A Dangerous Combination

My teacher at Columbia, the late Max Weinreich, took time off from his linguistic research during the Second World War to write “Hitler’s Professors,” documenting the participation of some of Germany’s leading academics in the Nazi movement. This book should lay to rest the notion that there is any necessary correlation between the kind of intelligence that wins Nobel Prizes and the kind of political humility that democracy requires. In fact, because they consider themselves intellectually superior to the rest of the population, academics tend to be uncommonly impatient with the democratic process.

An example of just how misguided faculty initiatives can get was the 2002 petition circulated by a group of Harvard and MIT faculty, students, and other affiliates, urging divestment from Israel and from U.S. companies that sell arms to Israel. This call for divestment was part of a much broader political initiative by the Arab League, which has since the 1940s declared a boycott of “Jewish products and manufactured goods,” ordering all Arab “institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents and individuals...to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods.” (The terms “Jewish” and “Zionist” were used interchangeably.) The 72nd meeting in Syria of the League’s Boycott Bureau recently tightened its restrictions, which are designed to prevent trade with Israel and to isolate Jews politically by punishing their trading partners.

Instead of admitting their desire to join this oppressive boycott, the signatories to the petition blamed Jews for oppressing and displacing the Palestinian Arabs. The petitioners’ offense was thus three-fold: they joined the war against Israel, they absolved Arab leaders of their historical and ongoing role in ensuring that Palestinian Arabs remain “refugees,” and they tried to hold Israel responsible for what the Arab League had wrought. Since then, British professors have taken this process a giant step forward by trying to bar Israeli academics from academic journals. And just to round out the picture of academics’ political astuteness, targeted by this boycott are some Israelis who themselves supported the political campaign against their country. This academic divestment movement against Israel is a clear example of why I have come to trust investors more than professors in finance and politics alike.

On the other hand, one expects faculty to monitor their own profession. For example, Harvard recently announced a $20 million gift from a member of the Saudi royal family. The gift is targeted for the study of Islam, and may legitimately enhance the University’s research in that area. Yet, without prejudging the uses to which the gift will be put, there is reason for careful scrutiny of this funding: Saudi Arabia exports and pays for the spread abroad of some of the most virulent forms of Islamism. Last year the Center for Religious Freedom (a division of Freedom House) reported on the extensive propagation of hate ideology by Saudi Arabia within America. Faculty surely have a right to know the exact terms of the agreement governing the uses of the money. Where their own academic standards are at stake, academics have not merely the right but the duty to ask for an accounting.

Furthermore, if professors are intent on improving the Middle East or any other troubled part of the globe, they have their work cut out for them—as academics. How about raising a matching fund of $20 million at Harvard to establish in Saudi Arabia an institute for the study of democracy? Academics who believe in the merits of an open university can do no better than to encourage the free spread of information and of competitive ideas to parts of the world where such privilege is discouraged or denied.

Harvard is fortunate to have in place a deliberative (and hopefully dispassionate) shareholder responsibility system. The faculty’s fundamental mission is to impart knowledge and humbly seek truth. This division of labor has the best chance of advancing the University and the rest of society it is meant to serve.

Ruth R. Wisse is the Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature.