It’s over. The politicians have backed down. We won.

Congratulations: Lord Dark Helmet was wrong.

Excellent news. God knows I don’t say this very often, but good for Bloomberg.

Outstanding. Now go get some sleep :)

Soooo glad to see Bloomberg speak out on CUNY’s behalf (Although “I couldn’t disagree more violently with BDS” contains an extremely poor choice of adverb, in context.) And hey, hopefully you local opponents of BDS out there use this as an opportunity.

Stage a protest at the event. (Finding out who the buildings and grounds manager is, and requesting formal approval to occupy a given stretch of land/walkway for the duration, is both classy and defensively prudent; it’s not necessary, and you can expect total boilerplate from their supervisor in response, but it doesn’t hurt and reflects well on you.) Carry a couple signs if you want, but for this event don’t take a loud/obnoxious “BDS is BS” route, your target audience won’t be as receptive. Mostly, stand around handing out carefully written, polite, formal one-page fliers/letters — unlike most handouts, people will actually read these, because they have nothing better to do while sitting in their seats waiting for the speaker to begin.

Have a few folks attend the event itself, and dutifully take notes on what is said via text messages, so that your allies can contemplate specific counterpoints and rebuttals to bring up during Q&A. (Preferably on a touch-screen phone. Holy crap do the nonstop little keyboard keytaps ever get loud.) Have enough people attend that they can ask one question apiece, maybe three to five questions total — it’s more effective than one person asking follow-ups until they wave you off and retract the mic. Bringing up noteworthy statements the speaker has made elsewhere can be very effective.

Be prepared with a few succinct messages to give the campus/local media, if they appear, and send them each a press release with your statement a day or two before the event. It’s pretty easy to get campus media to show up to just about anything, if you send a note to the student editor-in-chief, and local media will probably eat this up, given that it involves the City Council and exciting protest stuff.

(I would wish ’em good luck, if not for our nearly categorical ideological differences…)

Then the “progressive” politicians followed suit.

I propose that we honor NYC’s less reactionary politicians by dropping the scare quotes from the word “progressive.” At least until the next outrage.

Great news for academic freedom and free speech in general. Congrats!

Wonderful news. And while Corey sleeps, I wonder – what’s next?

Congratulations!

Seasoned decent-watchers will be aware that Fathom is just the latest of Alan “not the minister” Johnson’s many many ventures. The editorial board of Fathom includes at least one person – Anthony Julius – who has co-written anti-boycott articles with Alan Dershowitz and other people from outfits like the neo-con Henry Jackson Society. (This isn’t an argument of course, just background information, but if Dershowitz did have a blog, it might well get hosted at Fathom.)

Well done Corey et al. JW Mason is right – it’s a good moment to savour victory.

Which is why savoring victory and all that (hard to keep track of which thread is which at this point, not sure why @16 is on this thread anyway, really).

Wrong thread, sorry.

Shorter A “NTFM” J: if anti-Zionism were anti-semitic, it would be anti-semitic. But is it? No, it isn’t, but it does have anti-semitic tendencies within it, and denying this fact simply will not do. In reality, people who say that anti-Zionism does not have anti-semitic tendencies within it are unwitting apologists for the anti-semitic tendencies which anti-Zionism has within it, and denying that those tendencies exist simply postpones the inevitable reckoning with the anti-semitic tendencies which anti-Zionism has within it. Judith Butler’s anti-Zionism is, of course, not anti-semitic, which makes it all the more tragic that Judith Butler’s anti-Zionism is inherently anti-semitic.

It’s like playing Whack-a-Mole with King Charles’s head.

Where Does Corey Robin Stand? Defining Prizewinning Blogsmanship Down: The Real Left vs. the Crypto-Fascist Post-Left of Today, http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/08/what-is-the-pos.html
http://www.fathomjournal.org/reviews-culture/parting-ways/
http://www.fathomjournal.org/policy-politics/defining-antisemitism-down/
V

Anthony Julius – who has co-written anti-boycott articles with Alan Dershowitz and other people

Julius has also written a scholarly history of antisemitism in England, of course. Even seasoned ‘anti-Zionists’ may find things of interest in there (although not necessarily the things they are looking for).

It’s amusing that our friends like Gabriel think they can intimidate anybody except some exceptionally chickenhearted politicians with their hysterical (in both senses) accusations of antisemitism. What do I care what names some random asshole on the intertubes calls me?

Thanks to Allan Johnson for that link to Fathom. I hadn’t read Judith Butler’s opinions, but the article in Fathom makes them sound really interesting, and has piqued my interest in Butler’s views of the diaspora as a positive idea. I’ll investigate more of her work on this.

Thanks!!!

What’s this Torquil, you think that Judith is a N++i? Or are you just being a dickhead?

Faustusnotes, I advise reading the brilliant “The returns of Zionism” by my UCLA colleague Gabi Piterberg as well for a discussion, among other issues, of how Zionism both needed a story of diaspora and had to assail it (cf. Torquil’s comment for a rather crude example).

Sorry for posting on a different topic, but I wanted to call CT’s attention to another struggle deserving of attention–attempts by students at Sussex University to stop the administration’s plans to privatize 235 jobs. Here’s a link to the Sussex Against Privatization website: <a href=http://sussexagainstprivatization.wordpress.com/