[Peace-discuss] Why UIUC is not successfully policing the limits of allowable debate

[C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/2014-09-21/jim-dey-salaita-fight-generating-wild-theories.html


What Jim Dey actually exposes is the neoliberal panic at the weakening of its Zionist prop. That's what's revealed by the Salaita affair. 

Suppose Salaita had 'tweeted' what he did about Hamas, instead of Israel? Would we ever have heard a peep (or a tweet) about it?

Of course for the last 40 years - since the establishment of post-Vietnam Gleichschaltung in the universities - no careful faculty member would have said such things (about Israel - attacking official US enemies is OK). The fact that the academy has to move to suppress something that would not have occurred antecedently is a sign of panic. The lid is coming off.

Dey's fevered assertion that "There's nothing there!" is a clear admission that there is. We should to point out the interests being served by the contemporary university. They're not just Zionist. We should talk more about neoliberalism as the real enemy - that's the talk Dey is trying to scotch (so to speak).

--CGE