democracynow.org
Stories
|
We turn to the sporting news that has put a new spotlight on domestic violence and its lax treatment by the country’s most popular sport. Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice has been cut by his team and indefinitely suspended by the National Football League after a new video showed him punching his then-fiancée into unconsciousness. But the details of the case have been known for months after a previous video from a different angle showed Rice dragging the unconscious woman out of an elevator and dropping her face-first on the ground. The Baltimore Ravens had defended Rice, while the NFL’s first response in July was to suspend him for just two games. A massive public outcry led NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize and change the league’s domestic violence policy. Why did it take the NFL so long to act? What did the league and the Ravens know, and when did they know it? We are joined by Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation magazine and host of Edge of Sports Radio on SiriusXM. "This is about a National Football League that treats violence against women as a public relations crisis, not as a crisis about the ways in which the violence of the game spills over into people’s families," Zirin says.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the sporting news that has put a new spotlight on domestic violence and its lax treatment by the country’s most popular sport. The National Football League has indefinitely suspended star running back Ray Rice over a video showing him punching his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, leaving her unconscious. The video, from February, was released Monday by the tabloid website TMZ. And a warning as we show it to our television audience, it is graphic.
On the tape, Rice and Janay Palmer are seen arguing in the elevator of a casino. As Palmer lunges toward Rice, he strikes her in the face, and she falls back and slams her head against the elevator wall. Rice then drags her from the elevator as she lays motionless.
In addition to his league suspension, Rice has also been cut by his football team, the Baltimore Ravens. That’s a reversal from just weeks ago, when head coach [John] Harbaugh stood by Rice and praised his handling of the fallout. On Monday, Harbaugh said the new video changed the team’s perception of the incident.
JOHN HARBAUGH: You know, it’s something we saw for the first time today, you know, all of us. And it changed things, of course. You know, it made things a little bit different.
AMY GOODMAN: But Harbaugh’s explanation may not satisfy critics, who say the Ravens and the league mishandled Rice’s assault from the start. The details in this case have been known for months. Video from a different camera angle had previously been released of Rice dragging Palmer out of the elevator and dropping her face-first onto the ground, unconscious. The tape released Monday was previously known to exist, but the NFL’s first response in July was to suspend Rice for just two games. That sparked a massive public outcry that led NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize and change the league’s domestic violence policy. The Ravens now say they’ve suspended Rice because he was dishonest with them about the incident.
And despite reports to the contrary, the NFL now claims it never saw the new video, saying law enforcement did not make it available. That in turn raises questions for New Jersey prosecutors. Although Janay Palmer, now Rice—she married Ray Rice—refused to testify against her husband, prosecutors apparently had this video in their possession. But Rice was able to avoid his aggravated assault charge by entering into a pretrial diversionary program.
For more, we go to Dave Zirin, author of a number of books, sports columnist for The Nation magazine, host of Edge of Sports Radio on SiriusXM. His latest article is for The Nation is "The Revictimizing of Janay Rice."
Dave, just start from the beginning and talk about your response to what has happened.
DAVE ZIRIN: Absolutely. Howard Zinn once said that the first thing we should know about governments is that governments lie. The first thing people should know about the NFL is that the NFL lies. This is a league built on hypocrisy and brain damage, and they want us to believe that they are surprised, absolutely shocked, that some of that violence spilled over into the personal lives of their players. The NFL treats domestic violence as if it is a public relations issue, and their message in this entire story seems to be: If you are going to commit domestic violence, do not get caught on videotape. It is a profoundly cynical message.
And I don’t—I understand why everybody is showing the videotape. I understand that, because the news value of the videotape shows that, first of all, the New Jersey prosecutors who, by the way, arrested Ray Rice and Janay Palmer when this incident took place, saying both were at fault, the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens, which advanced the narrative that both were at fault, the video gives lie to that, and that is important for people to see. Although, that being said, I think one of the reasons why the videotape is so powerful is that we are conditioned in this society, because of the incredible sexism in this society, to think that in cases of domestic violence, the woman must have done something. And the videotape shows that to be a lie.
I still don’t understand why so-called progressive sites like The Huffington Post are showing the video while also talking about women’s beach bodies on the side. I don’t understand why Chris Matthews on Hardball showed the video on a loop while they were talking about it. And that’s why I wrote the article about how this video also revictimizes Janay Rice, because domestic violence counselors talk about how every time it is shown without her consent, it actually serves the purpose of hurting her. But the one thing that it does do is that it exposes profoundly the hypocrisy of the National Football League in terms of how it deals with domestic violence.
AARON MATÉ: Dave, what do you make of the NFL’s claim that they didn’t see the video until it was released by TMZ?
DAVE ZIRIN: People should understand that the National Football League has an entire security operation that’s populated by people who used to work for the Secret Service of the United States. So, that’s considered the plum job when you’re done with the Secret Service. So then you have to ask yourself a question. Either the former Secret Service officers who work for the National Football League decided that they were not going to pursue this videotape, so the NFL has plausible—had plausible deniability and they could sweep this case under the rug like they always do with issues of domestic violence, or the NFL saw it and they’re lying. And I would actually bend towards the latter. I find that it’s strains credulity to think that the NFL did not see the videotape.
But either way, the NFL has handled this horribly from the very beginning. The first time Roger Goodell met with Janay Rice, he met with her right next to Ray Rice. They came together to his office to plead for his job and to speak about what happened. Think about that for a second. That goes against every possible practice that people who deal with domestic violence talk about. The idea that the perpetrator and the person who is victimized sit side by side and beg for their economic life in front of a boss figure or an authority figure, I mean, it’s absolutely repellent. And it says something about how the NFL—how they think about women and how they think about the issue of domestic violence.
AMY GOODMAN: The Baltimore Ravens tweeted in May, quote, "Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident." That tweet has since been deleted?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes, that tweet was deleted, Amy, yesterday. That’s when it was deleted. They kept that up on their website for this entire period. The Ravens also staged a press conference where Janay Rice and Ray Rice sat next to each other, so Janay Rice could take, quote-unquote, "her responsibility" for what took place. I mean, so much of this was stage-managed by the Baltimore Ravens to make Ray Rice look as good as possible and to make the team look as supportive of him as possible. Once again, though, this is not the Baltimore Ravens in a vacuum. This is how the NFL, league-wide, deals with domestic violence. A player for the San Francisco 49ers named Ray McDonald was arrested after his pregnant fiancée was found with bruises on her body after a party and she called the police. Ray McDonald still played this past weekend despite those charges against him. Why did he play? Because he was not caught on videotape. If he was, he probably would not have been playing. So, once again, this is about a National Football League that treats violence against women as a public relations crisis, not as a crisis about the ways in which the violence of the game spills over into people’s families.
AARON MATÉ: Dave, this is NFL insider Adam Schefter speaking to ESPN Monday night, reacting to the video showing Ray Rice knock his wife unconscious.
ADAM SCHEFTER: This is arguably the biggest black eye the league has ever had. We heard Pete Rozelle talk in the days after and the years after JFK was assassinated that his biggest regret was playing games the Sunday after the president of the United States was assassinated. Roger Goodell will look back on his time as the commissioner in the NFL and say this is easily the biggest regret.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Adam Schefter speaking Monday, Adam Scefter of ESPN. I have to point out that after Ray Rice was suspended for two games initially, Schefter said on the air, "It’s a suspension that will [generate] a lot of discussion. Was the commissioner lenient enough?" Dave Zirin?
DAVE ZIRIN: Look, I think that is a shameful phrase by Adam Schefter. I don’t know if Democracy Now! listeners may realize that Adam Schefter is considered the ultimate NFL insider, incredibly high-profile. He’s clearly very upset that he was lied to about the NFL throughout this whole process about what they knew and when they knew it. And he’s responding, sounding more like Keith Olbermann than Adam Schefter.
But that being said, to call this, quote-unquote, "the biggest black eye" in NFL history, unfortunate phrasing aside for a domestic violence incident, it’s really shameful for him to say that, because the NFL has a history of horrific moments of violence against women, cases of serial rape, cases of murder. I mean, just two years ago, a player for the Kansas City Chiefs killed the mother of his child, Kasandra Perkins, and then took his own life in front of his coach in the parking lot of the stadium. Yet that’s not the biggest black eye in NFL history? So what makes this, in Adam Schefter’s eye, so much worse? It’s because it was caught on videotape, and it is a public relations crisis for the National Football League.
As long as we look at this through the lens of public relations, we’re never going to get to the bottom of this issue, which is, how do you deal with the fact that you have an incredibly violent game that causes head injuries, that causes all kinds of financial pressure on families that tend to come from poverty, and then how do you deal with it when that violence spills over into the personal lives and families of players? The NFL, for decades, has treated it as something that you push under the rug, yet in an era where everybody has phones, everything is digital, video cameras everywhere, that is much, much more difficult to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave, San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Ray McDonald was arrested August 31st on felony domestic violence charges in San Jose. Despite the arrest, he started in the 49ers opening game on Sunday. The team is coached by Jim Harbaugh, the brother of Ravens coach John Harbaugh. Can you talk about this—the two brothers, the Ravens, the 49ers, the two Rays, Ray McDonald and Ray Rice?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah. I mean, a lot of symmetry at work there. Jim Harbaugh, interestingly enough, is somebody who for a long time has had—I’ve talked to people who are involved in that organization—who has said to players that violence against women is the one thing that he will never tolerate on this team. He has said that to players in closed-door meetings. It’s something that he apparently believes very strongly. Although if people know Jim Harbaugh, you’ll know that he phrases those kinds of declarations with the same kind of masculinist, patriarchal verve that unfortunately so too often colors how people respond to domestic violence, as if you have to have, you know, a much more manly approach to it and that’s the only way you’re going to actually squelch it. And that’s how Jim Harbaugh has approached it. Yet, unfortunately, even though Jim Harbaugh has had that rhetoric for so long, there was Ray McDonald on the field of play in San Francisco.
And once again, I said this earlier, Amy, but it really does expose how videotape has played a role in this, and because people don’t believe victims in this country. I mean, it’s the same thing that we’re talking about with Ferguson. I mean, the assumption among the majority of the United States that somehow Michael Brown must have been at fault, even though he’s the one who ended up dead, is so similar to the rhetoric around Janay Rice, to the rhetoric around Ray McDonald in San Francisco. Somehow, the woman must have been at fault, because people don’t want to believe, whether it’s the police or their NFL heroes, that maybe, just maybe, in these very violent jobs, that violence leads to acts of power and injustice.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave, I have to say, we, too, ran that video, this new video that shows what happened inside, as you were talking. And you have said you think it’s wrong to run this video. I know there is a controversy around this, and I’d like to get listeners’, viewers’, readers’ responses. You could email us, go to tweet, Facebook, whatever you’d like, to know—to let us know what you think. But that video has certainly changed everything here. Yet I do wonder—
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —what did people think actually happened in that elevator? The first video that we all played was that video of Rice dragging his unconscious then-fiancée, now-wife, out of the elevator. He admitted he assaulted her in the elevator, and that’s exactly what the video shows.
DAVE ZIRIN: I mean, what it exposes, first of all, is the degree of complicity among the prosecutor’s office, who originally charged both Ray Rice and Janay Rice; the National Football League, which when Roger Goodell, the commissioner, said both Rices take responsibility for what took place; and the Baltimore Ravens, who staged that press conference where Janay Rice, quote-unquote, "took responsibility" for what happened—is that they all advanced this narrative that said, "Well, we don’t know what happened in that elevator." But this idea that somehow she provoked Ray Rice punching her, the video shows that to be a lie. What’s so tragic about the United States, what’s so tragic about how we view violence against women, is that we assume that that is what happened. The assumption is not with the person who was knocked unconscious; the assumption is that she must have done something to deserve it. And that’s the thing that really makes me shake my head. And that’s—I think we have to get beyond this idea that the oppressed are somehow only vindicated if we see it with our own eyes. They never get the benefit of the doubt.
AARON MATÉ: Dave, if TMZ had this video, then obviously the prosecution likely had it, too. So does this raise questions about how prosecutors handled this case? They had a video of their suspect punching the victim.
DAVE ZIRIN: There’s no question about it. And just so people understand, that videotape, the importance of it from a prosecutorial standpoint is that they did not need Janay Rice’s consent to go forward with the prosecution, because Janay Rice, she did not want to cooperate with the prosecution. She made that choice. And in some states, if the person who is assaulted does not cooperate, it’s pretty standard for the prosecutor to then drop the case. But if you have videotape, all of that goes out the window, obviously, because you have objective proof of what took case. Yet the prosecutors still decided not to go forward. Every legal expert who I’ve both heard and spoken to over the last 24 hours say that this is profoundly unusual and that it certainly does look like that Ray Rice’s fame, his money, his connections to the National Football League are all things that—there’s no other explanation—played a role in the fact that they went for a pretrial diversion program and not for actually prosecuting him for the assault itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Wasn’t Ray Rice also applauded when he came back after his two suspensions?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes, he was. He was applauded by the Baltimore faithful when he came out onto the field. I mean, that reflects a couple of things. It reflects our attitude nationally about domestic violence, but it also reflects the narrative that the National Football League and the Baltimore Ravens put forward through these last several months. And that’s the thing that they’re going to have to live down. You know, Amy, the slogan for the National Football League for all of these crises has always been "hate the player, don’t hate the game." In other words, all of the criticism should go on the miscreant player, and the game itself must—is protected at all costs. This is the first time in my reporting lifetime, Amy, that it feels like the scandal of the individual player is having a massive blowback effect on the league itself, and that makes this very newsworthy and very different.
AARON MATÉ: Dave, the new policy on domestic violence, that was announced after the Ray Rice suspension generated so much outrage when he was just given two games, a two-game suspension, was that now the players will get six-games suspension. How does this compare to how the league handles drug offenses?
DAVE ZIRIN: Well, it’s interesting, because the drug offenses is carefully planned out in the collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. First offense, you get X amount of games; second offense, you get X amount of games. There are all sorts of programs that you can go into. There’s different penalties for different drugs. So it’s very clearly spelled out. Domestic violence has been a blank slate in the NFL for decades. And in a lot of ways, frankly, until Roger Goodell said, "First offense, six games; second offense, lifetime ban," it was still a blank slate. I mean, this idea that somehow Roger Goodell was only bound to give Ray Rice two games is an absolute joke, because there were no guidelines around domestic violence, so the two games only spoke to how seriously the NFL takes domestic violence.
That being said, I have a great deal of problems, having spoken to advocates who work with violence against women, who work in domestic violence shelters, about the whole six-game and then lifetime suspension, the sort of big hammer approach that the NFL is clearly going to adopt now, going forward, because one of the things that does creates, according to people who work on this for a living, is that it creates a disincentive for women to come forward and speak about situations of abuse, especially if the entire economic security of their family is at stake in a career and in a league where the average career lifespan is only three-and-a-half years. And so, any time the NFL creates something to deal with domestic violence that disincentivizes women coming forward, that’s something that needs to be looked at very carefully.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave, in July, Pro Bowl defensive end Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers was convicted by a district judge in North Carolina of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. Hardy exercised his right to a jury trial, likely to take place after the season. He also played on Sunday. According to ESPN, Hardy faces a six-game suspension by the NFL if his guilty verdict for domestic violence is not overturned on appeal.
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, and he was not caught on videotape, so he plays, just like Ray McDonald. There are players in the NFL Hall of Fame who have been convicted and arrested on domestic violence issues. One wonders if they would be there if they had been caught on videotape. The video aspect of it is so troubling in this case, because I still stand by what I wrote in The Nation, that the showing and reshowing of the videotape revictimizes Janay Rice because it is being shown without her consent. If it was a sexual assault, we would not be showing it. There’s a reason why we have rape shield laws in this country. But that being said, the videotape is also the only thing that’s making people believe Janay Rice. I mean, this is why people want police officers to have video cameras now on their lapels, because this idea that nobody really trusts the processes that happen unless they can see them with their own eyes. And the NFL clearly has a problem, going back decades, when it deals with domestic violence. And this is certainly a wake-up call, if for no other reason than that when people are seeing how the NFL actually deals with things, how the sausages are in fact made to get us our three hours of commodified violence every Sunday, I mean, people are recoiling.
AMY GOODMAN: Should Goodell resign?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yes, absolutely, Roger Goodell should resign, not only for this, but he should resign because of the way he has handled concussions and head injuries on the job. He should resign for the way he has handled the Washington slur name here in the nation’s capital, defending its use. And he should resign for all the myriad ways that he has put the interests of the league ahead of the interests of players, fans and the general culture.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, college football, you know, not just the NFL, people like Derrick Washington of University of Missouri, Jameis Winston of Florida State, can you talk about them?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people should read the work of Jessica Luther, who writes extensively about college football and domestic violence and sexual assault. I mean, the connective tissue is so particularly egregious on the collegiate level because, of course, the players are, quote-unquote, "student athletes" and not workers. So what’s created instead is this gutter economy where women are basically held up as the perks of playing, the perks of supplying your college with millions of dollars in revenue, and all you get for it is an education that you don’t have time to attend or classes that you may not even be educationally prepared to attend. And so, this is the problem in the NCAA, and this is why this problem keeps replicating itself in the NCAA, that very dangerous connective tissue between football, particularly amateur football, and sexual violence.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you very much, Dave Zirin, for being with us. Dave is sports columnist for The Nation magazine, host of Edge of Sports Radio on SiriusXM. His latest piece, "The Revictimizing of Janay Rice," we’ll link to it online. Dave is also author of many books, among them, his latest, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
|
As the fall school term begins, an Illinois college campus is embroiled in one of the nation’s biggest academic freedom controversies in recent memory. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has sparked an outcry over its withdrawal of a job offer to a professor critical of the Israeli government. Steven Salaita was due to start work at the university as a tenured professor in the American Indian Studies Program. But after posting a series of tweets harshly critical of this summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza, Salaita was told the offer was withdrawn. The school had come under pressure from donors, students, parents and alumni critical of Salaita’s views, with some threatening to withdraw financial support. Thousands of academics have signed petitions calling for Salaita’s reinstatement, and several lecturers have canceled appearances in protest. The American Association of University Professors has called the school’s actions "inimical to academic freedom and due process." A number of Urbana-Champaign departments have passed votes of no-confidence in the chancellor, Phyllis Wise. And today, Urbana-Champaign students will be holding a campus walkout and day of silence in support of Salaita. We are joined by two guests: Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke, who has canceled a lecture series at Urbana-Champaign in protest of Salaita’s unhiring; and Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a scholar who went through a similar incident in 2011 when Brooklyn College reversed a job offer after complaints about his Middle East views, only to reinstate it following a public outcry.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: As the fall school term begins, an Illinois college campus is embroiled in one of the nation’s biggest academic freedom controversies in recent memory. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has sparked an outcry over its withdrawal of a job offer to a professor critical of the Israeli government. Steven Salaita was due to start work at Urbana-Champaign as a tenured professor in the American Indian Studies Program. But after posting a series of tweets harshly critical of the summer’s assault on Gaza, Salaita was told the offer was withdrawn. Urbana-Champaign has come under pressure from donors, students, parents and alumni critical of Salaita’s views, with some threatening to withdraw financial support.
The move has been criticized both in and outside of the school, with administrators accused of political censorship. Thousands of academics have signed petitions calling for Salaita’s reinstatement, and several lecturers have canceled appearances in protest. The American Association of University Professors has called the school’s actions "inimical to academic freedom and due process." A number of school departments have passed votes of no-confidence in the chancellor, Phyllis Wise. And today, students will be holding a campus walkout and a day of silence in support of Salaita. A news conference is being held, where Salaita is expected to make his first public comments since his unhiring last month.
AMY GOODMAN: In a public statement, Chancellor Phyllis Wise said her decision to unhire Salaita "was not influenced in any way by his positions on the conflict in the Middle East nor his criticism of Israel." She goes on to write, quote, "What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them," unquote. The school has now reportedly offered Salaita a financial settlement for his troubles. The school’s Board of Trustees is expected to take up the controversy at a meeting on Thursday.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Kristofer Petersen-Overton is an adjunct lecturer of political science at Lehman College. In 2011, Brooklyn College initially decided not to hire Petersen-Overton as an adjunct professor for a seminar on Middle East politics. But the school reversed its decision after criticism that the decision was politically motivated. And Katherine Franke joins us. She’s a professor of law at Columbia University and the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. She recently canceled a lecture series at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in protest of Steven Salaita’s unhiring.
Professor Franke, let’s begin with you. Talk about the facts of this case and how you got involved.
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, Professor Salaita was previously a professor at Virginia Tech University, and he had a well-known dossier of books and articles thinking critically about the relationship between indigeneity, meaning native people, and the political environments in which they live—hard questions about dispossession, belonging, state violence and identity. And because of that important scholarly record, the University of Illinois went after him—in a friendly way, unlike what they’re doing now. And he was hired by an overwhelming vote by the American Indian Studies Program there in the normal way that we hire faculty in universities. An offer letter was issued to him. He accepted it. They paid for his moving expenses. He quit his job, a tenured position in Virginia. And he has a small child and a family and a wife, and was ready to move. His course books had been ordered. He had been invited by the university to the faculty welcome luncheon.
And then, on August 1st, he got a letter from the chancellor saying, "We’re sorry, we’re not going to be able to employ you here, because I haven’t taken the last step, which I had not informed you about before, of taking your candidacy to the Board of Trustees." He had assumed he had an accepted job offer. He had relied on that offer—and at his peril. He now doesn’t have a home, doesn’t have a job and doesn’t have an income.
So what we now have learned, through a FOIA request and the disclosure of emails at the university, is that there was enormous pressure put on the chancellor and the Board of Trustees by large donors of the university, who said, "I’ll take my six-figure donations away if you hire this guy." And this is as a result of some tweets that Professor Salaita made over the summer during the heat of the Gaza—the Israeli assault on Gaza. He was very upset about it. He himself is Palestinian. He was watching children die and the destruction of Gazan villages that we all watched. And like many of us, he was quite impassioned and used colorful language on Twitter to express his views, and that those tweets somehow made their way to donors at the University of Illinois. And so, the job, as been described even here in the setup, is either withdrawn or somehow not—well, what has happened is he’s just been fired. And so he’s now organizing, along with the rest of us, a response to what is a deliberate campaign by a number of political operatives who put pressure on universities like the University of Illinois to censor critical scholarship, critical comments, critical research about Israeli state policy.
AARON MATÉ: And just to say some of those tweets, after the three teens in the West Bank went missing and were kidnapped and later killed, he said, "I wish all the [bleeping] West Bank settlers would go missing." He also said, "Zionists: transforming 'anti-Semitism' from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." He was saying that it’s Israel itself that conflates Judaism with Zionism, hence they’re the ones that are perverting anti-Semitism—a nuance that can’t be captured quite in a tweet. But so, what did you do after this controversy broke out?
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I’d been working on this issue in my own scholarship on the politics of the region and on the complex legal questions at stake in Israel-Palestine. I’m a human rights lawyer myself, and I also have done some work having to do with what we call "pinkwashing" in that area, of how the Israeli government has touted, as a sort of rebranding campaign, its pro-gay laws as a way to tarnish the Palestinians for being anti-gay, which I think is a questionable proposition itself, but more importantly, to distract attention from what the Israelis have been doing in terms of human rights violations. So, I’ve been working in this region for some time in my own scholarship, and then recently received funding from the Sabah Foundation to think hard about how we might generate complicated questions on campuses, in an academic context, around the issues that are trying to be censored by various political outsiders to the university. There’s a kind of political correctness and almost a witch hunt that’s going on on universities to stop these hard conversations, for which there are not obvious right answers. There are complex answers. And if we can’t talk about them in the university setting, where can we talk about them? So that’s why I’m interested in this issue, not because I have a particular ideology that I think I want to impose, in place of whatever these outside operatives are interested in, but because I’m interested in the region and the ideas and the complexity of rights and belonging and dispossession in Israel-Palestine, which if we can’t do it, as I said, in the university, where can we?
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what you decided to do, your invitation to the University of Illinois and what you’re doing about it.
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, as soon as we all learned in early August of the termination of Professor Salaita from his employment at the University of Illinois, there was a call that went out from the faculty there and from those who supported Professor Salaita that we not agree to visit the University of Illinois outside faculty to give talks or lectures until this problem was resolved. I had just coincidentally been invited in June to go to Urbana-Champaign later this semester and give a series of lectures, which I was happy to do. I’m from Illinois, it’s nice to return to the state, and I have wonderful colleagues there who I really look forward to working with. Incidentally, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a world-class university, wonderful faculty there, so we’re missing something by not being able to participate and work with them and think about these hard problems.
So what I decided is I wouldn’t go, I certainly wouldn’t go on the University of Illinois’s nickel, that I would honor the call for a boycott of participation in lectures and speaking at the University of Illinois, but I would do more. And I think all of us who think about boycotting injustice in the world need to think about doing boycotts, but more. How will you engage affirmatively the injustice that generated the boycott in the first place? So I’m going next week to the university, to Urbana-Champaign, on my own nickel, at my own expense, to hold a teach-in—although students now are saying that "teach-in" is a term that’s from the '60s and we should find a better one, so if you can help me generate a more with-it term for these sorts of events, that would be great. But I'm going next week to meet with students, faculty and other members of the community to think about and talk about the academic freedom issues that are at stake here, but also the underlying issues that these tweets gestured at, although in a very colorful and blunt way. But instead of talking about the hard issues of Palestinian rights, Palestinian sovereignty and the violence of the Gaza war, we’re talking about these tweets. And they are such an inartful way to really say anything.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was the university’s response to how you’ve chosen to come back to Illinois and to the university?
KATHERINE FRANKE: The university has not responded to any of us who have said—sent many, many letters. It’s not just a few of us who have said we will boycott the university; it’s hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of us. So, I have not heard anything from the university, but the faculty is thrilled, I hope, and they’re co-sponsoring this event off campus.
AARON MATÉ: We’re also joined here by Kristofer Petersen-Overton. You’ve spoken out on the Middle East. You’re a scholar yourself. You went through something similar at Brooklyn College. Can you tell us your story?
KRISTOFER PETERSEN-OVERTON: Yeah, well, I mean, I think there are important points of contact between my experience at Brooklyn College and Professor Salaita’s case. I mean, I was hired back in 2011 as an adjunct lecturer, so that’s a significant difference. I’m not a tenured professor. I’m a doctoral student, actually, at the CUNY Graduate Center. But many of us also teach courses in order to support our education. So I was hired to teach a one-semester course on Middle East politics. But before I was able to actually arrive in the classroom, a student complained to the department that she had googled me online and found some of my views apparently she took issue with and complained that I would be slanted and unfair towards Israel. The department asked her to hold off, and she turned around instead and went to a New York state assemblyperson, who then issued a press release calling me a, quote, "overt supporter of terrorism." And this turned into an enormous controversy, which I didn’t expect, not knowing the political culture of Brooklyn College, not knowing the politics and background of this issue there. And unfortunately, the political science department, while supporting me, was routed by the administration, who intervened and canceled my appointment. And were it not for a large mobilization of students, faculty, activists and all sorts of independent organizations around the country and world, I wouldn’t have gotten my job back five days later.
AARON MATÉ: What did they do, this mobilization for your reinstatement?
KRISTOFER PETERSEN-OVERTON: They put a spotlight on the injustice of canceling my appointment, not only because of the controversy of, you know, the taboo, the general taboo placed on criticizing Israel’s occupation, but also issues that are related to really adjunct labor rights and the sort of two-tier system that you have at universities across the country, which is a major point of contact I see between my case and Professor Salaita’s.
AARON MATÉ: Were there protests? They wrote letters? There was a campaign?
KRISTOFER PETERSEN-OVERTON: Yeah, there were letters. A number of very well-known scholars wrote letters on my behalf, similar to what we’ve seen here, although, of course, Professor Salaita is much higher-profile than I am. I’m just a lowly graduate student.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read an excerpt from the letter by the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Phyllis Wise, explaining the university’s position on Steven Salaita. After saying that the decision, quote, "was not influenced in any way by his positions on the conflict in the Middle East nor his criticism of Israel," Chancellor Wise goes on to write, quote, "What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them. ... As chancellor, it is my responsibility to ensure that all perspectives are welcome and that our discourse, regardless of subject matter or viewpoint, allows new concepts and differing points of view to be discussed in and outside the classroom in a scholarly, civil and productive manner." Professor Franke, your response?
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, what we see in that letter is basically a page from the playbook of the David Project. The David Project is a Boston-based pro-Zionist, pro-Israeli project dedicated to shaping the way in which Israel and Israeli state policy is discussed—are discussed on college campuses, in a way that is friendly towards Israel and Israeli state policy. They’ve recently issued a report where they said, "Our technique now will be in approaching the critics of Israel on campus to describe what they say as uncivil." And if you read the chancellor’s letter and you read this strategy memo, you see that her letter—I don’t know if it’s actually been informed by that memo, but it certainly reflects it and was influenced by it.
Civility is not an academic norm. It actually runs contrary to what we do in an academic setting. In my teaching, in my writing, I try to unsettle people’s comfortable—my students’ comfortable notions about what rights can do, what law can do. Sometimes law is part of the problem as much as it’s part of the solution. Other parts of my work make us think hard about sexual identity and sexual orientation-based identity. I’m one of the biggest critics in the country of the gay rights movement’s investment in the marriage campaign, the marriage equality campaign. That doesn’t make me very popular with some parts of the gay rights movement, and it unsettles the ideas of many of my students. Some might say what I do is uncivil. So, a civility norm isn’t really the right norm to appeal to in the academic context, because it really undermines what it is we do as academics, which is think hard and often think in uncomfortable ways about our settled ideas and our settled senses of what we know in the world.
AARON MATÉ: In you letter to Chancellor Wise, you talk about how Israel-Palestine is addressed on campus, and you mention that you were once told not to use the word "Palestine" in one of your courses.
KATHERINE FRANKE: It wasn’t that I shouldn’t use the word "Palestine" in my courses. I’ve done work in Ramallah and in Palestine with women lawyers there. I’ve been working to try to build a bar, a legal community, within Palestine. Any society needs a strong civil society as it’s rebuilding itself. And so, I’ve been working with women lawyers to be important parts of the Palestinian bar. And so, I came back from one of my trips there, and I wanted to do a talk at Columbia about Palestinian women lawyers. And we have this little administrative thing we have to do at Columbia, is put our posters through the dean’s office for approval. And I was told I couldn’t have an event where the word "Palestine" appeared in the title of the event, because there is no such thing as Palestine. Well, I ignored them; I went ahead and did it anyway. But we can think about a lot of places in the world, Tibet, for instance, where you could say, "There’s no such place as Tibet." So, to censor the idea of even the conjuring the idea of Palestine in an academic setting is something that’s happening across campuses all over the country. What’s happened to me is so mild compared to what’s happening to Professor Salaita or that happened to Kris, but they’re all part of an organized campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you’ve called the "corporate university" and how you think that ties in.
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, Kris made comments about this in his experience, as well. And what we’re seeing in this incident—and I’ll call it a catastrophe, really, at the University of Illinois—is evidence of the corporatization of the university, where the executive—in this case, the chancellor—sees herself as responsible to investors or donors more than she does to the constituency on campus, the academics and students. A university is not just a business, where you have to have a bottom line that satisfies your board of directors every year like other businesses. We have a particular mission in the university, perhaps to do things that are unpopular, that challenge what your donors think is the right way in which you should be thinking about particular problems. If we’re not doing that, then we’re not running a university, we’re running some other kind of ideological machine. Columbia has the same problem. I’m not going to single out the University of Illinois, but it’s a really bare example of an executive of a university seeing herself as accountable to her donors, not to an intellectual and scholarly mission.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will certainly continue to follow this issue. Katherine Franke, we want to thank you for being with us, a professor of law at Columbia Law School and director of the Open University Project. Kristofer Petersen-Overton, thank you for joining us, adjunct lecturer on political science at Lehman College, doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.
|
In a surprise move, District Attorney Sam Sutter of Bristol, Massachusetts, has dropped criminal charges against two climate activists who were set to go on trial Monday for blocking a shipment of 40,000 tons of coal. In May 2013, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used their lobster boat to prevent a delivery of the coal to the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. For their trial, Ward and O’Hara had planned to invoke the "necessity defense," arguing that their actions were justified by how the coal industry worsens the climate change that threatens our planet. In an unprecedented announcement, District Attorney Sutter all but adopted their reasoning and dropped the charges. "Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced," Sutter said outside the courthouse, explaining his decision. "In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been sorely lacking.”
Tune in to Democracy Now! on Wednesday for our interview with the two climate activists, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara, and District Attorney Sam Sutter.
Image Credit: lobsterboatblockade.org
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We end today’s show in Massachusetts looking at a case known as the lobster boat blockade. Two climate activists were set to go on trial Monday for blocking a shipment of 40,000 tons of coal. Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used their lobster boat to block a delivery of the coal to the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. Ward and O’Hara faced charges stemming from their act of civil disobedience. But in a surprise move, the Bristol district attorney, Sam Sutter, announced he had instead dropped the criminal charges and reduced three other charges to civil offenses. This is Sutter speaking just outside the courthouse.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: The decision that Robert Kidd and I—that’s the assistant district attorney who handled this case—reached today was a decision that certainly took into consideration the cost to the taxpayers in Somerset, but was made with our concern for their children, the children of Bristol County and beyond, in mind. Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been gravely lacking. I am heartened that we were able to forge an agreement that both parties were pleased with and that appeared to satisfy the police and those here in sympathy with the individuals who were charged. I am also extremely pleased that we were able to reach an agreement that symbolizes our commitment at the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office to take a leadership role on this issue.
CROWD MEMBER: Amen!
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: Thank you. ... So that’s very inspiring to me, and I will carry that with me in my heart. Thank you.
REPORTER: Will you be a model for across the country?
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: Well, I certainly will be in New York in two weeks, how’s that? And I’m walking around with Bill McKibben’s article from Rolling Stone a couple of months ago. How do you like that? So, you know where my heart is.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter. As he spoke outside the courthouse, the protesters also spoke.
KEN WARD: They’re still burning coal over there. In fact, they’re burning twice as much coal last year than they did the year before. And this is a plant that’s supposed to be phasing out. That’s the problem. I mean, we just found out this summer that the West Antarctica ice shelf is in collapse. Nothing we can do about it. Ten feet of sea-level rise. In that context, it seems to me the only thing one can do is put yourself in the way.
AMY GOODMAN: That was climate activist Ken Ward. And we’ll be joined by both the Bristol County district attorney, Sam Sutter, as well as the activists, tomorrow on Democracy Now!
|
Headlines:
•U.N.: Greenhouse Gas Levels Reach Record High
The United Nations says levels of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming have reached a record high. According to the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose by nearly three parts per million from 2012 to 2013, the largest single-year increase since detailed records began three decades ago. Last year, concentrations of carbon dioxide reached nearly 400 parts per million, the highest level in at least 800,000 years. As oceans absorb the increased carbon, ocean acidification has reached a rate that is "unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years." In a press release, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud called the data a "scientific base" for global action on climate change. "We are running out of time," he said. The report comes ahead of the U.N. climate summit and the People’s Climate March in New York City later this month.
•Report: Southwestern U.S. at Higher Risk of "Megadrought"
A study on climate change has warned the southwestern United States is at an increased risk of devastating drought. Cornell University professor Toby Ault discussed the results on Monday.
Toby Ault: "The risk of a decade-long drought is normally about 50 percent, but with climate change it goes up to about 80 or 90 percent, according to our results. And for a multiple-decade-long drought, a megadrought, the risk is normally in the order of 5 to 15 percent, but with climate change it goes up to between 20 and 50 percent for a lot of the Southwest."
California is in the midst of an epic three-year drought with more than 58 percent of the state deemed to be in "exceptional drought," the most severe category possible.
•Iraqi Lawmakers Approve New Government
Iraqi lawmakers have approved a new government. Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will share power with two deputy prime ministers — one Sunni and one Kurdish. The key posts of defense minister and interior minister have not yet been filled. Speaking on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the new parliament as a necessary step in the fight against militants with the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Secretary of State John Kerry: "Tonight, Iraq has a unity government. Tomorrow, I will travel to the Middle East to continue to build the broadest possible coalition of partners around the globe to confront, degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL. On Wednesday, President Obama will lay out in even greater detail our coordinated global strategy against ISIL."
On Monday, the U.S. military said its latest round of airstrikes in Iraq near the Haditha Dam killed 50 to 70 Islamic State fighters.
•EU OKs New Sanctions on Russia; Report Finds MH17 Hit by "High-Energy Objects"
The European Union has agreed to expand sanctions on Russia over its role in eastern Ukraine. But the EU said it would hold off on imposing the sanctions right away amidst a ceasefire between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops, which has been disrupted by periodic clashes. A U.N. human rights official says the number of people killed in the Ukraine crisis has topped 3,000 and could be "significantly higher." The number includes the 298 people on board Malaysia Airflines Flight 17. A new report by the Dutch Safety Board out today finds the plane was hit by multiple "high-energy objects" and broke apart in the air over eastern Ukraine. The report does not assign blame.
•Yemeni Police Fire on Protesters, Killing 7
Yemeni police have opened fire on Shiite protesters marching on the prime minister’s office in the capital Sana’a. A rebel leader told AFP seven protesters were killed. The Houthi rebels have been protesting for weeks to call for the resignation of the government and the reinstatement of fuel subsidies.
•Chile: Bomb Injures 7 in Subway Station
In Chile, a bomb has exploded in a subway station, injuring seven people in the capital Santiago. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet called it a terrorist attack.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet: "We think that this is an abominable act and therefore we will use the full weight of the law, including invoking anti-terrorism law, because those responsible for these acts will need to be held accountable, and we’re going to take all measures to ensure that people can continue to live their lives in peace and tranquility."
•Obama Extends Embargo on Cuba Despite Global Condemnation
President Obama has extended the more than 50-year-old embargo on trade to Cuba for another year. In a statement, Obama said the embargo is "in the national interest of the United States." Each year for more than two decades, the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The most recent vote was 188 to 2, with only the United States and Israel supporting the embargo.
•Top Anti-Logging Activist Murdered in Peru
In Peru, an anti-logging activist and three other leaders of the Ashaninka native community have been murdered in a remote area near the Brazilian border. Edwin Chota was a prominent opponent of illegal logging, which is devastating the Amazon region. He had received death threats from the loggers, who local authorities say are suspected of carrying out the killings.
•Report: Israel Unlawfully Coercing African Migrants to Leave
A new report by Human Rights Watch finds Israel has unlawfully coerced nearly 7,000 Eritrean and Sudanese migrants into returning to their home countries, where they may face torture and other abuses. After fleeing human rights crises at home, the migrants have faced indefinite detention, restrictions on healthcare access and the rejection of 99.9 percent of asylum claims in Israel.
•U.S. Senate Advances Amendment to Overturn Citizens United
The U.S. Senate has voted to advance a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark ruling in Citizens United. The ruling cleared the way for corporations and other special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. On Monday, 20 Republicans joined Democrats as the Senate voted 79 to 18 to open debate on the amendment proposed by Senator Tom Udall, which would restore Congress’ ability to limit campaign spending. It would still need approval by a two-third majority in the Senate before moving to the House.
•Documents Show Secret U.S. Plans to Spy for the Benefit of Corporations
Documents from Edward Snowden have revealed details about the U.S. government’s secret plans to conduct economic espionage for the benefit of U.S. corporations. The Obama administration has acknowledged conducting economic spying, but denies it does so to help U.S. companies. However, a 2009 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published by The Intercept news site reveals concern about potential challenges to U.S. corporations from foreign multinationals. It suggests using "cyber operations" against "research facilities" in foreign countries and then assessing "whether and how [the] findings would be useful to U.S. industry."
•SAC Capital Ex-Trader Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison
A former portfolio manager for SAC Capital has been sentenced to nine years in prison for what the government has called the largest insider trading case in history. Mathew Martoma was charged with conducting illegal trades based on inside information about the development of an Alzheimer’s drug, netting $276 million in profits and averted losses for SAC Capital. He was the eighth employee of the firm to be convicted of insider trading.
•Ray Rice Suspended from NFL After Video Shows Him Punching Then-Fiancée
Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice has been cut by his football team and indefinitely suspended by the National Football League after a video showed him punching his then-fiancée into unconsciousness. (A warning to our TV viewers the video is graphic.) The footage, from February, was released Monday by the tabloid website TMZ. The details of the case have been known for months after a previous video from a different angle showed Rice dragging the unconscious woman out of an elevator and dropping her face-first on the ground. The Baltimore Ravens had defended Rice, while the NFL’s first response in July was to suspend him for just two games. A massive public outcry led NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize and change the league’s domestic violence policy. We’ll have more on the case with sportswriter Dave Zirin after headlines.
•City of Ferguson to Adopt Reforms After Death of Michael Brown
The city of Ferguson, Missouri, is set to implement new reforms following mass protests over the police killing of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown. At a meeting later today, the City Council is expected to vote on reforms that have stemmed from activist demands, including a citizen review board for police, a cap on how much of city revenue can come from fines, and a one-month recall program for warrants. Municipal court fines currently make up Ferguson’s second-highest source of revenue, and the city issued warrants at a rate of three per household last year. The meeting comes exactly a month after Brown was shot dead by a white police officer.
•New Witness Confirms Michael Brown Fled, Put Hands in Air
An eyewitness who saw the police shooting of Michael Brown has largely confirmed the accounts of earlier witnesses who said Brown was fleeing from police officer Darren Wilson. The witness is a worker who did not know Brown and had no ties to Ferguson. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he saw Wilson chase Brown and fire at him while his back was turned, before Brown stumbled and put his hands up in the air in an apparent gesture of surrender.
•Video Shows NYPD Officers Beating Latino Man After Stop-and-Frisk
The New York City Police Department is facing new accusations of police brutality after a man said he was punched, kicked, beaten with nightsticks and hit with pepper spray in the Bronx. Surveillance video shows about half a dozen officers piling onto 23-year-old Santiago Hernandez and pummeling him. Hernandez said he had been waiting for a friend outside a building when he was stopped and frisked by officers who said they were investigating a noise complaint. When the search turned up nothing, Hernandez said he asked why he had been frisked, at which point the officer put handcuffs on him. After he asked why he was being arrested, several other officers arrived and surrounded him. Hernandez told local news station ABC 7 what happened next.
Santiago Hernandez: "They was taking turns on me. One kicks me, he steps back. Another one comes, he punches me, he steps back. And another one comes, he grabs my arm, hits me like 10 times with the baton. Another one comes, pepper sprays me. They was taking turns on me, like it was like a gang."
Hernandez was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, but the Bronx district attorney has reportedly declined to prosecute him. The NYPD says it is conducting an internal investigation. The incident took place August 18 while the NYPD was already facing protests over the death of Eric Garner. Garner died after police in Staten Island wrestled him to the ground in a banned chokehold and then pinned him down, while he pleaded that he could not breathe. He had been accused of selling loose cigarettes.
•Oklahoma: Cop Accused of Sexually Assaulting 8 Women Released from Jail
An Oklahoma City police officer accused of sexually assaulting eight African-American women while on duty has been released from jail. Daniel Holtzclaw was released on Friday after posting $500,000 bond. He is accused of carrying out the alleged assaults after threatening victims with arrest if they did not comply with his sexual demands.
•Pennsylvania Mother Sentenced to Up to 18 Months for Helping Daughter Get Abortion Pills
A single mother in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison for ordering medication online to help her teenage daughter induce an abortion. Jennifer Ann Whalen pleaded guilty to breaking a state law that prevents anyone other than a doctor from providing abortions. Her daughter suffered abdominal pain and went to the hospital where a doctor called the police. Whalen said she bought the pills online because her daughter did not have health insurance and she could not find a local clinic near their rural community.
___________________________
Democracy Now
207 W 25th Street,11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment