JEWISH PROFESSOR HOUNDED AT CALIFORNIA CAMPUS FOR HOLDING PRO-ISRAELI VIEWS

Posted: 10/30/2015 11:44:00 AM
Author: Dr. Phyllis Chesler
Source: This article was first published on the FRONTPAGE websie.

JEWISH PROFESSOR HOUNDED AT CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE CAMPUS FOR HOLDING PRO-ISRAEL VIEWS
by Dr. Phyllis Chesler

Dr. Denise Dalaimo Nussbaum was smeared, shunned, and assaulted for having opposed pro-BDS, anti-Zionist speaker Miko Peled.
October 30, 2015


Dr. Denise Dalaimo Nussbaum, Chair of the Sociology Department, distinguished author and professor, is suing the Governing Board of Mount San Jacinto Community College for 9.5 million dollars for “assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gender discrimination, failure to prevent discrimination and harassment, violation of constitutional and statutory rights of free speech and political activities, retaliation, tortious interference with law enforcement investigation, and breach of fiduciary duty.”

I think she should sue for more—far more—since this long-time tenured professor now faces a potentially dangerous and hostile work environment.

Her crime? She is a Zionist and proud of it. More importantly, she is a great believer in objective truth. This is currently out of fashion on so many American campuses when the subject of Israel, Palestine, and Islam are discussed. Dr. Nussbaum is also a feminist—and this figures in this story as well. Her love of truth, love of Zion, and love of freedom for women and minorities are anathema to those who have attacked her.

What is going on?

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel Brownshirts are growing more and more aggressive on North American campuses. They support “hate speech” and “blood libels” but in the name of “free speech.” They claim “academic freedom” to do so. But they behave in absolutely uncivilized ways.

They glare, stare, yell, march, chant, intimidate and bully, even as they conduct intense internet and campus-wide smear campaigns. They interrupt, challenge, and walk out on outside speakers who hold “false” ideas. If a faculty member shares such ideas, the Brownshirts create a hostile, even a dangerous work environment—all the while accusing their (usually) single opponent of having done so.

Such Brownshirts (students, faculty, administrators), are both actively and passively involved in destroying, one by one, all those who hold “false” ideas. They advance on—or refuse to stop such an advance on—the “politically incorrect” professor like a swarm of killer bees. For years, I have called this phenomenon Gaza on the Pacific or Gaza on the Hudson. Otherwise good people fear them and do not want to get involved.

I have been writing about this danger for fifteen years now; as I feared, matters have worsened. Senior, competent, beloved professors are being forced to flee for their lives by mobs of vicious haters, often led by one or two Islamists who are always, always “pro-Palestine” and “anti-Zionist.”

For example, in 2002, a riot took place at Concordia University in Montreal. Dear friends were bruised, knocked down and beaten bloody. This is hardly constitutes a free exchange of ideas.

Also in 2002, at San Francisco State, students had to walk a hostile gauntlet attacking Israel and Jews. Posters read: Zionism=Racism and Jews=Nazis. At one point, Jewish students had to be escorted by campus police away from a hostile, near-rioting mob.

In 2003, I experienced one of the earliest near-riots in academia in America when I told the truth about Islam and Israel at a free-standing conference that had rented space at Barnard. I had to be hustled out for my safety. I wrote about that experience in these pages.

In 2009, at York University, another pro-Palestine/anti-Israel riot took place. Nora Gold fictionalizes this in her award winning novel Fields Of Exile. Her heroine is badly wounded in just such a riot—because she is known as being pro-Israel.

In 2011, while Charles Small was not physically assaulted, he was psychologically and verbally assaulted by those who forced him out of Yale, actually who punished him, for daring to tell the truth about contemporary Jew-hatred in both the Islamic world and in the West.

In 2015, Philosophy Professor Andrew Pessin had to take a medical leave of absence due to the swarm of vicious propaganda that circulated against him on campus as well as the death threats—all because he was known to be pro-Israel. This campaign was led by a pro-Palestinian religious Muslim female student.

Early this year, Dr. Nussbaum, became the next, known victim of a similar four-month campaign in which she was bullied, harassed, shunned, shamed, turned on by her colleagues, betrayed by her own administration—and physically assaulted by a more junior faculty member. Unbelievably, infuriatingly, her administration is now paying for her attacker’s lawyers.

How and why did this happen?

Observing due process, Dr. Nussbaum persuasively objected to the lecture invitation extended to a known non-academic Israel-hater, Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew. She went through channels. Most of the involved faculty agreed with her. But two, perhaps only three faculty members who wanted Peled to speak bypassed all appropriate channels and used their own faculty “turf” to pay him $2,500.