Posted by David Bernstein: Shorter Brian Leiter: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_14-2007_10_20.shtml#1192843823
[1]From his blog: (1) Bernstein says, accurately, that Columbia Professor Joseph Massad says there are no homosexuals in the Arab world, though there are men who have same-sex contact. [He adds that to the extent there are self-identified homosexuals, they are the product of Western cultural imperialism via "Gay International," who have basically invited Arab governments to persecute them because they are importing foreign ideologies.] What, I, Leiter KNOW Massad really meant to say is that while "there exists same-sex contact by numerous individuals in the Arab world" he "denies that engaging in same-sex contact marks out a kind of person about whom there are meaningful, lawful (or law-like) generalizations to be made (e.g., that homosexuals are mentally ill; or that homosexual men had bad relations with their father; or that homosexuals only have sex with people of the same sex, and so on)." I know this, even though Massad says nothing about these generalizations, and instead relies on a conspiracy theory about "Gay International" and cultural imperialism, because he cites Foucault in two footnotes, and this is Foucault's theory. (2) Bernstein says that Marxism is about as scientifically valid as intelligent design, and he's right that "the following aspects of Marx's theory are false: (1) the labor theory of value; (2) the theory of the falling rate of profit; (3) the teleological conception of history; and (4) the a priori commitment to the dialectical structure of historical change." But Marxism is still a valid methodology because it's "amply supported in numerous sociological and historical studies" that "one can explain historical events by attention to how different economic classes pursue their material interests, which lead them into conflict with other economic classes." [You know, that's exactly how I go about my own day: how can I help the upper-middle-class and screw all the other classes today?] Oh, and moral and political ideas are basically just exist to promote and protect class interests. In other words, the crudest sort of Marxist materialist class analysis is still valid, even if all of Marx's other ideas are not. (3) It's offensive, but not anti-Semitic, for Norman Finkelstein to write that leading American Jewish activists "resemble stereotypes straight out of [Nazi newspaper] Der Sturmer." It's neither offensive for him to write that "American Jewish elites" are imbued with "chauvinistic arrogance, feigned (or imagined) victimhood, and Holocaust-immunity to criticism" resulting in "recklessness and ruthlessness" And Finkelstein may be on to something when he says that "American Jewish elites" are among "the main formentors of anti-Semitism in the world today." And it's not at all offensive to say that "Coddling them [American Jewish elites] is not the answer. They need to be stopped." Perhaps if Finkelstein were wrong, it would be anti-Semitic, but he's not. (4) Bernstein says the vast majority of Freud's work is not empirically valid. I, Leiter, have a couple of footnotes in one paper where I cite a defender of Freud who claims that a few of his theses are valid. I won't mention the fact that even accepting this work as valid, that still leaves the vast majority of Freud's work empirically false. [More important, Freud never tried to empirically invalidate his work, and for decades his followers denied that his work should be subject to empirical testing. If Freud turned out to right on some things, well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.] Back to me [Bernstein]. I'm not going to waste my time rehashing all of Massad's foibles, detailed in many prior posts on this blog, explaining why Finkelstein, who makes [2]misogynistic [stating that a photo of two respected elderly Jewish women may "give you nightmares"] as well as anti-Semitic comments, is a creep, or debating about Marxism and Freudianism. I'll just say that if Leiter and the rest of the far left want to make Massad and Finkelstein their poster children for "scholars" who are "unjustly" attacked, they are welcome to them, just as they are welcome to uber academic fraud Ward Churchill. I should note the irony that Leiter, et al.'s concept of academic freedom apparently amounts to "we should be allowed to say whatever we want in however offensive a manner, and not have anyone criticize us, or point out our scholarly and ethical deficiencies to relevant parties." A question for Leiter: if we were to agree that Massad's scholarship is poor, should he be granted tenure because he hates Israel, and expresses such in his scholarship? And if Leiter wants to keep attacking the "right" for being "anti-science," while defending the idea that Marxism and Freudianism are scientifically sound, well, that's his credibility at stake, not mine. And the really funny part is that Leiter apparently exhibits none of the skepticism regarding Marxism and Freudianism (which historically have been embraced by the "Left") that he [3]famously exhibits regarding evolutionary psychology (which horrifies the far left because it suggests the lack of malleability of human behavior). References 1. http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/10/more-fun-with-d.html#more 2. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1224 3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=892881 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
