On the evening of May 15, 2011, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) emailed a letter to the Board of Trustees at City University of New York about the Wiesenfeld/Kushner/CUNY scandal. SPME is an academic group which represents 55,000 professors, researchers and students on 3,500 campuses worldwide.
Thus far, no New York mainstream media has covered this truly significant event and unprecedented act of academic courage. I checked today’s New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York Times (NYT). As we know, the NYT published more than 10 articles, blogs, and columns on the brouhaha.
With the exception of the article written by Stanley Fish, the articles essentially defended Tony Kushner as a Great Artist-victim and pilloried Jeffrey Wiesenfeld as a bully. Few articles dealt with the issues. Everyone avoided doing so by attacking Wiesenfeld personally. Wiesenfeld was depicted as a man “obsessed” with Israel who, for that reason, was no longer entitled to free speech or to academic freedom. Wiesenfeld was also demonized by the Forward and by the New York Observer.
In other words, if a Trustee of a university does not toe the political party line against Israel and in favor of “Palestine,” then he will be slimed and asked to resign.
When serious journalists and academics defend him—as Scholars for Peace in the Middle East just did and as I have done—it is as if we have not spoken. There is very little coverage, feedback, or flack. I googled the CUNY/Kushner/Wiesenthal/SPME subject and found that only pro-Israel blogs had covered it and that only one small blog took issue with SPME.
So far, two SPME Board members have heard absolutely nothing. True, it is only two days later, but still…I will continue to monitor the media coverage. If Jeffrey Wiesenfeld is allowed to twist in the wind alone merely for voicing his opinion (which is based on reality), then no lesser personage on campuses across America (a non-trustee who is not yet tenured) will dare speak out about Israel—unless they are in favor of boycotting, disarming, or abolishing the Jewish state.
This is typical behavior for left-wing politically correct thinkers. If you disagree with something, you pretend it does not exist. You do not read it, publish it, review it, or talk to the author. If something you disagree with persists or commands power of any kind, then you demonize the person as a way of avoiding the issues.
Now something also really big has just happened.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has written to the Chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY, Benno Schmidt, and to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. This Council represents approximately fifty Jewish organizations (including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, Hillel, Jewish National Fund, Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, UJA, Union of Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, ZOA, the American Sephardi Association, etc.) and is headed by some Major Jewish Players.
One wonders if their letter will be treated as if it did not arrive and does not exist. The letter urges that Trustee Wiesenfeld not be pressured to resign. I am reprinting part of it here:
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has never taken a position regarding the worthiness of any particular honorary degree recipient. We respect the process delineated in CUNY Policy 1.19, which appropriately includes a system of checks and balances that ultimately grants the CUNY Board of Trustees the final determination of honorary degrees.
We are troubled though that it appears that the explicit right and duty of a CUNY Trustee under Policy 1.19 – to express his/her views and vote his/her conscience – are now being challenged. Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld’s opinions, presented in good faith, unleashed a cacophonous barrage of calls for his resignation. Whether Trustee Wiesenfeld was right or wrong about Item 8 on the May 2, 2011 Board of Trustees’ meeting is immaterial. His fellow Trustees had the responsibility to evaluate and to accept or reject his assertions.
We believe that academic freedom cannot be exclusively limited to faculty and/or students. Indeed, that right applies to all sectors of the academy, including Trustees. We are shocked that people – including zealous advocates of academic freedom and free speech – have called for a Trustee’s removal because they disagree with his ideas and/or his desire to articulate them. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s freedom to state his views and opinions – whether one agrees with him or not – is equal to the freedom granted to faculty, students or even honorary degree nominees.
We view any effort to remove Trustee Wiesenfeld, or any Trustee, for acting in – what he considered – CUNY’s best interest is unacceptable both as university policy and as public policy.
UPDATE: The Jewish Week has just published a staff article about both the SPME and the JCRC letters. And, the influential Daily Alert, put out by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has linked to the Jewish Week article.
From Accuracy in Media‘s Don Irvine:
Former Speaker of the House and now GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich got caught in the liberal media’s desire to paint him as a racist for calling Obama the most successful food stamp president in American history.
This statement, which he first made in a speech to the Georgia Republican Party on Friday, was seized upon by the liberal media as a coded racially tinged message, since Obama is black.
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Gregory: What, what about jobs? Jobless rate now at 9 percent. You gave a speech on Friday in Georgia, and you said the following about this president:
Gingrich: You want to be a country that creates food stamps, in which case frankly Obama’s is an enormous success. The most successful food stamp president in American history. Or do you want to be a country that creates paychecks?
Gregory: First of all, you gave a speech in Georgia with language a lot of people think could be coded racially-tinged language, calling the president, the first black president, a food stamp president.
Gingrich: Oh, come on, David.
Gregory: What did you mean? What was the point?
Gingrich: That’s, that’s bizarre. That–this kind of automatic reference to racism, this is the president of the United States. The president of the United States has to be held accountable. Now, the idea that–and what I said is factually true. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is on food stamps. And to hide behind the charge of racism? I have–I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist.
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz also chimed in and accused Gingrich of taking an ugly shot at Obama with the food stamp comment. Schultz added that when Gingrich was asked about it by Meet the Press’ David Gregory, he played the victim.
And exactly how does Schultz feel about all of this supposed racism?
Schultz: The Republican Party still can’t win on issues so their only chance is to play the race card, again.
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Chris Matthews also couldn’t resist, calling Gingrich an alter cocker, saying that his ideas are “so old, so yesterday that he’s still talking like Reagan and food stamps and welfare queens.”
Matthews went on to say that we all got tired of that language in the ’70′s and ’80′s and that it had the tinge to it that we didn’t like so we dropped it.
The media have never been fond of Gingrich and he has certainly made his share of mistakes over the years. He certainly deserves to be scrutinized and criticized now that he is running for president.
But what he and other conservatives don’t deserve is for the media to twist simple statements of fact into charges of racism.
What was missing from all of these discussions was the blatant racism practiced by Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright and other liberals. But since they’re black and Gingrich is white they wouldn’t possibly be accused of playing the race card or being racist themselves.
This is just another example of the hypocrisy and double standard by the mainstream media that conservatives have unfortunately grown accustomed to.
From Accuracy in Media‘s Cliff Kincaid:
The Washington Post noted that House Speaker John Boehner’s commencement speech at the Catholic University of America (CUA) was non-political. But the Post story about the speech was entirely political. The story slammed Boehner’s conservative Catholic views by using a student at the event—one of about 30 liberal “social justice” advocates—to argue that the Republican from Ohio isn’t compassionate enough toward the poor.
Here’s how the Post story by Katherine Shaver began:
“Katy Jamison strode toward her graduation from Catholic University on Saturday wearing the requisite black robe and mortar board—plus a neon green message to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). ‘Where’s the compassion, Mr. Boehner?’ said the 8-by-10-inch sign pinned to her chest.”
Jamison, it turns out, was one of “about 30” involved in this “protest,” out of 1,500 students receiving bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral graduates. And this is what the Post decided to emphasize. It is a case study of liberal media bias through deliberate distortion. The purpose was to portray Boehner as not only heartless but out of step with the teaching of the Catholic Church. But the ploy failed, based on the paltry numbers of protesters, according to the paper’s own account.
Boehner was selected, CUA said, because he is “A strong supporter of Catholic education in the District of Columbia, particularly the inner-city Consortium of Catholic Academies, [and] he co-chairs an annual dinner to benefit the organization.”
Boehner has long been an advocate of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DC OSP) to provide poor or low-income students an opportunity to receive a scholarship to attend a D.C. private school of their parents’ choice. He invited some of the students benefiting from the program to be his guests at the State of the Union. One of the students, Lesly Alvarez, was described as an outstanding eighth-grade student who attends Sacred Heart School, a private Catholic school where 100 percent of eighth-graders graduated on-time during the past three years. “Without the OSP scholarship,” noted a report on WUSA in Washington, D.C., “Alvarez would not be able to attend the private school that charges around $8,100 per child.”
But President Obama, who sends his children to exclusive secular private schools, opposed the Boehner initiative.
Giving poor parents the ability to send their children to a private Catholic school so they can get a better education doesn’t qualify as “social justice” to the students and their faculty advisers putting on the anti-Boehner protest.
The attack was not unexpected; the Post had already run an article in advance of Boehner’s appearance noting that a group of liberal Catholic professors had taken issue with the House Speaker’s desire to cut government spending and debt. Not surprisingly, the Shaver article regurgitated what had already appeared, in order to make it appear that the protest of about 30 students was the dramatic culmination of what the professors had set in motion. In truth, the protest demonstrated that most students wanted no part of this political show.
The show was staged by a group of liberal professors, led by Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, who decided to use the university and manipulate students for the purpose of serving as cannon fodder against the Republican Party as 2012 rolls around.
The Post of course cannot be counted on to point out that Schneck is a board member of the George Soros-funded Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), a “progressive” front group that is designed to counter the conservative and pro-life tendencies that many Catholics, including John Boehner, embrace. Schneck, who does not include this outside affiliation on his official CUA bio, works closely with White House official Alexia Kelley, former executive director of CACG and a speaker at his recent conference.
The CACG has been described by some observers as inactive, but in fact it continues to organize support for “progressive” Catholic functions at places like CUA.
There was a new development, as far as the Post was concerned. “A letter signed by 83 students and sent to university president John Garvey on Thursday said Boehner was an inappropriate keynote speaker because the fiscal 2012 budget resolution that he had championed severely cut funding for food assistance, programs for low-income children and help for the homeless,” the paper said.
Out of a total enrollment of 3,470 undergraduate and 3,240 graduate students, the liberal-left could muster only 83? This was big news for the Post, desperate to make Boehner look bad.
The number of signers in fact “swelled” to 86 in the final version, which attacked Boehner for opposing illegal immigration and several federal welfare state schemes.
The Post failed to note that the campus student paper took a very different view than those 86, editorializing, “Finally, a speaker allowed to come to the University that we can be proud of.”
Less than two weeks earlier, Schneck and his allies had organized a campus forum in tribute to “social justice” featuring former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, both of them members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Sweeney accused university officials of union-busting—a charge that the university dismissed as a gross misrepresentation. Meyerson, a non-Catholic, told the forum that he was a follower of Michael Harrington, the Catholic-turned-atheist. He thought this was a good role model for students on campus to follow.
What the campus socialists tried to do under the nose of CUA President Harvey was to undermine and taint the commencement address by House Speaker Boehner and put this great Catholic University into the Obama-for-President camp. They failed, despite the Post’s feeble attempt to pump some life into this pathetic “protest.”
True to form, Boehner broke down in tears as he described to the CUA students his Catholic upbringing. For Harvey, however, it is not a time for tears but action. The politically “progressive” Obama supporters at CUA who masquerade as professors tried to ruin the university’s commencement ceremony. Harvey—and CUA alumni—may not forget that.
The size of her breasts, the shape of her backside, and of course, her name. These are some of the details Le Monde, the French “journal de référence,” and its subsidiary Le Post published about the woman who says IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn groped her genitals and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a room at the Sofitel near Times Square.
France-Soir described the cut of her hotel maid uniform and how good she looks for a woman in her thirties, while France’s RMC radio reported that Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys were surprised by how “unattractive” she is.
And a bevy of friends and supporters rallied to the defense of Strauss-Kahn, a leading figure in the French Socialist Party, hoping to discredit his accuser lest she derail their plans for him to oust Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential elections. read more…
Dear President Abbas:
You write in your New York Times op-ed column today that the Palestinians are ready for international recognition of a “long overdue Palestinian state.” You’re wrong.
You may well succeed in persuading the pro-Palestinian UN General Assembly to give you the vote of confidence you will be requesting this September, but you blew any chance to make a legitimate claim for international recognition of a Palestinian state by deciding to lie down with the Hamas terrorists. read more…
Never before have I walked into a church to be greeted by a barrier of armed police with metal detector wands. Nor have I had to let officers open my purse to search for weapons before I could enter a sanctuary—that is, until now.
That was when Geert Wilders came to speak at Cornerstone Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to warn America, to warn Christians. He came to wake up the Bible Belt to the threat of Islam. But before a single word was spoken, these ominous signs foreshadowed the truth of what was yet to come.
Glenn Beck has announced that he will be holding the “Restoring Courage” rally in Israel this August. This is a bold, accessible and positive event that the American Jewish establishment could not possibly bring about.
There has been a significant graying of the American Jewish community’s mainstream Israel advocacy organizations in the last two or three decades. In a Jewish world where “young leadership” means under 40, this has been especially alarming. Intermarriage, assimilation and indifference have taken a toll on many pro-Israel groups.
As proof of this changing reality many in the community have pointed to the creation of groups such as J Street, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and Jewish Voice for Peace to indicate where the vitality in the pro-Israel community can be found.
For the sake of this the article, let’s leave aside the very real question of whether J Street and their allies can be truly considered pro-Israel when they were created by and large with the sole purpose of lobbying for the creation of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel.
A survey of social media paints a very different picture. It is true that much of the pro-Israel establishment has failed to embrace and profit from social media. J Street and the left have fully embraced social media but in actuality they have very, very little to show for it. To be fair the Zionist right in the U.S. has fared worse, but they have not made the effort that their competitors have.
The reality is that Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded in 2006, has more backers of Israel engaged in debate concerning Israel and a future Palestinian state.
For evidence of this let’s look at the top social media sites and overall Internet traffic stats.
- 12,629 users have “Liked” J Street on Face Book while 328,539 have “Liked” CUFI on Face Book.
- Jstreetdotorg has 4,397 Followers on Twitter. CUFI has 1,422 Followers on Twitter and AIPAC 4,387 Followers on Twitter.
- Isaac Luria is the Vice President of Communications and New Media for J Street. The J Street group Luria is the owner of on LinkedIn has six members. CUFI does not have a LinkedIn group. The AIPAC group on LinkedIn has 414 members. The AFSI / Americans For A Safe Israel LinkedIn group (of which this author is the owner) has 91 members.
- Alexa.com website traffic statistics show jstreet.org‘s Alexa Traffic Rank in the U.S. as 228,817; cufi.org’s Alexa Traffic Rank in the U.S. is 66,472. It is also worth noting that israelnationalnews.com’s Alexa Traffic Rank in the U.S. is 3,864. Israel National News is also known as Arutz Sheva and is known as the Religious Zionist / pro-Israeli settlements media network.
What also has to be pointed out here is that Pastor Hagee achieved this all the while enduring years of personal attacks from both liberal Jews and liberal non-Jews while steadfastly growing support for Israel not just in Texas but nationwide. The founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Hagee started the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) organization in 2006 and wrote the book In Defense of Israel in 2007. CUFI has sponsored well over 150 “A Night to Honor Israel” events since 2006. Criticism of the pastor by Abe Foxman and the ADL have been especially shocking and over the top. Here’s Hagee, for example, at the Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend:
No one in the U.S. has impacted support for Israel in the way Pastor Hagee has in the last half decade except for perhaps…Glenn Beck.
It has also been announced that Glenn Beck will give the keynote speech at the “A Night to Honor Israel” banquet on Tuesday evening, July 19 during the Christians United for Israel’s sixth annual Washington Summit. It is well worth noting here that Abe Foxman and the ADL have criticized Beck too.
Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg wrote the following in his introduction to In Defense of Israel:
For many years, Pastor Hagee has lived and labored selflessly for the people of Israel. In 1981, when the world condemned Israel for bombing a nuclear reactor in Iraq, Pastor Hagee’s response to (critics of Israel) was to start “A Night to Honor Israel.” That night Pastor Hagee proclaimed, “Israel, you are not alone; Christians support you and America supports you. We love you, and we shall stand by you.”
When Israel critic Pat Buchanan stated on The McLaughlin Group on August 26, 1990 that “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States” it caused a sensation. By “amen corner” everyone thought Buchanan meant Jews (and he most likely did) but now two decades later the stronger amen is coming from Christians.
Abe Foxman and the ADL should take note. And all lovers of Israel everywhere should say thank you to Glenn Beck, Pastor Hagee and everyone who is a part of CUFI.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that academic freedom really did reign on America’s college campuses. I know, it’s difficult to envision, but just for the sake of argument let’s pretend it exists.
So into our little fantasy, let’s introduce a character. Let’s make him one of the most influential young conservative Christians in America, who is also a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at Yale. (Ha ha ha! A well-known conservative Christian teaching at Yale! This is one crazy fantasy!)
And let’s say that in a lecture one day, he says the following things:
Will this message fly with voters?
Democrats were understandably thrilled that it was their guy, Barack Obama, who finally nailed Osama bin Laden, who has for the past decade been as elusive as he was hated. But just how much of a political boon is the victory for the president? That’s the question asked today by the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, who sees it as a major shift away from the Democrats’ dovish image: read more…
Over at the LA Times, Andrew Malcolm asks, “Why do one-in-five American voters now believe Osama bin Laden is still alive?“
This incredulity phenomenon is a curious creation of a high-speed global media so full of unverified and unverifiable information floating about, combined with a modern cynicism about political leaders masquerading as voter wisdom.
After so many lies and misleading claims by politicians over the decades since the Kennedy assassination and its conspiracy theories (“I am not a crook” “I did not have sex with that woman”), the safest way to look wise and experienced these days is to dismiss virtually any public official’s statement as a talking point and/or lie. read more…
ACORN is far, far worse than everything you’ve heard. It celebrates and promotes the worst pathologies in society in an effort to kill the American experiment in self-governance.
And the rumors of ACORN’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The radical group declared bankruptcy at the end of 2010, but its leaders acknowledge that they are building a new network of activist groups to continue ACORN’s work undermining America’s free institutions. read more…
The mainstream media reports about the May 15 Palestinian violence which accompanied the Nabka Day protests all talked about the desire to establish a Palestinian state within the pre-June 1967 borders. Even “moderate” terrorist PA President Abbas reaffirmed that position.
“A Palestinian state is inevitable, the whole world supports the end of the occupation,” Abbas said, reaffirming the aim to establish a state on the pre-1967 borders.
Of course there are many issues with Abbas’ position, such as the Palestinians stated position that they have no intention of making a real peace but a hudna, a temporary peace that would enable them to rearm, train and finally attack Israel and drive the Jews off “their” land.
Even if the Palestinians were to change their minds about wiping the Jewish State off the map, there would remain another major barrier to Israel reverting to the pre-June 1967 borders….they do not exist!
