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The tenured radical Left at the University of Haifa is hysterical and in panic. It seems that students from the local chapter of the Zionist "Im tirtzu" student organization have started attending classes of some of the radicals, taking notes and threatening to cite what the faculty members say in class. On other campuses, Im Tirtzu students have already started to tape lectures with small cameras or cell phones.

That has the tenured Left at the University of Haifa soiling itself. In recent days the chat list of faculty members at the university has been flooded with hysterical postings by leftist faculty members denouncing the students as fascists and for violating the "rights" of the professors. Most of the hysterics are coming from the very same University of Haifa professors who sponsored and collected a petition a few years back demanding that army officers be prevented from giving talks to students in high schools. So you can see they have a very sophisticated appreciation of academic freedom. One of the posteurs was Prof. Gabi Salomon, quoted in the press last week as comparing the proposed loyalty oath for immigrants to Israel to Nazi Germany's genocide of Jews.

http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2010/10/im-tirtzu-zionist-students-have-tenured.html

Im Tirtzu Zionist students have the Tenured Left Wetting Themselves

From Steven Plaut
Tuesday, October 19, 2010

1. The tenured radical Left at the University of Haifa is hysterical and in panic. It seems that students from the local chapter of the Zionist "Im tirtzu" student organization have started attending classes of some of the radicals, taking notes and threatening to cite what the faculty members say in class. On other campuses, Im Tirtzu students have already started to tape lectures with small cameras or cell phones.

I failed to stay out of the conflagration and posted the following, which so far seems to shut up the tenured Left:

More on Im Tirtzu Students and Their Activities

So let us see if we have this straight.

The Im Tirtzu students are violating the rights of faculty members by attending the public lectures given by these faculty members in public institutions paid for by the taxpaying public while drawing salaries paid for with public funds. The students are threatening to reveal to the public the public statements made at public lectures.

Taking notes in public lectures at public universities is suddenly a form of violence and fascism. Moreover the Im Tirtzu students are suspected of plans to cite the public statements made by publicly paid faculty members at public institutions. Then the Im Tirtzu students are threatening to silence those faculty members, but it is a strange form of silencing, for it consists of granting widest public circulation, citation, publication, and other forms of spreading of the words of the silenced faculty members. Just imagine the dangers to which this could lead! Members of the public learning about advances in research methodologies, scientific insights, tools of analysis. The list of dangers is endless.

Moreover, students who attend lectures and cite what they are told there in forums outside the classroom are fascists because they might be involved in unauthorized citation of the contents of public lectures.

People who cite what rabbis say about politics in yeshivas to their students are great heroes, but tuition-paying students at universities who do the same are terrorists and fascists. We know they are fascists because they wear black tee shirts with slogans on them and black socks and black shoes and none of the guilty students are wearing Che Guevera shirts to class. Since when do students not wearing Che Guevera tee shirts (or Abdul Nasser tee shirts) to class have the right to hold any opinions? Citing what a faculty member says in his lecture hall is no different from planting a listening device in the faculty member's bedroom or bathroom and revealing the utmost intimate sounds coming from in there.

Of course what REALLY has the tenured Left so upset is that they fear that the public might just learn from these perfidious unauthorized cases of citations just how many faculty members at Israeli universities are misusing their classrooms for political indoctrination and ideological brainwashing and preaching, rather than for teaching and analysis. And the public might react with expressions of unwillingness to pay for such things using their tax shekels.

Now since the Israeli university administrations for years have refused to put a stop to the in-classroom indoctrinations and abuses, and indeed wink at them, one might think that the public should salute the Im Tirtzu students and their efforts. But instead we are hearing thunderous denunciations coming from the tenured Left about students who maliciously attend lectures and take notes, since such abusive behavior has been known to lead to citation. What would come next � citing in the media the contents of course syllabi carried on the universities' web sites? Unauthorized break-ins to the reserve library to read course readings without permission? Unauthorized citing of Op-Ed articles published by faculty members in newspapers? Inappropriate unauthorized reading of books written by faculty members?

And, most dangerous of all, it could actually lead to students expressing unauthorized opinions and criticism of the political activism of members of the faculty, especially the extremist ones. If we do not put a stop to that at once, freedom of speech and academic freedom could leak out of control in an uncontrolled manner and actually be practiced by non-leftists!

And then what would we all do? It might even lead to soldiers having the right to speak when invited to schools!