Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Conclusion

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:  

"The Israelis rapidly filled with Jewish immigrants the homes and farms of the Arabs who had fled and whom they did not allow to return. For every Jew who found refuge an Arab went forth homeless onto the Desert. On a fair estimate 700,000 former refugees were cared for, and 700,000 new refugees created; the world as a whole was no better off.

"...The number of Arab refugees has been officially estimated by the United Nations' authorities as over 880,000 [in 1954] men, women, and children, they still live mostly in tents, caves, and temporary shacks [in 1954], partially clothed by charity, partially fed by the two dollars a month allowance [in 1954] given them by the United Nations. They want to go home, and this they cannot do..."

(end of article)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Part 8

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"...When the proposal for the partition of Palestine came before the General Assembly--the Ad Hoc Committee, with our approval, rejected the proposal that the International Court of Justice should be asked to rule upon the legal status of Palestine, and finally, by a majority of the nations actually voting, adopted the partition plan. But when this recommendation came before the Assembly, not merely a majority, but a two-thirds vote was needed. Then tremendous pressure was exerted because of Zionist influence, not only through the United States Government but by powerful private individuals and organizations. Five countries which had indicated their intention of voting against the partition were special targets,--Haiti, Liberia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Greece. All except Greece were either won to voting for the partition or persuaded to abstain. Thus the United States succeeded in forcing through the partition proposal.

"...Meanwhile, the Arabs and the Zionists were fighting in Palestine. That unhappy land was torn with violence, fear and cruelty. Outstanding among the horrors was the massacre of Dair Yaseen in early April [1948]. The whole population of that Arab village, women and children, the aged and infirm, as well as the able-bodied men, were massacred by the Zionist terrorists in cold blood. As the news of this slaughter spread through the country hundreds of thousands of other Arabs from villages and towns fled from their homes and possessions to save their lives, expecting of course, like all those who in the past have fled from floods, wars, and eruptions, to return to their houses and farms when the terror had passed.

"Since they have never been able to do so, reprisals from Arabs on Zionists and counter-reprisals from Zionists on Arabs followed Dair Yaseen, and the chain of tragedies continued until the destruction of the Arab village of Kibya by Israeli armed forces in 1953 redoubled the tension, which seems destined to continue indefinitely..."

(end of part 8)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights in 20th Century--Part 7

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"...In 1952 I resigned the Chairmanship of the Board of Directors of Reid Hall, which I had held for over 30 years...

"...I have spoken of the rise of the Zionist movement and the forcing into the small country of Palestine of many thousands of Jewish immigrants, against the will of the Arab majority of the population, whose ancestors had held and tilled the land for over a thousand years. The long and intricate history of this movement reached one of its culminating points in the autumn of 1947 when the General Assembly of the United Nations considered a report from a special U.N. committee recommending that on the ending of the British Mandate Palestine be divided into two states,--one Arab and the other Jewish, with economic union between them and Jerusalem internationalized. The Jewish state was to contain the greater part of the fertile land of that arid country and the only first-class deep-water ports. The proposal aroused a storm of protest from all the member nations in the Middle East who objected to it vehemently; but the Delegation of the United States of America, that country which of all the West the peoples of the Middle East had looked upon as their best friend, was ordered by President Truman to support the partition plan, and every resource of propaganda was used by the American Zionists to present the idea favorably to the people of America and to prevent the opponents of it, whether they were Christian, Moslem, or Jew, from being heard...

"...Unhappily, this delicate and difficult question had become a kind of football in American politics. Perhaps there is a `Jewish vote' in New York which might determine the casting of the state's 45 electoral votes in a presidential election, though I doubt it. At all events the Zionists succeeded in convincing both the Democratic and the Republican politicians that they did control a Jewish vote, especially in the state of New York, and they urged upon the party leaders the necessity of coming out strongly in favor of the partition plan. When President Truman had insisted that the British, under the Mandate, admit immediately 100,000 more Jews, Governor Dewey of the State of New York, his Republican opponent, had promptly urged the admission of 200,000. I do not doubt that President Truman and Governor Dewey, besides political motives, were animated also by humanitarian concern for the Jewish refugees and, having probably heard only one side of the question, believed that they were pursuing a humane and generous course. It is easy to imagine, however, with what bitterness the Arabs saw the fate of their people being sacrificed by American political leaders who insisted that American foreign policy must be determined by the needs of local politics..."

(end of part 7) 

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Part 6

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"...Not all the Zionists merely denounced me. Many of them sent me interesting material about Palestine and the projects for settlement and development. Some of them chose to call at my office and discussed the great problem with me, and I continued for several years my humble efforts to help get some sort of just and peaceful settlement.

"My most moving experience during these efforts was on a day when I called in New York upon Dr. Judah Magnes, a distinguished and a noble Jew, for many years President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a much-loved leader in Palestine, and author of a plan whereby he felt confident that Jews, Moslems, and Christians could live together peacefully in the Holy Land. I shall always remember the very touching way in which he spoke of his friends and neighbors in Jerusalem--Jews and Arabs alike--and his confidence that they could live in peace and work together for the welfare of their country. He gave me a copy of a press release he had written, setting forth his views. The American newspaper would not publish it, he told me. This saddened him profoundly--the fact that he was refused a hearing before the American people. His health had been poor for some time and not long after my visit to him, in sorrow and disillusion he died.

"Of the tragic story of death and hatred in the Holy Land and of my small efforts to help mitigate the horrors. I will speak further in a later chapter in which I tell of the years after my retirement from the Deanship of Barnard, when I devoted myself mainly to the Middle East..."

(end of part 6) 

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Part 5

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"...I wrote the following letter to the New York Times, which appeared in its issue of October 9, 1945:

"`To The Editor of The New York Times:

"`The situation in the Near East is apparently approaching a crisis; very soon violence and bloodshed may result. For this I fear our country is partly responsible.

"`I believe sincerely in the peaceful settlement of disputes, a policy to which the United States is now committed, and I am deeply interested in the Near East through connections with American colleges and universities in that area. I am therefore greatly distressed by the policies now being urged on our Government, policies which threaten violence and upheaval in that critical region of the world.

"`Sooner or later Arabs and Jews must sit down together and reach an agreement regarding life in Palestine. Why should they not now gather about a conference table to arrive at some adjustment and avoid violence?

"`Surely it will be no kindness to the Jews to secure by force their admittance in very large numbers to a section of the world where they will have as neighbors many millions of enemies.

"`Are not some Americans urging the plan of forcing Britain to force the Arabs to admit the homeless Jews in order to escape our own responsibility toward these unfortunate persons? The conscience of the world should recognize the obligation of us all to help the homeless Jews whose persecution by Hitler we have so bitterly denounced. Each of the United Nations should accept its proportionate share of those Jews who seek new homes. The Arab nations have already offered to accept their share.

"`What will be the number the United States should admit? Perhaps 200,000? Then let Congress admit these over and above the usual immigration quotas. And let us stop evading our responsibility by urging that our Government force Britain to force Palestine to take in far more than its share. Thus we may avoid setting the Near East aflame.

"`Virginia C. Gildersleeve

"`New York, October 6, 1945'

"This letter brought a storm on my head. Many Zionists denounced me vehemently; some threatened violence. Most of my Jewish friends, on the other hand, were in favor of my views. So were some distinguished Christian leaders, notably my neighbor Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Pastor of the Riverside Church, and my friend and comrade of many years Dr. Henry Sloan Coffin, President of Union Theological Seminary. So also were practically all the Americans I met who had lived in the Middle East and knew Palestine personally..."

(end of part 5)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Part 4

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"...Surprisingly few Americans knew anything about the background of this tragic situation. The spotlight of publicity had been focused so brightly by the Zionists on their plan for Palestine that to many of our citizens the rest of the Middle East was shrouded in darkness. Of the few who had any real knowledge of the circumstances, almost no one was willing to speak out publicly against a project of the Zionists. The politicians feared the Jewish vote; others feared the charge of anti-Semitism; and nearly all had a kind of `guilt complex' in their emotions towards the Jews because of the terrible tragedies inflicted upon them by Hitler. It seemed to me, however, that someone ought to speak out against the cowardly and immoral course to which our nation was being urged. My knowledge of the Middle East made me sure that only war and hatred could come from this policy..."

(end of part 4)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights in 20th Century--Part 3

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following: 

"As the clouds of that terrible struggle [in World War II against Nazi Germany and Japanese militarism] began to lift a little and we could again put our minds on the Palestine problem, among so many others, we were aware that disorder and death were rife in the Holy Land. The Zionists with ruthless efficiency were pushing to get more and more Jewish immigrants into Palestine. The Arabs were violently resisting. The British, in despair of arriving at any satisfactory adjustment, or even keeping order in the unhappy country, were preparing to give up the Mandate. In the United States powerful and influential Zionists began to put heavy pressure upon our government to force the British, contrary to the desires of the majority of the population, to admit more and more Jews to the Holy Land.

"The Zionists were supported in this by a great many American Christians, some few of whom, I am sorry to say, advocated the project because it would relieve us of doing anything ourselves to help the exiles. These unworthy Christians did not want to admit any more Jewish refugees into America. `Let's push them off on Palestine by all means,' they thought. They apparently saw no objection to our bullying our British allies, now in such an embarrassing position with relation to us, and forcing them to bully the Arabs into admitting this huge influx of alien foreigners. This seemed to me a most contemptible attitude for my country to tak, and I was bitterly ashamed of it..."

(end of part 3)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights in 20th Century--Part 2

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:

"..The Zionist movement...pushed forward with intense religious enthusiasm. Some Zionists said they did not want a political state in Palestine. Their concept of the `national home' was more humanitarian than political, but the ideal in the minds of the chief leaders seems to have been defined by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, later first President of the State of Israel, when as early as February, 1919, speaking before the Peace Conference, he explained the Jewish national home as the creation of an administration `with the hope that by Jewish immigration Palestine would ultimately become as Jewish as England is English.' At this time, 1919, the number of Jews in Palestine was some 65,000, constituting about a tenth of the population. The remaining nine-tenths, as they learned of this policy, naturally looked on it with apprehension. They consisted of some 515,000 Arab Moslems and 62,500 Christians, of whom many were Arabs.

"By 1936 the number of Jews in Palestine had increased to nearly 400,000, amounting to somewhat more than a quarter of the total population. The Palestinian Arabs inevitably increased their protests and efforts to stem this tide which they feared was going to overwhelm them,--as it soon did.

"The situation seemed to me to be drifting towards a disastrous explosion. Could not the free nations of the world somehow meet their humanitarian duty to the Jews without depriving the Palestinian Arabs of their native land, thereby setting the Middle East aflame and antagonizing the rest of the Moslem world? From my interest in the Middle East, my vision of it as a great whole, and from my concern for the Jews, whom I had come to know so well in my own city of New York, I felt this great problem keenly; all the more because the Zionists project was being financed by hundreds of millions of American dollars. Thus stood the situation and my own feeling when we were plunged into the chaos of World War II..."

(end of part 2)

Columbia University's Barnard College Dean Gildersleeve: Supported Palestinian Rights In 20th Century--Part 1

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:

"...In October 1895...I entered Barnard College...On February 1, 1911, I took Office as Dean...As I look back over my 36 and a half years as Dean, it seems to me that the most thoroughly pleasant part of the job was my association with the Barnard undergraduates...

"....The Jews were of course an important element in the make-up of our student body. Once in a printed statement early in my Deanship I alluded to them as a nationality or race, mentioning them along with the English, the French, the Russians, and so on. Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer, our very zealous Trustee and herself a Jew, insisted that I recall this document and have it corrected, since the Jews were not a race or nationality but a religion. This I did...Several of the outstanding personalities among the original group of Trustees who had started the College I came to know intimately over many years. One was Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer...Mrs. Meyer and her husband, Dr. Alfred Meyer, signed the lease for the house the College was to occupy, and...the infant Barnard started courageously on its way...

"In the difficult and complex world of the Middle East there was now developing in Palestine, land of the Holy Places of three great religions, a movement which was to plunge much of the region into war, sow long-lasting hatred, and make the Arabs consider America not the best liked and trusted of the nations of the West, as she had been, but the most disliked and distrusted as she is today.

"The movement was International Zionism, the plan to convert Palestine into a `homeland'' for the Jews. The Zionists wished to bring back the Jews to the country which, they believed, their God had given them and which their forefathers had held for a time two thousand years ago.

"The small land of Palestine, about the size of our state of Vermont, had been inhabited for over a thousand years by Arabs, who naturally looked forward, when the British mandate should expire, to becoming an independent state, as had Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, their brother Arab nations...The Zionist movement, however, had been growing in strength, and was immensely stimulated by Hitler's terrible persecutions of the Jews in Germany and the need of finding asylum for some hundreds of thousands of survivors...

"...Naturally...like all decent Americans, when Hitler perpetrated his persecutions and massacres, I felt a wave of horror sweep over me.

"I can vividly remember that deep emotion. These appalling outrages seemed so terrible as to be unbelievable...

"Partly to meet the need of providing some sanctuary for thousands of Jewish refugees, and building on the sympathy aroused in other countries by these persecutions, the Zionist movement now rose quickly to much greater strength. It had first received important international recognition when in 1917 the British Government approved the famous Balfour Declaration, which stated, `His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.' Subsequently the League of Nations assigned Great Britain the Mandate for Palestine to carry out their Declaration,--this very ambiguous statement of which only the first half is generally quoted.

"What right had Great Britain, asked the Arabs as the years went on, or indeed the League of Nations, to give away any part of Paelstine without the consent of the inhabitants who had lived there and tilled the soil for over a thousand years? What right had they to say that foreigners might come to the ancient land and there establish a `national home,' whatever that may mean? Surely this was contrary to all the principles of democracy and self-determination..."
(end of part 1) 

Columbia University Apartheid Divest's February 27, 2017 Statement

In a February 27, 2017 column that that was originally posted on the Columbia Daily Spectator news site, the Columbia and Barnard student group that is campaigning for an end to the Columbia University administration's policy of owning stock in U.S.-based transnational corporations that profit from their investments in an Israeli economy whose government continues to violate Palestinian human rights and democratic national self-determination rights--Columbia University Apartheid Divest--stated the following:

“When students launched the Barnard Columbia Solidarity Network (BCSN) last year, they sought to put into practice principles of solidarity between movements and work against forms of oppression using an intersectional framework. The guiding principle of this coalition was that all forms of oppression operate in interrelated ways and thus must be fought together.

“Although BCSN sought to foster solidarity among campus activists, its inclusion of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) incurred virulent criticism as some argued that the pro-Palestinian groups created a hostile environment for students who support Israel. We, members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), were left asking: why should recognition of intersectionality exclude Palestinians? How could one, in good conscience, ignore racism, sexual violence, environmental racism, and colonialism in the context of Israel/Palestine?

“When students are made aware of this double standard, they will often say that they simply don’t know enough to take a stance. This widespread belief—that entitlement to an opinion requires exhaustive knowledge of the Israeli occupation of Palestine—keeps many students out of the conversations we in CUAD try to encourage on campus. Moreover, the misleading and divisive narrative of “us vs. them” that attends dominant discourses surrounding Israel/Palestine activism intimidates students and activists with the implied accusation that any engagement at all amounts to full endorsement of one side or the other.

“Either afraid of negotiating or believing themselves unable to negotiate these polarizing stances, students retreat to a position of presumed “neutrality,” a non-stance amounting to little more than tacit support for the status quo: occupation, dispossession, and apartheid. “Neutral” silence has become a powerful tool wielded by Zionists in their effort to bolster the hegemony of Israeli apartheid and dissuade dissenting voices. From hard-right Zionist groups such as AIPAC to student Hillel chapters, the discourse about Israel/Palestine at Columbia is in need of dramatic recalibration.

“We put on events for Israeli Apartheid Week to create a space for learning and growing, not hostility. Activism is a process, one that is shared between all groups organizing against oppression and one that asks for the participation—at whatever capacity—of those who might not call themselves “activists.” Without engaged people seeking new information, dialogue on campus becomes a repetitive cycle of attack between the “two sides.”

“As part of our work this Israeli Apartheid Week, CUAD will present a resolution to CCSC calling for divestment from companies that participate in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the government’s continued human rights abuses. If 10 percent of the CC student body signs our petition supporting the resolution, CCSC will be obligated to put the resolution to a vote for the entire Columbia College student body.

“The resolution seeks to end our University’s support for corporations that engage in and profit from human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. Education and dialogue during Israeli Apartheid week are essential to the resolution vote. This is our way of honoring the Palestinian call to BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions). BDS, with its three simple demands, is an effective tactic for pressuring the Israeli government into abiding by international law. It is a tangible way to empower everyone, from consumer to politician, to end apartheid.

“There is a new administration in Washington, and a staunch supporter of illegal settlement building has been nominated to be the new US Ambassador to Israel. Now more than ever it is incumbent upon us to fight for institutional support in the struggle to end the well-documented violations of human rights in Palestine. To do so means both to learn and to act simultaneously. We hope Israeli Apartheid Week will serve this purpose.

“This week, featuring events every night, and our mock Apartheid wall on Low Plaza every day, is an essential moment in our movement and an excellent opportunity for students to learn about Israel/Palestine

“The United States has witnessed the consolidation of power by some of the country’s most overtly corporate, racist, and authoritarian forces in the past few months. The supposedly neutral stance on Israel/Palestine may have felt comfortable for people in the past, but it now becomes impossible to uphold if we are at all opposed to what is happening in the United States—the Muslim ban, the Dakota Access Pipeline, police brutality and the reinstatement of Jim Crow-era voting laws in some states.

“It has been heartening to see so many in the United States come together—in the streets, at town hall meetings, on campuses—to reaffim our basic principles of equal protection under the law. Right here in Morningside Heights, students, faculty, staff, and administrators have recommitted to the principles of sanctuary. In this fraught moment, it is especially important that we all reaffirm our insistence that basic human rights are not limited by zip code, religion, or national identity, but that they are fundamental rights for all individuals. This is what we, as CUAD members, fight for this week and every week.

“Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition between Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).”

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Conclusion

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for parts 1 to 6).

In recent years, U.S. university professors like Norman Finkelstein and Joel Kovel, who have written books that were critical of Israeli militarism and expressed support for Palestinian national self-determination rights, have ended up losing their academic jobs--apparently due to pressure from the Zionist lobby in the United States. How would you characterize the role that the Zionist lobby presently plays on U.S. university campuses in 2009?

Hilton Obenzinger: The campaign by Zionists to purge campuses of critical views has been going on for decades, and it’s shameful. Finkelstein and Kovel are by no means the first. For example, Breira—Choice--a Jewish peace group--was crushed in the Seventies with McCarthyite type attacks on those who worked in Jewish communal organizations.

I was on a list of people to ban from speaking on campuses in the early eighties – I was honored to be on the same list with Edward Said and Rabbi Elmer Berger and Noam Chomsky, probably the only time I would be on the same list with such luminaries.

When Jewish students at Stanford organized to support the divestment campaign, they were banned from meeting at Hillel until they denounced the “apartheid” label of Israel. They refused, and it’s the same old story.

The Zionist lobby has been focusing on campuses since the late Seventies because they correctly determined that it’s necessary to prevent critical approaches, alternate theoretical and historical frameworks, from becoming legitimate. They want only fringe groups or actual anti-Semites to become the critics of Israel so that they can smear everyone else as “anti-Semites” or “self-hating Jews.”

Now that they have attacked well-known academics like Tony Judt they are even crazier than ever, and even many who consider themselves pro-Israel think they have gone too far. Nonetheless, when you believe they can’t get more fanatical and shrill, they pull something even crazier else off.

I think their approach may be similar to Israel’s military thinking in their attack on Gaza: The military wanted to be regarded as a crazy animal, capable of doing anything, going totally bananas. That was on purpose, the lesson being that if Israel believes it’s provoked, it will unleash widespread, wild violence, and civilians will be chewed up in the IDF's jaws.

Likewise on the intellectual level. It seems absurd to attack Judt or Jimmy Carter, people who are not radical at all, but they are following that wild animal strategy, and any mild-mannered critic will be blown away. When I heard that Netanyahu called Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod “self-hating Jews” because Obama called for a settlement freeze, I thought that it’s consistent with that wild animal strategy.

Academics do resist, and there have been successes. But the fact is that the campaign has been debilitating, and, once again, a distraction from Israel’s on-going colonial project.

My bottom line is simple and not even ideological: Through everything in the past 40 years, Israel keeps doing one thing: they keep building settlements in land occupied in 1967. Rain or snow, storm or drought – intifadas or Oslos – they keep building gated, segregated housing projects on stolen land. Can professors and students object to such outlaw behavior without getting smeared?

If readers find that their local university and local public libraries did not purchase copies of your `Busy Dying' book, how can they obtain copies of your book?

Hilton Obenzinger: They can order from the usual outlets, such as Powell’s Books or Amazon, or they order from the publisher (CHAX). They can also go to a web site a friend made of my work. There’s information on how to order `Busy Dying’ along with other books, including `This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem’, directly from me. The website is www.obenzinger.com

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 6

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for parts 1 to 5).

Following the Israeli war machine's late 2008-early 2009 military campaign in Gaza, many anti-war students in the UK began to stage campus protests there in support of some kind of anti-apartheid divestment and academic boycott campaign for Palestinian human rights. Do you think it might be desirable and/or possible for a similar campaign to happen on many U.S. campuses during the 2009-2010 academic year--especially if the Israeli war machine gets the green light from the U.S. government to attack Iran?

Hilton Obenzinger: The BDS campaign could have some impact, although I’m wary of its effectiveness.

A few years ago, students at Stanford set up a committee to call for divestment and called Israel an apartheid state. They made some headway, but much of the discussion got deflected into the Zionist outrage that Israel could be associated with the racist South African regime.

Likewise the boycott debate – it often gets deflected into a freedom of speech or academic freedom brouhaha. Maybe getting into academic freedom debates is good, but I have my doubts.

If Israel attacks Iran, all kinds of things may make sense – but the propaganda about Iran as evil is very intense--not that I support theocracies--and I’m sure many will support any attack. Perhaps better would be a campaign for Israel to join the non-proliferation treaty so that UN inspectors could check their bombs?

In the main, though, I consult with students but I leave it up to them to take the lead. They don’t need one more moth-eaten old radical to tell them how to do things.

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 5

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for parts 1 to 4).

In 1968 anti-war students at Columbia University protested against Columbia's complicity with the U.S. war machine. In recent years the Pentagon has funded millions of dollars of research work at many U.S. universities. At Stanford University, for example, $37 million worth of research work was being funded by the Department of Defense in 2000. Do you think it's now appropriate for U.S. universities like Columbia and Stanford to continue to accept research contracts from the Pentagon while the Pentagon is using drones and robot weapons--that were often initially developed with Pentagon funding in the labs of U.S. university campuses--to continue to wage endless war in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq?

Hilton Obenzinger: At Stanford, students in 1969 demanded an end to secret military research. They won that demand and that still stands.

However, military research that is not secret is tremendously active. Not just military research, many economic and political science scholars, in particular, purposely keep their visions narrow, and the departments exclude scholars with alternate world views, otherwise the smart guys could have known the economic disaster was coming, and they didn’t. The Hoover Institution looms over Stanford, even though it’s supposed to be an autonomous organization and not part of the university.

As soon as the military rescinds the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule, ROTC will return to campuses, since what prevents their role on campuses is the discriminatory position of the military and not opposition to militarism. And most students I teach are just fine with the military; even if they are opposed to the current wars, they support the military as an institution, and there’s little anti-imperialist analysis of the US.

The country seems headed into disaster with endless wars but not an endless flow of money. Elite universities are part of the ruling apparatus, even if the students and faculty are not following that agenda. When there is an even deeper crisis and a real challenge to the priorities of the country as a whole, then students will also move. When there really is a mass movement challenging the assumptions of militarism, then students will target universities.

But I don’t see that movement in the near future. There was an awakening because of the Obama campaign, but I’m not sure that has gelled into anything on-going – it’s too soon to tell. There is hope of mobilization, but it’s—rightfully--coming from the terrible condition of education, such as the dismantling of the UC and CSU systems in California. We’ll see how this all develops when connections to the military budget and the prison-industrial complex are brought into the students’ protest programs.

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 4

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for parts 1 to 3).

In what way is `Busy Dying’ different or similar to Professor Stefan Bradley's recently-published book,` Harlem vs. Columbia University’, from both political and literary point-of-view?

Hilton Obenzinger: Stefan Bradley’s book is not at all fictionalized, and it’s not memoir like Mark Rudd’s book; the book is history, based on interviews and archives, and projects a historian’s analysis of events, strategies, and motivations.

The book provides a needed revision of the distorted accounts of 1968, situating members of the Student Afro-American Society (SAS) and other black students, along with Harlem, as central players in how events unfolded. This is wonderful, as well as Bradley’s extension of his analysis of other black student-community eruptions at that time in elite universities, such as at Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, and the struggle for African American Studies at Columbia and other universities.

Professor Bradley’s work was also well-served by the April 2008 conference. I have some disagreements with his account, particularly his account of the white students, but that does not take away from the book as a major accomplishment.

There’s still more to do: I hope Ray Brown, Jr., Cicero Wilson, and the other leaders of the black students in Hamilton Hall write their accounts of the occupation and strike; and there’s certainly room for other historians to explore Columbia 1968, pulling together an account and analysis of all the threads of the story.

In 1968 many white Columbia and Barnard students protested against the Columbia University Administration's attempt to grab a few acres of Harlem parkland in order to build a new gym for Columbia students. Yet at a 40th anniversary reunion of '68 student protesters in 2008 there didn't seem to be that much discussion about Columbia's current attempt to grab 17 acres of West Harlem land, north of West 125th Street, for its latest campus expansion project. In what ways do you think people who participated in the 1968 Columbia protests have generally changed politically and philosophically since 1968? And in what ways do you think U.S. universities like Columbia University have changed or not changed since 1968?

Hilton Obenzinger: For the conference in 2008, the ad-hoc organizing committee assessed the situation of Columbia’s expansion, talking with a number of people involved, including Manning Marable, who heads up Columbia’s African American studies program.

We reached the conclusion that we--the conference organizers and the attendees--had no basis as an organization--if you could call it an organization!--to take a position on the decades of controversy surrounding Columbia’s plans. But we also decided to encourage everyone’s positions and discussion, and it was distressing to see Columbia President Lee Bollinger leave one panel he participated in just when questions were opened from the floor.

When we had our initial meeting with Pres. Bollinger, we pointed out that there were parallels between 1968 and today – Vietnam/Iraq, Gym/Manhattanville – and he said that Columbia is different today, and in terms of expansion, they were working with the community, with Harlem leaders. I’m sure that many would dispute that.

I had not followed the controversies and felt ill prepared to take a position, and I didn’t want to take a knee-jerk position that everything Columbia does is evil, tempting as that may be. Others I spoke with thought it was too late to stop the project, that gentrification involves a lot more players than Columbia and the community needed to pressure Columbia to win concessions (such as housing and jobs), while others thought it was a betrayal of 1968 to invite Bollinger to the conference when Columbia was once again engaging in what many consider a land grab.

Our goals for the conference – one of which was to insist that 1968 be accepted as part of the university’s history with our active involvement and not have our role erased or distorted – meant that we welcomed a tactical relationship with the university (which helped us with space and the participation of many sympathetic faculty) while encouraging a wide range of views on the current situation. I think we were successful in this regard.

Bollinger ended up getting attacked by a right-wing columnist in the Daily News who was outraged that the university president would participate in “an all-Bolshevik affair.” Hilarious.

I don’t think I can talk of how all the people involved in 1968 have changed politically. About 400 people were involved in the conference, but there were thousands of people involved in the anti-war, anti-gym side of the conflict (not counting those against us or in the middle), and they have probably gone in many directions.

A great many who came to the conference or who signed up on our on-line discussion group have continued their progressive political stances, although most do not adhere to radical views popular in the 60s. Quite a few shaped their lives to a great degree around their commitments to change in whatever career they took up – people who are academics in women’s studies and African American studies and other fields, union and community organizers, activists in social movements such as the women’s, environmental, anti-war, anti-racist movements, writers with left politics, lawyers and physicians for change, and more.

It’s probably safe to say that the majority opposed the war in Iraq (if not at the outset, at least by the time of the conference). As a generation at Columbia in 1968, I would say that, as far as the people I know and those who participated in the conference, we have been mainly true to our roots.

Universities have changed enormously as a result of Columbia and the whole student movement of the 60s. Universities now have ethnic studies, women’s studies, GLBT studies as separate programs emerged, and a lot more social consciousness in teaching and research. Not enough, but things are very different. Ivy League schools are now co-ed, students are regularly invited to contribute to university deliberations.

A lot has changed, but elite universities like Columbia are still instruments of the ruling elite, and particularly when it comes to military research, most are as deeply involved as ever, if not more.

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 3

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for parts 1 to 2).

In what way is your `Busy Dying’ book different or similar to former Columbia Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] chairman Mark Rudd's recently-published book, `Underground’, from both a political and literary point-of-view?

Hilton Obenzinger: I worked with Mark on his book for years, including the first time he attempted to write it in the 80s.

My book is fiction because I began to doubt whether I could ever write a memoir without inventing memories – and it became easier to tell the truth by releasing myself from the memoir format. I spoke with people who were there, such as Mark but also other friends who were part of the Low Library Commune – it’s an interesting thing, doing research on your own life from others’ vantage points – and I used real names when I could, but if I couldn’t contact someone, I used fictional names.

My book has additional, different themes than Mark’s – including coming to terms with the death of my brother and the literary scene at Columbia and in the Lower East Side – and it moves back and forth between students at Columbia back then and the work I do with students at Stanford today.

Mark’s description of Columbia 1968 is from his vantage point, of course, and it’s well done. It’s a welcome addition to the historical understanding of Columbia 1968, and the growing library of Weather Underground literature. The book gained greatly because of the 40th anniversary conference in 2008, and he was able to provide an even broader perspective, particularly on the media distortions of the occupation and strike that created “Mark Rudd,” the Great Revolutionary Leader.

But his biggest struggle was figuring out how to discuss his post-1968 Weather Underground experience. I wrestled with him many times on how to characterize mistakes while historicizing them, and we don’t always agree. It’s a tough job trying to understand one’s own involvement in the 1968 moment and its aftermath in a larger (even worldwide) political, even sociological context.

I think, in the end, he did a fine job in the book. He tried staying honest throughout, tried to be judicious, and he certainly did not romanticize – and it’s well written.

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 2

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger. (See below for part 1).


Why do you think anti-war students at Columbia University in 1968 did not also protest against the U.S. government's support for Israeli militarism in 1968?

Hilton Obenzinger: When the 1967 war broke out I was very confused and conflicted and ignorant. To illustrate: Edward Said was my teacher but I didn’t know he was a Palestinian – I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Palestinian. I didn’t even know he was an Arab – I thought he was Jewish!

We later became friends and colleagues in terms of literary studies and working on Palestinian rights, and we joked about that moment.

I stayed up one night during the war, upset about it, and in the early dawn sat on the Sundial in the center of the campus to read the NY Times, weeping. Wasn’t Israel sort of socialist? Weren’t they advanced, democratic and progressive? Why did the Arabs want “to push the Jews into the sea”?

My moment of awakening was in 1969 when Moshe Dayan went to Vietnam on a fact-finding tour and offered complete support for the US war. This was cognitive dissonance in a big way – and I either had to be consistent with my principles or begin fudging them out of some sense of ethnic loyalty (and fudging became the process for many progressive, anti-war, pro-civil rights Jews, trying to support their principles while apologizing for Israel – ultimately, an untenable position).

When I taught on the Yurok Indian reservation in 1969-70 I began a process of understanding settler colonial societies. In the 1970s, I studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sympathizing with the Palestinians as a national liberation movement, and I began to speak out.

Then, in the mid Seventies, I was working with the American Indian Movement, and I was going to collaborate with the Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz on a book on how history made it so that we both ended up in California. Simon quickly realized he had to get the hell out of California, and he returned to New Mexico where he wrote a terrific book about his early experiences working in uranium mines.

I ended up writing This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, a collection of poems and sketches about Jews, Indians, and Palestinians that invokes a Jewish American sensibility free of Zionist assumptions – and that became the basis for my support of Palestinian rights. While writing that book I helped to establish a Jewish group in the Bay Area in order to protest the Israeli occupation and to provide a clear ideological alternative to the Zionist consensus that even held the left in thrall.

The book received the American Book Award, and I was invited to campuses to speak about what it means to be a Jewish American critical of Israel and Zionism. At this point I would be regularly attacked as a “self-hating Jew” and would have my life threatened.

That book appeared in 1980, and in 1981 I was invited to Beirut as part of an American delegation to the PLO to investigate the bombing attack by the Israelis on Fakhani, in downtown Beirut, a prelude to the 1982 invasion.

From that point Palestine became the focus of my political work through the first intifada, and eventually the “Holy Land” and the study of comparative settler colonial societies became the main interest in my scholarly research, which culminated in the cultural and literary study American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania, and continues today with a book I am working on called Melting Pots and Promised Lands: Zionism and the Idea of America.

Interview With `Busy Dying' Author Hilton Obenzinger--Part 1

Besides writing the book, Busy Dying,

http://www.obenzinger.com/books_busyDying.html

Hilton Obenzinger is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who now teaches writing at Stanford University. Following is the text of a recent email interview with Busy Dying author Obenzinger.

An interview you did last year about your Busy Dying book that's posted on the video.google site

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5884618881046739147#

mostly just discussed the 1968 Columbia anti-war student protests, but doesn't make much reference to the impact of the Israeli military occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights that happened less than a year before the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt. Would readers of `Busy Dying’ find any indication in the book as to why you later become such a strong supporter of Palestinian human rights?

Hilton Obenzinger [HO]: In 1968 many of us didn’t want to be “Good Germans,” passively accepting genocide and vicious Jim Crow racism. Engaged in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, right after graduating college I taught school on an Indian reservation – and my eyes opened. I began to understand the US more deeply as a settler society, and consequently the similarities between the US and Israel.

I wrote Busy Dying trying to stay within much of the consciousness I had then – and Israel was not a central part of my concerns at the time. It’s an indication of just how un-Zionist many of us were, and how much Israel was on the periphery of our consciousness (although I know I was deeply aware of being Jewish, of my family’s murder at the hands of the Nazis, the narrative of Israel as Jewish redemption after death and persecution).

Rejecting being a “Good German” expanded in time to include other things, such as rejecting silence about Israel’s colonization. So, Columbia 1968 was a decisive, formative experience for me. I got a glimpse of a new world, of the possibilities of change, and of overturning injustice, and that glimpse has kept me going ever since.