Beinin brings moral commitment -- and controversy -- to the classroom

BY JOHN SANFORD

It's unfair to expect students and teachers to set aside their moral commitments or the way they identify emotionally with a topic when they enter the classroom, according to history Professor Joel Beinin.

"In my view, moral commitment and passion are a good thing," Beinin said. "I have it. Why shouldn't my students have it? It's why I do what I do."

And while such a philosophy probably wouldn't invite much debate in, say, a course on particle physics, it comes heavily into play when the subject is the Middle East -- and, more specifically, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Beinin happens to be one of the world's leading scholars on the modern social history of the Middle East, and he teaches a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He spoke Thursday about the role strong feelings, which are inevitably aroused when discussing one of the world's most complicated geopolitical imbroglios, should play in the classroom.

His talk, "Moral Commitments, Emotional Identifications and Historical Evidence: Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict," was this year's first installment of the Center for Teaching and Learning's Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching series, and it drew a crowd of more than 50 people to the Hartley Conference Center in the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building.

Discomfort, Beinin asserted, is key to the learning process. "Teaching should be about developing the ability to think critically," he said. "It requires people being willing and being led to challenge received truths. The student who graduates from Stanford after having been here for four years and who has the same view of the world that he or she had when he arrived hasn't learned very much."

An activist for the Palestinian cause of ending the Israeli occupation and a strong opponent of the looming war with Iraq, Beinin said he makes no bones about his social and political views in or outside the classroom. "I think it's essential to respect and acknowledge students' differences and moral commitments and emotional identification," he said. "I also acknowledge my own, and I make it very clear that any student who disagrees with me and presents even a shadow of a coherent reason why is going to get an 'A' in the class." This, he explained, permits students to openly challenge his views in their papers and in class while eliminating the specter of retributive grading.

Nevertheless, Beinin's activism and the fact that he was president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America for a year beginning in November 2001 -- a period that was, for obvious reasons, rather tumultuous vis-à-vis U.S. relations with various Muslim countries -- have made him a lightning rod for criticism by conservatives and supporters of Israeli policy toward Palestinians.

Much of this criticism stems from comments Beinin made at a Sept. 17, 2001, rally organized by the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center. In the speech, Beinin pointed to controversial elements of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East -- such as America's considerable military aid to Israel -- in describing why many Arabs and Muslims feel anger toward the U.S. government.

A cohort of right-leaning pundits and Middle East scholars seized on Beinin's words to paint him as an apologist for the Sept. 11 attacks and Middle Eastern terrorism, in general. But they failed to mention that Beinin, in the same speech, said Arab and Muslim grievances about American foreign policy "can in no way justify the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

Supporters of Beinin maintain that his views on the Middle East have been speciously represented by reactionary critics. In any case, Beinin has not been cowed. Indeed, he has remained an active presence at many Bay Area demonstrations over the past year.

At a rally in San Francisco last March, he called for suspending military aid to Israel until it ends its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and addresses the claims of Palestinian refugees; at a gathering outside Memorial Auditorium, where former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was preparing to speak last October, Beinin joined dozens of other demonstrators in protesting the Israeli occupation; and just this past weekend, at Palo Alto City Hall, he spoke at a rally held to oppose war with Iraq.

Beinin said he does not believe that being a professor should mean giving up his rights as a citizen -- that is, the right to publicly express his personal views. "One thing I'm trying to convey here is that this history [of the Arab-Israeli conflict] isn't dry and removed from life," he said. "Of course I'm going to speak at demonstrations, because I want students to understand that the conclusion they come to -- one way or another -- actually should make a difference in what they do."

However, he said he does impose certain limits on himself. For example, he said he does not publicly criticize students outside the classroom, including in letters to newspapers.

During Thursday's presentation, David Patel, a graduate student in political science, asked Beinin whether it was wise to show moral commitment and emotion in the classroom as an untenured professor. Patel asserted that such demonstrations can reflect badly in a profession whose most prized commodity is dispassionate, high-caliber research. "My impression is that the easiest way to scuttle a career in Middle East studies is to teach the Arab-Israeli conflict and to write about it," he said.

"I'm living proof that you're wrong," Beinin responded, explaining that he has taught in the same fashion since he first started his professorial career at Stanford in 1983. Beinin recalled that Morris Zelditch, a professor emeritus of sociology, once told him that young professors at Stanford have a better shot at tenure if they set themselves apart from the crowd.

Later, Beinin qualified his remarks: "Everyone doesn't get away with this; you're right," he said. "The waters are pretty muddy when it comes to the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict, in particular. But if you don't get up there and say what you think, the whole enterprise is useless. It's just not worth being here."