The Travails of "Leah Bowman"

by Cliopatria

This week’s Chronicle published a piece by Dr. “Leah Bowman,” which demonstrates, among other things, the shortcomings of anonymous articles. Bowman is, in fact, Assistant Professor Laura Bier, an NYU Ph.D. newly hired in Georgia Tech’s History Department, where she is a social and cultural historian of post-colonial Egyptian history whose “research interests include gender and decolonization, the history of sexuality and the family, feminist theory and oral history.” Bowman/Bier’s article decries the “witchhunt” that she faces as a lonely voice among today’s college faculty demanding justice for the Palestinians.

Bowman/Bier alleges that after publication of an article in Frontpage, she received hate e-mails—which, if true, is utterly inexcusable. The rest of her piece, however, makes for interesting reading. Now that the cloak of anonymity has been removed from Bowman/Bier (though not on the HNN homepage, where the Chronicle formally protested the posting of her article under her real name), it’s possible to provide some context to her portrayal of events.

Bowman/Bier's problems started when she spoke at a panel on the “Israeli occupation of Palestine,” which was, she says, sponsored by “a Palestinian advocacy group for which I am the faculty adviser. The group is a university-approved student organization that aims to educate and raise awareness about the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli rule. Similar organizations are found on many American campuses.” It’s odd that Bowman/Bier devoted three sentences to describing the group but never identified its name. The group is, in fact, “Students for Justice in Palestine.” Bowman/Bier had participated in the NYU branch of the organization, where she signed a petition demanding that NYU divest from Israel.

Could it be that Bowman/Bier didn’t mention the group’s name because she knew that its rather extreme reputation would make it difficult to claim, as she does in her article, that it supports a “just and peaceful resolution to the conflict for both Jews and Palestinians”? During the spring 2006 semester, the group’s primary activity was the construction of a simulated Israeli “apartheid wall” on the Georgia Tech campus, coupled with attendance at a vigil for the late pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie. Bowman/Bier, of course, is fully entitled to argue that this agenda envisions a “just and peaceful resolution to the conflict for both Jews and Palestinians.” But, at least according to recent opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of Israelis do not believe that removing the security fence will produce a “just and peaceful resolution” of the conflict—nor, I suspect, would they endorse Rachel Corrie’s vision of a “peaceful” single-state, secular Palestine. So Bowman/Bier’s description in the Chronicle of Students for Justice in Palestine’s concerns for a just and peaceful resolution for both Jews and Palestinians is less than forthcoming. Anonymity can be useful in denying context.

The student president of the Georgia Tech Hillel, Orit Sklar, wrote the Frontpage story. I couldn’t find any mention of the event in the Georgia Tech newspaper, so Sklar’s account is the only one on record—though Bowman/Bier doesn’t claim that Sklar's description had factual inaccuracies. (She strongly disputes Sklar's interpretations.) According to Sklar, the panel was billed as an educational event, but the moderator announced that the organizers tried but couldn’t find a pro-Israel faculty member able and willing to appear. Just a hunch—but scheduling the event for a Friday night might have intensified this problem.

"Leah Bowman" contends that her remarks at the Students for Justice in Palestine event were boilerplate, in which she spoke of “the necessity of a just political solution," without any additional details. Hard to see how anyone could object to that. But a petition that Laura Bier signed at NYU gives a sense of her perspective on what constitutes a “just political solution.” That statement defined a “just resolution to the conflict” in"Palestine/Israel" as “an immediate end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, Israeli recognition and implementation of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, and the attainment of full civic equality and equal citizenship status for Palestinians within Israel.” What Bowman/Bier considers a “just political solution,” then, others would term a de facto end to the Jewish state. But, writing under the cloak of anonymity, she didn’t have to point out this problem, because"Leah Bowman" had never described what she meant by a"just" resolution of the conflict.

The rest of Bowman/Bier’s article addresses her concerns of “right-wing” “blacklists” regarding a “liberal bias" in Middle East Studies. (Many people might, not unfairly, describe the views that Professor Bier has publicly taken as demonstrating a leftist—not liberal—bias, though the views of “Leah Bowman” are far more moderate.) “Entire Web sites,” Bowman/Bier reveals, “are devoted to exposing academics with expertise on the Middle East as dangerous radicals who pose a threat to the young minds of America . . . The message to those of us who believe there must be room for ethical and reasoned debate on American involvement in Iraq, on the Israeli occupation, and on the war on terror has never been clearer: We are watching you. And we're going to take you down.” Bowman/Bier does not identify any of these “entire Web sites” that seek to “take . . . down” the brave few among today's college faculty that oppose the “Israeli occupation”—perhaps because there are, to my knowledge, no such Web sites.

Campus Watch, of course, publicizes the remarks of many Middle East Studies professors. But apparently Laura Bier believes that those on her side of the debate should be free to publicly make their case on Middle Eastern affairs, without the possibility of anyone who disagrees challenging or even mentioning what they said. So much, apparently, for the celebration of “engagement with alternative ideas” that “Leah Bowman” provided to Chronicle readers.

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Ralph E. Luker - 4/18/2006

In your view, language that you want to use is, by definition, not hate speech. Right?

Martin Solomon - 4/18/2006

I don't believe the term "hate speech" should be used casually, but should be reserved for the most vile forms of demonization and vilification -- the way I believe the average person understands it when they hear it.

Labeling speech we don't like as "hate speech" is as dismissive a bit of labeling as you say some other types of speech are. It's most often used to silence ideas we don't like or don't want to have to respond to. Maybe some Jews are self hating, maybe some ideas deserve to be vilified, maybe some people do, too...we don't know until we hash it out and let the marketplace of ideas do its stuff.

The "hate speech" label has also come to imply that there should be some sanction, and that the ideas so labeled should be dismissed and the person stating them stigmatized. I say that's as dangerous or more dangerous than whatever it is you're trying to apply the label to.

You might find some ideas and/or the way they are expressed wrong-headed, inadvisable, churlish, or just plain incorrect, but don't call them hatefull -- not if you really want to keep open the avenues of debate -- that's a label that's almost (and in some cases quite literally) come to have a legal definition, and should be reserved for the most extreme forms of expression in my view.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/17/2006

What is it, then, if it isn't intended to stigmatize another person, as most "hate speech" is? It is the same kind of stereotyping language that has all too often been inflicted on Jews and other people.

Martin Solomon - 4/17/2006

It is an expression I tend to avoid (avoid, but do not eschew completely -- there may be some to whom it may apply), but neither is it "hate speech."

Ralph E. Luker - 4/17/2006

Solomonia would do itself a favor by avoiding language like "self hating Jew" for a number of reasons, including its assumption that all Jews must have a single fixed attitude on middle eastern issues -- lest they be marked with the "self hating" stigma.

Martin Solomon - 4/17/2006

Here is my original post on the subject (my post today merely points to Pipes' post).
Too Late For the Mask:
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/008147.shtml

I don't think there's any "hate language" generated in it at all, but I suppose that's subjective. I quote the FrontPageMag article written by the student who saw the panel who does, indeed, refer to a founder of a local Palestine Solidarity chapter as "a self-hating Jew." I think you've got to have a pretty low threshhold to see that as hate speech (like the threshhold that apparently reigns on college campuses these days), but ymmv.

I approvingly quote someone who states that hate-mail is never acceptable, and the rest of my posting is a fairly milquetoast muse on the apparent desire of some campus dwellers to be free of the same criticisms the rest of us have to deal with.

Those of us who follow these things understand what is meant by the word "justice" when groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and their supporters use it, and if there is anyone fanning the flames of hatred it is they in my view. A bit of exposure is like tea and cucumber sandwiches compared to the vicious rhetoric these groups generate -- including their divestment petition which Bier signed.

Robert KC Johnson - 4/17/2006

I said "if true" only because other items in Bowman/Bier's article--the specifics of the student group for which she serves as faculty advisor, her conception of a "just political solution"--were, to put it most generously, less than complete; and, to put it less generously, inapprorpiately shaded in such a way to make all criticisms of her positions look unreasonable.

Scott McLemee - 4/17/2006

"Bowman/Bier alleges that after publication of an article in Frontpage, she received hate e-mails—which, if true, is utterly inexcusable."

Is there any reason to doubt this? Inciting hate-mail is one of FrontPage's basic functions. And from experience I can tell you that it is very effective at this.

Robert KC Johnson - 4/17/2006

I addressed the anonymity point above, sorry. The "outing" of her, as I noted, takes around 5 minutes. (I did it through a "google" search of "frontpage magazine"--which I assumed was the "rightwing" site that wrote on her--and the title of the Palestinian film.) So we're not talking about lots of evil website manpower here.

On the NYU petition point--here's what her article says: "In fact, overtired and underprepared, I said a few words about the humanitarian costs of the occupation on Palestinians and the necessity of a just political solution." She doesn't say what she meant by a "just political solution." I agree--maybe she defined just political solution differently than when she signed the NYU petition. But it doesn't seem reasonable to wonder if "overtired and underprepared," she didn't fall back on positions she previously had taken. That she went out of her way to avoid mentioning the student group's name in the article (SJP has branches on lots of campuses, so mentioning it wouldn't have hastened the process of "outing" her) suggested to me an intent to "sanitize" some of her positions.

As to the point that she wrote the column to avoid this kind of attention--I don't buy that. If she wanted to avoid this kind of attention, she shouldn't have written a column for the Chronicle. Essentially, her contention in the article is that she wants the freedom to say what she wants without anyone challenging her.

Robert KC Johnson - 4/17/2006

I had missed the Bowman article when it came out (I don't usually read the Careers section); it was sent to me last night by a colleague, who asked if I had any idea who the real author was. I didn't realize she already had been "outed"--it took me around 5 minutes of different Google configurations to find out her identity.

My concern is largely with the Chronicle. This article was published "anonymously"--yet in such a way that the real author was easily detectable. So there was nothing gained from "anonymity," and what was lost was the ability to question any of the blanket assertions made by Bowman/Bier.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/17/2006

Manan, Background on the controversy over the outing of Professor Bier is treated here. Martin Kramer is, apparently, the person who identified her.

Manan Ahmed - 4/17/2006

Whatever petition she signed at NYU has little to do with whatever she actually said at the event. I fail to see how you make that assumption...Ironic that she wrote her column to avoid just this kind of attention.

I am curious as to who 'outed' her. Were those 'entire Web sites' responsible? Doesn't that actually speak to her point?

Also, for the record, I didn't think CHE's column was a good idea

Ralph E. Luker - 4/17/2006

It should be kept in mind that there is a larger story that gathers around the outing of Professor Bier as the author of the article in the CHE. If you read some of the pro-Israeli websites, i.e., Front Page Rag and Solomonia, there's a powerful amount of hate language generated. One of the panelists at Georgia Tech is described as a "self-hating Jew," for example; and the e-mail address of Professor Bier's dean is being circulated. I can't imagine that the latter is done in order to generate praise of her impeccable scholarship. She's got a right to publish a pseudonymous article if she wants to; and her critics, like Martin Kramer, have a right, if they can, to out her. But I'm reserving my respect for people who aren't fanning the flames of hatred in a case like this.