Drexel Criticized for Noam Chomsky Honor

Noam Chomsky (AP Photo/Nader Daoud)

Drexel University is under continuing criticism from Jewish groups for awarding an honorary degree to left-wing scholar and activist Noam Chomsky during its mid-June graduation ceremonies.

Chomsky, critics say, has been a virulent and unfair critic of Israel.

“Chomsky has seldom missed an opportunity to author a screed against Israel,” Abraham Miller, a senior fellow with the Salomon Center for American Jewish Thought, wrote last week in an essay that has been carried in The Jewish Exponent and the Algemeiner.

Chomsky, 86, a linguist at MIT, is Jewish. His own website features him among “famous Jews who have opposed Israel,” along with this quote: “In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”

He was honored — and was speaker — during Drexel’s June 12 ceremony for master’s graduates in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, School of Education, LeBow College of Business and Goodwin College of Professional Studies. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey was also honored at that particular ceremony.

The address can be seen in the video below, starting around the 1-hour-seven-minute mark:

Chomsky made no mention of Israel in the speech, instead spending a few minutes warning about the dangers of climate change. Species extinction is taking place at the same rate as 65 million year ago, he said, when an asteroid hit the earth. “The difference is, we’re the asteroid,” Chomsky said.

“Your generation faces an extraordinary challenge,” Chomsky told the graduating students. “The challenge cannot be evaded or even deferred.”

The criticism has continued.

“Chomsky’s far leftist world view does not permit facts to get in the way. His positions sound remarkably like those of other leftist Jews, who, given a choice between their political ideology and their Jewish heritage, eagerly lacerate their heritage to embrace their politics,” Miller wrote. “Chomsky claims the brutal Hezbollah as a moderate force for peace, just as he showcases the Palestine Liberation Organization, ignoring their glorification of terror against innocent Israelis, their saturation of their people with propaganda that justifies the killing of innocents, and their corruption that prevents the creation of an economically viable and decent society.”

He suggest that Drexel donors take their money elsewhere. “The public now knows what Drexel stands for,” Miller wrote, “and the same freedom that Drexel exercises, Drexel’s donors are also free to exercise by voting with their pocketbooks.”

The Jewish Press reported that some alumni are upset with the university.

“As a Jewish Dragon I am deeply offended that the university would associate itself with such an unabashed anti-Semite,” one alum told the website. “The beliefs and virtues of the current Jewish student body are threatened by this overt display of approval for Chomsky’s hate speech.”

“The awarding of honorary degrees does not in any way indicate endorsement of a recipient’s opinions,” Niki Gianakaris, the university’s director of media relations, said in an emailed comment to JNS.org, “As a scientist, Chomsky’s work is at the forefront of his discipline, and he is often described as the ‘father of modern linguistics.’ As a political philosopher and activist, he is widely read and debated, especially with regard to U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. He has been voted the ‘world’s top public intellectual’ in a poll by the magazines Foreign Policy and Prospect.”

Opponents say they have collected thousands of names of opposition, which were delivered to Drexel on Monday.