William Robinson of UC Santa Barbara Spams Class With Graphic "Jews Are Nazis" : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

Via Brad Greenberg, a typical example of the vicious rhetorical moves that would never be tolerated towards anyone but Jews. Can you imagine a professor accusing a black politician of "politically lynching" an opponent? Let alone sending an email about it to his enrolled students, which by the by is a violation of any number of "hostile environment" harassment policies:

I just received an e-mail, which included a link to the video seen after the jump, forwarding an e-mail from William I. Robinson, a USCB sociology professor. The contents of that e-mail, which Robinson reportedly sent to students on Martin Luther King Day and ran under the heading "Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis," included 42 side-by-side photos...

"I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing "with love" on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children. Gaza is Israel's Warsaw - a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: "the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group"), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood."

I like how he included the smear about Israeli children writing love notes on missiles, even though that incident (a) was staged by photojournalists and (b) happened during Lebanon II and has absolutely nothing to do with "Palestinian children." You can also pick apart the rest of the email - mass starvation is the opposite of true, the genocide is so "slow-motion" that the Palestinian population is skyrocketing, etc.

But why bother? He's got tenure. So blatant lying and anti-Jewish tropes - that's the very definition of academic freedom. Besides, "Jews are Nazis" is exactly the line toed by the State Department's flagship Arab public diplomacy outlet. So what's the big deal?

http://sb4af.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/breaking-news-abraham-foxman-pushed-uc-santa-barbara-to-investigate-professor/

BREAKING NEWS: Abraham Foxman pushed UC-Santa Barbara to investigate professor

Anti-Defamation League’s national director personally pressured UCSB representatives to act against faculty member

Please Distribute Widely
Contact: Jeb Sprague, (805) 886-0429, jhsprague@umail.ucsb.edu.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman held a confidential meeting in early March with University of California officials on campus to pressure them to investigate charges of “anti-Semitism” against sociology professor William I. Robinson.

The meeting included Dean of Students Michael Young, a second dean, and at least seven faculty members.

Some of the meeting participants told Robinson that Foxman, who was in Santa Barbara to meet with local funders, requested the meeting at UCSB for the sole purpose of demanding that university officials investigate Robinson for introducing materials critical of Israeli state policies in a course on globalization in January.

The materials included a photo essay that Robinson forwarded to students from the Internet and that had been circulating in the public realm. The photos compared images of Israeli abuse against Palestinians during the recent military invasion of Gaza with Nazi abuses during the holocaust. Two students took offense at the images and withdrew from the course, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to pressure the university to investigate Robinson for “anti-Semitism.”

Robinson said participants at the meeting with Foxman were unaware beforehand of the ADL’s intentions. He said the attendees assumed the meeting had been convened to discuss university efforts to hire a chair for a Jewish studies program. “But when the meeting started, Foxman made clear that the only agenda point was his demand that I be investigated,” Robinson said.

Robinson said such intimidation against critics of Israel is standard ADL policy, but Foxman’s personal intervention at UCSB constitutes a marked escalation of pressure tactics that sets a dangerous precedent for the future of academic freedom here and at other universities.

Foxman, 69, has been director of the Washington, D.C.-based ADL since 1987 and has worked with the organization since 1965. He is an international lobbyist who has met frequently with national and world leaders, including all U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon.

Members of the ADL’s Santa Barbara/Tri-Counties Office — which serves Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties — accompanied Foxman to the meeting on campus.

It’s unclear what effect Foxman’s pressure had on university officials. However, the Academic Senate has opened a formal investigation of the charges against Robinson.

The decision to investigate the professor spurred an angry backlash on campus. Students formed a Committee to Defend Academic Freedom and have created an online blog to coordinate efforts to cease the investigation against Robinson.

For detailed information about the Robinson case, visit the committee’s blog at http://www.sb4af.wordpress.com.

For media inquiries, call Jeb Sprague at (805) 886-0429, or write him at jhsprague@umail.ucsb.edu.

Scholars condemn attack on academic freedom at UC-Santa Barbara
April 28, 2009

Noam Chomsky and international scholars demand dismissal of “anti-Semitism” charges against sociology professor

Please Distribute Widely.

Contact: Jeb Sprague at (805) 886-0492, or write him at jhsprague@umail.ucsb.edu.

SANTA BARBARA — Internationally renowned author and linguistics professor Noam Chomsky has added his voice to a campaign by dozens of scholars worldwide to demand that the University of California at Santa Barbara cease its investigation of “anti-Semitism” charges made by the Anti-Defamation League against sociology professor William I. Robinson.

Robinson introduced materials critical of Israeli state policies in a course on globalization in January. They included a photo essay that he forwarded to students from the Internet and that had been circulating in the public realm. The photos compared images of Israeli abuse against Palestinians during the recent military invasion of Gaza with Nazi abuses during the holocaust. Two students took offense at the images and withdrew from the course, prompting the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to demand that the university investigate Robinson for “anti-Semitism.”

[...]

http://sb4af.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/scholars-condemn-attack-on-academic-freedom-at-uc-santa-barbara/#more-383

Just imagine if this was a fine arts professor insisting that his class read literature on Dick Cheney for President in 2012 and then be graded on it in art class!

This self-righteous fool was a sociology professor who took it upon himself to use his position of authority over these students to inflict his personal political opinions on them. Its not "academic freedom", nwhich DOES NOT include the freedom to intimidate and bully others, its abuse and harassment.

Its an issue of Academic freedom to harrass Jews out of universities. We of the Students for Justice in Palestine were sucessful in expressing our academic freedom at Berkeley when we were able to manipulate the student government so as to impeach our first of many Zionist Jews out of his position. We were inspired by the expression of academic freedom in 1933 Germany when freedom of academic expression permitted the expulsion of ALL Jewish professors. We hope to do the same in the future but we wil call them "Zionists" not "Jews" as that seems more acceptable here. We also hope to use our academic freedom to bar any university level courses that promote Jews,Judaism, Israel or which denigrate Islam. Academic freedom is a basic Muslim right.

When I saw the photos of Gaza for the first time, I felt that I've seen it before somewhere!

I did remember the photos of the Holocaust victims of the Nazi mass murder campaign. There was no need for a comparison. It is clear. Just change the names

Gaza victims of the Israeli mass murder campaign.

So the Jews are Nazis exactly as their systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group. Gaza and the Western Bank are vast concentration camps that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs.

Voilà, this is Israel and this is America in Iraq!!!

Why bother? It is a form of liberty where victims are killed to quickly free them from death of malnutrition, disease and despair!

Here's a photo from Gaza- its lauren booth in her hotel in Gaza city. Yeah, just like the warsaw ghetto

Children in gaza
by compare with earlier photo Friday, May. 01, 2009 at 10:21 AM

This is a photo of a toy market in Gaza. These photos, by the way are all from the live journals of people in the free Gaza campaign, or from the blogs of gazans

A toy shop selling fake guns- just like the warsaw ghetto

A candy store in Gaza- just like the Warsaw ghetto.

My favorite blogger for Gaza complains that because of Israel's brutal and genocidal occupation, its hard to get soda- her kids are forced to drink fruit juice.

Oh, the inhumanity of it all!!!!!

So William Robinson is evil, a liar, and spreads anti-Semitism.

Thank you for posting the photos from Gaza. A view of fgaza from Google earth also reveals many surprises- including 25 miles of beaches, a zoo, an amusement park, farms, and orchards.

(Yes, just like the Warsaw ghetto)

Prof. William Robinson of UC Santa Barbara was spamming his students with propaganda- meant to elicit an emotional response. He was not sharing information with them. And yes, it is for precisely this reason that he needs to face discipline.

Professor William Robinson Violated Academic Freedom

http://theimpudentobserver.com/multicultural/professor-william-robinson-violated-academic-freedom/

I have taught for 52 years and worked with 15,000 students but never in my career did I ever violate academic freedom in the manner displayed by Professor William Robinson, a Jewish professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson, and his defender Noam Chomsky, have raised the banner of academic freedom. Unfortunately, it was Robinson who violated this concept, not those attacking him. Professor Robinson was teaching a course, “Sociology of Globalization” and during this course, he sent an email to all students in his class which claimed; “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw- a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease, and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide.” He compared the Israel invasion of Gaza to the Holocaust.

Professor Robinson is either, (a) ignorant of the Holocaust, (b) stupid, (c) a malicious sick man. Let’s examine the manner in which he violated his role as a professor.

1. He sent an email to all students which meant his views impacted the entire class and it was impossible for a student to respond to the entire class.
2. This was not a class dealing with the Holocaust so Professor Robinson did not have any awareness of the knowledge base of his students regarding the Holocaust or even what they knew about what is meant by genocide. We can assume a high percent of his students did not have this knowledge and thus were unable to refute the professor’s ignorant statements.
3. A professor has the power of giving a “grade” which means there is no level playing field when he introduced a controversial issue. Students responding to him risked having grades lowered if they challenged their professor on a topic that was NOT part of the curriculum.
4. A professor with a sense of intellectual honesty should have provided students readings, videos or access to opposing views if he wanted to introduce this comparison. The majority of his students lacked knowledge and his responsibility was to ensure they would be in an intellectual position to respond in an informed manner.

I do not know if Professor Robinson is an anti-Semite. I do know in this incident he displayed poor teaching procedures and displayed an ignorance of the Holocaust that is inexcusable for a college professor.

On the Nature of Academic Freedom and Bob Cohen on Pete Seeger

On The New Republic website today, the distinguished sociologist Alan Wolfe pens a defense of a left-wing academic, William I. Robinson.The Anti-Defamation League and others are attacking Robinson for recent actions he took in conjunction with a course he teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on the “Sociology of Globalization.”

Robinson did the following. Last January, he sent an e-mail to students in his course accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, said that the occupation of Gaza by Israel was the equivalent of the Nazi occupation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sent photographs which he argued showed that what Israel was doing to the Palestinians was the same as what the Nazis had done to the Jews. In protest, the Anti-Defamation League has called for an investigation of Professor Robinson.

Wolfe comes to Robinson’s defense by making the following argument. He does not agree with his beliefs as expressed in the e-mail. Indeed, Wolfe acknowledges that “neither Robinson’s leftist kind of sociology nor his activist kind of politics are mine.” Yet he finds the idea of investigating Robinson “appalling” and writes that “the ADL should be ashamed of itself.” As Wolfe sees it, censoring Robinson would set harmful precedents that could have ramifications for anyone teaching at public universities.

Robinson’s defenders say his academic freedom is in danger of being abridged, especially since the University has said it will investigate his actions. Wolfe does not buy Robinson’s critics contention that propagandistic e-mails have nothing to do with the subject he is teaching. Wolfe maintains that professors at our universities who teach controversial subjects should “provoke, and even outrage, their students.” This certainly is what Robinson has done, especially to the school’s Jewish students. Wolfe worries about “academic apathy;’ he thinks it is a good thing when a professor cares so much about issues of the day that he e-mails students about them. Even if his actions caused damage or hurt to some, Wolfe says, the “arguments and discussion” they provoke outweigh the damage he might have done.

Moreover, those opposing Robinson, like the ADL, are condemned by Wolfe as “thought police,” who are “monitoring campuses for any sign of what it considers offensive speech and putting pressure to bear on university administrators to stop it.” So Wolfe has joined a new committee “to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB,” which includes Noam Chomsky, a man who has never found an extremist critic of Israel he has not rushed to defend. Noting that his own college cancelled a speech by Bill Ayers and that Clark University considered cancelling a speech by the self-hating Jew Norman Finkelstein, Wolfe is concerned that “this whole business is threatening to spin out of control.”

So Wolfe, who claims he opposes the “smug political correctness of the academic left,” says it is imperative that he also oppose “the new version of political correctness” of those who want to censor ideas they oppose.

Is Alan Wolfe correct? I think not. First, he confuses the concept of free speech- guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution, with the concept of academic freedom. As a political philosopher and sociologist, Wolfe should know this. A David Duke may have ideas we despise and detest; that does not give Duke to teach a course, let us say, on English literature, and send out his anti-Semitic hate material to students by e-mail. It does guarantee Duke the right to spout his bile in public, and for us to denounce him in return.

No one has made the distinction better than Stanley Fish, writing in The New York Times on July 23, 2006. Fish wrote: “Academic freedom is the freedom of academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any body of material, however unpromising it may seem, to academic interrogation and analysis…Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.”

I do not think Professor Robinson and his supporters could provide evidence that these anti-Israel e-mails meet that criterion, or Wolfe’s criterion that they provoke thought. Robinson did not e-mail counter arguments with his e-mail. He sought instead to indoctrinate students with his own political agenda, using his power over them via the course he is teaching to make them pay attention to his own political views.

The second document I cite is the famous “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” passed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) when the group had clout and influence in the academy. Written at a moment when our country was at war, the AAUP statement says: “Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject….When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint…and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”

In 1970, the AAUP printed an addendum, in which they said the intent was not to discourage what is controversial, since controversy is “at the heart of the free academic inquiry.” It was only meant to “underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to the subject.”

To sum up: Alan Wolfe should look closely at Stanley Fish’s argument, as well as the AAUP statement. Freedom of speech is not the same thing as academic freedom. Too many left-wing academics, like Ward Churchill, have hidden under the rubric of the latter to assert a false case that their free speech is being challenged. It is not. They have a perfect right to make idiots of themselves as citizens; students have the right to let an administration know that as captives in the classroom, they do not have to listen to a professor’s political agenda and to be subject to
indoctrination

for what REALLY happened, read an interview with Robinson himself.
http://www.counterpunch.org/henwood04292009.html

UCSB's William Robinson's Lack of Propriety, Sense, Class...
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/05/ucsbs-william-robinsons-lack-of-propriet/

Unfortunately, he still has "classes," but "class?" No. Fanatics like Robinson are a walking argument for revising the tenure system. By now, you've read about: William Robinson, UCSB Sociology Professor, Compares Israel to the Nazis. If not, go ahead.

Somehow, academic freedom has morphed into "saying and doing whatever the hell I want with no accountability whatsoever." Imagine you're in a class being taught by this guy, spending thousands of dollars, and this idiot spams out a completely unnecessary email having zero to do with the course, unmasking himself as a drooling hater. Stuck.

Ron Radosh has some great comments (of course Alan Wolfe is defending this fool):

...Is Alan Wolfe correct? I think not. First, he confuses the concept of free speech- guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution, with the concept of academic freedom. As a political philosopher and sociologist, Wolfe should know this. A David Duke may have ideas we despise and detest; that does not give Duke to teach a course, let us say, on English literature, and send out his anti-Semitic hate material to students by e-mail. It does guarantee Duke the right to spout his bile in public, and for us to denounce him in return.

No one has made the distinction better than Stanley Fish, writing in The New York Times on July 23, 2006. Fish wrote: "Academic freedom is the freedom of academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any body of material, however unpromising it may seem, to academic interrogation and analysis...Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply."

I do not think Professor Robinson and his supporters could provide evidence that these anti-Israel e-mails meet that criterion, or Wolfe's criterion that they provoke thought. Robinson did not e-mail counter arguments with his e-mail. He sought instead to indoctrinate students with his own political agenda, using his power over them via the course he is teaching to make them pay attention to his own political views.

The second document I cite is the famous "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure," passed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) when the group had clout and influence in the academy. Written at a moment when our country was at war, the AAUP statement says: "Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject....When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint...and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution."

In 1970, the AAUP printed an addendum, in which they said the intent was not to discourage what is controversial, since controversy is "at the heart of the free academic inquiry." It was only meant to "underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to the subject."...

See also Brad Greenberg: Santa Barbara professor compared Israelis to Nazis

The trouble is that the academy is so shot through with little politicians that there's no one left to enforce a sense of propriety and responsibility now.

StandWithUs has a resource page here where you can find background, as well as a petition to sign and contact information for the university.

There were candy stores in the Warsaw ghetto

Were there perfume stores in the Warsaw ghetto?
This one in the big mall custom mixes scents.
Just like the warsaw ghetto

obviouls the phony Gaza stores and the phony captions are the only things holding this myth of a normal prosperous Gaza together.
Just like the Nazis who ran the Warsaw Ghetto showed pictures of happy playing children, eating and singing.
The zionists taught them well.

Aryan fecal matter posted the image so it could "respond" to it.

I'm beginning to wonder if Yada even knows what its posted anymore. But it sure is easy for everyone else to see, that's for sure.
"Jews are Nazis" is the obligatory stitching together of zionism and Jews, because they need to operate behind the skirts of the Jewish faith.

Cleveland Indy Media Center