It's Tough Being Joel Beinin

My colleague, Campus Watch director Winfield Myers, has penned a satirical blog post on Middle East studies professor Joel Beinin. It begins like so:

Poor Joel Beinin: the world consistently fails to measure up to his high standards of conduct. Year after year, uncaring, boorish individuals fling darts straight through his thin skin and into his pure heart.

The most recent episode of brutish cruelty came earlier this month when, according to Beinin, two professors at Portland State University asked the Stanford professor inappropriate political questions during his interview for a position in PSU's history department. Beinin complained about this roughhouse ordeal in an email to Ken Ruoff, who headed the search committee that invited Beinin for an interview. Willamette Week in Portland published a story on the controversy (in which they erroneously clamed that Campus Watch is run by David Horowitz) along with Beinin's email to Ruoff.

Let's take a look at the email, with my comments and translations in bold...

Continue reading "Everybody's Always Picking on Joel Beinin"

I've written about Beinin on several occasions myself. Click here, here and here to read.