times a week,” writes Joseph Massad. The powerful teasing voice on the other side was that of Edward Said. Massad remembers his dear friend and teacher, and contemplates how the legacy of this exemplary scholar and public intellectual can teach us how to continue our journey. Read more about Edward Said's journey to Ithaka
One of the bitter ironies of the last few years is the continuous calls issued from the United States, that school curricula across the Arab (and Muslim) worlds should be changed in order to reflect the American (and Israeli) view of the world. Yet, writes Joseph Massad, it is the school curricula and textbooks which the United States and Israel both use are in need of equally, if not more, major overhauling, to come close to objective, or at least more inclusive, representations of reality. Read more about Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel
Joseph Massad, in this contribution to EI, writes about an intense campaign by supporters of Israel against academics who criticize Israel and against academic freedom itself. While the pro-Israel lobby’s campaigns to discredit people who criticise Israel had decreased in relative terms after Oslo, they were revived after the failure of the Camp David talks and the eruption of the second Intifada. The lobby and its individual manifestations have become rabid in their campaigns of discrediting offenders to the point that they have become embarrassing to many Americans who support Israel. Read more about Policing the academy
Why have the Palestinians lost so much international support, and what can be done to regain it, asks EI contributor Joseph Massad. Read more about Post-Oslo solidarity
Until European intellectuals take on board the racist basis of the Jewish State, their support for the struggle of the Palestinians will always ring hollow, writes Joseph Massad in this contribution to EI. Read more about Sartre, European intellectuals and Zionism
