Friday, March 25, 2011

Harvard Club promotes muddled thinking and supposition

Sydney Harvard Club, a Harvard alumni organisation, promotes a 4 April $25 lunch event:
In current secular upheavals across the Middle East, Arab peoples have demonstrated dissatisfaction with governance of their repressive states. They want dictatorships abolished and replaced by democratic governments where the right to decent wages and good living standards are respected and human rights are upheld. Israel is following the changes with nervousness and some trepidation. Many Israelis continue to believe that their future security and continuing colonisation depends upon neighbouring states being governed by dictatorships backed by the United States, Australia and the West. But WikiLeaks, by exposing such American activities, has put these relationships in doubt. Antony Loewenstein will examine the latest developments and make some predictions about whether Israeli views will change, and how.
The Harvard Club should be deeply embarrassed at having published such nonsense: the muddled thinking and supposition of the bolded section above is so vast as to render it meaningless. Then again, the author-bio is also misleading:
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent journalist and writer. He has written for the Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and Haaretz and many other newspapers and journals across the world. He has published two books: ‘My Israel Question’ (Melbourne University Press, 2009), and ‘The Blogging Revolution’ (Melbourne University Press, 2008) and is currently working on a book about disaster capitalism.
Having book reviews and articles published by newspapers or their online sites does not mean you have written for them.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

You'd have to wonder why an association of Harvard Alumni would be listening to a person with no actual qualifications.

Notwithstanding, Loewenstein also found himself on the board of a questionable Macquarie University Department (Macquarie is the Diet Coke of universities in NSW).

Perhaps he figures that hanging around universities long enough will bestow the sort of credibility that most people earn after a few years actually studying there.

The whole idea that Israel is interested in colonising anything, is simply ridiculous. No colonial project involves withdrawing from land (e.g. Gaza) and then quietly putting up with rocket-fire as your reward.

It's a worthless slogan, like most of the arguments used against Israel, with no basis in fact.

Needless to say, Loewenstein wouldn't have a word to say about the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Indeed, he's probably not even aware of it, having previously issued a map in his Israel book wherein Lebanon was next to Tel-Aviv.

You know, exactly the sort of thing that gets you an F at a real university...

6:43 PM  
Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

Loewenstein was invited onto the Board of Macquarie University (the Diet Coke of Australian universities) by a fellow Israel-hater.

Now he's hanging around with Harvard types.

Presumably Loewy thinks that if he hangs around graduates long enough, he may be mistaken for one.

8:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Harvard Clubs of Australia" = just Harvard selling a franchise, trading on their "prestigious" name
http://hcag.org.au/Logos-Photos-Buttons-Headers/HCA+HCAV_Group.PDF

10:14 PM  

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