Chumash Auditorium was nearly full. Many of those waiting were simply students hoping to pick up a few extra credit points. But others were angry. Some had survived the Holocaust and were not ready to hear criticisms of the state of Israel. Some were Jewish students not sure what to expect of a man incorrectly identified by the Mustang Daily as “anti-Jewish.” And some were there to hear the opinion of an accomplished scholar whose background as a Jewish citizen of Israel made his calls for Palestinian justice unexpected.
Cal Poly became the second of three California State University (CSU) campuses to host a lecture from controversial Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé on Feb. 22.
Pappé is a history professor and scholar at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. He is a well-known member of a group of scholars known as “New Historians,” whose work is centered around rewriting Israel’s history based on declassified Israel Defense Forces documents, according to history professor Manzar Foroohar, who invited Pappé to Cal Poly.
According to a BBC News profile of Israel, Israel declared its independence in 1948. The Zionist movement, dedicated to establishing a homeland for those of the Jewish faith in what is now Israel, reached its peak after the World War II. As the only majority-Jewish state in the world, Israel’s population continues to grow, pitting the Israeli government against Palestinians and other members of the Muslim world.
Pappé’s lecture focused primarily on the effect the Arab Spring — the revolutions sweeping the Middle East — might have on relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
He spoke about the three A’s — acknowledgement, accountability and acceptance — he believes would provide reconciliation for the hotly contested region. Pappé said Israel must acknowledge the catastrophes they have brought onto Palestinians after the bloody Arab-Israeli War of 1948, that Israel must take accountability and tell Palestinian refugees they can return home and that the Middle East must collectively accept that “this community of Jews in Israel is a part of the Arab world, the Muslim world.”
His lecture comes at an especially poignant time, as media reports say a conflict between Israel and Iran seems imminent. Many, including Pappé, fear that a military showdown between these two countries in the midst of the revolutions would put Israelis and Palestinians alike at risk.
For administration and most faculty, Pappé’s lecture was a simple example of academic freedom.
Foroohar, who has a background in Latin America and the Middle East, invited Pappé to speak on campus. She is Iranian, and received her bachelor’s degree from the National University of Iran in Tehran.
She said she has not personally seen much criticism from the student body about Pappe’s lecture.
“This (controversy) is an issue of academic freedom and misunderstanding,” Foroohar said. “Without the freedom of discussion, the Earth would still be flat. We are not afraid to touch unpopular topics.”
Before the lecture, she said she received one piece of hate mail, but didn’t respond to it.
“When you respond to low blows, you dignify them,” Foroohar said.
Foroohar said she knows Pappé from conferences they both participated in, calling him a respected international scholar.
Pappé also serves as the European Centre for Palestine Studies director and Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies c0-director. However, Pappé’s criticisms of the Israeli government, as well as his belief that the Israel/Palestine conflict is resulting in a systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, are contested by some scholars and members of the Jewish community.
Foroohar is open about agreeing with Pappé’s stances.
“When we say, ‘Never again (a widely-used statement about the Holocaust);’ we don’t just mean genocide against Jews,” Foroohar said. “We have to say never again for all humanity.”
In Pappé’s speech, he made it clear that Israeli actions against Palestinians are part of an ethnic cleansing, rather than genocide. As a Jewish citizen of Israel whose family emigrated from Germany, he said he had a hard enough time using the term ethnic cleansing.
As it stands now, Pappé said, “The peace process is never going to work. You cannot bring peace between the occupier and the occupied. You need reconciliation.”
The College of Liberal Arts and history department attached their names to the event.
While Pappé’s stance is critical of Israel’s policies and might be controversial for the Jewish community or those not willing to criticize the state of Israel, groups and individuals protesting his appearance said it is not what he says that upsets them, it’s that he says it with the perceived support of the university.
Several groups have been vocal about their demands.
The AMCHA Initiative is one such opponent to Pappé’s CSU appearances. In a statement sent to California State University, Fresno president John Welty; Cal Poly president Jeffrey Armstrong; CSU Northridge president Harold Hellenbrand; and CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and released on AMCHA’s website, the Initiative calls for the universities to rescind their sponsorship of these events, based on concerns that the events are using taxpayer dollars for “propagandizing.”
A letter responding to AMCHA’s requests, signed by all three campus presidents, states that while the universities might not agree with Pappé’s message, the presidents stand by their faculty in allowing him to bring a perspective, however unpopular, to campus.
Pappé referred to the letter as justification for the emotional and geographical toll his trip has taken.
“I’ve been an academic for more than 30 years, and it’s amazing to see a letter so clear,” Pappé said of the document in defense of academic freedom.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA Initiative co-founder and a lecturer in Hebrew at University of California, Santa Cruz, said AMCHA’s main concern is Pappé’s presence was requested by a professor and as a result, the university has attached its name to his lecture. She said having the university’s name attached to a politically charged event — and brought about by a professor with a “political agenda” — is more than unethical, it’s illegal.
“If a student group had brought him in, there would be no AMCHA response,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “It’s a free speech issue, and students have that right. I wouldn’t like it, I would protest and bring my own information, but it would be covered under freedom of speech. We’re not calling for the event’s cancellation, but there are no student groups behind (the Cal Poly visit) as at Northridge.”
Rossman-Benjamin said she believes the event’s goal was not solely to inform students about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
“It’s one thing to bring a scholar who’s going to educate, and another to have an event for a political agenda — to harm the Jewish state,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “That’s the goal of the event. But the university doesn’t have freedom of speech, and freedom is a privilege that you get to advance knowledge. This isn’t that.”
In Rossman-Benjamin’s opinion, tying the Cal Poly name, as well the name of the history department and the College of Liberal Arts, to Pappé’s appearance is unacceptable and “part of a campaign to harm the Jewish state and to harm Jews that comes from the university itself.”
Rossman-Benjamin and AMCHA asked for two main things.
“We want for the university to take its name off of the event — for the history department and the College of Liberal Arts to take their names off of the event,” she said. “Second thing, we do want a statement from president Armstrong and chancellor Reed that acknowledges that propagandizing on university premises is prohibited.”
College of Liberal Arts dean Linda Halisky said college support of a speaker invited by a member of the faculty is almost done by default. According to Halisky, faculty are free to invite whomever they choose, unless they are affiliated with the government or endorsing violence.
She also said AMCHA’s claims that the event was funded by taxpayer dollars are untrue.
“We have three different sources of funding,” Halisky said. “The first is from the state, the second is from a lottery and the third is a special fund dedicated to bringing international speakers. Since Dr. Pappé is an international scholar, the money from the third fund was used.”
She said the money in that fund is an endowment from a donor, so no state funds were used to pay for Pappé’s appearance.
Another of AMCHA’s claims was refuted by Pappé himself during his lecture.
AMCHA’s letter to CSU administrators stated “much of the rhetoric Pappé uses to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state is anti-Semitic according to the working definition of anti-Semitism employed by the U.S. State Department.”
“As a Jew, I’m really annoyed at the cheap usage of anti-Semitism,” Pappé said during his lecture. “Anything criticizing Israel is suddenly anti-Semitism. It’s completely ignorant.”
The history department does offer other points of view about issues concerning the Middle East and Judaism. It has three more events relating to the Middle East coming up in the near future, including guest speaker Laith Ulaby, who will discuss the role of music in the Egyptian uprisings.
Foroohar said many different perspectives are offered on campus, citing the speech that Holocaust survivor Albert Rosa, gave on Feb. 16. His speech was co-sponsored by the MultiCultural Center and seven different College of Liberal Arts departments, including history.
During one tense moment in the question and answer segment of Pappé’s speech, a man stood up and introduced himself as a Holocaust survivor. He asked why the presentation had not included a panel to present both sides.
“We are bombarded by the other side,” Foroohar said of the question. “Last week, we brought a Holocaust survivor, and nobody asked why there wasn’t a Nazi on the panel. These are examples of victimizers and victims.”
However, Rossman-Benjamin is not convinced there is a perspective that would counteract Pappé’s messages.
“Bringing the Ambassador to Israel, who’s going to say all these great things about Israel, is not the opposite of calling Israel an apartheid state,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “It’s the hate speech, the anti-Semitic speech that should not be supported. It’s not right to politicize the university.”
Cal Poly’s Freedom of Speech Codes do allow for usage of campus facilities by faculty-sponsored educational activities. The code allows for “events such as conferences, meetings, lectures … public assemblies concerned with the professional, cultural, recreational or entertainment phases of university life. Participants and guests may include students, faculty and staff of other educational institutions and the general public when such participants or guests are appropriate to the function.”
Though it is allowed, computer engineering senior Sagiv Sheelo said the presentation itself was unbalanced.
Sheelo is president of Hillel, a large, on-campus Jewish club which welcomes students of all faiths. He attended Pappé’s speech, and though he was not surprised by the content, he disagreed with the presentation on different grounds.
“For myself and the people I know, it wasn’t the fact that he had a talk on campus,” Sheelo said. “It was the way they brought him to campus, through a professor with an anti-Israel view. When you produce only one side, it’s not as balanced of a viewpoint.”
Sheelo said he knows of students who have taken Foroohar’s classes and felt uncomfortable vocalizing their viewpoints, which may not coincide with hers.
However, Sheelo said he is not saying that campus does not host speakers who strongly support Israel.
“There are those speakers that come, but I can’t remember the last time the university hosted a pro-Israel event on the same (professional) level,” Sheelo said.
Sheelo said Pappé being an Israeli Jew does not make him a balanced presenter.
“There are both Jews and Israelis who have a negative view toward Israel, just like there are Americans who dislike America,” Sheelo said. “They presented him as a factual historian without being fully upfront of his viewpoints and the motives behind his talk.”
Similar points were raised by dissenters on other campuses.
Pappé spoke at Cal State Northridge on Feb. 20.
Ken Scarboro, CSU Northridge newspaper the Daily Sundial’s editor-in-chief, was present at the beginning of Pappé’s speech.
He said the most visible opposition outside of the presentation was from groups such as the Jewish-interest fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and the local chapter of Students for Israel.
“Inside, there wasn’t much vocal opposition,” Scarboro said. “There were a few groans and sighs from the crowd. At one point someone said, ‘That’s not true.’ It was the Q-and-A session when things got interesting.”
He said there were many pro-Israel students calling Pappé’s credentials into question and saying his personal background did not make him a reliable source. Similar objections were raised at the Cal Poly lecture.
No protestors were present outside of Pappé’s speech in Chumash Auditorium.