Here's a run down and summary of the recent controversy between Israel and the BBC, and of the case of Amit Duvshani, the Israeli graduate student whose application to an Oxford Ph.D. program was rejected by Professor Andrew Wilkie on quite plainly racist/anti-Semitic grounds.
One of the over 3,000 emails Wilkie received after the story hit the internet was from novelist Jack Engelhard (presumably it's the J.E. who wrote Indecent Proposal):
"High-minded German professors, as you know, were the first to backstab their Jewish students and fellow Jewish scholars," he wrote. "Thank God Einstein got out in time - though we'll never know how many other Einsteins (perhaps with the cure for cancer) never made it out of the death camps because they were doomed by their own university elite."Despite the severity of such comparisons, Wilkie is trying to control the damage and put a good face on things, providing Jewsweek with some bizarrely jaunty-sounding quotes, including this one concerning the beast that exposed and may, in the end, have slain him: "the power of the internet is awesome!"
(Has it slain him? Difficult to say. Mona Baker, reaper of a similar whirlwind, seems to have managed to ride it out.)
In addition to his official letter of apology that was released publicly by the university, Wilkie sent Duvshani an "additional, more personal apology... in which the professor proclaimed that some of his 'best friends are Jewish.'"
I've always thought that this particular phrase tends to be oversold as an incomparably damning and outrageous mark of bigotry. There are worse things you can say or do, and it's not like people don't say them or do them. And I have no doubt that it is literally quite true. Still, it is difficult to imagine anyone not realizing that including this phrase in a letter of apology when one has been accused of racism is just a bad move. Particularly when aware, as Wilkie surely must be, that such a letter was destined to be made public and scrutinized the world over.
A year ago, when the Mona Baker imbroglio was still at a brisk boil, I wrote of her and her husband:
The astonishing thing is that the reaction and controversy really does seem to have taken these people completely by surprise. Europeans who are critical of Israel often don't realize just how bad their rhetoric can sound... Baker's ideology appears to have blinded her to reality, and it's certainly not the first time that such a thing has occurred. But can it really be that there was not a single soul in her professional circle with enough sense to have pointed out the folly, if not the reprehensible nature, of her "token gesture"?I had the same thought here, a reaction less of outrage than of pure astonishment that neither Wilkie himself, nor apparently any of his friends, family, or associates (to whom I'd imagine he'd turn for editorial advice, considering the hot water in which his last off-the-cuff mail had landed him) were capable of noting the phrase and saying "you know, Andrew, that 'some of my best friends' paragraph has got to go..."
(via Jeff Jarvis.)
Posted by Dr. Frank at July 3, 2003 03:40 PM | TrackBackI was not surprised at the behaviour of Mona Baker or the attitude of all the other left-liberal university lecturer types. Most of such people suck moral superiority from striking attitudes and glaring round at any colleagues who dissent from these reflex and simplistic attitudes. Moreover the actual value of such people personally and professionally is minimal.
In the case of Wilkie, he is a pathologist, one of a useful group of human beings, with a proper job. He must have been having a bad day.That seems to be the explanation, borne out by his obvious regret for his lapse.
>in which the professor proclaimed that some of his 'best friends are Jewish.'
>I've always thought that this particular phrase tends to be oversold as an incomparably damning and outrageous mark of bigotry.
Indeed. After one of my best friends made a disparaging and generalized remark about a small group of black (African-American) people, and before I could launch into my own anti-racist diatribe about what he had just said, he quipped “It’s ok, my ex-girlfriend is black. Hell, I could burn crosses in my front yard and it would be fine.” His point, although as abrasive as his personality, was well taken and proved the absurdity of the “It’s ok, some of my best friends are...” defense of bigoted rhetoric.
-Bobby J
Posted by: Bobby J at July 3, 2003 07:19 PMI dunno, Tregagle, I understand your preference for the academic culture of the physical, over the social, sciences but I see no evidence of any inherent ethical superiority. In fact, if the case of Wilkie demonstrates anything against the background of the Mona Baker case, it's that blind spots when it comes to anti-Semitism and Judeophobia appear to be fairly well distributed amongst different sorts of departments in British universities. It's a small sample, but it attests to a more wide-spread, non-discipline-specific occurrence of this tendency in the culture of the British academy rather than the reverse, if it attests to anything at all. Wilkie himself says as much in his original letter: "as you know, I am not the only UK scientist with these views." I take that as a factually accurate overt statement, as well as an attempt at irony/understatement. I have no doubt that he meant it, and that he was right, whatever he may regret now that it has come to light. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
A list consisting of anti-Jewish bigots throughout history, the willful along with those like Wilkie and Baker who, to take the kindest view, just can't seem to help themselves, would, I imagine include quite a few who display such bigotry but nonetheless have managed to hold down proper jobs.
Posted by: Dr. Frank at July 3, 2003 08:12 PMIf some of his best friends are Jewish, why did he not seek their council on how to handle the controversy?
Posted by: JB at July 4, 2003 03:49 AM"as you know, I am not the only UK scientist with these views."
I took this to mean, "The lurkers support me in email."
I am an American Jew (was bar-mitzvahed, attend High Holy Day services at a Conservative Shul, observe Passover), and an anti-Zionist. I do not believe that the State of Israel is necessary for Judaism to survive, and the longer Israel under its current reactionary regime is taken as a representative of my religion, I fear that Israel will actually help destroy my tradition my betraying every tenet of justice, humanism, and social concern that Judaism has stood for over many centuries. Being anti-Israel is NOT the same as being anti-Jewish, and in fact Zionism was a very controversial movement within the religion for decades, even in the US after WWII. What this professor actually said was that he thinks the IDF is engaged in an immoral occupation of Palestine and that he doesn't want to work with an individual who participated in the Occupation while serving in the IDF.
Now, you can certainly argue that Wilkie shouldn't take even this into account, but he certainly didn't say "I won't work with Jews." One question to ask is whether he's accepted as students people from other backgrounds who've done equally reprehensible things: for instance, someone who served in the South African security forces, or who informed for Stasi in the DDR? If he's willing to work with non-Jewish students like this, and not with Jewish ones, then he deserves to be called out as an anti-Semite. How has he treated Jewish students who aren't Israelis and members of the IDF?
Posted by: Nick at July 8, 2003 02:46 AM