ISOLATION DIARIES
A few years ago, before the Corbyn era, I clashed with an English musicologist who spent a lot of time online being rude about Israel. I told him he was in danger of being antisemitic if he thought the one Jewish state was the worst state in the world. “It isn’t,” he shot back.
“Which is?”
“The US.”
This was mildly reassuring, representing the left’s reverse Cold War perspective. My acquaintance — let’s call him “Keith” — toned down his rhetoric as he and I worked together on exposing brutal abuses in English music schools. Last month he got in touch on another matter. My former anti-Zionist had been alarmed by an eruption of academic antisemitism.
To give the full picture, I’ll need to introduce you to Heinrich Schenker, a Galician Jew in Vienna. Schenker (1868-1935) was a failed composer who invented a method of studying scores by tracing everything to a single root phrase. Praised by the influential conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler for his deconstruction of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, Schenker’s became the mainstream university method of musical analysis.
I, along with many others, loathed Schenkerian analysis as mechanical and inhuman, relating only to an alleged code in the score and not to the feeling that is the impulse of great music. Schenker was a crabby, obese, arid, unattractive fellow. Little did I imagine that I would be called to his defence.
But right now Schenker is at the heart of an antisemitic insurgency. It began when an Afro-American assistant professor from New York, Philip Ewell by name, called Schenker “a virulent racist” because he considered German music superior to other forms. Ewell demanded a ban on Schenkerian analysis. “Keith” was appalled. “This is toxic,” he cried, “the most sustained attack on any teaching of classical music we have seen.”
And that was just the start. The Journal of Schenkerian Studies published 100 pages of responses to Ewell, one arguing that his denunciation of Schenker “may be seen as part and parcel of the much broader current of black antisemitism”. This remark ignited a furious petition, signed by hundreds of scholars, demanding punitive action against the author of that remark. His name is Professor Timothy Jackson and he happens to be Jewish. He is facing a hate-fuelled mob. How can I not defend the Schenkerians? This was never about music.
If you’re thinking of studying musicology in the US any time soon, I’d advise you to take a first degree in war studies and a further course in krav maga. It’s hell out there.
And not just there. It’s here as well. I asked “Keith” why he’d asked me to speak out in the Schenker row when he felt so strongly about it. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I’ve been made head of department and I’m committed to decolonising the curriculum.” Come across that phrase before? It means, according to the
Guardian, in university courses at the expense of recognised authorities who are “male, pale and stale”. On paper, decolonising is not a bad idea, broadening and diversifying the curriculum. In practice, it is a cross between the Robespierre reign of terror and the Salem witch hunt, with a dash of Stalinism for good measure. “Keith” has been muted by the mob. Here’s another case, more insidious still. A friend who teaches ancient history in London had a surreal conversation with the head of department. “What are you doing to decolonise your curriculum?” he demanded.
“My curriculum ends in the second century, long before colonialism,” replied my friend reasonably. “I am sure you can find it within yourself to show that you are decolonising,” he advised.
Old KGB tricks have been called into the service of BLM. Universities, once paragons of free thought, have turned into echo chambers of empty slogans. Independent thinkers are deplatformed. “Decolonising the curriculum” is making a bonfire of the books that shaped our minds and the men who saved our nation. BBC News recently accused Churchill of fomenting famine in India, a specious libel that has yet to be retracted. BLM began as a campaign for equal rights. Look now and it’s about Jews. Be alert. We are in danger of becoming outlaws in academia, censored in the halls of learning.
We are in danger of becoming outlaws in academia’