Laura Bier decided to advertise herself as a candidate for inclusion in the list of “Middle East scholars” accused in the court of public opinion of “‘anti-Semitism,’ ‘liberal bias,’ and ‘support for terrorism’.”
A panel discussion held last November at Georgia Tech has won a tiny measure of notoriety for a young history professor. Oddly, for an untenured professor with her reputation still to make, Laura Bier actually appears to be attempting to draw negative attention to herself.
The screening of a movie called Arna’s Children, attended by a crowd of about 200 in the Student Center Theater, was followed by a panel, chaired by Professor Kirk Bowman. http://www.oie.gatech.edu/isss/intechnational/InTECHnationalNews11_04_2005.pdf There were three panelists, Adam Levenstein, of Atlanta Palestine Solidarity, Brittain Fellow Rodney Hill, and Laura Bier, Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies. All of the panelists, like all of the films in the Film Festival, were strongly critical of Israel.
A member of the audience, Orit Sklar, an undergraduate, decided to write the event up for an online magazine. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20420 In her article, Sklar criticized the panelists for engaging in what she called a one-sided, propaganda exercise at an event that was “marketed as educational, run by Georgia Tech faculty, and paid for by Institute funds.” According to Sklar, “The present situation in the Middle East is much more complex,” than the speakers let on.
Sklar was particularly critical of Laura Bier. “Professor Bier’s promotion of anti-Israel rhetoric leads me to question her intellectual capacity and objectivity on Middle East issues. Couple this with her statements condoning terrorism and her role as the faculty advisor of SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine,) and one wonders why she was hired in the first place. By the way, she is also going to be teaching History of the Modern Middle East in the upcoming Spring semester.”
Acording to Bier, the Sklar article generated an unspecified number of angry emails. Beyond which the world paid no attention to either Sklar’s article or to Laura Bier.
So, Laura Bier decided to advertise herself as a candidate for inclusion in the list of “Middle East scholars” accused in the court of public opinion of “‘anti-Semitism,’ ‘liberal bias,’ and ‘support for terrorism’.”
Using a pseudonym that did nothing to conceal her identity, Bier an long essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/04/2006041001c/careers.html In it, Bier complained on the basis of that lone, student-authored article that she had become the “target” of a right-wing campaign to “blacklist” her for agreeing to be the faculty advisor of a student group “dedicated to a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict for both Jews and Palestinians.”
This description is more than a tad disingenuous. There are student groups dedicated to justice and others that advocate peace, but the group Bier advises, Students for Justice in Palestine, is a radical political advocacy group.
Bier is well acquainted with SJP. As a student at NYU, she signed the SJP-sponsored “Call for New York University to Divest from Israel.” (http://www.nyudivest.org/signatures.shtml signature # 28) That petition defines “a just resolution to the conflict” between Israel and the Arabs as requiring “implementation of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return.” In other words, Laura Bier, like the student group she advises, advocates the elimination of the Jewish State. The SJP also actively apologizes for terrorists, calling suicide bombing a “legitimate strategy.”
Pity the young Ward Churchill wannabe. You advocate the destruction of the state of Israel and sponsor a student group that apologizes for terrorism… and virtually nobody will notice. It’s no fun to take outrageous political positions if nobody gets outraged, no fun at all to be radical when people only yawn, hard to get noticed for merely advising apologists for terror when professors at other campuses are actively apologizing for actual terrorists. Still, Bier gets credit for trying hard to overcome the obstacles to becoming notorious.
In her essay, Bier lashes out against “faculty members in other departments” who, she claims, have written “letters urging the department to help purge the campus of dangerous viewpoints and the faculty members who espouse them.”
Now that is something the world would notice. Faculty in other departments at Georgia Tech writing letters to Bier’s department chair demanding that Bier be “purge(d).” If Bier can produce such letters, she may succeed in her quest to become famous for five minutes.
The effect that would have on the young academic’s career? Not to worry. “My departmental colleagues… reassure me that they will back me up when I get called into the dean’s office someday because angry alumni and donors write letters asking why my institution allows student groups that ‘promote terrorism’ to operate on the campus.”
But wait. The Dean hasn’t called her in. There is no evidence that a single alumnus or donor has yet noticed Bier, let alone phoned the Dean. No evidence that Bier has become a “target” of a “public witch-hunt.”
Not to mention that there is no “blacklist.” Professors as radical as Laura Bier teach at many American universities, unhampered by public disapproval of their politics.
But who knows. If Laura Bier keeps trying, she may yet manage to become as notorious as Ward Churchill. Or she may merely succeed in making herself look silly.
