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Campus
Hysteria in
the Face of Truth
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Through
a simple campus lecture, Edward Said precipitated a rupture
at Ohio's Oberlin College. But like many things in his life,
the debate did not touch the substance of Said's theory
or politics. Instead, his enemies were obsessed by what
he stood for-- a Palestinian nationalism that scared them
because it was not easily stereotyped or dismissed. Through
this vignette, I also learnt about the limitations and myopia
of liberal campus politics.
In
fall of 1989, I arrived at Oberlin from Bangladesh. Through
the vagaries of campus housing, I found myself placed in
one of the student eating coops-- Kosher Coop. A small place
with thirty-plus Jewish students of various observant hues,
they were happy to have a Muslim student join. Historically
open to both Jewish and Muslim dietary practices, the Coop
had three Muslim students that year. The campus Rabbi in
particular was very welcoming. Enjoying my liberal politics,
Rabbi Brand encouraged me to write a letter on the "Rushdie
Affair." The campus newspaper published it, several
other Muslims wrote in agreeing with the defence of free
speech, and so on.
All
this changed one day with the announcement that Edward Said
had been invited to give a Distinguished Lecture that semester.
Overnight, the campus transformed into balkanised, opposing
camps. Hillel, the campus Jewish organisation, went berserk.
To my total shock, people who were truly liberal on other
issues were up in arms about Said being allowed to come
on campus. All this controversy over an eloquent academic,
who composed classical music, wrote "Orientalism"
and defended Palestinian self-determination. Bemused, I
wondered what the campus would have done if someone truly
controversial (say someone defending hijackings) had been
invited.
The
debate ran straight through the heart of Kosher coop. Most
of it raged between Jewish students, pitting liberals against
conservatives. Should Said be allowed to come on campus?
Should we boycott him? Should we heckle him? Do we ask questions,
or not dignify him with such an approach? All commitments
to free speech were ejected (ironically, this group had
once encouraged my defence of Rushdie). The three Muslim
students sat mutely through most of this, taken aback by
the ferocity of the emotions on display. During one pitched
dinner debate, one student looked point-blank at me and
said, "What do YOU think?" It was the first time
I had heard that word used in a way that made me conscious
of my colour or putative religious affiliation. Even though
Edward Said promoted a secular view of Palestinian nationalism,
here at Oberlin the entire debate was recast into a strange
fantasy of "age-old" Jewish-Muslim tensions. I
too was supposed to be tapped into this lineage by virtue
of being born Muslim.
Edward
Said's fate was always to inspire heated emotions. Though
he argued the case for Palestine with passion and intensity,
his prose was calm, logical and factual. In fact, the polemic-heavy
rhetoric of Palestinian leaders infuriated Said. In more
than one essay he pointed out that Chairman Arafat had brought
the crowd to its feet, but had said nothing of substance.
Yet, in spite of this calm, measured approach-- he seemed
to inspire irrational fear in opponents. At Oberlin, charges
of "anti-semitism" filled the air as his lecture-date
approached. These moments illustrated that his opponents
had done no original research. After all, Said was one of
the earliest to argue that the Jewish holocaust was a unique
event that must be respected and understood. He vigorously
attacked those who would dismiss the facts of this tragedy
in their pursuit of the Palestinian cause. To call this
man "anti-semitic" was lazy rhetoric or deliberate
lies.
Said's
actual speech at Oberlin was uneventful. He delivered the
address in measured tones, aware of the hostilities in the
audience. Ignoring the hecklers, he answered the few ambush
questions with calm logic. The much-anticipated event was
somewhat of a non-event. Contrary to the fears being circulated,
his visit did not result in any major antagonism between
Jewish students and the rest of the campus. Most of the
students who supported a Palestinian state were sensible
enough to differentiate between the Israeli government's
occupation policy and individuals. But the anti-Said camp
was not so interested in subtle differentiation. In the
days before and after his visit, I kept hearing one falsehood
repeated-- that Said supported attacks on civilians. Although
this was in the days before Google, a cursory search through
library stacks would have yielded voluminous counter-evidence.
The
ripple effects of this day were felt for months afterwards.
Hillel seemed to mutate from a campus organisation to a
shrill political group. Kosher coop itself was rived by
conflict. The Said debate had brought out fault-lines between
the liberal Jewish students and the more right-wing element.
New debates started about seemingly unrelated topics. Should
there be a Hebrew-language dinner table at the coop when
half the Jewish students didn't speak the language? Should
we go out of our way to recruit Muslim students, to promote
a more diverse image? Underneath these debates was a larger
truth struggling to get out. The limitations of the coop's
liberal politics had been revealed by the Said episode.
It was hard to go back to pretending everything was fine.
By the end of that semester, two Muslim students had left
the coop. Many of the liberal Jewish students also stopped
attending. I stuck it out for another semester, but eventually
drifted away as well.
Sadly,
while arguments raged about Palestine, Said's epochal work
in "Orientalism" was sidetracked at Oberlin. His
role as Palestinian spokesperson was the only thing critics
cared about. The polymath who had composed piano pieces,
analyzed Joseph Conrad, and created an academic discipline
had disappeared. In his place stood a crude cartoon of a
fanatical Palestinian demagogue-- ready to "infect"
the young, impressionable minds of Oberlin freshmen. This
stereotyping continued for many years afterwards. Years
later, I returned as an alumni to Oberlin to find the campus
enmeshed in controversy again over Said. In 1996, the college
decided to award him with an honorary degree. But through
behind-the-scenes manipulation, his critics managed to get
the invitation rescinded. Outraged, students mobilised to
protest the decision. When the college administration refused
to reconsider, students raised funds through donation and
invited Said on their own. The money raised was used to
give him an "alternative" award, to parallel the
Honorary Degree the college had rescinded. At commencement
that year, the campus saw two ceremonies. The official graduation
ceremony was muted, but the student-organised ceremony honouring
Professor Said was a jubilant occasion-- not least because
of the accomplishment students felt at having managed to
bring him to campus despite the opposition.
I
first learnt of Palestine in 1983-- a grainy documentary
on Bangladesh television was talking about the Sabra-Shatila
refugee camp massacres. As dirge-like Arabic music played,
the screen flashed images of Palestinian youth dancing at
a night-festival. These were in the days before the conflict
catapulted to the forefront of third-world consciousness.
Palestine seemed like a distant land with a sad history,
but not directly relevant to my personal politics. Years
later, I found a worn copy of "Covering Islam"
in my aunt's library. As I started reading about the "Princess
Episode", I felt my reality shift to a new level. As
the bookstores started importing his work from India, Edward
Said, along with Noam Chomsky, became the focal point for
intellectual activity in Dhaka circles. By 1989, when I
left for the USA, his books were routinely being translated
into Bengali, reaching a wide audience.
Growing up in Bangladesh, the trinity of Said, Chomsky and
Alexander Cockburn were crucial in showing me a left, anti-imperialist
politics that was neither stale Marxism nor Islamic fundamentalism
(the two choices in Bangladesh). But to fully appreciate
Said's achievement, I had to witness that turbulent semester
at Oberlin College. Said inspired hysterical reaction and
propaganda wars precisely because of his stature. He spoke
for the dispossessed, but could not be dismissed with cliches
about "fanatical Arabs". In fact, he dismantled
those very stereotypes and uprooted their sources of power
in "Orientalism" and related works. Edward Said
will be missed immensely, but his legacy will carry on in
these debates.
Naeem
Mohaiemen can be contacted at [email protected]
A
Bold Voice of Dissent
Zafar
Sobhan
I
awoke on the morning of September 25th to sad news. Edward
Said, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at Columbia University, scholar, critic, activist, and eloquent
representative and spokesperson for the Palestinian people,
had finally succumbed to his long battle with leukemia.
Obituaries and appreciations from fellow admirers of Said
flooded my in-box and I spent much of the day reflecting
upon the passing of this remarkable man who had meant so
much to me and countless others all over the world.
I am
a part-time lecturer in English Literature at BRAC University,
and I have long been filled with reverence and awe for this
one English professor who both had such an impact on the
intellectual world and cut such an imposing figure on the
world stage. There are few academics in any century who
can justifiably claim to have pioneered an entire discipline
and school of thought and in doing so turned existing scholarship
and convention on its head but Edward Said was just such
an individual.
Said
can credibly claim to have pioneered the field of post-colonial
literary theory with the publication of his ground-breaking
masterpiece, Orientalism, in 1978. Orientalism was a devastating
critique of the study of Eastern society and culture by
scholars in the West, and was the first study of its kind
to insist on the imperative of critically analysing this
entire body of scholarship from an ideological perspective.
Said argued that knowledge was always connected with power
and that it was impossible to understand so-called Oriental
scholarship without placing it in the correct context of
the colonial relationship of dominance and subjugation between
those doing the writing and those who were being written
about.
Today,
as I teach Post-Colonial Literature to my students at BRAC
University, I try to impress upon them how seminal Said's
work in the field is and how, without him, the very course
I am teaching may never have come into being. My students
struggle through excerpts of his work, and I can only hope,
as their academic careers progress, that they will return
to it again and again, as I have done, for wisdom, for guidance,
for intellectual nourishment, and to have the world opened
up and presented to them in a way in which they never imagined
before.
In addition
to Orientalism, Said has in his lifetime penned a library
of critically-acclaimed books, articles and essays. His
recent writings on the negative perceptions and portrayals
of the Arab and Muslim world that currently permeate Western
scholarship and media seem more prescient, astute, and indispensable
with every passing day. Expanding upon his earlier theoretical
work, Said was, as always, ahead of the curve in writing
about hostility towards Islam and of the internal and external
consequences of this hostility.
But
it is not for his academic achievements, staggering though
they might be, that Said has received his greatest renown.
Said, a Palestinian Christian who was born in Jerusalem
in 1935, was most well-known and respected for his tireless
and courageous championing of the cause of the Palestinian
people. For almost forty years his has been their most eloquent
and persuasive voice. His book, The Question of Palestine
(1979), is a superb explication of the competing rights
and aspirations of the Israelis and the Palestinians and
remains the most compelling and convincing argument of the
Palestinian cause.
It is
hard for one not living in New York to appreciate just how
courageous and principled Said's defense of the Palestinian
cause has been. His unflinching defense of the rights of
the Palestinians has earned him scorn, derision, and even
death threats. His honesty, integrity and scholarship has
been under continual, disgraceful, and often libelous attack.
I was
always astonished to find how so many people in his adopted
home-town of New York thought so poorly of him. That this
remarkable man revered around the world should be held in
such poor esteem in the city in which he lived was almost
unfathomable to me until I fully appreciated the courage
and iconoclasm of his beliefs. That he should hold such
beliefs while living in New York and neither waver nor equivocate
was testimony to his courage and integrity.
It was
similarly a mark of his courage and integrity that he was
equally critical of dictatorial Arab governments and the
Palestinian leadership for their failure to adequately address
the aspirations of their people as he was of the Israeli
government. Although he had been a member of the Palestinian
National Council from 1977-1991 and had been instrumental
in the drafting of the Palestinian constitution in 1988,
he had become marginalized by the Palestinian leadership
in recent times due to his opposition to the 1993 Oslo Accord
which he felt surrendered too much to Israel and was not
sufficiently attentive to the needs of the Palestinian people.
We live
in a time in which public intellectuals and scholarly giants
are few and far between. Even rarer is the public intellectual
who can claim to have impacted the world as much as any
politician or general. Just such a man was Edward Said,
and we are all the poorer for his passing. |