Michael,
Thank you for listening to Activist Radio and for you exhaustive response to our recent interview of two student members of Vassar College's Jewish Voice for Peace.
You ask us to correct some "inaccuracies" in their interview statements. No one likes inaccuracies, but these students were there during Vassar's campaign for BDS, and you weren't. Your references to supposed antisemitic statements made by Dr. Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, is a good example. Did you attend her lecture at Vassar two years ago? Or are your opinions based on some second hand account of what she was purported to say?
You might be interested in a letter about Dr. Paur that was sent to then President of Vassar College by over 500 scholars and educators.
"As scholars, educators, and and academicians engaged with political developments in Israel/Palestine and their effects in the United States, we are deeply concerned to learn that our esteemed colleague, Prof. Jasbir Puar of Rutgers University, has become the target of a rash of hate mail and other threats since delivering a talk at Vassar College earlier this month. These heinous and misinformed attacks are the direct result of the talk Prof. Puar presented at Vassar on Feb. 3, at the invitation of the American Studies Program and seven other academic programs and departments, including the Jewish Studies Program. We feel strongly, as we’re sure you’ll agree, that universities have a responsibility to provide invited speakers with a climate of security and safety, especially when their views are controversial. We also believe this responsibility to defend the free speech rights and integrity of invited guests continues even after they leave your campus, when they are subjected to vilification and hatred—as Prof. Puar has been, particularly in the ugly op-ed article in the Feb. 18 Wall Street Journal, which was also an attempt to smear Vassar College."
Sadly, you are still repeating this vilification of Dr. Paur in your criticism of my two student guests. I don't find your other "inaccuracies" in their interview any more creditable.
Moreover, I think your letter confirms a finding by the Center for Constitutional Rights, that “a network of lobbying groups, watchdog groups, public relations entities, and advocacy groups funded by, working in coordination with, and/or staunchly supportive of the policies and practices of the Israeli government primarily drives efforts to silence speech on behalf of Palestinian rights.”
A free and open society must resist such attempts to smear and slander advocates of human rights.
Fred Nagel
Activist Radio
