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| Fifth Column |
| Professor Can't Win Suing For Libel, So Sues For Copyright Infringement |
| 2006-08-04 |
| Stanford University's Joel Beinin is used to criticism for his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but when a conservative commentator put the professor's photo on the cover of a booklet titled "Campus Support for Terrorism,'' it started a whole new war. Beinin, a prominent Middle Eastern scholar, filed suit in March -- turning his ideological clash with FrontPageMag.com Editor in Chief David Horowitz into a legal one. Horowitz removed the photo from later printings, but Beinin said the harm had already been done and is demanding unspecified damages. With the United States at war in Iraq, Beinin said, it's a scary time to be labeled a supporter of terrorism. "Horowitz is -- if not a coordinated part -- part of a broader attack against people who speak out against Bush's Middle Eastern policies," said Beinin, past president of the Middle Eastern Studies Association. "If you don't fight back and allow the Horowitzes to do and say what they want, it pollutes the political environment to the point where you can't have intelligent discussions about what we do in the world." While he believes what Horowitz did was libelous, Beinin isn't suing on those grounds. Instead, he selected a more clear-cut legal challenge -- copyright infringement for unauthorized use of his photo. Horowitz, who said he didn't know the photo was copyrighted, argues he's the victim in the dispute. "It's an abuse of the courts to chill my free speech," Horowitz said of Beinin's lawsuit. "If he wants a debate, I will come to Stanford and debate him." Both men are Jewish, but they stand on opposite sides of a deep fault line of opinion on Israel and its actions in the Middle East. Beinin believes Horowitz's antipathy toward him stems in part from the fact that he is Jewish -- Horowitz calls Beinin a "self-hating Jew" -- and that he has criticized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and called for a Palestinian state. Horowitz, who is frequently seen on cable television programs such as "The O'Reilly Factor," is a 1960s radical turned conservative who founded the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The center has since been renamed the David Horowitz Freedom Center and is publisher of the online magazine Front Page. His books include "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left." He calls Beinin an "apologist for terror" and not only published Beinin's photo on the cover of "Campus Support for Terrorism" but featured him in his subsequent book, "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." He accuses Beinin, among other things, of saying the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shouldn't be considered a terrorist but should be respected as the Palestinian Authority's elected president. Beinin called that a typical Horowitz distortion. "He gets everything wrong," Beinin said. "His mode of operation is to distort and misquote and confuse people by piecing things together that don't belong together." Arafat, Beinin agrees, was responsible for many acts of terror but as president of the Palestinian Authority needed to be dealt with internationally as a statesman. Beinin's lawsuit reads in part, "Mr. Horowitz's most recent 'campaign' has been to attack the integrity, scholarship and patriotism of academics who question American foreign policy in an overt attempt to intimidate and silence them for fear of being labeled as Islamic terrorists or collaborators." He is seeking an unspecified amount in damages in federal court. Beinin was one of the nation's first Middle Eastern scholars fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic. He spent a year on the Kibbutz Lahav in Israel before earning a master's degree at Harvard. Briefly disillusioned with academia, he made doors for Dodge trucks in Detroit, where he helped Arab autoworkers understand their rights. Talking about Israel and the Palestinians has always been difficult in the United States, he said, and during his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, he followed his thesis supervisor's advice not to write about the subject if he wanted a job in academia. Stanford hired him in 1983 to teach Middle Eastern studies. The Beinin-Horowitz controversy is just one example of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seeped into academia here and abroad. In Britain, the largest association of higher education instructors voted in May to ask its members to consider boycotting their Israeli academic counterparts who don't publicly dissociate themselves from Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. In the United States, the activist group Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, held a conference at San Francisco State University in July and called on Palestinians to protest at the Israeli consulate, while the Philadelphia-based organization Campus Watch began asking students in 2002 to monitor their professors for perceived anti-Israel bias. In recent years, Middle Eastern studies in the United States have come under scrutiny by Horowitz and others who believe faculty are too sympathetic to Palestinian issues and unreasonably hostile to Israeli policies, said Jonathan Knight, who directs the program in academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors in Washington. "As long as faculty are free to question accepted ideas and notions, there will always be those disturbed by their questioning, and there will always be those who will call for restraints on freedom," he said. Knight cited Columbia University, where the administration formed an ad hoc committee in 2005 to investigate the classroom behavior of Middle Eastern studies Professor Joseph Massad after student complaints. Knight fears such censure is having a chilling affect on academia. Campus Watch -- a project by the Middle East Forum -- has encouraged students to monitor professors for perceived anti-Israel bias and report their findings. The Campus Watch Web site has many articles about Beinin. To stop professors from discussing their political opinions in the classroom, Horowitz has shopped his "Academic Bill of Rights" around the country and has succeeded in getting legislation to that effect introduced in 16 states, although no legislature has passed it. Still, Horowitz said he believes his bill has influenced debate. "My model for academia is the Columbia I went to in the 1950s -- I want to see it depoliticized," he said. "I never heard a teacher one time express a political opinion. That's what I want. There's massive abuse going on." He is incensed that in 2003 Beinin held a class lecture at a "teach-in" against the Iraq war in Stanford's quad. The lecture that day on the Gulf War happened to be relevant, Beinin said, but was "definitely an act of solidarity with the teach-in." "This is as close to the line of putting politics in the classroom that I've ever done," he said. "I don't hide my opinion." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #10 DepotGuy is right. No matter how much I may agree with the guy, I've heard Horowitz on the radio debating various commies and he comes off as a loudmouthed, bullying idiot. Our side could do a lot better. Hell, our side NEEDS to do a lot better on the PR front. ThatÂ’s no joke. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2006-08-04 20:49 |
| #9 DG - I disagree. He would be a pariah and broke if his statements were unprovable slander. Damn…didn’t think a little pot-shot across the bow would illicit this banter. But let me clear. I agree with some of Horowitzs’ opinions but I don’t care for his style. He has a habit of refuting an opposing opinion by attacking the messenger and not the message. One particular tactic he seems fond of is alleging “guilt by omission” and then drawing conclusions based on speculation of motives. He then he assigns a label to his opponent based on said speculation. It works great on the talk-shows where everybody shouts to be heard, but in reality, it’s simply another hollow argument. Again, just my opinion…but I’m sure Horowitz would dismiss it as the rant of another bigot. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-08-04 18:35 |
| #8 DG - I disagree. He would be a pariah and broke if his statements were unprovable slander. Just as we Christians (and my own Catholic Churches'Jesuit branches are a good example, particularly the "social justice" concerns) have self-loathing "progressives" that defy all tenets of their religion, there are "self-hating Jews" who despise all methods and manners by which Israeli Jews try to postpone their violent deaths at the hands of hateful Arabs, Islamists, NeoNazis, etc. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-08-04 17:30 |
| #7 How's he wrong, DepotGuy? RC, maybe Beinin actually suffers from the psychosis Horowitz alleges? I don’t know enough about Beinin or the affliction commonly referred to as a “Self-hating Jew” to say one way or the other. But it’s pretty much a given that anybody that Horowitz debates will arrogantly be branded as anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew. (Even when simply discussing policy issues.) Besides, I think most of his writing is filled with adolescent innuendos and speculation stated as fact supported by sloppy research. Just my opinion. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-08-04 17:01 |
| #6 Whatever 'sins' he committed in the past, David Horowitz has long since atoned for them. He should get a medal. He's been assaulted, beaten, egged, pied, spit on, cursed and had just about every vile thing imaginable thrown at him---human excrement, you name it -- by American students, in American Universities. Why? For daring to express a different view than the moonbat professors. TW, I already scratched off more than 80% of the schools my daughter was considering because of their vile anti-Americanism. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-08-04 15:10 |
| #5 Horowitz isn't just a former leftwing radical, but a genuine "Red Diaper Baby." His parents were active Communist Party apparchiks through the 1950s, I believe. I've been tracking the schools the trailing daughters express interest in through Mr. Horowitz's site, and the evidence I find there is one of the factors that will help us make the final choice. Duke, for instance, had been off our list ever since their Provost (or whatever they call the Dean of Students these days) organized that PLO conference a few years, and justified it to *me* on the grounds that his dear old, Holocaust-survivor father didn't object -- the blind, self-hating ass! Of course, where they go depends on their capabilities, interests, and scholarship money, but I still have a little longer to discover where that will lead us! ;-) This is a battle that needs to be fought, and David Horowitz is uniquely qualified to do so. I look forward to seeing it play out. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-08-04 14:40 |
| #4 Let the lawyer games begin. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2006-08-04 14:37 |
| #3 How's he wrong, DepotGuy? |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-08-04 14:03 |
| #2 "Horowitz calls Beinin a self-hating Jew" Good one Horowitz. You really are a master |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-08-04 13:30 |
| #1 As usual, the commie Chronicle couches the facts with a leftist slant. Beinin is a supporter of terror. Horowitz called him on it. Beinin didn't like Horowitz' free speech. simple as that. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-08-04 13:24 |