"The Israel Lobby" and Intellectual Freedom in Pakistan

The News, May 5, 2006
Blackboard
Intellectual freedom…still a dream

Many Pakistani scholars agree that despite its limitations, the kind of freedom and importance that American academia enjoys is desperately needed in Pakistan

By Ammara Durrani

Some say it would have ended up in the obscurity of academic theory had it not picked up a subject known for rising heckles. Indeed, the working paper titled "The Israel Lobby" published in the London Review of Books in late March and authored by two of America's most well-known academics of international relations, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has created a huge stir.

The paper (available online in an abridged form at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html) comes against the backdrop of the ongoing campus wars in which the Arab-Israel conflict has become "ground zero". In it, both the authors, among other things, hold that the Israel "lobby", has become a "liability" for America, causing it more harm than benefit. Since its publication, the Mearsheimer-Walt study has not only received tremendous coverage in the Western press, it has become one of the most emailed items in the last couple of months. Such has been the uproar caused that after a week of its publication Harvard removed its logo from its cover and issued a standard disclaimer stating that the views expressed belonged only to the authors.

However, KSG Dean, David T. Ellwood, defended Walt's right to express his views. "Throughout this episode, I have sought to be driven by one principle above all others: maintain academic freedom for our scholars and our school", The Harvard Crimson quoted Ellwood as saying in a statement issued last month.

In that respect, the authors have succeeded in creating a debate on Jewish influence on US policy. However, the debate has spilled beyond America. It is being happily used by Palestinian officials and the Arab media to press home their political point against the US and Israel. Israeli and Jewish groups, on the other hand, have not been shy of expressing their unhappy anger with what they see as nothing but yet another example of biased, academically flawed and anti-Semitic vitriol.

Strangely, despite the fierce political passions that US foreign policy and Israel ignite in Pakistan, where sympathy for the Arab cause reigns supreme, the Harvard controversy has been barely mentioned here. Press coverage aside, even the academic community, save a few exceptions, seems generally unaware of the latest debate in the Western academia. Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, sees Pakistan "many continents away" from the Mearsheimer-Walt controversy. "Yet there is a powerful message for all who care to listen," he says, a most vociferous critic of the Musharraf government's higher education sector reforms. "The good news is that academic freedom is still alive and well (in the US)," he says, mentioning independent intellectuals in American universities like Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmad and Howard Zinn, who were "despised" by their fellow academics and university administration but never lost their jobs. "You can literally discuss anything under the sun, even if sometimes there is a price to pay," something which he also notices in European and Indian universities. Comparing that with the "utter conformity" of Pakistani universities, Hoodbhoy talks of the intelligence agencies that monitor staff and students for "anti-state" activities. Deputed agents often do not bother to hide their identities; "thugs" from religious student organisations and "biased university administrations" are factors that prevent openness on Pakistani education campuses. According to him, it is because of these reasons that controversial issues in Pakistan are now discussed not on campuses but in hotel seminars.

Professor Moonis Ahmar of the department of international relations at Karachi University also credits American universities for their well-known focus on R&D, observing that academic freedom thrives in the US. "Criticising the party in power is not discouraged in the American academic set-up," he says, adding that debate and discussion on domestic matters routinely takes place in various American universities.

It is a kind of intellectual freedom that is unthinkable in Pakistan. In his opinion, "The restrictions and harassments from various 'mafias' are enormous [in Pakistani academia]". For instance, the question of Israel takes an altogether different twist here. "If criticising Israel is considered reprehensible in American academic community, in Pakistan taking a positive position on Israel is considered to be an offence," says Ahmar, who faced fire and vilification in the 1990s for authoring a path-breaking study on the possibility of establishing Pakistan-Israel relations. He observed sadly that even during last year's media-cum-government driven debate in Pakistan on the question of recognising Israel, the academia remained indifferent "because of the backlash costs from the extreme right-wing forces."

Dr Farooq Hasnat, former chairman of the department of political science at Punjab University and currently a scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington DC, says that the debate about Israel's status and its relations with the United States is "not a subject which anybody will pick up with ease," even though they talk about it "privately".

"You can debate in the classroom but then you are out from such state institutions like the State Department," he says.

Many Pakistani scholars agree that despite its limitations, the kind of freedom and importance that American academia enjoys is desperately needed in Pakistan. "I often dream of the day when it will happen in Pakistan," says Hassan Abbas, author of the 2004 hit Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America's War on Terror, and currently a visiting scholar at Harvard and working for his doctorate at Tufts University. The level of scholarship needed to contribute to state and society is only possible when a scholar is "free and independent--economically and politically", says Abbas, a former civil servant-turned-scholar and who was recently reported in a section of the press to have been put on the watch-list of the Pakistani government for writing "anti-Pakistan" books and delivering "anti-Pakistan" lectures in the US. Abbas says that admittedly in the US, charges of anti-Semitism can be "devastating" against anyone, but it didn't take long for the two scholars' academic institutions and other scholars to stand up in their support and that of academic freedom. "This is the power of academia in the US, not lesser than AIPAC [American-Israel Public Affairs Committee] in any way."

However, Pakistani academicians also point to the limitations of American academic freedom, apparent to them in scant discussion of foreign policy issues, particularly those influencing a post-9/11 America.

"The influence of various Jewish foundations like B'inai B'rith on American campuses is deep-rooted," says Ahmar. From his 1999 association with the Middle East Institute, he recalls a conversation with its faculty and a visiting German scholar, in which he was told that it was "impossible" to pursue a critical approach on Israel, particularly regarding its policy on the PLO and its Arab neighbours.

Hasnat says that in the US at present Christian Evangelists have emerged as the strongest force on the right, "calling all the shots" and "all out" for Israel. In his view, in such a political climate, academicians from countries like Pakistan feel "vulnerable". "We are all 'suspects' (in the US)," he says. "The level of trust is very low when it comes to the matters of the Middle East, especially Israel, Iran and Palestinians."

Known for his critical positions on issues like the US foreign policy, Arab-Israel conflict and nuclear weapons, Hoodbhoy is not surprised at the 'Lobby' controversy, which he says, "states the obvious". "The bad news is that most American academics are prepared to be reasonable and liberal about almost everything except Israel, for which they have a blind spot," he says. The question is---Why the blind spot?

"The key to AIPAC's success is the media," says Hoodbhoy. "Part of the reason is the appalling intellectual bankruptcy of Palestinian and Arab scholars and their failure to analyse and write effectively." Which is why, he says, Edward Said was so important--- brilliantly drawing analogies that were wonderfully expressive and to which the Western readers could relate. "The Zionists welcome mullahs spouting venom against Jews and Israel and they secretly welcome the occasional suicide bomber as well," says Hoodbhoy, "but they hated and feared Edward because he spoke and wrote as a humanist, shunning religious and national prejudices."

Hoodbhoy thinks the state of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals in the US today is "no better" than that during the Israeli invasions of Lebanon of 1976 and 1982. He remembers that time when he, being a member of various pro-Palestinian groups, would visit newspaper editors and staff in Boston and Seattle to persuade them for giving a balanced coverage to the Middle East. "Their answer was invariably: write something and we will publish it," he recalls, "and invariably, the task to write was handed to me because none of my Arab friends had the foggiest idea of how to write a newspaper article." And write he did, often under some of their names. "It is this crippling inability to write", he says, "that made the Palestinian lobby so weak and, conversely, the Zionist lobby so strong in the US."

The real purpose of any education is to cultivate the students' critical faculty, to make them think and ponder over what is happening around them and to voice their opinions regarding these happenings, without any fear of backlash from the concerned parties. This intellectual freedom is what we need in Pakistan if we really want to progress as a nation.