“Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion”

I linked to the article I tweeted earlier on facebook, adding this:

Published in LAU Mag. According to AngryArab, Sarkis, a professor of 17 years, has now been sacked. Ya lil 3ar, ya lil 3ar. But what else would you expect from our lovely alma mater? A lesson in freedom of speech, or a show of political courage perhaps? The article is weak, the political orientation questionable, but op/ed is op/ed, LAU. It’s Journalism 101 & you fail.

No ifs ands or buts. Dr. Jabra should resign

A friend commented back, suggesting that while he shares my views on the absoluteness of freedom of speech in academic contexts, etc. I should  have been more careful not to jump to conclusions, recommending I speak with the administration first. Here is my reply:

Good advice, if I were a student at LAU perhaps. Also good advice if Ihave had even normal experiences with LAU administration on such matters in the past (I assure you, my experiences have been sub par). I base my observations mainly on this: http://www.lsf-lau.com/dr-pierre-sarkis and the insulting notion that a university must go and apologize … Read Moreto an unelected, reactionary religious figure, is to me, unacceptable. In Lebanon perhaps, there may be no other choice for LAU. But my friend, reality exists beyond the borders of broken Lebanese political culture, and in the real world (or perhaps it is the ideal world), bowing down to such authority is academic high treason.

I don’t care what the technical legal issues are. Technically religious figures are beyond criticism or attack in Lebanon. Again, I refer you to the real world where ideals live & human rights exist. This world may not have geographical borders, but it shows up on the radars every once in a while when someone says ‘no’.

So no, religious figures are not beyond criticism or attack. Also, I don’t care much about the article itself. There is much that is wrong about it from many different perspectives; in some places, Sarkis is quite racist, in other places he defends the history of the Lebanese Front, which I find ahistorical and inappropriate to say the least. The article is also written badly, which is a relevant criticism for a professor. And if it were these criticisms that were being made of Sarkis, I would be the first to join in. But for the university to apologize to Sfeir, and in doing so take sides politically is shameful. There’s a song somewhere that says ‘when worst comes to worst, my people come first’. The university should have defended Sarkis as an academic first, THEN should have criticized him for failing his credentials on the criteria I mentioned above, if that’s what it thought he did. But to bow down to pressure is not behavior befitting an institution calling itself a university.

I realize it is very difficult for the university, but I still hold the naive ideal of universities being the final bastion of freedom of thought in society. Yes, it’s a laughable idea, given the times, but ideals only die when protests go quiet. So yes, I do understand that my post was fiery and perhaps, in the long run, if the protests grow and the university backtracks (and the PR companies find ways of making the whole thing go away), what I said may appear hasty. But that’s the nature of dialectics. First there must be a ‘hell no!’ before the ‘umm well maybe’ can emerge.