(MartinKramer.org) Martin Kramer - Last month, Columbia University announced with much fanfare that it would establish a chair of Israel studies. Four generous trustees threw in $3 million to make it happen - and to help extricate the university from its crisis. The search committee includes Rashid Khalidi, the ubiquitous Edward Said Professor; and lesser-known Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and signer and supporter of Columbia's divestment petition who's writing a book on the Palestinian experience in 1948. Edward Said used to complain that the Palestinians needed "permission to narrate" their story. At Columbia, the situation is reversed: Israel can't be narrated without the permission of the great Palestinian mandarins.
2005-05-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive