IsraCampus.Org.il

Then, Commentary Magazine adds its voice:
…Back at Ben-Gurion, the political biases of the politics department are well-documented. Indeed, though Prof. Newman should be lauded for his efforts to combat the proposed academic boycott of Israel in the UK, they do ring somewhat hollow when the chair of his own department supports the boycott, a matter to which one would assume Newman would urgently attend. Instead of ignoring the report, Prof. Newman and the rest of the faculty should immediately correct the failings in their departments. And if they fail to step up, the authorities should press them to step down.

http://zioncon.blogspot.com/2012/01/ruckus-over-bgus-tenured-tanzim-heats.html

The Ruckus over BGU's Tenured Tanzim Heats Up
The ruckus over the anti-Israel indoctrination center pretending to be an academic department at Ben Gurion "University" continues.

posted by Steven Plaut
Thursday, January 05, 2012

Yaakov Bergman, a prominent professor at the Hebrew University, has joined the assault on the Tenured Tanzim who teach "politics" at Ben Gurion University. He published a response to Neve Gordon and Dani Filc, the two most extremist Israel-hating faculty members in this otherwise wall-to-wall anti-Israel far-leftist department. Gordon and Filc have both served as department chairmen in that department and both have also chaired the anti-Semitic organization "Physicians for Human Rights." (Neither of course is a physician.) Gordon and Filc defend in Haaretz their department serving as a one-sided Bash-Israel propaganda center. After all, whine Gordon and Filc in their Haaretz article, people who actually want an "ordinary" political science department that engages in scholarly work and research can find those at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University. In contrast, they insist, Ben Gurion "University" wanted a different sort of politics department, one focused on "criticism," by which they mean Bash-Israel pro-terror extremism plus a lot of Marxism. And ONLY that. There is not a single non-leftist permitted to teach in that department. And by the way there is no shortage of Marxists and radical leftists in the political science departments at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University either. Gordon and Filc then cite one Avner De Shalit, who teaches political science at Hebrew University, of approving of what they are doing in politics at BGU, but of course neglect to mention that De Shalit is himself a Marxist and far-leftist who has made a career out of studying "environmental justice," meaning a Marxist take on environmentalism (see http://www.deshalit.huji.ac.il/) .

Anyway, Bergman bashed Gordon and Filc (in Hebrew) and posted this segment from the recent international panel report on the Gordon-Filc "department":

3.5 Research
The committee feels that the research performance of the Department can be improved considerably. [ A]n examination of faculty publications raises concerns about the department's research. [ ] While many books were published by good academic publishers, few books in the materials presented to the committee were published by leading university presses and none of the articles mentioned were published by leading political science journals. [ ] In the original report, which covered a five-year period, only a couple of articles of all faculty members combined were published in leading political science journals. [ ] The committee recommends, therefore, to strengthen the overall research performance of the Department [ ].
http://www.che.org.il/download/files/Ben%20Gurion%20Report.pdf

Gordon and Filc then recruited some students from their own department to write a letter cheering on what goes on in that department. But guess what. Since the entire politics department at BGU engages in Bash-Israel extremism, most of the students who sign up for courses in that department are SEEKING Bash-Israel extremism and Marxist gibberish. So OF COURSE they are great defenders of the Gordon-Filc gang.

Then, Commentary Magazine adds its voice:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/03/is-ben-gurion-polisci-department-biased/

IS Ben-Gurion PoliSci Department Biased?
Jonathan Neumann
03/01/2012

A recent report by an international committee appointed by Israel's Council for Higher Education recommended that the Politics and Government Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev be shut down, should it fail to address the shortcomings outlined. In particular, the department stands accused of allowing the faculty's leftist political opinions and fondness for activism to affect the curriculum and undermine the quality of its academic research, a viewpoint apparently affirmed by students.

Faculty have responded that the committee is populated by extreme rightists and set out to hurt the department. However, in an op-ed for Haaretz entitled, ''Yes, Shut it Down!'' (perhaps unsurprisingly, it is only available in Hebrew) Ze'ev Maoz, a professor at UC Davis and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center and a self-declared "proud man of the left" (credentials here), revealed he had been tasked with evaluating the department some nine years ago and came to the same conclusions, also based solely on academic considerations.

Rather than confront the findings of this report (and, it seems, the previous one), faculty have gone on the defensive. Meanwhile, Prof. David Newman, a founder of the department and now a dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion, has paid it little attention, instead engaging in a peripheral, if revealing, personal conflict with Prof. Efraim Karsh, of King's College, London.

Prof. Karsh noted on the day of the publication of the report, Newman's Jerusalem Post op-ed, instead of dealing with the committee's findings, blasted the Knesset for its alleged attack on democracy in seeking to restrict foreign funding of NGOs, to revise the system of judicial appointments, etc. The article, though of course it does not precisely confirm the concerns of the report, certainly does nothing to mitigate them.

Following the harsh words from Karsh, Newman, in a subsequent Jerusalem Post piece, inexplicably denounced his adversary for committing "verbal terrorism" in resorting to Nazi metaphors – a feat of which only Newman, of the two, is in fact guilty. Perhaps recognizing the flimsiness of his defense (and compounding it), Newman further implies that Karsh, having left Israel to teach in England, is somehow less fit to comment on his native state – an odd espousal from a man who himself has also spent much of the past few years in England.

Back at Ben-Gurion, the political biases of the politics department are well-documented. Indeed, though Prof. Newman should be lauded for his efforts to combat the proposed academic boycott of Israel in the UK, they do ring somewhat hollow when the chair of his own department supports the boycott, a matter to which one would assume Newman would urgently attend. Instead of ignoring the report, Prof. Newman and the rest of the faculty should immediately correct the failings in their departments. And if they fail to step up, the authorities should press them to step down.

Ben Gurion University

Ben Gurion University – Additional Calls to Deal with BGU's Tenured Tanzim

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The Ruckus over BGU's Tenured Tanzim Heats Up The ruckus over the anti-Israel indoctrination center pretending to be an academic department at Ben Gurion "University" continues.

The Ruckus over BGU's Tenured Tanzim Heats Up
The ruckus over the anti-Israel indoctrination center pretending to be an academic department at Ben Gurion "University" continues.