What is Jasbir Puar is afraid of? A professor at Rutgers University, Puar has been making the college circuit with lectures that are both academic mumbo-jumbo and searing indictments of Israel that bleed into anti-Semitism.
Three weeks ago, in a talk at Vassar College, Puar added to an anti-Israel, sometimes anti-Jewish, climate on the campus. She asked Vassar to bar recordings. Appallingly, Vassar complied.
On Thursday, Puar was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Fordham on “the biopolitics of debility in Gaza” under the sponsorship of the university’s Graduate English Association. Prompted by an inquiry by the Daily News Editorial Board, school administrators discovered that Puar had again set a no-recording condition.
Although Fordham President Rev. Joseph McShane has made clear that, as an institution, the school condemns much of Puar’s outlook on Israel, the university had granted her a podium as a matter of free expression. Security was on hand for the talk.
But, upholding “academic transparency,” McShane properly would not facilitate Puar’s attempt to limit the wide dissemination of her ideas.
Noting that the lack of an official recording at Vassar opened Puar to mischaracterizations, he directed aides to inform Puar she could speak only if she was recorded and the recording was made public.
Puar bagged it. What’s she afraid of?