Pieter Willem van der Horst

Pieter Willem van der Horst (born 4 July 1946) is a scholar and university professor emeritus specializing in New Testament studies, Early Christian literature, and the Jewish and Hellenistic context of Early Christianity.

Education and career

Van der Horst was born in Driebergen, the Netherlands.[1] He studied classical philology and received a doctorate in theology in 1978. From 1969 to 2006, he was a research assistant, junior and senior lecturer, and full professor at the Faculty of Theology of Utrecht University.[2] He is an editor of the series Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature, published by Walter de Gruyter,[3] and is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.[4][5]

'Jewish cannibalism' controversy

See also: Blood libel against Jews and Islam and antisemitism.

In 2006, van der Horst became embroiled in a controversy over his retirement lecture, "The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism," which traced the development of this antisemitic theme from the Hellenistic period through the Middle Ages to Nazism. He planned to conclude by examining the resurgence of the cannibalism myth in contemporary Islamic media, including cartoons, television programs, and sermons, particularly in Iran, Syria, and Palestine.[6]

The text of the lecture was reviewed in advance by Utrecht University administrators. According to van der Horst, he was asked by the dean of faculty[7] to delete the passage on what he prefers to call "Islamic Jew hatred."[8] She found the contemporary portions of the lecture to be "pamphlet-like" and "unscientific."[9] When he declined to edit, the dean referred the matter to the rector magnificus Willem Hendrik Gispen, the university's chief administrator. Van der Horst was then asked to appear before a committee composed of the rector, two deans of faculty, and Bas de Gaay Fortman, who holds Utrecht's unique chair of Political Economy of Human Rights. The administration, while not disputing van der Horst's reconstruction of the chain of events, has maintained that he misunderstood the content of that meeting.[10] Van der Horst says that he was given three reasons for editing his lecture:

“ They claimed it was too dangerous to give the complete lecture because it might trigger violent reactions from 'well-organized Muslim student groups' for which the rector could not take any responsibility. The committee also said it feared my speech would thwart efforts at bridge-building between Muslims and non-Muslims at the university. Finally, they claimed my lecture was far below the university's scholarly standards.[11] ”

Van der Horst said that he was given 24 hours to edit the lecture, and left the meeting "in a state of total confusion." In a guest column for The Wall Street Journal, he wrote that he had decided, with no independent means to verify any potential risk to himself or others, to proceed with an expurgated version. Because of the challenge to his academic reputation, he said, he also asked several colleagues, including three professors of Islamic Studies he left unnamed, to review his work from a scholarly perspective. According to van der Horst, none found weakness in the scholarship, nor any statements offensive to Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur'an.[12]

Van der Horst delivered his "castrated"[12] valedictory speech 16 June 2006.

Media reaction

The next day, the incident began to receive Dutch media coverage. The deleted passages were published by the daily newspaper Trouw,[4] which had been contacted by van der Horst's fellow professors. These included passages that van der Horst himself identified as "polemic" involving the connection between German fascism and "Islamic vilification of Jews" in the contemporary Middle East, with statements such as "the Islamisation of European antisemitism is one of the most frightening developments of the past decades."[13]

On June 22, rector magnificus Gispen responded to the controversy in an interview with NRC Handelsblad, another Dutch daily. Gispen maintained that neither "Islamophobia" nor censorship was at issue, but rather the quality of van der Horst's work. He attributed van der Horst's response to resentment over having to retire and the "marginalization" of his academic department.[10]

Theo van Gogh, murdered filmmaker

Van der Horst's Wall Street Journal column was published June 30. In it, he asserted that despite the publication of the unexpurgated version of his lecture in multiple media outlets, he "did not receive a single negative, let alone threatening, Muslim reaction," though some had criticized him for overgeneralization.[12]

Peter Debye, Dutch Nobel laureate

Critics interpreted the university's reaction as part of an excessively conciliatory response to a perceived Islamist agenda following the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in late 2004 and subsequent threats against Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who emigrated to the United States in 2006.[14] The incident has been compared to Utrecht University's handling of accusations against Peter Debye, the Nobel laureate after whom the university's Institute of Physics & Chemistry had been named. Debye's name was removed following allegations that he had collaborated with the Nazis while director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin during the 1930s.[15] Gispen himself acknowledged that his position toward van der Horst's lecture had been influenced by the Debye controversy.[10]

Dutch media covered the controversy through news stories and in editorials; the positions of both the rector and van der Horst received support.[16] The controversy also received attention from Anglophone blogs that deal with antisemitism or with the effects of "Islamophobia" on academic freedom.[17] French media are alleged to have underreported the incident, but French commentator Paul Landau stated strongly that in his opinion it "illustrated the level of 'dhimmitude' elite universities in many European countries have come to today. … Wake up, Erasmus, they've become fools."[18]

Van der Horst went on to publish "The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism: A Chapter in the History of Antisemitism" in Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (English Series), vol. 8 (2008). He traces the origin of the belief — that Jews murder a non-Jew each year to ritually consume the entrails and blood — to Apion, a 1st-century Alexandrian scholar who constructed the myth as a conflict between the civilizing Egyptian deity Isis and the god of the Jews.[19]

Selected works

In addition to numerous articles, van der Horst has published, edited or contributed to the following books:

Van der Horst was honored with the publication of Empsychoi Logoi: Religious Innovations in Antiquity. Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 2008), as part of the series Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. The volume was edited by Alberdina Houtman, Albert de Jong, and Magda Misset-van de Weg.

References

  1. ↑ Biographical note, NIAS Newsletter 37, Fall 2006, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, p. 34 online.
  2. ↑ Pieter Willem van der Horst, Jews and Christians in Their Graeco-Roman Context (Mohr Siebeck, 2006), author's note, p. iv online.
  3. ↑ NIAS Newsletter 37, Fall 2006, p. 35.
  4. 1 2 Manfred Gerstenfeld, "Utrecht University: The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism, Censorship, and Fear of Muslim Intimidation," Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 2008, online.
  5. ↑ "Piet van der Horst". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
  6. ↑ Carine Cassuto, "Academic Censorship in the Netherlands," FrontPageMagazine.com, 12-05-2006, view.
  7. ↑ The dean has not been named in English-language sources consulted for this article.
  8. ↑ Pieter W. van der Horst, "Tying Down Academic Freedom," Wall Street Journal 30 June 2006, online.
  9. ↑ Jannetje Koelewijn, "'Ik ben niet bang en van censuur is geen sprake': Rector magnificus Gispen over zijn ingrijpen bij afscheidsrede," NRC Handelsblad, 22 June 2006, English via Google Translate.
  10. 1 2 3 Koelewijn, "Rector magnificus."
  11. ↑ Van der Horst, "Tying Down Academic Freedom."
  12. 1 2 3 Van der Horst, "Tying Down Academic Freedom."
  13. ↑ Van der Horst, "Tying Down Academic Freedom"; Gerstenfeld, "Utrecht University," where a sample passage involving Mohammad Amin al-Husayni is reprinted.
  14. ↑ Cassuto, "Academic Censorship in the Netherlands,"; Paul Belien, "Coping with Islam: Censorship in Dutch Academia," The Brussels Journal 07-03-2006, view.
  15. ↑ Carine Cassuto, "Academic Censorship in the Netherlands", stating that the charges against Debye were untrue and evidence of academic censorship; Gerstenfeld, "Utrecht University," with the view that the actions against Debye were justified by his Nazi connections. See extensive treatment of the subject at Peter Debye: War activities and controversies.
  16. ↑ Gerstenfeld, "Utrecht University,"
  17. ↑ For instance, Dhimmi Watch in FrontPageMag.com, "Dutch professor censored for daring to criticize Islam"; Kesher Talk, self-described as having "a hawkish liberal Jewish perspective," 6 July 2006, "Eurabia Here We Come: Wackademics Censor the Truth in the Netherlands"; and NoolaBeulah (12-05-2006) "Limits of academic freedom," all supporting van der Horst; Demagogue, "Gadfly or Victim?", presenting both sides of the issue.
  18. ↑ "L’affaire Van Der Horst illustre à mon avis le niveau de dhimmitude auquel sont parvenues les élites universitaires dans de nombreux pays d’Europe aujourd’hui. … Erasme, réveille-toi, ils sont devenus fous." Paul Landau, "Retour sur l'affaire Van Der Horst: Eurabia et la mise au pas des universités européennes," republished by The Augean Stables, referring to the Dutch humanist who was one of the leading figures of the northern European Renaissance and the author of The Praise of Folly. Public comments also available at the site.
  19. ↑ Article abstract

Further reading

External links


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