{"id":2675,"date":"2010-10-15T03:25:38","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T08:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martinkramer.org\/sandbox\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2010-10-15T03:25:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T08:25:38","slug":"start-with-two-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/2010\/10\/start-with-two-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Start with two Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview<\/a> in February 2003, Edward Said said this:<\/p>\n

An outrageous Israeli, Martin Kramer, uses his Web site to attack everybody who says anything he doesn\u2019t like. For example, he has described<\/a> Columbia as \u201cthe Bir Zeit [university] on the Hudson,\u201d because there are two Palestinians teaching here. Two Palestinians teaching in a faculty of 8,000 people! If you have two Palestinians, it makes you a kind of terrorist hideout. This is part of the atmosphere of intimidation that is McCarthyite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Flash forward seven years later, to last week\u2019s formal inauguration<\/a> of the new Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. From its website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Founded in January 2010, the Center for Palestine Studies is the first such center to be established in an academic institution in the United States. Columbia University is currently the professional home to a unique concentration of distinguished scholars on Palestine and Palestinians, as well as to award-winning supporting faculty in a variety of disciplines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So how did Columbia go so rapidly from \u201ctwo Palestinians teaching in a faculty of 8,000 people!\u201d to \u201ca unique concentration of distinguished scholars on Palestine and the Palestinians\u201d? Don\u2019t be shocked, but Edward Said was out to deceive in that 2003 interview. Obviously there were more than two Palestinians back then. But I didn\u2019t invent the nickname Bir Zeit-on-Hudson because of their number. It was meant to evoke precisely the atmosphere of intimidation\u2014anti-Israel<\/em> intimidation\u2014that would later come to light<\/a> in the \u201cColumbia Unbecoming\u201d affair.<\/p>\n

Now that Columbia boasts of being home to \u201ca unique concentration of distinguished scholars on Palestine\u201d (who \u201cwill have a national and global reach\u201d), Bir Zeit-on-Hudson hardly sounds far-fetched. By that, I don\u2019t mean a \u201cterrorist hideout\u201d\u2014those were Said\u2019s words, not mine\u2014but a redoubt of militant Palestinian nationalism in the guise of scholarship. And I mean militant: the affiliates<\/a> of the new center aren\u2019t only engaged in the positive affirmation of Palestinian identity, but are activists in the campaign to negate Israel. This is obviously the case in regard to Joseph Massad and Nadia Abu al-Haj\u2014their field isn\u2019t Palestine studies, it\u2019s anti-Israel studies\u2014but it\u2019s increasingly true of the new center\u2019s co-director, Rashid Khalidi, Columbia\u2019s Edward Said Professor, an enthusiastic spokesman<\/a> for the PLO in its terrorist phase and a severe critic<\/a> of the same leadership in its present phase.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For now, Khalidi is cleverly doing what Said did with his \u201ctwo Palestinians\u201d shtick. \u201cWe have absolutely no money,\u201d Khalidi said<\/a> at the launch (attended<\/a> by an overflow crowd). \u201cWhat our little modest center will be able to do may be some narrow, specific things,\u201d he reassured<\/a> a journalist from the Jewish Forward<\/em>. I’m not buying it, and I think that the moniker Bir Zeit-on-Hudson is too modest to convey the scope of the ambition behind this project. So I\u2019m working on an alternative. For a preview, click on the thumbnail or here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bir Zeit-on-Hudson was the nickname given by Martin Kramer to Columbia in 2003. Edward Said complained, but Columbia’s new Center for Palestine Studies now confirms its Bir Zeit-like status–and then some. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15067,101153,2241,21063],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-columbia","tag-edward-said","tag-palestinians","tag-rashid-khalidi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}