Faculty Anti-Semitism, Part Two: Hatem Bazian at UC Berkeley

This is the second of a three four-part post about the problem of anti-Semitism among university faculty members. Part One was about Prof. Michael Chikindas of Rutgers, who has been sanctioned for posting anti-Semitic memes on his Facebook page.  Today’s post will discuss Dr. Hatem Bazian, a lecturer at UC Berkeley and a founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, who has circulated equally venomous images via Twitter. Part Three will address some of the defenses that have been raised on behalf of Chikindas and Bazian.

Chikindas and Bazian are probably quite dissimilar politically, apart from their animosity toward Israel and their displays of anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.  In their social media depictions of Jews,however, they turn out to have more in common than either one is likely to admit. 

A key difference, however, is that Bazian is a recognized leader in a national movement. He has over 16,000 followers on Twitter, which no doubt far exceeds the number of Chikindas's Facebook friends. Bazian’s foray into anti-Semitism is not merely cranky or idiosyncratic; rather, it is influential and strategic.  Protected speech can nonetheless be damaging speech.

As in yesterday’s post, I am not going to put the offensive memes on the main page.  After the jump, you can see the images that Bazian recently retweeted, which are nearly as bad as Chikindas's:

 

A Berkeley spokesman (but not the president or chancellor, as at Rutgers) has condemned Bazian's posts as crossing the line from "criticism of Israel’s governmental policies" into "anti-Semitism," while taking no further action.  Given the evident religious malice in the tweet, the reference to Israel's governmental policies was gratuitous. (As pointed out by The Atlantic's Graeme Wood, the tweet was also racist, as it ridiculed the Korean Kim Jong Un for saying "Donald Tlump.")

Bazian deleted the retweet and offered a feeble semi-apology, in which he devoted more energy to slamming Israel than to expressions of regret.  According to Bazian, he "did not realize or read the full text in detail" until after he had retweeted the images, as though the use of the graphics was otherwise unobjectionable.  And when the problem was first brought to his attention, he did not respond "as a matter of policy," because he assumed that the complaints were Zionist attacks. The original tweeter, btw, was a guy named Ron Hughes, whom Bazian evidently follows.  Hughes's other virulent tweets include such venerable anti-Semitic memes as the phony charge -- really, a form of birtherism -- that virtually every Jewish senator and congressperson is a dual Israeli citizen.  

According to Bazian, his "problem is with Zionism," not with "Judaism or Jews" (so long as they "express solidarity" with him politically).  He added, absurdly, that "In the future, I will make sure to include that retweets don't represent an agreement or support for the ideas that are shared." So I guess he plans to continue retweeting anti-Semitic memes to his 16,000 followers, but now with a built-in excuse.  Wink, wink; nudge, nudge.  President Trump recently retweeted three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos. I doubt that Bazian would accept the excuse that they were only retweets; I certainly don’t. 

There is actually a stronger case for disciplining Bazian than there is against Chikindas, given that Bazian's expression of bigotry is directly related to his academic appointment in the Department of Ethnic Studies.  According to the AAUP Statement on Extramural Utterances, a faculty member may be disciplined if "the professor’s extramural utterances raise grave doubts concerning the professor’s fitness" for service in his or her position.  Religious biases may be irrelevant to Chikindas's teaching of Food Science, but they go right to the heart of teaching Ethnic Studies. As far as I know, Bazian does not teach any required courses and, unlike Chikindas, he holds no administrative office.  According to Bazian's website, however, he is an "adviser to the Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley," which is a position that ought to be reconsidered by the university administration. But as I have already explained, I do not think any more severe measures are appropriate consequences of even hateful extramural speech.

Although I am generally opposed to disciplining faculty for extramural speech, I am also in favor of calling people to account for bigotry, no matter how much they try to rationalize or justify it.  No one who is actually opposed to anti-Semitism could circulate those images, as Bazian did, with or without reading the accompanying text.  Only someone with an underlying antagonism toward Jewishness would use memes that deride the markers of Orthodox Judaism -- kippah and payot --  to make even the most heartfelt political point. It is easy to be repelled by Michael Chikindas, who has no constituency, but Hatem Bazian has behaved just as badly, with greater impact, and for a much bigger audience.

Comments

[Stan Nadel]

Again, I question the presumption of innocence that would suggest that these extramural eruptions could possibly not also involve bias against any Jewish students who might take any sort of courses from either Chikindes or Bazian. I think that a presumption of guilt is warranted here.

[Deep State Special Legal Counsel]

So, Professor Bazian is a lecturer. So, let's unpack that. He is not a professor or even an instructor. What does he do? Read from his notes to 250 undergraduates? These guys can't come to grips with the facts: The Arabs attacked Israel in 1967 and again in 1973 without any provocation and lost the wars they started. They continue to bomb fast food establishments, kill Olympic athletes, bomb busses and run cars into civilians and now want their land back? So they resort to anti-Semitism to make their case. Good Luck with that.

[concerned_citizen]

"Dr. Hatem"...

... so we ask, "what's in a name?"

[Jeff Rice]

I would not get too hung up on his being a "lecturer". Many universities and colleges including Berkeley have non-tenurable faculty who are hired to teach. At Berkeley, as at other schools, after a certain amount of time (in this case, 6 years) one can become a 'continuing lecturer' which means your renewal is presumed shy of negative evaluations. So to say he is not a professor or even a lecturer actually makes no sense and is a distraction. What is relevant is that he can be denied renewal without having to revoke tenure.