[Peace-discuss] Article related to conference at Duke University

[David Green]

This article, published in Duke's student paper, drew
many predictable outraged responses. PSM refers to the
embattled Palestine Solidarity Movement conference
that was held last weekend in the midst of well-funded
protests.

October 18, 2004
The Jews 
by Philip Kurian
You are not required to complete the work, yet you are
not allowed to desist from it.

—Pirkei Avot (The Book of Principles), 2:21

Such describes the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam.
Perfecting, preparing or repairing the world: a credo
that, to many Jews, prescribes what role they should
play in the wider concerns of our society. Judging by
the opposition to this past weekend’s Palestine
Solidarity Movement conference, however, I cannot help
but conclude that the powerful Jewish establishment
has distorted the meaning of this age-old teaching.

It is well known that Jews constitute the most
privileged “minority” group in this country. Among the
top 10 universities, Jews enjoy shocking
overrepresentation: Only the California Institute of
Technology has an undergraduate Jewish population
below 10 percent, and four schools have particularly
stark Jewish advantages—Harvard (30 percent), Yale (23
percent), UPenn (31 percent) and Columbia (25
percent). Keep in mind that, at best estimate, no more
than 3 percent of all Americans are Jewish.

In his slim volume The Holocaust Industry: Reflections
on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000),
Jewish-American historian Norman Finkelstein argues
that American interest in Judaism is “a tribute not to
Jewish suffering but to Jewish aggrandizement.” The
holocaust label, he says, arose from the real
suffering of European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s,
in turn giving rise to the Holocaust ideology,
distinguished in its capitalization. He documents
economic exploitation by this “Holocaust Industry,”
which he calls an “outright extortion racket.”

Regardless of your political stance or position on the
PSM conference, it is impossible to ignore the
unprecedented outpouring of pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli
support in defiance of free speech at Duke. Jewish
alumni, faculty and staff have gone out of their way
to lobby Duke to reject the PSM conference, mustering
92,000 signatures for their online petition and
denouncing professors who have spoken out in support
of free speech, as Duke’s chair of political science
Michael Munger can attest.

Supposedly apolitical in nature, the Students Against
Terror concert, headlined by Sister Hazel, kicked off
this weekend’s festivities. The Chronicle reported,
“The Freeman Center for Jewish Life funded 90 percent
of the $80,000 event through the private donations
from parents and alumni.” The Joint Israel Initiative,
a coalition of campus Jewish and pro-Israeli groups,
coordinated a series of events in opposition to the
PSM, at a price tag of $25,000, more than
two-and-a-half times what was spent on the conference
itself. Four pro-Jewish, full-page advertisements
appeared in the Friday, Oct. 15, edition of The
Chronicle, with two directly condemning the PSM. We
are dealing with a very well-funded and well-organized
establishment, indeed.

Granted, I tend to err on the side of complete
academic freedom; I would probably let the Ku Klux
Klan hold a conference on campus, as long as it could
be couched within the framework of serious discussion.
But what Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish
privilege in the United States—amounts to is a
stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel
the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be
criticized or offended. If the Duke administration had
buckled under the influential weight of the Jewish
establishment by not allowing the PSM conference, we
would be suffering from the Orwellian notion of
consciousness, where the only ideas that matter are
the ones espoused by the powerful.

While Jews undoubtedly lay claim to a long history of
racism and genocide that continues across the world
today, this characterization does not transport
perfectly to the United States. After World War II,
overt anti-Semitism gradually subsided, in part
because of American response to Hitler’s murderous
regime, but largely due to Jewish association with
whiteness and the privileges white skin affords. In
short, Jews can renounce their difference by taking
off the yarmulke. Clearly, this is not a luxury
enjoyed by all minority groups.

When former President Bill Clinton nominated his first
two judges to the Supreme Court, both were Jews. 
Remarkable in the slightest? No, of course not. But
the American public still can’t get over Clarence
Thomas’s cultural heritage, after being appointed by
Bush 41. To be Jewish is to have the right to move
seamlessly between the majority and minority, without
constraint. Thus, Jewish-American appropriation of the
“oppressed” moniker is disingenuous, belying the
reality of America’s social hierarchy.

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its
influence to stifle, not enhance, the
Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling
the real struggles for socioeconomic and political
equality faced, most notably, by black Americans. As
the world-renowned historian John Hope Franklin
mentions, the U.S. decision to authorize federal
funding of a holocaust memorial on the National Mall
in Washington, D.C.—hallowed ground otherwise reserved
for commemorating U.S. history—camouflages this
nation’s guilt in our own crimes against humanity: the
Native American genocide and slavery.

I do not ignore historic Jewish oppression or
discredit the stark realities of the holocaust. Nor do
I discount anti-Semitic sentiments that still persist
in America. With the burden of Tikkun Olam, Jews were
even some of the most vocal abolitionists and
supporters of the civil rights movement. However, to
preserve our democracy and honestly confront
inequality where it persists, Jews must own up to
their privilege in America, and use it more wisely.

Philip Kurian is a Trinity senior



		
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