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Extremist Label Doesn't Fit: UO Instructor Wrongly Tagged

The Register-Guard
Posted on Monday September 30, 2002

A University of Oregon instructor has become the unwilling and undeserving target of accusations of anti-Israeli extremism. The sad case of Douglas Card teaches several lessons – about the dangers of rushing to judgment, about the value of a free exchange of ideas, and about the importance of maintaining perspective in a time of escalating tensions.

Card teaches sociology at the UO, and is familiar to Register-Guard readers as the author of occasional opinion articles dealing with 19th century Oregon history. Through casual contacts over the years, we’ve come to know him as the opposite of an extremist – a man who is willing to examine all points of view in search of common ground. Card is opinionated, to be sure, but he’s also broad-minded to a fault.

Thus it was a surprise to see Card’s name show up on a list of American academics who harbor a virulent hostility toward Israel. Columnist Daniel Pipes, writing in The New York Post on July 25, named half a dozen professors on campuses around the country who had used their classrooms as megaphones for anti-Israeli, even anti-Semitic, propaganda. Pipes said the hostile rhetoric of these faculty members has contributed to a wave of verbal and physical attacks against Jews.

Here’s what Pipes wrote: “University of Oregon: In a course entitled `Social Inequality,’ the sociology department’s Douglas Card called Israel a `terrorist state’ and Israelis `baby killers’ and insisted that students agree with his view that Israel `stole land’ on the final exam. One student said Card bashed Israel and Jews `at every opportunity.’ ”

That doesn’t sound like the Douglas Card we know. It rang false to others as well, ranging from Tamam Adi, director of the Islamic Cultural Center of Eugene, to Rabbi Yitzhak Husband-Hankin of Eugene’s Temple Beth Israel, who contacted Pipes on Card’s behalf. Pipes admits no error and has issued no apology.

Pipes’ column went from The New York Post and other newspapers into cyberspace, where Card has been electronically branded as an enemy of Israel. Card has received hundreds of e-mail messages from around the country and the world, many of them merely annoying and some of them disturbing. On the basis of an unsubstantiated claim based on hasty research by a single columnist 3,000 miles away, Card has been smeared.

Anti-Semitism is real, and sometimes it wears the guise of criticism of Israel. But if Card belongs on a list of anti-Israeli extremists, that kind of extremism can’t be much of a problem on American college campuses. By naming Card, Pipes undercuts the credibility of warnings about anti-Semitism on college campuses and elsewhere – such alarms become more likely to be dismissed as exaggerated at best, erroneous at worst.

Pipes’ list also raises the issue of open debate. College campuses are precisely where Israel’s policies, and the United States’ Mideast policies, should be subjected to the sharpest scrutiny. Some of this will be conducted in terms that Pipes or others won’t like. There’s no room on campus for violence or intimidation against Jews or anyone else; nor is there room for attempts to limit the free exchange of ideas and opinions. When people like Douglas Card begin showing up on lists of extremists, the lists look like efforts to shrink the space for the latter rather than the former.

Demands for political conformity are likely to grow as preparations for war against Iraq proceed, as hopes for peace in the Middle East recede and as the threat of terrorism persists. Pipes’ list may be a symptom of a narrowing tolerance for dissenting views. It will be vital for Americans on college campuses and elsewhere to respect the opinions of others, to avoid rushes to judgment and to value the clash of viewpoints as an essential part of democratic decision-making.