The other day I wrote about a course in “Liberatory Violence” given by U of C professor Alireza Doostdar, a course that seemed to me to be (while probably not violating academic freedom) designed to propagandize students—largely against Israel. (Doostdar has a long history of anti-Israeli activism, and is director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion.) While I can’t say that the course should be deep-sixed, I can say that it’s likely to promote hatred of Jews and Israel, which Doostdar sees as guilty of “Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.” Ah, three big lies in one sentence!
But it’s one thing to teach a permissible but dubious course, and another to fund an initiative designed to indict Israel for “scholasticide”: the destruction of Palestinian academia by design. Yes, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, a unit that “brings unlikely partners together to work on complex problems”, has announced funding for ten new group projects in 2026-2027. Here’s one of them, and, lo and behold, Dr. Doostdar is one of the stars:
Scholasticide in and Beyond Palestine
Jodi Byrd (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Alireza Doostdar (Divinity School), Eve Ewing (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Darryl Li (Anthropology)Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this project will use a mixed-methods approach in undertaking empirical research and comparative analysis to investigate “scholasticide” as a critical category for political and historical analysis. In addition to the resident research team, the project will involve a sequence of virtual visiting fellows.
This is another way to use College money to do down Israel, and this I object to. Believe me, if there were a similar project designed to investigate “genocide by Palestinian terror groups,” it would not only not get funded, but would raise an ruckus. This one has elicited nary a peep. I’m wondering whether the University of Chicago even thinks about the optics of giving money for a project like this.
The problem, in my view, with this kind of research is that these traffic in foregone conclusions. Does anybody doubt what they’ll “find”?
Hey c’mon it’s “empirical research”! They even use “mixed methods”. How much more objectivity do you want?
More seriously, I agree: so much university scholarship is like this, cloaked in scientistic words like”empirical” and pretending to use data but lacking any method that could lead to a result that would surprise anyone.
Highlighting just this part :
[ begin excerpt, bold added ]
The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society [..] “brings unlikely partners together to work on complex problems”
[end excerpt ]
Unification of opposites is, inter alia, alchemical in nature :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_opposites
Goes way back.
Just the premise of “scholasticide” indicates to me that there is no research question here, but rather an already decided upon assertion just waiting to colored in and piled on by a select (and selected) team of the uchicago faculty. Outcome bias at its most abhorrent.
Just saw JBaldwin comment #1 after I posted: yep me too!
Hmmm. This seems like an inversion of reality. It’s the Israelis that are being locked out of research collaborations worldwide.
I don’t get it. When I wanted to create a new course, it needed approval by our department’s curriculum and executive committees. Is there no vetting of courses in a department’s curriculum? Or maybe it was vetted and approved, which might be even worse.
The listing of this “interdisciplinary team of scholars” reveals professor Doostdar’s geolocation at the U. of C., a matter in yesterday’s posts that had puzzled me. He is not in the Arts and Sciences or the Humanities: rather, this activist/scholar is in the School of Divinity. In short, his source of academic authority is Divine. Explains everything—except, perhaps, why this branch, a remnant of medieval times, is still present in universities after 600 years.
At the risk of insulting our host’s feeling about his school, I think the UofC does think about the optics. Like almost all
indoctrination campsuniversities, they aren’t adverse to showing their true colors on anything – antisemitism, trans lunacy, misandry, anti-white racism, etc) if they can mask it in the plausible deniability of academic inquiry. It’s code for the termites.I find this, and the Hamas demo a few blocks from me in Midtown today… to be incredibly surprising. Almost unbelievable.
Woke dynamics and (pro-Pal CCP owned young people “news”) TikTok got us here.
D.A.
NYC
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
All great comments above. Edward M you cracked me up. The scary thought is, if the usually strict adherence to fairness that UChicago is famous for can allow this, what will happen at all the progressive institutions that don’t even bother to fake fairness?