Panel Defends Robinson

Mr. Hayden, you could at least have had the decency to spell Prof. Walter Kohn's name properly. He is not just a "physics and chemistry teacher" who just happened to win the Nobel Prize

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kohn

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Robinson opened a hornet's nest and will have to take the consequences. This situation spans decades and involves much more than his minor academic opinions. He barely touches the tip of the iceberg. His great grand parents were not even born when the middle east stared to grow into the political and social tinder box we have today. Comparisons are odious . Robinson should start by studying the politics and the meddling mechanisms beginning in the early 19th century. He will find out there is no way of controlling human beings , no more than the mediators could control the obviously emotional and diverse audience last night.

Discussions like this one as UCSB faces $50 million-level cuts resemble Nero fiddling as Rome burned.

Is there an adult in the room? Both sides are acting juvenile. Move on; the anti-Robinsons and pro-Robinsons should go on a hike somewhere and build a rope bridge across a gorge together.

Meanwhile, some adults need to appear at UCSB to deal with the financial meltdown. The current leadership looks like a flock of ostriches with their heads down gopher holes.

I am happy to see Professor Hajjar defend Robinson's academic freedom (and thus hers) even though she would not herself have made the comparison. She provides a model for all to follow. If we prize an open democratic society, we should all defend academic freedom, as well as the freedom of speech we all enjoy, even for relevant speech with which we disagree.

However, I don't agree with her statement, "You don't evoke Nazis unless you're talking about Nazis." It's a poorly formed thought, frankly. The e-mail evokes the Nazis for the purpose of comparing oppressive state tactics carried out against marginalized peoples. This is a legitimate exercise.

What are the reasons for not evoking Nazis unless you are talking about the Nazis? Because it is mistaken? Should we then stifle a social scientist who compares Iran to Nazi Germany even though such a comparison is rather obviously erroneous? Obviously, we can't even debate whether the comparison is erroneous if we are not allowed to evoke it. This is the purpose of the classroom (and other academic fora).

Should the comparison be disallowed because the Jewish holocaust is something of a sacred case? Are we going to make a list of sacred cases disallowed in historical comparison? Who will make this list? Shall we call it the "Index of Prohibited Historical Comparisons"? Doesn't making exceptions run contrary to the goal of objectivity in science?

The Catholic Church allowed Galileo to discuss many of the things he was discovering about our solar system. But when it came to the question of geocentrism, which the Catholic Church felt delegitimated its dogma, the Church drew the line. We all recognize now that was inappropriate. And we should all understand the motive of the Church. We cannot similarly make an exception for arguments comparing the tactics of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians to the German Nazi tactics against the Jews.

The dangers of artificially constraining comparisons should be obvious. The Nazis were not the only regime in history to have perpetrated genocide. The Jews were not the only victims of genocide. Yes, the Nazi case is unique. But all genocides are unique cases taken in terms of their own particulars. Taking cases in themselves doesn't help us fully explain them and, crucially, prevent them from happening again. Many observers, including many of Jews, have suggested something like the Jewish holocaust could happen again. The point of comparison is to identify similarities and dissimilarities and generalize patterns to theorize common causes and dynamics. There can be no science without comparison, and science is inappropriately limited when certain cases are for non-scientific purposes excluded from analysis.

Amen to what sevendolphins said.

At least one thing is clear about this sorry little controversy: William Robinson has done the university a disservice at a very sensitive moment.

This is much bigger that the University of California at Santa Barbara. Robinson is one case in a string of cases in a campaign to silence the critics of Israel.

Professor Hajjar's assertion that "You don't evoke Nazis unless you're talking about Nazis" is too PC for me. Spit out the kool-aid, professor!

The Holocaust was a monumental atrocity, to be sure.

But what to make of the Armenian genocide? (It was irrefutably orchestrated by Dunmeh Jews, by the way). ADL protested the term genocide in that case, because "the" Holocaust is a money-making industry that's also used to confer SPECIAL victimhood status upon Jewry, for political advantage. Most people don't want to be seen as bullies, especially when their name might subsequently be juxtaposed with NAZIS by some local Jew of social standing. So, the social agitation is effective.

But here we see academics standing on their hindlegs without apology! Times are changing.

Can the Holodomor be compared to the Holocaust? "The what?" Many millions of "bourgeoisie" (small farmers) were murdered in Russia, Ukraine, Belorus and Georgia in the 1930s to crush patriotism and empower the Great Jewish Makeover. Yup - the designers of communism, most of the early the Bolsheviks, 40% of the Politburo (and most of its key members) and 90% of the kommissars leading goon squads were in fact Jewish. Ever see a movie about that?? Solzhenitzyn wrote a book called "200 Years Together, a historical study of the relationship between Russians and Jews in Russia," but you won't see that either, presumably because a Nobel Prize in Literature (for The Gulag Archipelago) can only get you so far when you're treading on the toes of an "unmentionable" elite.

But mentions are increasing, while it's still legal! (But who does Congress heed?)

(And yes, I know Stalin was non-Jewish. Only his wives were Jewish.)

That was the context of Hitler's (still indefensible) "Final Solution," but that context has been air-brushed out of Western discourse. (Bravo, bravo.) Then we had the Cold War, but Hitler can't be credited with any extenuating circumstances, including global Communist designs on the entire world.

So remember, kiddies, it's all about the Holocaust. Yeah, right!

I have a question for Il_miglione: What is it about this moment that is different from any other? Whoever is right or wrong, at no time should we ever shy away from discourse. No matter how shocking or politically incorrect ones claims may be, those who oppose such claims merely need to refute them.

In response to Adonis_Tate: (I hate it when I have to type those underscores between names) I would add specifically that a few years back it was revealed by mainstream news sources that 6 million Ukranians believed to be killed by the Nazis were in fact wiped out by Stalin's regime. I also read death camp survivors testamonies that while in the camps, some of the worst cruelty inflicted upon them was by other inmates--specifically Ukrainians.

Nazis and Communists...God knows how many these people murdered in cold blood.

Wow, is this article one-sided or what?

Walter Kohn did NOT speak for well over 2 minutes. In fact, he barely had an opportunity to introduce himself as the first Nobel Laureate of UCSB and to quite justly criticize the lack of diversity of opinion of the panel chosen that evening. Indeed, all four faculty members were supportive of Robinson, hardly indicating that the committee who organized the event were interested in any genuine debate, but simply wanted a publicized forum to air an unabashedly biased defense of Robinson. Many who condemn Robinson's actions did not attend due to that very fact. The entire forum essentially consisted of two hours of alternately praising and excusing Robinson, followed by half an hour of audience questions and comments, evenly divided between supporters and dissenters. Moreover, panel discussions mostly centered around the bureaucratic inefficiencies surrounding the handling of the case, rather than whether or not Robinson actually did anything wrong.

Someone like Dr. Kohn SHOULD have had the opportunity to speak, and indeed the panel members did not object to his continuing to speak, although the organizers and many audience members silenced him. This appalling lack of respect towards such a distinguished individual who also happened to be a Holocaust survivor who had lost his parents in the Holocaust truly characterized this amateurish event: A one-sided affair that failed to provide any meaningful insight into this important issue. The organizers should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

Fwiw, Prof (retired) Richard Falk is not a member of the UN Human Rights Council but the HRC's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. His appointment was highly criticized, fwiw. See the Wikipedia discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_...

It is striking to an American living abroad (in Palestine) and frequently traveling, that the views expressed by Prof. Robinson are considered moderate in the rest of the world.

First, he was expressing his views and exercising his academic freedom, a very American value...no? Second, he was expressing concern about Israel's oppressive and illegal occupation of Palestine, a major concern of the overwhelming majority of the world.

The fact that a state institution, as I assume UCSB is, would try to suppress such views should be investigated as an act of anti-Semitism (after all Palestinian are Semites as well) and possibly hate speech (in violation of art. 20 of the ICCPR) that tries to insulate one of the worst violators of international law in the world and their allies from criticism for their wrongful acts.

Curtis Doebbler
Professor of Law
An-Najah National University
Nablus, Palestine

This coverage is unfortunate; by focusing on the drama the reporter has side-stepped the important issues raised by both sides. For example my main point was that the charges officer is the wrong venue for handling student complaints about course content. Insofar as such complaints, by there very nature, invoke issues of academic freedom, they should not be handled via quasi-judicial procedures established to deal with quid pro quo arrangements, failure to teach, and other such failings. It would be far better to handle complaints regarding course content as disputes (where both sides could learn important lessons); As it currently stands the use of the charges officer isolates the parties and sets them into conflict with one another. That undermines the educational mission of the university.

Just to be clear: I am not to saying that the students don't have a right to complain; rather there are many better ways to handle complaints of this sort. Punishment is not the answer to every problem. More generally I believe that we should be very cautious about claiming a person who articulates their deeply held views has committed an ethical violation.

As for those who claimed that this amounts to "fiddling while Rome is burning". In what way can this be treated as mere entertainment? I spoke to many students after the event -- some who came to support the students who complained, others who came to protest the treatment of Robinson. Everyone of them claimed to have been deeply interested in the discussion, and to have learned from it. More than a few said that they will remember it as the most important event they participated in as a student at UCSB. Why is that a bad thing? Why is a discussion about freedom and education a distraction? The organizers should be proud of the event they put on.

I've always enjoyed the Independent; you could have done better in this case.

Geoffrey Raymond

Geoffrey Raymond... if UCSB is about to suffer 10% cuts each year into the foreseeable future, that is a much bigger issue than a controversial e-mail. I think Robinson should merely ignore the drama and carry on, and his outraged students should calm down and move on too.

To me it looks like a bunch of squabbling that is de rigueur, and not worthy of same level of attention that is due a $50 million cut to UCSB in 2009-2010. If UCSB doesn't exist or is seriously crippled, who will remember this issue?

Or worse, maybe the taxpayer will deduce that professors just like to argue, and the taxpayers will just pull back more and more funding during this crisis in California state finances.

"You don't go to the gym to relax," Hajjar said, "and you don't attend a university to be comfortable."

There is more to this debacle than we are being told. This much drive, work and money being used to investigate and hang this guy reminds me of George Jr's hunt for the WMD's in Iraq.

Perhaps if someone at the Newspre... er I mean the Independent could get to the meat of whats really going on.

Do some "investigative reporting" instead of opinionated journalism. I can barely stomach reading these articles as of late.
Just my opinion.

I attended a meeting back in the late 1990's at which the subject that was being debated was bilingual education. A man who identified himself as a Santa Barbara elementary school teacher said the following in response to the proposed plan to eliminate bilingual education: "Well, I guess this is Santa Barbara's version of Hitler's Final Solution". (He might have said " 'our' version of Hitler's Final Solution") None of the other teachers seemed to object, and while I didn't follow up on whether or not any action was taken I certainly didn't read anything about him being under fire for his comments.

If Robinson had compared anything else to the nazi holocaust--such as what is happening in Darfur or any place other than Israel, would he be facing the same scrutiny?

I meant to be more specific and add that this was an school board meeting in which many members of the public attended.

"I think Robinson should merely ignore the drama and carry on, and his outraged students should calm down and move on too.... maybe the taxpayer will deduce that professors just like to argue..."

Could you possibly be more ridiculous? Professor Robinson is being charged with academic misconduct and could lose his job and his reputation. The budget cut issue is an absurd red herring that has nothing to do with anything in this article.

Geoffrey Raymond said that, "More than a few said that they will remember it as the most important event they participated in as a student at UCSB."

Apparently you don't recognize pasture pizza when you hear it. You should have responded, "If this is the most important event for you at UCSB, you wasted your time and your parents money."

Did you?

"If Robinson had compared anything else to the nazi holocaust--such as what is happening in Darfur or any place other than Israel, would he be facing the same scrutiny?"

If he had compared MEChA's El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, which calls for a bronze continent for a bronze people, free of gabachos, to Nazi race policies, I am sure that every Latino organization would be calling for Robinson's head.

The ADL and Jewish students are doing the same thing that Latino and Black student organizations have been doing for years. In the words of Reverend Wright, the chickens have come home to roost. Or to turn Armando Navarro's quote around, the Jewish students are only doing what any good Latino would do for Aztlan.

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR DEFENDS ROBINSON

Watch it at: www.ajpme.org

The panel was put on by a group in support of Robinson. OF COURSE it is "one sided," they are defending him! The focus was entirely to counter the charges that have been filed and allegations that have been directed against Professor Robinson.

Walter Kohn interrupted the beginning of the event requesting to make a statement. When he was told to wait for the Q&A after the panel he remarked how incensed he was that his request was denied. I don't care who he is. You don't walk into an event you aren't a part of and automatically expect the floor be yielded to you. I think for anyone to do that is plain rude. Despite that there was a long line waiting for the Q&A, the organizers graciously let Mr. Kohn speak from his seat ahead of everyone. He started on a rather moot point about how the panel wasn't evenly balanced but then transitioned into a tangent about who he was. With his slow cadence of speech and fumbling through a notebook he had in hand, he spoke well over a minute and showed no interest to arrive at a question or statement. For the most part everyone else, either in support or in opposition to Robinson, was concise about their points or questions they had and even despite that the event went a half hour over the time it was scheduled for.

why do you gotta bring MEChA into this? Why not just compare the Nazi's to America's war on Arabs, I mean terror ?

Criticizing MEChA would not mean he is being racist against Latinos and I strongly doubt any Latino organization would ever make that claim. Why? Because those organizations aren't enamored with the prospect of Nazi comparisons as the ADL are. The ADL have stated that any correlations between Nazi Germany and Israel is automatically chalked up as anti-semitism. The reverence for the need to speak out is there.

However that all completely evades the main point that such organizations shouldn't be allowed to impose themselves on university processes. As Geoffrey Raymond said at the event, allowing such organizations to set standards and litmus for what is and isn't academic freedom has completely tainted the investigation.

Nothing will happen to Robinson. When did an Academic Senate committee ever do anything? He is best advised to ignore the drama and just do his work as normal.

Geez, at UCSB the #2, the Executive Vice Chancellor once accused the current Chancellor of bugging their phone. Both have subsequently received >$2 million each of UC money, although that EVC has moved on. UC investigations have no teeth, and actually they end up kissing the feet of anyone being investigated.

Excuse me, but the financial crisis now afflicting UCSB dwarfs any in the last 75 years. If there is no UCSB there will be no squabbles like this on. Let's act like adults and stop the namecalling and juvenile posturing, and try to make sure UCSB doesn't go down like the Titanic.

I attended the forum on Thursday night as the parent of a UCSB undergrad and the president of the Community Shul of Montecito and Santa Barbara, and am writing to correct what I believe to be several important misstatements in the Independent article and the comments above.

The attempt to characterize criticisms of Robinson as an attack on academic freedom is not based in fact. That analysis hinges on the a priori premise that the members of the UCSB community who support Israel are themselves incapable of thinking critically about Israel, and that they will in fact go to extreme lengths to shut down criticism of Israel. This idea was repeated many times at the Thursday night event by all but one of the panelists. In fact, those who support Israel at UCSB have shown themselves perfectly willing to criticize Israel and to tolerate even harsh criticism from the pro-Palestinian voices on campus. The problem here really wasn't what Robinson said, but where and how he said it.

The Faculty Code of Conduct violations for which Dr. Robinson is being investigated only come into play if the faculty review committee determines that the e-mail he sent is unrelated to the course maeterials, and that he used his position of power as a teacher to "coerce judgment or conscience of a student." Some of the speakers at Thursday's panel appear convinced that the faculty committee will find against Dr. Robinson. I don't think anyone can know the outcome of their review.

On the other hand, no one disputes that Dr. Robinson introduced his "parallel images of Nazis and Isrealis" e-mail without any attempt to frame the material in a way that fostered dialogue or that created a safe space for that dialogue. Had he made some effort in that direction, I believe this whole episode would have been an insignificant blip. Under those circumstances, some members of the Jewish community, myself included, would still have found the comparison to be repugnant and without pedagogical value, but would have considered him to be within his rights to send it. To me, the issue has nothing to do with stifling academic freedom; it is about fostering a civil learning environment.

Also, one of the comments above states that Dr. Robinson could lose his job as a result of this investigation. In reality the stakes are considerably lower than that. Based on the language of the Code of Conduct and the political realities of the university's approach to discipline, the range of likely outcomes is someplace between a mild admonition if he is found to have violated the Code of Conduct, to no admonition whatsoever if the faculty review committee finds that his actions fell within the boundaries of the Code.

Peter Melnick

UCSBdad (Peter Melnick): you opened your comment by saying you wished to address "several important misstatements in the Independent article and the comments above."

Where are the misstatements article? You have not presented any; perhaps an apology is in order?

Spacey: If MECha were to compare "Occupied America"
(to quote the book title from author and MECha ally Rudy Acu±a) to what happened under the Nazis, who would protest? You can check out this link to a time magazine article from 1998 where ending bilingual education in Santa Barbara was compared to "cultural genocide".

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art...

Why the double standard? Robinson is in the hot seat for what he says, but La Raza groups can make similar allegations and *that* is ok?

I'm willing to take my chances and allow Robinson, Vallejo, (as quoted in the article) and others to make allegations--regardless of how unreasonable they may be or seem to be, and in so doing, respect the 1st Amendment. I'm not just arguing law, but also the very soul of a free society.

Someone replied to my earlier post, apparently in need of clarification about the misstatements I sought to correct regarding the Robinson situation. To summarize the points I was attempting to make:

- Robinson is subject to an investigation by a committee of his faculty peers, concerning possible violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct, not charges of anti-Semitism.

- Dr. Falk and others are convinced that Robinson is in hot water with the university because of pro-Israel Jews who will go to extreme lengths to stifle criticism of Israel. In fact, they advance this analysis as a priori evidence of an attack on academic freedom, without offering factual support for the claim. If they bothered to look at the work of those faculty who are openly supportive of Israel, they would find an insistence on critical thought about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The same also holds true with respect to the pro-Israel students on campus, and likewise to the voices of Israel advocacy in the Santa Barbara community.

- The stakes here, should Robinson be found to have crossed the line, are not all that high - no one familiar with the workings of the university seriously anticipates anything might come of it worse than a mild admonition. The attempt to cast Robinson as the cutting edge of an attack on academic freedom is enobling, but were it not for his own efforts, Robinson would be more mole-hill than mountain.

I don't doubt that some of Robinson's supporters genuinely believe that academic freedom is under attack here. Reasonable people may disagree about the academic freedom argument, and there is truly a great deal more to discuss on the subject. But reasonable discourse is the antithesis of the kind of polemical invective that characterized so much of Thursday night's event. One has to wonder at the need for such histrionics, especially on the part of as highly credentialed an academic as Dr. Falk.

It might have been more honest to label Thursday night's gathering an Indoor Rally, rather than a forum. But to be clear, the organizers and speakers have every right to produce this sort of event. (I feel the need to make this point, lest someone get the impression that because I criticize their conduct I would abrogate their freedom of speech.)

Peter Melnick

I promise this is my last post on this topic. The best explanation I have read of why Jews might appear oversensitive to the issues of Israel and antisemitism appears in Mark Steyn's "The Oldest Hatred." Read it if you have an open mind

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ha...

Actually, UCSBdad (Peter Melnick), I replied to your earlier email because you falsely accused the writer of the article for perpetuating misstatements.

Instead of clarifying yourself, you charged forward and simply ignored righting your error. My first guess appears correct -- you didn't like the report on the evening, and condemned the messenger, reporter Tyler Hayden.

Thanks, Krakatoa, you made me laugh. And on that note, I'm going to bow out of this protracted series of posts...

Peter Melnick

"binky's gonna huff, and puff, and BLOW YOUR POST DOWN! YAAARRRRrrrrrgggghhhh!!!" -kratatoa-

Hmm, "Yarg" was a greeting among a select few of us that went to Santa Barbara High School back in the 70's. Is this a coincidence, or are you one of my old cohorts?

UCSB has not had so much fun since Huttenback, or maybe was it Cheadle, spent too much money on renovating his kitchen. This easily forgettable blast of hot air with all it's academic posturings and twaddle is clearly outliving it's importance. Please move on and write a book or something. Try earning your salaries by teaching perhaps,because that's what teachers are supposed to do and for which we tax payers pay heavily.

Kratatoa says: "Please stop trying to wrap this self-indulgent jackass in the cloak of "academic freedom.""

Gee, no one said that about any of my professors when they did that in the 60's. 'course they were all lefties spouting the lefty view. Hmm, kinda like now - anyone claiming any of the UCSB lefty profs are self-indulgent jackasses???

Hmmm? That's all it takes to be a professor at UCSB? Send out a bunch of blog information, passively scatter in some opinion, and design it without any sense of dialogue format and structure and call it teaching at a higher level? Sounds like BS and hidden agendas to me. This isn't about Academic Freedom, it's about the email Robinson wrote that was offensive. One would hope having a PhD would include having a sense cultural proficiency for the diverse student population in the classroom. Robinson could have made this go away with a quick apology to the students, but maybe that's too far above a him.

Why should a professor apologize for distributing via the listserv of his course two pieces from the world media - a letter from a Jewish woman and a photo essay that appears on the web site of an expert on the Palestinian situation - along with his well-reasoned commentary for the purpose of provoking discussion of an on-going global issue in a sociology class on globalization? Why did the university hire and tenure the man if they didn't want him to teach his subject? He should apologize for doing his job?

This "controversy" would be bizarre if it were not for the obvious reality that the witch hunt is aimed at suppressing speech critical of Israeli policy. This is one in a string of cases that demonstrates a campaign of harassment and intimidation of those who speak truth to power by those who desire to cover up Israel's behavior towards Palestinians. Professors trained to analyze such matters are especially dangerous to oppressive state projects, which is why they have become special targets in this struggle.

It is my hope that enough people have studied history to recognize what we are seeing, namely the persecution of intellectuals who expose the character of oppressive state projects. The public universities are among the most problematic of spaces, because the doctrine of academic freedom (in too many cases theoretically it seems) protects them from being punished for presenting interpretations of facts. We must strive to make sure they remain among the most problematic of spaces, by definition, where things are open to discussion and debate.

The point is, it's no that he distributed material on a list serve. "If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. "

These are Robinson's words taken from the academic freedom website. Sure, one could agree MLK would condemn Israel, but wouldn't he also condemn Palestinians to some extent? But to write that MLK would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians is a bit of a stretch. In my opinion, if this "assignment" was meant to be open discussion and debate, his statement could be perceived as inflammatory, offensive, and biased. It sure doesn't sound supportive for students to "debate" or discuss pro - Israel.

The demand that critics of Israel's behavior in Palestine must "balance" their criticism with notes about the tactics of some in and around the Palestinian resistance is part and parcel of the apologists' desire to force parameters around the debate and reclaim lost legitimacy. The desire here is to compel the supporters of the Palestinian resistance to imply that Israeli oppression is in some way justified. This is an illegitimate demand.

We saw the same rhetorical tactic used when defenders of South Africa's apartheid regime demanded their opponents condemn the African National Congress in order to claim legitimacy in their criticisms of apartheid. But apartheid is wrong no matter what the victims of apartheid do. Nothing the victims of apartheid do justifies the injustice of apartheid. Nothing the victims of ghettoization, ethnic cleansing, or genocide do justifies these deeds committed against them. Resistance to these deeds is a fundamental human right. Commission of these deeds is a fundamental human wrong.

The defenders of white supremacy used the same rhetorical tactic against Martin Luther King, Jr. White authority and black collaborationist figures demanded that MLK denounce the Black Power movement. But MLK would not. In fact, after much debate internal to the struggle, MLK came down on the side of Black Power. He recognized that Black Power was the consequence of white oppression of black Americans. For this, MLK was labeled a terrorist and put on the list of targets for neutralization drawn up by the FBI's counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO.

There are many who wish that what I wrote above about COINTELPRO was nothing more than a "conspiracy theory." Alas, it is not. The FBI list with Martin Luther King Jr.'s name is an uncontroversial and well-known fact of history.

I am not surprised that Kratatoa doesn't know this. Tragically, most Americans don't know their own history. Compounding this tragedy is that it's a history hidden in plain sight. The challenge for the Kratatoas of the world is to choose to see it.

Alongside King's name were the names of Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammed. The FBI ran COINTELPRO offensives against many other black leaders, as well, including Fred Hampton, who was assassinated by the Cook County SAO, working closely with CPD and the FBI. Organizational targets of the FBI were SNCC, SCLC, RAM,and NOI.

This information, and much more, is in the form of a slew of declassified documents that Kratatoa and others can easily find for themselves in only a matter of seconds by searching Google. Time for some soul searching, Kratatoa.

Whether it's the FBI or the KGB, programs like COINTELPRO are the result of the authoritarian desire to suppress dissent. The ADL runs its counterintelligence programs in manner quite similar to COINTELPRO, collecting extensive dossiers on critics of Israel, sending agents into the classrooms to spy on professors, and spreading rumors, defaming characters (the Anti-Defamation League has become quite adept at defaming the character of critics of Israel). This is the standard counterintelligence model.

Here are some primary documents in the form of U.S. government reports.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Internal Security. Hearings on Domestic Intelligence Operations for Internal Security Purposes. 93rd Cong., 2d sess, 1974.

U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee on Intelligence. Hearings on Domestic Intelligence Programs. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Hearings on Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 90th Cong., 1st sess. - 91st Cong. , 2d sess, 19671970.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Hearings - The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights. Vol. 6. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Hearings - Federal Bureau of Investigation. Vol. 6. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report - Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans. 94th Cong., 2d sess, 1976.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report - Book III, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans. 94th Cong., 2d sess, 1976.

Here's are some scholarly sources from peer-reviewed academic pressed:

Garrow, David (2006). The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Revised ed.). Yale University Press.

Cunningham, David (2004). There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, The Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence. University of California Press.

Theoharis, Athan, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Temple University Press, 1978).

Here are some popular sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel...

Don't let people distort your history. This is what this whole debate is about: historical truth. What I said is historically true. Individuals like Kratatoa mean to deny historical truth for political-ideological reasons. People like this resort to attempted ridicule because the truth crushes their arguments (or because they really are ignorant of history and don't know how to figure out things for themselves). Historical facts scare authoritarian minds, who often behave very much like bullies on a playground.

The irony of this situation is that the 1st Palestinian leader WAS a Nazi war criminal.

Palestinian convicted war criminal, Haj-Amin al-Husseini was an Arab Muslim that allied himself with Hitler and collaborated with Eichmann in the Holocaust. During the war Husseini lived in Berlin and made radio broadcasts urging Muslims to slaughter Jewish people. He also had a very close relationship with Eichmann, encouraging him to start what later became the Holocaust.

Also known as the Grand Mufti, Husseini, organized anti-Semitic riots in Jewish areas of the Holy Land in the 1920's. The most infamous was the Hebron massacre on August 24, 1929. Scores of Jews were murdered and driven from their homes. Their land was stolen and possessions looted or destroyed. Similar riots targeting Jews occurred in 1920, 1921, and 1936-1939

After WW2 at least 10 high-ranking German Nazi war criminals involved in the Holocaust, relocated to Egypt where they became involved in Nasser's government. Anwar Sadat was also involved in pro-Nazi movements.

Egypt holds the majority of responsibility for Gaza since they were the catalysts of the current Gaza situation by creating the refugee camp and closing the borders. Between 1949-1956 there more than 9,000 terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians launched from Gaza and surrounding areas.

Lisa Hajar's defense of Robinson should not surprise anyone especially based on her past ridiculous statements accusing Israel of apartheid and of boycotting Israel while ignoring Palestinian terrorist acts.
In fact she has supported Palestinian "unconventional" protests, which include bombings of buses filled with Jewish civilians.

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/i...

The biography of Haj-Amin al-Husseini is irrelevant here if the question is the substance of historical comparison under debate. No matter how much attention a particular characterization of al-Husseini enjoys in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Palestinians cannot be rationally compared to Nazis or white South Africans. Position of powerlessness has relegated them to other roles.

However, Haj-Amin al-Husseini is relevant to this discussion in another regard. It is inconceivable that a professor giving a lecture about the history of the Middle East in which Haj-Amin al-Husseini was depicted as playing a starring role in the Holocaust, even when that characterization was clearly being used to smear the Palestinian resistance, would be brought up on charges of academic misconduct or defamed by external stakeholders.

The Campus Watch diatribe against Lisa Hajjar loses its steam in the first paragraph when its author wonders how a sociologist could teach in a Law and Society program at UCSB, as if the qualifications of lawyers to scientifically study complex social institutions is unproblematic or sociology has no application to the Middle East. What is it that Campus Watch thinks sociologists do? (The answer to that question doesn't really matter, frankly. The rational capacity of Campus Watch ideologues is negated by their overeager disdain for open debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)