The silencing of exiled South African activist Fred Dube – for teaching Zionism critically
JVL Introduction
“[A] political firestorm awaits American professors, university administrators, and students who refuse the reductive scripts of Israeli nationalism in public,” writes Stony Brook University academic Abena Asare.
It’s not today or yesterday. This is story dating back to 1983 when Stony Brook University Prof Ernest Frederick Dube, a South African anti-apartheid activist and graduate of Robben Island and Cornell was called an antisemite and eventually dismissed.
Boston Review is to be congratulated for publicising this long-forgotten story of how a course on Zionism and racism, that didn’t baulk at making comparisons with Nazism, taught without complaint for 6 years, attracted a firestorm after a single complaint by a visiting Israeli professor.
He saw no need to discuss with the academic in question, no need to attend the course before filing an angry complaint. Years of wrangling followed.
In the first instance, a faculty committee investigation concluded – with the university administration agreeing – that “the bounds of academic freedom had not been crossed”.
Not good enough for the state governor, under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League who weighed in. Not good enough for some donors. A long, vindictive campaign of escalation followed, detailed below, culminating years later in Dube’s dismissal, despite the ongoing support of his students and faculty.
As Asare points out: “The question posed on Dube’s syllabus—about the relationship between Zionism and racism—remains as relevant as it was then, although in many places, it still cannot be explored without fear of reprisal.
RK
This article was originally published by the Boston Review on Thu 18 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
The Silencing of Fred Dube
Forty years ago, the exiled South African activist dared to teach Zionism critically. A furious backlash ensued.
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“Israel’s nationalist violence…is endemic to the nation-state and is neither religiously rooted nor exceptional.”
Depressingly, nothing much has changed in academia. However, this particular tale with its many amazing follow up stories is worthy of a Hollywood movie – the Blinkens, the Cuomos, the Israeli professor and the 7th Otober uprising, the ANC led South African government taking Israel to the ICJ……….Will this fascinating story have a happy ending? Will the world finally see the dismantling of this racist, colonial, settler, genocidal state?
Liberals in western countries say they support a civic nationalism based not on race but on an attachment to the values of a liberal democracy – equality before the law, freedom of speech, equal political rights etc – and oppose an ethnic nationalism based on race that characterises populist right wing movements and countries such as Hungary where the government embraces this racist perspective. It seems that the only ethnic nationalism that is acceptable to them is in Israel. Point out this contradiction and you get accused of anti-semitism.