" But trustees are slow to move."

Someone needs to light a fire under their chairs.

Why is Peretz unable to disagree with anyone without resorting to personal attacks? The politics of personal destruction are ruining this country, and Peretz is a primary culprit.

Excuse me, achester, Coatsworth himself has engaged in the politics of personal and impersonal destruction.

The man is a disgrace.

It's a great country we live in where parents pay $50,000/year to send their children to universities run by subversives.

This goes well beyond capitalists selling revolutionaries the rope with which to hang them.  

By the way, you've got a terrorists on the payroll of a public university in Illinois.  So, this sort of thing is hardly unprecedented.  Just at a higher level and subsidized by unwitting (presumably) private donations and tuition.

Actually, here in the U.S. we don't usually ascribe criminal status to someone unless they've been convicted in a court of law.  It's a silly idea maybe, but it's worked so far.

I have a good idea.  Let's start rooting out from public life people whose politics we disapprove of.  We can have Congressional hearings.  We can have lists.  We can ask them questions like, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of [fill in the blank]."  This has worked so well for us in the past.

Frankly, it comes as no surprise that the rightwing would love nothing more than a revival of a McCarthyite movement in this country to distract everyone FROM THE SHEER FUCKING STUPIDITY, INCOMPETENCE AND GREED of the neo-conservative thieves, idiots and war criminals who got us mired down in Iraq and are otherwise busy destroying our economy and stealing our public resources, tangible and intangible, in a wide variety of ways.

And Martin Peretz and his acolytes should lead them.  They obviously have a keen understanding of the favorite tactics of the fascist right and are chomping at the bit to deploy them.

"I have a good idea.  Let's start rooting out from public life people whose politics we disapprove of.  We can have Congressional hearings.  We can have lists.  We can ask them questions like, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of [fill in the blank]."  This has worked so well for us in the past."

What a bunch of roududu crap!

The lefty loonies have been using the specter of  McCarthyite tactics to scare everyone they disagree with. These miscreants always have a term of abuse which makes them innocent and their opponents guilty:

"bourgeois oppressors," "fascists" "mccarthyites" "orientalists" are but some of the terms in their menagerie.

Let's remember that when the drunken sot McCarthy was hounding his enemies in the early fifties, dragging them before congressional committees, black listing them and getting them fired, the leftists in the world were putting their enemies in gulags, shooting them without benefit of trial, torturing and exiling them.

Ask any Soviet prisoners be they form Russia or Cuba about McCarthyism and they will laugh in your face.

Finally, if Bollinger’s appointment had his way he would have black listed every zionist as well as instituted a boycott of Israeli academics.

So much for McCarthyite tactics!

"And Martin Peretz and his acolytes should lead them.  They obviously have a keen understanding of the favorite tactics of the fascist right and are chomping at the bit to deploy them."

And Bollinger and his  acolytes should lead them.  They obviously have a keen understanding of the favorite tactics of the fascist left and are chomping at the bit to deploy them.

He jackson, which one of you and Kirchick is Peretz's illegitimate son and which one is his mini-me?

Among the people who fought longest and most effectively against Soviet communism were Social Democrats, especially during the Cold War in Europe -- leftists, in other words.

hey roidubouloi are you the  illegitimate son of Bollinger or of Coatsworth?

irony, Ayers publicly confessed (and boasted) to the NYTimes, his criminal status.

We don't give legal status to random self-incrimination, either, and the fact that whatever Ayers' activities were, they related to another time, an entire generation ago in fact, is an aspect to consider.  At some point, one has got to put a stop to this picking over the scab of the 1960s and 1970s to attack someone running for presidnet in 2008!

irony, I didn't say he should be sent to jail on an inadmissible confession.  

But, he can certainly be blackballed for confessing to terrorism.  Honest people don't have to hang out with him.  People running for president don't have to make friends with him.

Why does he have some inalienable right to a job at a public university?  Why does he have the right to be treated as a respectable citizen, when by his own boast, he is not.

I don't know, Chan, really I don't.  Maybe because he does things that bring him that respect now, as a citizen or as an academic or as a teacher.  Maybe because it's America and not somewhere else.  Maybe because things that happened a long time ago are often the experience of a different person.  Maybe because he's genuinely an interesting and engaging individual and has ideas that people find persuasive.  Maybe because it counts for something to live a normal and productive life for almost three decades.  Maybe because it's Chicago.  Maybe because things are more complicated than "Ayers was wannabe terrorist in 1970s, therefore is now rejected for ever."  Maybe because some people admire him but don't know why.  Maybe because there's an aura of romantic authenticity attached to someone who belonged to a violent/militant group.  Maybe because he's been a good parent and his kids are impressive.  Maybe because people sense an ambivalence about the real self, what one was, what one is, that echoes their own ambivalence.  Maybe because he tells good jokes.  

Maybe because -- honestly, Chan -- because "blackballing" isn't what we do best in this country.

Thank you, irony.  That was very eloquent.  

ironyroad: "Maybe because -- honestly, Chan -- because "blackballing" isn't what we do best in this country."

Bullshit. Try being a Zionist Jew a a place like Columbia or MIT or Berkeley. You'll see how fun it is and you'll learn how suddenly you're no good or have inherent violent tendencies because you have an Israeli passport. You see ironyroad, whoever is not a fellow traveler of the Soviet-American Left in charge at such places is exactly blackballed.

It's such fun to refuse to sign an anti-Israel petition that your chairman wrote! Do you honestly think it doesn't mater? Do you honestly believe this is not blackballing?

And then you come with this lofty bullshit?

Someone here said something about McCarthyism. This is with the Left Loonies shout when criticized.

I am as much a lefty as any American who votes the Democrats, but I consider the Loony Left my mortal enemy. I lived in a Communist country and I know what I am speaking about.

In America there was a tradition of left-wing opposed to communists and other bastards that today are multiculturalists and marxists. JF Kennedy was just such a man. It is not by accident that he was murdered by a fucking Communist.

sleepy, that referred to a long argument Chan and I and others have been engaged in regarding Ayers and Obama (and Ayers's job at UIC).  Chan appears to think that nobody should associate with Ayers in any way (no matter how superficially), and no university should offer him a job, because of his past history 30-something years ago.  I disagree.

Is there a direct parallel to prejudice against Zionists?  IMO it's a different kind of issue in that it's to do with current political loyalties rather than past individual actions -- but personally I'm in favor of schools coming down hard on attempts to shut down freedom of speech for any one group to the benefit of another.

I remember, though, that a previous controversy to which you and I contributed our 10 cents' worth was the well known and tireless anti-Zionist/anti-Israeli Norman Finkelstein and his troubles at De Paul.  I could be wrong, but wasn't he ultimately DENIED tenure at De Paul?  Some effective blackballing there in the opposite direction, I'd say.

My bullshit's always lofty -- how is it with yours?

ironyroad:

Mine is realistic. How's that for a counter-part?

I dealt with a professional anti-Semite directly and he attempted to expel me from the university and have me arrested. He accused me of being violent (I had never met him and only corresponded with him).

Unbeknownst to him, I had sent copies of all our correspondence to the president and provost - blessed be the computer function of 'Bcc' (copying a message to another person without the first one seeing)! I thus had proof (that I made clear I would gladly shown in any US court) that I acted correctly and that his allegations were false and malicious.

So you see, I can attest first-hand that these people will stop at nothing. I can also attest that nothing happened to him. Oh no, calumny against a Jew is certainly nothing to punish or even reprimand someone for. I wrote a considerable number of letters to the administration of the university for that. Are you familiar with the term stonewalling and sweeping under the rug? The only help I had was from the press - and even that came way after the critical period.

So spare me the sanctimonious crap. I have direct experience with anti-Semitism in America. Of course, the apocalyptic and lying anti-Semite also talked about McCarthyism.

I wasn't being sanctimonious -- I was merely offering Finkelstein as a counter-example.  Other than that, my point stands that I was discussing a somewhat different kind of issue with Chan.  I didn't presume to comment on your own experiences and I don't see why you are trying to get a dig in at me -- if your argument is that there are anti-Israeli politics and people out there that can legitimately be described as (at least in part) anti-Semitic, then I agree.

It hasn't come up in my life so far, but if a department chair demanded that I sign a political statement -- be it anti-Israel or anything else whatsoever -- that I disagreed with, I like to think I would simply say no (including, if necessary, using the "Bcc" email function as you did).  It's not the business of an academic head of a department to recruit faculty for ideological declarations.

So, do I get to go now, or do you have some other bone to pick?

ironyroad, I have no bone to pick. Good to hear your opinions.

And I've none with you, sleepyavl.  No pickable bones.

Sleeplyavl: You seem awfully intolerant for someone who lived in a communist country (where, out of curiosity?) and understandably hated the repression. I know that horrible anti - Zionism and anti - Semitism disfigure Berkeley and elsewhere but as for the multiculturalists and Marxists, you sound like Roger Kimball who constantly has his knickers in a snit over tenured radicals. A lot of these people are harmless, trying to subvert the established order through deconstructive readings of Joseph Conrad and other canonicals and other equallly effective revolutionary strategies. It is a wonder that a lot of these people can start their cars in the morning. Come the revolution, if ever, they will miss it; they will be in bed furiously paging through Luce Irigary or The New Left Review.

liberal reformer: if you want a dialogue, read my post here (about seven posts ago). I don't know who Roger Kimball is but I know a tenured radical who is a rabid anti-Semite who has tried to expel me and arest me. In America. OK? Read and then we can talk.

Sleepyavl; I hadn't checked this thread for a long time. I just now read your last post. I previously saw the post you mentioned. What  you describe is not good but it does not mean that this is a common experience.