Long-time readers of this blog probably recall that I have written
numerous articles in opposition to Leon Botstein, the President of Bard
College since 1975. My first reaction to Botstein was positive. But
after Martin Peretz had joined the Board of Trustees, I changed my mind.
As president of the board of Tecnica, a sort of small-scale radical
version of the Peace Corps that sent volunteers to Nicaragua, the murder
of Ben Linder in Nicaragua in 1987 hit home since we were providing
material aid to his project. Ben was working on a weir—a small scale
dam—that would produce electricity for peasants in the north. Meanwhile,
Peretz was promoting the contras in The New Republic. That led me to
write an angry letter to Botstein about the mockery he was making of
educational values. While Peretz was attending Board meetings, his
“freedom fighters” were burning schools and killing teachers.
Botstein wrote back taking great offense at having his values held up
for scrutiny. Since he has an ego bigger than the Grand Canyon, the idea
that he wasn’t perfect got his juices flowing. Within a few years, I
went to work at Columbia University and began writing further critiques
of Botstein around a number of questions including the addition of Pom
Wonderful CEO Stewart Resnick to the board. Using his great wealth,
Resnick got preferential treatment for his farms in California even at
the expense of nearby people not being able to flush their toilet
because the farms were sucking up all the available water.
A year after I wrote my letter to Botstein, Bard hired my old friend and
comrade Joel Kovel to become the Alger Hiss professor, a post funded by
his family. For a number of years Joel enjoyed an idyllic existence at
Bard, not that different from what I experience as a student. But when
he began criticizing Israel, he got on Botstein’s wrong side. Botstein
was a Zionist, a stance that probably had a lot to do with him adding
Peretz to the Board. Peretz once said, ““Frankly, Muslim life is cheap,
most notably to Muslims.” He further questioned whether Muslim-Americans
deserve the “privileges of the First Amendment.”
After he wrote “Overcoming Zionism” in 2007, the University of Michigan
publishers decided to drop it after powerful Zionist donors to the
school threatened to end their support. A campaign around this
censorship was mounted but Botstein did not say a word, implicitly
siding with the move against him. Two years later, his contract as Alger
Hiss chair was not renewed and his supporters, including me, began
taking up his cause. Joel once told me that I should avoid using the
word “fired” because he was in delicate settlement talks with the school
that would be jeopardized by claims of their liability. When they
arrived at a settlement, it included a non-disclosure agreement that he
keep his views on Botstein and Bard College to himself.
In 2017, his memoir “The Lost Traveller’s Dream” appeared. A year later
he was dead.
Recently, I got around to read it in the hope that he would spill the
beans on Botstein and Bard despite the non-disclosure agreement. He did
not disappoint. He must have got Leon even more pissed than my letter
about Peretz. Below are 3 excerpts from the memoir that showed his utter
contempt for Botstein but also revealed the rancor the relatively
apolitical faculty held toward his haughty manner of running the school
as if he were a feudal lord.
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2021/06/15/joel-kovel-spills-the-beans-on-leon-botstein/
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