Israeli Public Relations Group Leads Lynch Mob Against Black Professor 47
Oberlin College’s Joy Karega Pokes 800 Pound Zionist Gorilla
By James F. TracyA professor at an elite liberal arts college in Ohio has been targeted as “anti-semitic” and labelled a “conspiracy theorist” for observing in social media posts that Israel was behind 9/11, the November 2015 Paris terror events, and the rise of the Islamic State. Jewish groups and major media outlets have joined forces to publicly assail Joy Karega, an assistant professor of composition, and her employer Obelin College, for voicing “kooky theories,” FoxNews reports. Yet Oberlin administrators have not capitulated to the mob-like calls for Korega’s de facto lynching. The entire controversy can
be traced back to a single source.
Prof.
Karega’s “hate speech”: “And I stopped letting folks bully me with that
‘you’re being anti-semitic’ nonsense a long time ago. Just a strategy
to shut folks up …”
However unorthodox or politically incorrect Professor Karega’s perspectives may appear, there’s abundant evidence to substantiate the veracity of her observations (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). And one need only look to cases such as Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty or the 1992 and 1994 “attacks” in Argentina to recognize the nation state’s long history of supporting false flag terror. Or simply consider for a moment the powerful Israel intelligence agency Mossad’s guiding philosophy: “By way of deception.”
The media frenzy was sparked in late February when The Tower, an organ run by pro-Zionist public relations group The Israeli Project (“TIP”) published an inflammatory article highlighting Karega’s extracurricular commentary.
When Oberlin refused to chastise or terminate Karega TIP’s The Tower published a followup article, essentially setting the agenda for other Israeli publications and the pro-Zionist corporate media to pile on. (Note that The Tower refers to the “controversy” it was responsible for generating around Karega and her university.)
Because of this starkly provoked “controversy” (see my “An Open Letter to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel“) Karega and her academic home are being intimidated by the most powerful and efficient propaganda system in the West.
“This is the worst kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin—Israel Law Center, an Israeli-based civil rights organization. “It is not acceptable for the dean to hide behind academic freedom and claim this is freedom of speech. “She (Karega) is not a tenured professor,” she added. “She needs to be thrown off campus immediately.”
Contrary to this contempt for free thought and speech, the First Amendment grants US citizens the right (and for true Americans the duty) to take issue with how their government’s affairs, as well as those its tax dollars support. Salaried intellectuals who have certain protections should be compelled to take on such controversial subject matter, yet very few actually do.
First Amendment experts note how Korega’s views are protected under the rudimentary free speech tenets. “As wacky and weird these comments may be,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley observes, “they were made by an academic outside of their classes and express her political and historical viewpoint … It is in fact free speech and there are academic protections for unpopular speech. The college is right. However, there is a growing concern over the test being applied to academics based on the content of such speech.”
Along these lines, Stanley Fish, the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, explains to Inside Higher Ed that “Karega is free to say whatever she wishes on social media or in her own scholarship, even if it’s untrue and relates directly to her subject area –provided she “doesn’t attempt to present it in class as a fundamental truth (and there’s a sound pedagogical reason for presenting it at all).”
Fish said that the Steven Salaita case at the University of Illinois, for example, should have hinged entirely on Salaita’s teaching record — not uninterrogated fears about what his controversial, anti-Israel tweets might mean about his ability to teach.While Oberlin’s administration has stood behind its young faculty member one can safely conclude that the university will experience acute pressure from alumni and donors who have been provoked by the coordinated propaganda campaign. Add to this the work of paid trolls who are at surely at work showering the young professor and her university with profane and threatening emails and voice messages, as her posts below indicate.
“Are you trying to inform your students about the various views or perspectives that are out there or are you trying to enlist your students in some kind of political agenda?” Fish asked. “It’s very simple, and if you keep those other questions out of it, a lot of confusion can be avoided.”
Karega and her colleagues will by now have received plenty of such communications. This is but one component of a psychological campaign to terrorize and isolate the professor from her peers. “Journalists” will similarly telephone and visit her office and residence with “interview” requests, further pressuring her into silence and conformity. Editors of academic journals and book series in her field may blacklist her for fear of being linked to a potential contributor with “anti-semitic” and “conspiracist” views.
In the end Karega will likely function as an example for other academics for uttering that which what must remain “unspeakable,” as author Jim Douglas calls it, a fitting term for the painful truths failing to pierce the comfort of willful ignorance.
These strictures characterize and define the modern state of academe and its often gutless approach to today’s most urgent social and political problems. Intellectuals recognize as a right of passage how they must tiptoe around concrete geopolitical and historical realities, lest they draw the ire of today’s thought police and face the potential consequences: financial deprivation and professional ruin. In this way what was once higher education has become yet another racket for high finance.
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