[Peace-discuss] Joseph Massad's response to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report

[David Green]

Israel Lobby Watch
EI EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Massad's response to the Ad Hoc
Grievance Committee Report
Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada, 5 April 2005



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In late 2004, claims of intimidation in the department
of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures
(MEALAC) of Columbia University hit newspapers around
the world after an unreleased documentary, "Columbia
Unbecoming", which purported to reveal incidences of
intimidation and anti-Semitism in the classroom. The
primary target of the organized campaign was Professor
Joseph Massad. Columbia University ultimately formed
an ad hoc committee to investigate, which released its
report on 31 March 2005. Joseph Massad responds to the
report.


Response to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report

The Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report[1] suffers from
major logical flaws, undefended conclusions,
inconsistencies, and clear bias in favor of the
witch-hunt that has targeted me for over three years.
Despite these major limitations, the report
acknowledges that there has been an organized attempt
by internal and external forces to intimidate faculty
at Columbia and that I have been the central target of
this attempt. In the following, I will point out the
most glaring flaws in the report to illustrate that
not only was the committee illegitimate, but that it
has also produced a report that is not defended by
argument, facts, or proof. 

I should reiterate that I do not recognize the
legitimacy of the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee
established by the Columbia administration, as I
consider it an instrument in the ongoing campaign to
suppress academic freedom on this campus. This is so
because the charge of the committee ignored the
central question of the intimidation of faculty by
other faculty, by students, by administrators, and by
forces from outside the university. I told this to the
members of the committee when I met with them on March
14th and clarified to them that I had acquiesced in
appearing before them out of a combined sense of
obligation and intimidation. It is this sense that
motivates my response to the report that the committee
released on March 28.


Pedagogy in Context

Let me begin with section IV of the report titled
"Pedagogy in Context." Despite the limitations placed
on the committee by its official charge, the
committee's report was forced to acknowledge that I
have been the target of a political campaign by actors
inside and outside the university, as well as by
registered and unregistered students inside and
outside my classroom. It affirms that during the
Spring of 2002, I was spied upon by at least one other
professor on campus, that my class was disrupted by
registered students (non-auditors) and unregistered
auditors, and that individuals and organizations
outside the university targeted me, my class, and my
teaching. 

Furthermore, the report not only confirms that in my
classes, and specifically in the Spring 2002 course on
Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies, I
allowed all questions to be asked, but, in fact,
implicitly assigns blame to me for being too open
during the Spring 2002:
there is ample evidence of [Massad's] willingness --
as part of a deliberate pedagogical strategy -- to
permit anyone who wished to do so to comment or raise
a question during his lectures. For many students this
approach itself became problematic because it allowed
a small but vociferous group of fellow students to
disrupt lectures by their incessant questions and
comments. (Section IV)

The report also claims that as a result of this
situation, the atmosphere in the classroom, as
described by some students, was "tense": "Some
students referred to 'emotional outbursts,' another to
the atmosphere being 'combative.'" Yet despite these
limitations and provocations against the professor,
the report states that "A significant number of
students found Professor Massad to be an excellent and
inspiring teacher, and several described his class as
the best they took at Columbia."[2] Moreover, the
report further affirms that instead of being provoked
to respond to this campaign inappropriately or
irresponsibly, that I seem to have taken my
professorial tasks professionally and responsibly:
Outside the classroom, there can be little doubt of
Professor Massad's dedication to, and respectful
attitude towards, his students whatever their
confessional or ethnic background or their political
outlook. He made himself available to them in office
hours and afterwards. One student, critical of other
aspects of his pedagogy, praised his "warmth, dynamism
and candor" and his unusual accessibility and
friendliness. One of the group of students who
questioned him regularly and critically in class told
us of their friendly relations outside class where
their discussions often continued.[3]

As for limitations that I insisted on in my classroom,
the report confirms one: ""Professor Massad...has been
categorical in his classes concerning the
unacceptability of anti-semitic views."[4] The report
also affirms that the committee did not find that any
of my students were "penalized for their views by
receiving lower grades."[5] The report does not find
any other limitations that I imposed on my students.
It is in this context that the report examines the
claim made by Deena Shanker, which is alleged to have
taken place during the Spring 2002 class on
Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies.


Student Claims

The report engages Deena Shanker's claim in a way that
renders it into a moving target. The committee first
reports Deena Shanker's testimony in which she claims
that I told her "If you're going to deny the
atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then
you can get out of my classroom!"[6] Shanker has two
witnesses, one is a registered student, and one whom
she claims was a visitor for the day, a claim that has
not been verified by anybody except for Shanker who is
the only witness that this person was visiting my
class, just as he is her witness that the incident she
describes took place! As for the registered student,
he provided testimony that differs significantly from
that provided by Shanker. He alleges that I "raised"
my "voice considerably and said that 'I will not stand
by and let you sit in my classroom and deny Israeli
atrocities."[7] 

Note that Shanker's claim that I instructed her to
"get out of my classroom" is not corroborated but
rather replaced by a different claim altogether. The
fact that I deny that the incident ever took place and
that my testimony is corroborated by three students,
two graduate Teaching Assistants and one registered
undergraduate student, while mentioned in the report,
is treated as immaterial to the report's conclusion.
Also immaterial to the report's conclusion is the
report's finding that Shanker did not register this
complaint in her anonymous evaluation of the course,
nor reported it to any one in authority nor spoke of
it to me, her professor. 

The report, despite noting the campaign against me
during the Spring of 2002 from inside the classroom
and outside it, from inside the university and outside
it, and despite its finding that I had conducted
myself in a responsible professorial way with students
who would incessantly disrupt and interrupt my class,
surprisingly moves to conjure up a fantastic scenario
wherein it "finds it credible that Professor Massad
became angered at a question that he understood to
countenance Israeli conduct of which he disapproved,
and that he responded heatedly."[8] This the report
explains as consisting of an allegedly "rhetorical
response...conveying that [Shanker's] question merited
harsh public criticism."[9] 

Thus, what the report finds credible is that I became
"angered" and "responded heatedly" with "harsh public
criticism." Notice that the charge is a moving target.
It started with the claim that I threatened to expel
Deena Shanker from my class, to my threatening not to
"stand by" while Shanker denies Israeli atrocities, to
the final form of the charge, namely that I responded
"heatedly" to Shanker with "harsh public criticism."
It is this last charge that the report found
"credible."

The Committee makes no attempt to relate Shanker's
allegations to two of its own findings: first, that
those testifying before the Committee agreed that I
conducted my class in an inclusive manner, both in
terms of allowing everyone to ask questions and that I
set no limitations on the questions that could be
asked. How then was the allegation that I sought to
exclude, whether directly or through a heated
exchange, a student who disagreed with me found
credible? And, second, that I and my class were
already the target of an organized attempt at
espionage and intimidation when Shanker claimed to
recover her memory suddenly because of hearsay by
another student interviewed in "Columbia Unbecoming."

Let me move now to the report's attempt to establish
facts. The report never claims that it established
Shanker's claim as true beyond a reasonable doubt,
rather that it found it "credible." What this suggests
is that at best the evidence was not persuasive enough
to establish the claim as a solid incontrovertible
fact but rather as "credible." Still, the report never
explains the basis on which the committee found
Shanker's claim and her witnesses more "credible" than
my denial and that of my witnesses. Floyd Abrams, the
advisor to the committee, responded to my public query
by telling the Chronicle of Higher Education "That's
what juries do all the time."[10] 

Mr. Abrams seems to elide the fact that the ad hoc
committee is not a court and that unlike the ad hoc
committee, a real court and a real jury listen to real
testimony, not from volunteers, but from all who were
determined to be present when an incident occurred,
and that the witnesses are subjected to
cross-examination. These important elements, which
escaped the attention of our esteemed lawyer, did not
apply to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee, as it is not
a court of law, evidenced by its failure to accord me
due process. Indeed, the committee's conclusion of the
credibility of Shanker's claim stands undefended by
facts, logic, or argumentation, all of which are
absent in relation to this finding. 

In contrast with the committee's conclusion that at
worst it found it "credible" that I responded to
Shanker "heatedly" with "harsh public criticism,"
President Bollinger reached an altogether different
conclusion. In a radio interview on April 1st 2005
with NPR's Brian Lehrer, Bollinger responded to
Lehrer's statement that the committee found it
probably true that Massad "yelled at a Jewish student
to get out of his classroom," by affirming that the
described incident "did in fact happen" (emphasis
added). Bollinger not only changes the report's
finding that the claim of a "heated" response and
"harsh public criticism" is "credible" but transforms
it into a new claim, namely, that I instructed Shanker
to "get out" of my class room, and that this claim is
a "fact." 

As for the Tomy Schoenfeld's claim, the Committee
affirms that it occurred at an unspecified time ("in
the late Fall or early Spring terms of the 2001-2002
academic year"), and at an unspecified place ("in a
building adjacent to campus on 113th or 114th
street"), at an event with an unspecified title and
unknown sponsor.[11] Schoenfeld claims that at this
alleged event I asked him "How may Palestinians have
you killed." He brought with him one witness who, like
him, also could not recall the time, place, or title
of the event at which this alleged incident took
place. According to the report,
Mr. Schoenfeld told the committee that he had not
spoken to a dean or advisor about the incident. By
contrast, an assistant dean of student affairs in the
School of General Studies recalls that Mr. Schoenfeld
spoke with her about the incident shortly after it
occurred. Although he seemed upset, she remembers that
at the time he did not think this episode warranted
further action.[12]

Although the report mentions that I have denied that
this incident ever took place, that I have never met
or seen Mr. Schoenfeld, the report concludes that "In
light of the confirmation of the event by another
student and the contemporaneous reporting to a dean,
the committee finds it credible that an exchange of
this nature did occur at a location adjacent to
campus."[13] 

Let me emphasize that what the committee found
"credible" is not that I allegedly asked Schoenfeld
"how many Palestinians have you killed," rather that
an "exchange of this nature" occurred. What that
means, the report does not clarify. It would seem that
based on this finding, anyone who was a student in any
department at Columbia University in the last six
years can come forward to this committee claiming an
imaginary exchange with me at some event whose date,
place, sponsor, and title need not be disclosed, and
the committee will find their claim at least partly
"credible." 

There is therefore a glaring illogic governing the
committee's finding in this instance, given the facts
available to it. Moreover, I should reemphasize that
given the organized political campaign against me,
which the report acknowledges, it is mystifying why
the report fails to make any connection between this
campaign and the nature and timing of the claims made
by Shanker and Schoenfeld.


Grievance Claims

Now having established these two claims against me as
being "credible," the committee moves to analyze why
this situation occurred and what remedies are needed.
The committee declares that:
Almost none of the issues enumerated in the preceding
pages found their way into the normal channels for
addressing student concerns about curriculum and
instruction, particularly complaints about individual
faculty and specific courses. The establishment of
this committee was a response to the failure to
address such concerns clearly, promptly, and
consistently. These failures reflected both the
negligent or misguided behavior of individuals and
widespread systemic confusion about responsibility and
authority. As a result of these failures, outside
advocacy groups devoted to purposes tangential to
those of the University were able to intervene to take
up complaints expressed by some students, further
confusing the location of responsibility and authority
for addressing student concerns about instruction at
Columbia.

This is indeed a surprising conclusion. Since the
report tells us that neither Deena Shanker nor Tomy
Schoenfeld (nor even Lindsay Shrier, for that matter,
who had complained to the committee about Professor
George Saliba) sought to register their complaints
against me with any university channel, how could the
university be faulted for not addressing their
grievances? As there were no other grievances of merit
against me, or Professor Saliba, according to the
report, or against any other professor for that
matter, to what failure of university grievance
procedure is the committee referring? This is
especially puzzling as the report states that "Many of
the matters brought before us did not, in our opinion,
constitute the basis for formal grievances but were
issues that warranted sympathetic hearing and an
appropriate university response."[14] Which matters
exactly then were reported to existing grievance
channels that failed to address them? On that, the
report remains silent.


Conclusion

The report issued by the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee is
indeed a weak report that is flawed in its very
essence. Not only does it not provide a logical
progression of its arguments to reach a conclusion, it
simply states conclusions that are undefended in the
body of the report. This applies as much to its
finding claims by Shanker and Schoenfeld "credible" as
to it identifying the university grievance procedure
as having failed, which in turn pushed complaining
students to outside parties. The report fails
completely to establish facts or to persuade by
reasoned argument. Its conclusions are simply
baseless, demonstrating a lack of courage and a lack
of principled commitment to academic freedom.

The only possible logic that might have contributed to
the findings reported by the committee is the logic of
pressure exercised by the administration and outside
groups on the committee to declare specific findings.
Such pressures are hardly separable from the national
campaign targeting academic freedom on various
campuses across the country. It was these pressures to
which the administration had initially acquiesced when
it established the Ad Hoc Committee as part of the
inquisition of the faculty. Since as I demonstrated
above, the report's conclusions follow no logic or
consistent argument, one is left with a sense of
bewilderment as to why the committee would find
unsubstantiated student claims more "credible" than
the testimony of professors. It is here where the
political element was perhaps greatest in influencing
the findings of the committee, wherein it decided to
throw the witch hunters a morsel to placate them. 

Even though the report acknowledges that there has
been an ongoing organized effort at intimidation, by
forces both external and internal to the university,
of Middle East faculty at Columbia, especially me, and
that this has been going on for years, the committee
fails to see how its very establishment and the manner
in which it established its findings makes it part of
this campaign of intimidation. The objective of this
campaign is to silence all dissenting scholarly
voices, indeed to silence scholarship per se on the
Palestine/Israel conflict. As scholarship on the
conflict has largely uncovered the scale of the
atrocities and historical wrongs that Israel and the
Zionist movement have visited and continue to visit on
the Palestinian people, the witch hunters won't have
any of it. It is high time that Columbia faculty stood
up to this internal and external campaign that seeks
to suppress our academic freedom and to destroy the
institution of the university. If we fail to act now,
the repercussions will indeed be grave for all of us. 


Joseph Massad is a professor of Modern Arab Politics
and Intellectual History at Columbia University.


Related Links

Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report, Ira Katznelson,
Chair; Lisa Anderson; Farah Griffin; Jean E. Howard;
and Mark Mazower, Columbia University (28 March 2005)

EI EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Massad's statement to Columbia
University's Ad Hoc Grievance Committee (5 April 2005)

"Columbia Unbecoming" in the clear light of day,
Monique Dols (5 November 2004)

Joseph Massad responds to the intimidation of Columbia
University, Joseph Massad (3 November 2004)

Columbia Considers Limits on Political Expression at
University, Jacob Gershman, The New York Sun (19 April
2004)

Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel,
Joseph Massad (18 August 2003)

Policing the academy, Joseph Massad (14 April 2003)


Endnotes
1. This response will be posted on
www.censoringthought.org and on my webpage at
www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/
2. All citations in this section are from Section IV
of the report.
3. Section IV.
4. Section III, C.
5. Section III, D.
6. Section III, 1.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Jennifer Jacobson, "Columbia U. Report Criticizes
Professor's Classroom Conduct But Finds No Pattern of
Anti-Semitism," Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 April
2005.
11. Section III, 2.
12. Ibid.
13. ibid.
14. Section VI, 5. 



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