In Response to Valerie Strauss’ Criticism of Stephen Hawking

Last week, Valerie Strauss wrote, “Why Stephen Hawking made a mistake backing Israel boycott,” in her Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

Here is my extended response:

Academic boycotts may be ineffective forms of protest and it is certainly difficult to maintain philosophical consistency—both legitimate reasons for not using this tactic. However, Strauss’ claim that “Academics is [sic] supposed to be about the pursuit of knowledge and truth” begs the question, To What Purpose? Knowledge and Truth may give a person intellectual satisfaction, but they do not put food on the table, nor do they keep repressive regimes from bulldozing homes or imprisoning dissidents.

The notion that academics exist on another plane, divorced from the socioeconomic and political realities of the rest of the world, is absurd. With many discoveries, the potential for making profits becomes far more important than the potential to save lives, leading to patents that prevent poor people from accessing them (e.g., AIDS medicines in Africa). The emphasis on profits even influences what research will be done in the first place. More and more scientists are now relying on funding from private companies, thus biasing their research, while federal funding for public health and preventative healthcare research has always been small compared with the share going to research on weapons and patentable drugs.

The naïve or uncritical “pursuit of knowledge and truth,” abstracted from their sociopolitical context, often results in corrupted research, incorrect analyses and conclusions, and sometimes tragic social consequences (e.g., eugenics research supporting the racist beliefs that Jews or Africans were subhuman). In other examples, the “pursuit of knowledge and truth” has been used to justify research that is inhumane, ecologically devastating or otherwise unethical (e.g., U.S. radiation experiments on prisoners and soldiers; Mengele’s experiments on concentration camp prisoners; the Tuskegee syphilis experiments). And sometimes the sponsors of research have no interest in truth and are trying to obscure reality (e.g., Big Tobacco’s research “proving” secondhand smoke is not dangerous; Big Oil and Coal’s research “disproving” human influenced climate change).

UCLA Professor Wins Academic Freedom Fight

This spring, UCLA professor David Delgado Shorter was asked to remove a link from his website that called for the boycott of Isreal. He was accused of advancing a political agenda that was inappropriate in the classroom, though he argued the link was one of many suggested links available in a “clearinghouse” of views for students to peruse in his Tribal Worldviews course. In his class, he discussed not only the boycott, but presented the views of those who oppose the boycott.

Last week, the UCLA faculty senate’s committee on academic freedom ruled that Shorter’s use of the boycott link was not a violation of UCLA policy, according to the Los Angeles Times. The policy allows faculty to present controversial material as long as it is relevant to the course no student feels pressure to adopt a point of view.

Irvine 11 Found Guilty On All Charges

10 of the defendants in the Irvine 11 case have been found guilty of conspiracy and disturbing the peace and were sentenced to three years probation and 55 hours of community service (see the Occupy California website). The other defendant had his charges dropped in exchange for community service after it was found that some of his charges resulted from a confidential email between him and his attorney, obtained by the District Attorney’s office, that should not have been made available to the court.

The Irvine 11 are Muslim students from UC Irvine who were arrested for disrupting a speech on campus by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. It should be pointed out that they only heckled the ambassador for a few minutes, while Oren cut his own speech short in order to attend the LA Lakers game.

The idea that they were guilty of conspiracy and disturbing the peace is absurd. Heckling is a time honored form of free speech. While it may be offensive to some, it was done nonviolently and politely, as the students consistently referred to Oren as “Sir.” It should also be pointed out the Zionist students have disrupted Muslim Student Union events and heckled their speakers while police have looked on, without arresting or charging the Zionist students for conspiracy, disturbing the peace or anything else.

Obama More Zionist Than Most Israelis

Mahmoud Abbas presented his case to the UN today for full recognition of Palestine, while the Obama administration and the Israeli government threatened to fight it to the end. While Obama has repeatedly said that he supports statehood for Palestine, once it became clear that the Palestinian Authority would go to the UN, he made an about turn, probably to prove to his Republican opponents that he was more pro-Israel than anyone else.

Now I’m no supporter of a two state solution. Hell, I am not even a supporter of states. But the possibility of a viable Palestinian state that is able to provide food, healthcare, housing, and jobs to its own people and that is not completely dependent on donations from Europe and the U.S., as is currently the case, is highly unlikely with Israel controlling its borders and its access to fresh water. It is also highly unlikely that Israel would consent to the 1967 borders, which essentially leaves a lot of desert and very little fertile land. And even if Israel did agree to the 1967 borders, there is a large and growing Palestinian population living within Israel proper, a population that will eventually be larger than the Jewish population at current birth rates.

Nevertheless, 70% of Jewish Israelis  and well over 80% of Palestinians support a two state solution, while President Obama has taken the ultra-Zionist stance and done everything possible to block it from even being presented to the UN (see Democracy Now, 9/24/11)

Students Face Up To 2 Years For Heckling

The Irvine 11 trial began this week in Southern California (for background, see here, here and here). The Irvine 11, Muslim students from the University of California Irvine and Riverside, face up to two years in prison (according to the Electronic Intifada), for heckling the ambassador from Israel, Michael Oren, when he spoke at UC Irvine last year. Interestingly, both the prosecution and defense are arguing free speech.

The prosecution is arguing that the protestors prevented Oren from exercising his free speech rights, while the defense is arguing that they the defendants were exercising their free speech rights by heckling him. The prosecution says that there were clearly articulated rules for debate delineated before Oren’s speech and that the protestors violated these rules, according to the Daily Pilot. However, heckling, by definition, knows no rules, yet it is still a time-honored and judicially defensible form of free-speech. Furthermore, the defendants, all of whom are Muslim, seemed to be singled out because of their faith, rather than their actions, considering that Israeli and Jewish protestors on campus who had engaged in similar tactics were never charged or prosecuted.

Aside from the fact that it is a horrendous waste of resources to prosecute these students at all simply for heckling someone, let alone threaten them with two years in prison for it, it is highly unlikely they can receive a fair trial in conservative Orange County. Out of a pool of 400 potential jurors, several expressed outright hostility toward Muslims and Arabs. Furthermore, the overwhelming consensus in this country, perpetuated by politicians and the media, is that Israel is completely justified in doing whatever it sees fit to “protect” itself from “terrorism” by Palestinians, despite the fact that the blockade of Gaza is illegal under international law, and the Israeli siege of Gaza resulted in the slaughter of 1,400 Palestinians, most of whom were innocent children, women and men.