Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Debauchery Spreading in the Hebrew University Department of Sociology

Debauchery Spreading in the Hebrew University Department of Sociology

The Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University has been in
the headlines of the front pages of the Israeli media nonstop in
recent days. The department is not only the worst academic disgrace
at the Hebrew University, but it rivals the Department of Political
Science at Ben Gurion University for the coveted title of the worst
academic disgrace in all of Israel. What has just emerged is the
newest outrage from the Department of Sociology there, the Aran
Affair.

This is all a bit ironic because the Hebrew University long was
home to the leading department of sociology in Israel, with the great
sociological thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s, the pioneers of
sociological thought (Eisenstadt, Lissak, and others). But by the
1970s the department was being hijacked by Marxists and far-leftist
lunatics. It became home to the late Baruch Kimmerling, a shallow
Marxist anti-Zionist fanatic, who fabricated an entire history of the
"Palestinian nation," while cheering on Arab suicide bombers and mass
murderers. Kimmerling became the symbol of Hebrew University
sociological (pseudo-) thinking. Now even Kimmerling has been
over-shadowed by the current SWAT team of leftist sexual predator
"academics" leading the Hebrew University sociology department.

You will recall that the Department of Sociology at the Hebrew
University sponsored, approved, and even gave a grand honors prize to
the MA student who wrote her thesis about how the absence of rape of
Arab women by Israeli soldiers proves that the Jews are vile racists.
Her thesis advisor for that was Prof. Eyal Ben-Ari. Starting 8 years
ago, the very same Ben-Ari was accused by a series of his female
students of molesting them, raping them, extorting them into having
sex with him, and penalizing them (such as by withdrawing research
fund) if they failed to provide him with what once would be called
their "favors." For years the Hebrew University stonewalled and
circled their wagons around Ben-Ari, pressuring the students in
question to drop their charges, pressuring the police and prosecution
not to indict him.

Last week the Hebrew University's own ethics and discipline
committee suspended Ben-Ari for two years from teaching and from
receiving his salary, and slapped his wrists in some other ways, like
freezing some of his research funds. After this, and 8 years after
the original complaints, the Hebrew University has also asked the
state Prosecution to reopen their investigation of Ben-Ari.

And just hours later, Haaretz breaks the scoop of the Aran Affair.

Before filling you in, let us note the frequent reoccurrence of
the nexus of radical leftism in academia with misogyny and molestation
of women. Predatory sexual harassment and leftwing politics seem so
closely linked in Israel these days that it is almost like that Frank
Sinatra song about love and marriage, where you can't have one without
the other. The very same people who build academic careers out of
posturing their "ethical concern, caring and moral sensitivity" in the
form of promoting the leftist agenda in and out of the classroom seem
to be the first ones to stalk, molest and sexually harass their
students. In the now notorious case of Ben-Ari, he even invented an
entire "scientific theory" that serves to justify his his debauchery =
rape is a form of egalitarianism while absence of rape proves racism.

Let us introduce you to Gideon Aran, the latest
leftist-cum-lecher to emerge from the department of Sociology at the
Hebrew University. He is listed here:
http://sociology.huji.ac.il/academic%20staff-eng.html#ga right next to
Ben-Ari. Aran claims to be some sort of sociological maven in the
sociology of religion, but most of the material by him that I have
seen is simply vulgar smearing of religious Jews. Aran considers
religious Jews to be fanatics, barbarians. Some of his "academic"
work consists of denunciations of settlers as religious fanatics,
those he calls "Jewish-Zionist fundamentalists." His denunciation of
"Jewish zealotry," by which he seems to mean Zionists and those who
observe Jewish religious practices, is his obsession. He has penned a
book entitled "Jewish Zealotry." Here is an example of his
"thinking:" http://kennedy.byu.edu/events/pdfs/aran_2mar11.pdf .
Here you can find an imaginary "dialogue" between women that Aran
published as a piece of supposed academic research:
http://gas.sagepub.com/content/9/1/60 (note the obsession with
"deconstruction").

Naturally Aran is pro-Arab and even pro-suicide bomber. He
published an article entitled "The Other Side of Suicide Bombing,"
from which we learn that he considers suicide bombers to have another
side, I guess a sensitive caring and pro-justice side in which
legitimate protest against Zionist encroachment is expressed in the
form of blowing up school buses.

Now, you know what I think of Haaretz, but one thing good that can
be said about Haaretz is that they are often willing to bash
ultra-leftist anti-Zionist fruitcakes when this serves their feminist
inclinations. Haaretz has been at the forefront of "outing" Ben-Ari.
And now the feminist big guns at the paper have Gideon Aran in their
sites.

What did Aran do? Well, he sexually harassed one of his female
students, and the harassment was so bad that the Hebrew University
itself agree to pay 38,000 NIS (around $10,000) in hush money to buy
off the student and prevent her from going public and filing criminal
charges against Aran.

Payment notwithstanding, the student went public anyhow. She is
Ortal Ben-Dayan. She is a proud Sephardic or Oriental Jewish woman
who comes from a low-income peripheral area of Israel and is the first
in her family to gain college education. She was a sociology student
in Aran's courses. She was outraged when Aran repeatedly made snooty
comments in class belittling Sephardic or Oriental Jews and she
complained to him about those comments. She even published reports in
Hebrew on some web sites about how Aran behaved in class. Ironically,
those internet postings triggered additional postings by other women
at the Hebrew University in the sociology department, and these
eventually led to the exposure of the misbehavior of the other
predator faculty member, Eyal Ben-Ari.

Aran found Ben-Dayan's anger at his nasty anti-Sephardic
comments to be endearing, cute, in fact sexually stimulating. He
propositioned and had a fling with the student, in violation of strict
university governing sexual liaisons between faculty members and
students. At some point, Ben-Dayan had enough of the lecher and she
dumped him. He continued to "court" her in an aggressive manner and
she eventually filed a formal complaint against him with the Sociology
Department Chairman Zali Gurevitch. Zali ignored the complain and
ignored the repeated submission of additional letters of complaint by
Ben-Dayan.

Before continuing the story, a side word on Chairman Zali
Gurevitch. You will be forgiven if you do not recall this, but
Gurevitch, like Ben-Ari, was up to his ears involved in the "Lack of
Rape Proves Jews are Racist" atrocity. That thesis was supervised by
Ben-Ari, but it was also supported and sponsored by Gurevitch, who
funded it when he was director of the "Shaine Center" for research, a
center functioning at the Hebrew University. We wonder whether the
Shaine family knows how their generosity to the Hebrew University is
being misused. Be that as it may, Gurevitch not only endorsed the
thesis and its conclusions, while backing Ben-Ari in full. He even
recommended the "Lack of Rape is Racism" thesis for a university prize
and honors. See this: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/28129
. This is the same Gurevitch who stonewalled the Ben-Dayan letters of
complaint about Aran stalking her, and he also backed Ben-Ari and
defended him when he was accused of raping and molesting HIS students.
Gurevitch was department chair when Ben-Ari charged purchases of
vibrators to his sociology research fund, and so evidently approved
the purchase! Gurevitch, surprise surprise, is also a leftist.

Gurevtch tried to "mediate" between the student and Aran, meaning
he tried to convince her to hush it up. Other university officials,
including the ombudsman, also tried to hush it up. The university
only started taking Ben-Dayan's complaints seriously when she got a
militant feminist group to start pressuring the university, the Israel
Women's Network. They filed a complaint with the university
disciplinary committee, which ended in a plea bargain under which Aran
pled to a reduced charge, something like behaving mischievously. The
disciplinary committee itself however rejected the plea as too
moderate and as a cover-up. It prosecuted Aran anyway, but it agreed
to mediation. Meanwhile the university was keeping Aran's identity
hush-hush and no one outside the people directly involved knew who the
molester was.

This week the story was leaked to Haaretz, and Aran's name was made
public. It is not clear who leaked. Aran is now on leave at San
Francisco State University and he is also teaching a course at
Berkeley. Those of you in the Bay Area might want to call him up to
get his reaction. Having spent part of my life at Berkeley, I can
think of some radical feminists there who could scare a Bushido
wrestler and I suggest someone tell them all about Aran!

The Haaretz scoop on Aran can be read in full in English here:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hebrew-university-pays-student-nis-38-000-to-settle-harassment-claim-1.346330

Hebrew readers can read more about the story here:
http://www.mako.co.il/news-law/legal/Article-7528fcebf807e21004.htm
and http://2nd-ops.com/orit/?p=65678 and
http://reshet.ynet.co.il/%D7%97%D7%93%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/news/CrimeAndLaw/Law/Article,63456.aspx

Anyone wishing to complain to the Hebrew University should go
here: http://isracampus.org.il/How%20to%20Complain.htm

(By the way, in the interests of full disclosure, when I was a
young lecturer in Haifa in the 1980s, I dated a woman who was a
student in the same university, but she was not my own student nor a
student in my own department, and I married her, 26 years ago, before
she ever claimed that I harass her.)






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