Friday, September 07, 2007

Shameful Contest At MIT-Yes You Read Correctly!

MIT's "Just Jerusalem" Contest Maligns Israel &
Encourages Taking Israeli Sovereignty Away from ALL of Jerusalem

Shalom CAMERA E-Mail Team:

In response to our August 8 alert about MIT's skewed "Just Jerusalem" contest (see below for that alert), many of you wrote excellent letters to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Some of these letters were passed on to Diane Davis, the co-director Jerusalem 2050 (the MIT group running the "Just Jerusalem" competition). Professor Davis, in turn, replied to a number of people who protested the contest's bias.

But Professor Davis's reply, which spoke in repeated vague generalities about the contest's supposed neutrality, failed to address any of the specific issues that betray the contest's partisan skew.

She claimed in her form-letter that there is no "implicit or explicit bias towards a particular sovereignty status for the city." But Professor Davis herself has written that the project seeks visions of "a city that is institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states." Clearly, this comment by Professor Davis - the co-director of the steering committee responsible for the contest - discourages visions which see Jerusalem and its institutions remaining under Israeli sovereignty.
More striking, though, is the claim in Davis's letter that "there is no political bias" and that the contest organizers "have carefully balanced or sidelined [political] considerations." The partisanship and lack of "balance" could not be more glaring.

If the contest has no political bias, then how did the following appear as part of the contest write-up?

"Jerusalem is divided by occupation and marked by profound inequality, injustice, and violence. The city continues to construct boundaries that segregate its space and its inhabitants, making many residents immobile, insecure, and excluded. Religiously, Jerusalem is central to the three monotheistic religions but is not equally accessible to all of them."

Most Israelis, and other observers, would certainly disagree that Israeli rule of the city is marked by "injustice." And it is clearly false that Jerusalem is "not equally accessible" to the three monotheistic religions. Israel does not restrict access to the city based on religion -- Muslim, Christian and Jewish Israelis, as well as tourists of any religion, are free to access the city. It is simply wrong to suggest that Israeli restrictions on individuals from countries or regions at war with Israel are related to the individual's religion rather than to security considerations.

Moreover, any contest seeking to avoid bias and sideline political considerations about a contentious issue would not be so dominated by individuals espousing extremist points of view about the issue and demonstrating such hostility toward only one side of the conflict.

MIT should explain why so many of those affiliated with "Just Jerusalem" represent the farthest fringe of one side of the debate? Wouldn't "balance" require a similar number of individuals who represent the opposite extreme? Or better yet, wouldn't it require that the contest officials not be political extremists at all, but rather moderates who understand both sides of the issue?

Consider how many of those affiliated with the contest promote fringe, anti-Israel views and delegitimize the Jewish state by calling it "racist," "colonialist," or a practitioner of "apartheid."

The steering committee's co-director, Leila Farsakh, signaled her support for an academic boycott of Israel by signing the May 20, 2005 "Open Letter to MESA Members." Clearly, this is an extreme position. Scores of university presidents - including MIT's president Susan Hockfield - agree that an academic boycott of Israel would be "utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy," a "deeply misguided policy," and an "intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempt to hijack the central mission of higher education" (See the anti-boycott ad signed by university presidents).

Farsakh also promotes an equally extreme, politically partisan and inaccurate position by calling Israel a colonialist and apartheid state. Similar views have been expressed by steering committee members Yosef Jabareen and Hania Maraqa and jury members Salim Tamari and Meron Benvenisti. Steering committee members Naomi Chazan, Jennifer Klein, Everett Mendelsohn, Zeina Saab, Richard Sennett, Philip Khoury and John Tirman also represent various points on the anti-Israel part of the spectrum.

Insisting the contest is unbiased and apolitical without addressing any specific complaints, as Diane Davis did in her e-mails to CAMERA members, is not a serious response. MIT should address - and redress - the specific shortcomings of the competition. With all the steering committee members who level virulent attacks against Israel, where are the steering committee members who focus on Palestinian culpability for the conflict? Why are both the Israeli and the Palestinian members of the jury extremist critics of Israel? Is this what MIT considers "balance"?

And how does MIT explain the "Just Jerusalem" Web site's highly partisan contention that Jews living in eastern Jerusalem - which includes the Jewish Quarter - are "settlers," and that Jerusalem under Israeli rule is marked by "injustice"? Why does the Web site mislead readers by claiming that "Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem are considered residents of Israel, not citizens" and that "they don't have Israeli passports and cannot vote in national elections"? In fact, Israel offers citizenship to all Arab citizens of eastern Jerusalem. Although most have chosen not to accept this citizenship, those who do hold Israeli passports can vote in national elections.

Action Items:

* Reread our August 8 alert, which is pasted below.

* If Diane Davis has sent you a reply that did not address the specific complaints about the contest, contact MIT president Susan Hockfield and insist that Professor Davis's vague and disingenuous generalities are insufficient. If you are using e-mail, copy Diane Davis on your note.

Feel free to thank President Hockfield for endorsing Columbia University president Lee Bollinger's note expressing dismay with the anti-Israel boycott movement, but you might also want to question why MIT is running a contest related to the Arab-Israeli conflict that is co-directed by a supporter of such a boycott (Leila Farsakh). If a boycott is "utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy," as the statement endorsed by President Hockfield asserts, then should someone who effectively supports such a boycott head an MIT contest about Israel?

President Susan Hockfield:

hockfield@mit.edu
(617)253-0148

Diane Davis:

dedavis@mit.edu

* If you haven't already done so, write to MIT officials to respectfully protest the contest's partisan, anti-Israel skew. This skew is evidenced by the contest's call for "a city that is institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states," by its steering committee and jury dominated by extremist critics of Israel, and by the Web site's misleading and pro-Palestinian assertions, including the defamatory description of Jerusalem.

Write/call:

MIT President Susan Hockfield:
hockfield@mit.edu
(617)253-0148

MIT Corporation Chairman Dr. Dana G. Mead:
(The MIT Corporation is the board of trustees that governs the university. Dana is a male. )
dmead@mit.edu

MIT Provost Professor L. Rafael Reif:
reif@mit.edu

MIT Alumni Association President Harbo P. Jensen:
harbo@alum.mit.edu

Let CAMERA know if you wrote or called MIT. Send CAMERA blind copies of your letters: letters@camera.org

Our original alert from August 8

MIT's "Just Jerusalem" Contest Maligns Israel &
Encourages Taking Israeli Sovereignty Away from ALL of Jerusalem

Shalom CAMERA E-Mail Team:

In Brief:

MIT has launched a "Just Jerusalem" contest that solicits "entries that envision Jerusalem, real and symbolic, as a just, peaceful, and sustainable city by the year 2050," as if Jerusalem is none of those things today. According to the co-sponsors ( Center for International Studies and Department of Urban Studies and Planning ), "Jerusalem is divided by occupation and marked by profound inequality, injustice, and violence. The city continues to construct boundaries that segregate its space and its inhabitants, making many residents immobile, insecure, and excluded. Religiously, Jerusalem is central to the three monotheistic religions but is not equally accessible to all of them." No surprise, the contest's steering committee and jury are comprised mostly of people with harshly anti-Israel views.

Complaints to MIT about this anti-Israel contest will likely elicit responses of "academic freedom; there's nothing we can do." But at the very least, the public should make it known loudly and clearly to MIT that such a skewed propagandistic contest is antithetical to true education and it taints MIT's reputation for scholarship and fairness.

Allowing MIT to become a haven for anti-Israel propaganda makes MIT an unattractive university for one's children or for donations.

For more details about the contest's bias, see the "In Depth" section below the Action Items.

Action Items:

* Read CAMERA's detailed analysis of the Just Jerusalem competition's steering committee and jury here: http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1346

* Write to MIT officials to respectfully protest the contest's partisan, anti-Israel skew. This skew is evidenced by the contest's call for "a city that is institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states," by its steering committee and jury dominated by extremist critics of Israel, and by the Web site's misleading and pro-Palestinian assertions, including the defamatory description of Jerusalem.

Write/call:

MIT President Susan Hockfield:
hockfield@mit.edu
(617)253-0148

MIT Corporation Chairman Dr. Dana G. Mead:
(The MIT Corporation is the board of trustees that governs the university.
Dana is a male. )
dmead@mit.edu

MIT Provost Professor L. Rafael Reif:
reif@mit.edu

MIT Alumni Association President Harbo P. Jensen:
harbo@alum.mit.edu


Let CAMERA know if you wrote or called MIT. Send CAMERA blind copies of your letters: letters@camera.org

In Detail:

The university is a place for the exchange and exploration of ideas. And so, at first glance, there is nothing especially remarkable about the Just Jerusalem competition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The competition, according to its executive summary, is meant "to generate new ideas and discussions about Jerusalem as it might be in the future - a just city shared in peace by all residents" and to lead to a "plurality of ideas and design visions that will make the competition a starting point for future deliberations over the city."

But despite this stated desire for a "plurality of ideas," the Just Jerusalem literature steers potential participants away from submitting certain ideas. The contest's executive summary, for example, calls for ideas about a "shared" city and visions that "transcend nationalist discourses." Three members of the Jerusalem 2050 steering committee, including its two directors, wrote an article explaining that the competition arose from a sense that "it may be time to try a new approach to Jerusalem, one that entails envisioning this city as transcending the constraints imposed by nation-states," and more specifically, "a city that is institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states." A solution to Jerusalem's problems, they suggested, would be one that would "emancipate" the city from "nationalist blueprints."

In other words, the competition appears to preclude, or in the very least discourage, proposals that leave even part of the city under Israeli sovereignty, including proposals along the lines of the one suggested by Bill Clinton in December 2000. The so-called Clinton Parameters, which represented the culmination of long and painstaking negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, called for what is Arab in Jerusalem to be Palestinian and what is Jewish to be Israeli. (Israel accepted the proposal and the Palestinians effectively rejected them. For details about the Clinton Parameters, see Dennis Ross's The Missing Peace.) Instead, the contest encourages proposals that wrest Jerusalem from Israeli sovereignty and turn the area into an international or binational "corpus separatum," or separate entity.

Equally troubling is the extremely partisan make up of the competition's steering committee and jury. Of the 20 members of the steering committee, 11 have shown themselves to be at best critical of and at worst extremely hostile toward Israel, while having little, if any, public criticism of the Palestinians. These jury members have accused Israel of state terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and of being racist state or even apartheid state.

By contrast, only one person on the MIT's online list of committee members past and present has unequivocally pointed to Palestinian violence rather than Israel's response to that violence as the key obstacle to peace. The remaining seven committee members (plus another one who isn't on the online list) have said very little publicly about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

With pro-Palestinian views dominating the steering committee, it is little surprise that the competition's jury includes similar partisans.

For example, a Palestinian jury member accuses Israel of racism, refers to Israeli settlements as "colonies," and argues that the Palestinians are living in an apartheid situation. And the Israeli jury member is even worse. To him, Israel and its "immigrant" Jews are not victims, but rather an "oppressor" of the "native" Palestinians. In fact, Israel is even worse than apartheid South Africa, he suggests.

The effect of this partisanship is already apparent. A section on the Just Jerusalem Web site about "The Political Geography of the City" refers to Jews living in east Jerusalem as "settlers" living in "settlements," thus clearly endorsing the Palestinian viewpoint while rejecting the Israeli view that Jews in east Jerusalem, including in the Jewish Quarter, are not "settlers." And the Web site's section on "The Socio-Economic Geography of the City" misleadingly claims that "Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem are considered residents of Israel, not citizens" and that "they don't have Israeli passports and cannot vote in national elections." In fact, Israel offers citizenship to all Arab citizens of eastern Jerusalem. Although most have chosen not to accept this citizenship, those who do hold Israeli passports can vote in national elections.

With thanks,

Gilead Ini
Senior Research Analyst

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