On the Matter of Edward Said

Greetings,

For those who wanted more information on who is behind this lunatic effort
to dismiss "the professor of stones" -- KS


---     Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 11:12:21 -0500 (EST)
        From: "Kamran D. Rastegar" <kdr7@columbia.edu>
        Subject: RE: Document: "On the Matter of Edward Said"

Tony and all,
   
    As a Columbia grad student, perhaps I am in a good position to
answer this... After the publication of the AFP photo last summer showing
Prof. Said rather unceremoniously hucking a pebble at the Lebanese/Israeli
border fence - a photo which did not indicate where the trajectory of the
object may have been - the vocal and rather extremist group for
pro-Israeli students here (under the name LionPAC - a direct reference to
its relationship to AIPAC, the Lion being Columbia's mascot) began
flyering and writing articles to the campus paper, the Spectator,
agitating for Prof. Said's dismissal from the university. You can imagine
the rhetoric - "Prof Terror Must Go!" etc.

    The campaign took a bizarre twist when two Professors, Avi
Federgruen and Robert Pollack, wrote an article that appeared in that
beacon of journalistic integrity, the Jerusalem Post, claiming that Said
took the photo himself (!) and had it sent to the AFP for self-promotion.
In response to demands for proof of the claim, they were later forced to
all but admit they had none. The article was reprinted in the Spectator.
Of course, this only whipped the already frenzied into a greater hysteria,
but thankfully the Provost's letter very clearly dismissed all calls to
judge or condemn Said's harmless (literally - he hit noone, noone was
threatened) act. Another surreal moment was when the World Zionist
Organization issued a report on Israelis killed by thrown stones during
the '87-'93 Intifada, linking that data to Said - of course there was no
mention of the many times higher death toll of Palestianians killed by
bullets and beatings in the same period. All of this, more or less,
predated the current Intifada.

    One can access the articles (mostly anti-Said) in the Spectator's
homepage, www.columbiaspectator.com, in the "archives" section.
Unfortunately, they don't have the many passionate and intelligent
defenses of Said that appeared in the letters responding to the campaign
in the archives.

    Recently, at a discussion with Ahdaf Sueif, Prof. Said was
introduced by a colleague (Hamid Dabashi) who mentioned the celebrated
stone... I wasn't there but I hear it was met with a round of applause,
and that Said only smiled...

Best,
Kamran Rastegar
Center for Comparative Literature and Society