Dr. Edward Beck couldn't help but notice the unending stream of comments critical of Israel coming from the so-called "New Left," so he decided it was time to push back.
Beck, a professor at Alvernia College in Pennsylvania, founded the nonprofit Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) in 2002 to challenge pervasive anti-Zionist attitudes in academia. Unlike other organizations with similar goals, however, SMPE is made up entirely of college professors from campuses all over the country.
Now, with the goal of "educating the educators," the group is holding a conference presenting opinions and papers that contradict postcolonial theory with regard to Israel. The conference runs from Oct. 29-31 at Case Western Reserve University.
Postcolonial theory, explains Beck, is the message that the Jewish state was modeled after the British Empire and that Israel has colonialist and expansionist tendencies. The idea has been promulgated by many prominent scholars, most notably the late Edward Said at Columbia University and Noam Chomsky at MIT.
"These guys have been writing and having conferences about this for 20 years," says Beck. "We've been so far behind, we've been caught with our pants down, so to speak."
The postcolonial paradigm has been gaining more and more credence in the traditionally left-leaning academic community ever since the beginning of the second intifada five years ago, says Beck.
On September 17, 2002, Harvard President Lawrence Summers said, "....Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent."
Earlier this year, students accused three Columbia University professors in the Middle Eastern studies department of anti-Semitic bias and intimidation. The university investigated and did not find evidence of bias, but the three professors have been given leaves of absence.
SMPE held an ad-hoc "teach-in" during the Columbia controversy that featured speakers like Alan Dershowitz and Natan Sharansky. The event was a success, but the group wanted to plan something bigger and more scholarly.
Rabbi Peter Haas, Abba Hillel Silver Professor of Jewish Studies at Case and an SMPE board member, offered the campus's facilities for a full-scale academic conference where scholars could present and defend papers.
The time was ripe for a conference, says Haas, especially when new voices have yet to emerge from academia. "The academic community falls more along the lines of Chomsky and Said. It's easy to get sucked into them because they are persuasive and articulate voices."
Twenty-one scholars from universities including Northwestern, McGill, Denver, Brandeis and The Unversity of London will present at the conference. Peers will critique each paper before it is placed into a volume for publication. The proceedings will also be recorded and eventually placed on the Internet, says Haas. Out-of-town participants in the conference will have meals and lodging provided for them through the support of the Jewish Community Federation.
Israeli native Gideon Shimoni, visiting Rosenthal Professor of Jewish Studies at Case, will present "Postcolonialism and the History of Zionism," while psychology professor Irwin Mansdorf will discuss "The Psychology of Post-Colonial Revisionism in the Arab World: An Analysis of ‘Occupation' and ‘Right of Return.'"
The four sections of the conference are titled "Theoretical Considerations," "Postcolonialism in Academia," "Postcolonialism and Islam," and "Postcolonialism, Palestine and Israel."
Most of the professors in SMPE are Jewish, but not all. Beck says he saw many of his Jewish colleagues "completely vilify Israel" after 2002, while he believes in defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
The conference will be "historic," notes Beck, in that it will "change the manner of thinking to be more critical and will separate academic analysis from propaganda. These papers are peer reviewed, discussed and debated. It's not just a think tank cranking out papers."
By the time the conference is over, SMPE hopes to have a balanced critique of the dominant theory. Haas, for one, is excited to be able to make a dent. "Non-academic organizations like Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League have done this before," he says, "but there have been no scholarly works dealing with them."