From the Chonicle of Higher Education: ""The 'Arab Spring,' Israel, and the Silence of the Academy"
The Arab world is experiencing a series of convulsions resulting in the quotidian slaughter of citizens in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and elsewhere. Yet the reaction on American college campuses is comparatively muted.
Muted compared to what, you ask? Compared to the tragic shedding of one life in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Having directed Jewish Studies programs in universities for most of my career I can assure you of this: If Israel were to inflict the type of violence on Palestinians that Arab regimes (and Iranian ones) casually inflict on their own dissenting populations in the course of one day, many colleges across America would be virtually shut down....
I am struck, however, by the relative calm on American campuses as each day brings forth fresh and repulsive evidence of civilian massacres in the Arab world. No demonstrations. No “teach-ins.” No “die-ins.” And there is less calling out of professors who support(ed) these regimes than I would ever have imagined possible.
This is not to say that faculty and students are unconcerned. It’s more as if they are speechless, unworded. They are not protesting, as much as they are trying to puzzle this catastrophe through (and let me be the first to say that this is precisely what people on college campuses should be doing).
Their speechlessness confirms a truism: The old dominant paradigm for explaining Mideast dysfunction is not working. It is hard to understand what the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has to do with Muammar el-Qaddafi strafing his own citizens or Bashar Assad unleashing his goons on protesters (though whether all of those protesters are offering more democratic alternatives is a conversation I will leave for another day).
No, sorry, not a new paradigm on campus, rather the same old one. Ignore the atrocities of the supposedly downtrodden or former colonized, and don't forget to bash the West and Israel. The "old dominent paradigm" never worked, in reality, but reality has little to do with the penchants of the leftists on campuses.
