Wednesday, July 02, 2003
(2:01 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Abuse of the word "Anti-Semitism" watch
In a post by the inestimable Andrew Sullivan, he notes the anti-Semitism of a British professor who turned down an Israeli job applicant with the following statement: "I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another lab if you look around." I assume the person in question here is Jewish, but I'm not sure every action taken against a Jew, even actions based on a Jew's military service in Israel, is anti-Semitic. The professor makes a generalization about the behavior of the Israeli military, supported by ample evidence, and he decides that he would rather not work with someone who had engaged in that kind of behavior. (Since serving in the army is public behavior, this seems to be different from refusing to hire someone who has slept with someone of the same gender.) Whether the professor in question was right or wrong in this specific case, it seems more than slightly ridiculous to proclaim his behavior anti-Semitic -- unless, of course, you're on a one-man mission to take down all non-conservative institutions, such as most of academia, through proclaiming them irrelevant, morally blind, anti-Semitic, anti-American, or whatever insulting epithet comes to mind. That is to say, if your goal is to prostitute yourself as a right-wing hack, then calling that professor an anti-Semite is absolutely the right thing to do, and I congratulate Mr. Sullivan on his courage in standing by his convictions.
