Word: pauline
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Talk about blaming the messenger. All Professor of English Elisa New did was pass on some chit-chat she’d heard from a party—that Tom Paulin, a poet who was scheduled to give a reading at Harvard, had made anti-Semitic remarks to an Egyptian newspaper. Yet as word spread of Paulin’s views and a controversy ensued, New herself, a 44 year-old tenured American literature scholar, became the target of suspicion from both colleagues and outsiders. Then again, that can happen when the president of Harvard calls you his girlfriend...
...Paulin. You have never had the honour of hearing him speak due to a kerfuffle over his views on Israel. We have never heard him speak because no English student has ever been known to go to a lecture. What a waste of?...
...they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them;” “I have utter contempt for them. They use this card of anti-Semitism. They fill newspapers with hate letters. They are useless people.” Those who dare to disagree with Paulin are “useless” and full of hatred? What is it that Mr. Paulin suggests we do with “useless people”? Should they too be shot and discarded like garbage on the trash-heap of history, as was done with Jews and others...
...more recent statement, published in The New York Times on Nov. 28, Paulin ostensibly offers an apology for remarks that the poet himself recognizes are “deeply offensive to all right-thinking people.” I wish that were the end of the matter. His statement, however, only clouds the issue still further. For what does he apologize? Not for “whatever was said in my lengthy exchange”—an odd disclaimer for a poet who supposedly has a way with words—but rather for the fact that...
Claiming that Paulin invokes tropes of anti-Semitism hardly suppresses his free speech rights. If anything, his status as an enfant terrible guarantees him publicity, prizes and platforms at prestigious universities. Paulin declares that there is a “conspiracy of silence” in Britain and that “the Blair government is a Zionist government.” If this classic anti-Semitic slur were correct, however, why is it that Paulin himself hasn’t been silenced? Whether right or wrong, charges of anti-Semitism do not suppress free-speech, any more than...