Cinnamon Stillwell

"Entertaining Vietnam" Trailer

2012-01-27T09:35:00.000-08:00

Shameless Mother-Promotion Alert! As many of my friends and some readers already know, my mother, Mara Wallis, wrote, edited, produced, and directed a documentary a few years back called "Entertaining Vietnam." She was an independent (i.e. non-USO) entertainer for the troops during the Vietnam war, as were many other young women and men from around the world, and their stories have rarely been told. There's much that's fun in the film (go-go dancers galore!) and much that's serious (not all the entertainers made it out alive) and the film offers up a real slice of history. Seeing the joy on the faces of American soldiers captured in the audience footage is one of the many moving aspects of the film. There's now a short trailer up at YouTube to whet the appetite and the DVD can be bought on Amazon. Of course I'm biased, but I truly do give it two-thumbs up!

Campus Watch (and Cinnamon) on Facebook

2012-01-26T12:28:00.000-08:00

Campus Watch now has a Facebook page, for which I'll be acting as the administrator, so please stop by, give us a look, and if so inclined, a "like." We plan on linking to all of our new articles and blog posts, as well as posting updates on developments in the field of Middle East studies. I also have my own personal Facebook page, so feel free to stop by there as well. Here are the links:

Campus Watch on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Campus-Watch/221916871196316

Cinnamon Stillwell on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1175764167

Time to Leave Afghanistan

2012-01-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

Venerable frontline reporter Michael Yon has come to a conclusion about Afghanistan I reached a few years ago: It's time to leave. We have no clear strategy in sight and quite simply, we're wasting blood and treasure. Our military does not exist to try and transform 7th century backwardness into modern, liberal democracies, particularly without first meting out utter defeat (a la' Japan and Germany during WWII). And if we're not addressing the ideological component at hand--Islamism--we're not truly engaged in the battle.

The Obama Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood: What Gives?

2012-01-20T10:17:00.000-08:00

Barry Rubin has an excellent article at Yid With Lid on the Obama administration's folly in believing they can work with the "moderate Islamists" of the Muslim Brotherhood and the media's culpability in pushing this false narrative. As he puts it:

Not only is the Obama Administration, as I’ve written for the last year, favoring radical Islamist forces–despite the fact that these are anti-Western, pro-terrorism, building dictatorships, and openly antisemitic and anti-Christian–but now even the establishment media is admitting it.

One could argue that via our relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, we're already allied with anti-Western, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, pro-terrorism (at least behind-the-scenes) Islamist dictatorships, and that perhaps the Obama administration considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be in the same category. One could more strongly argue that the Muslim Brotherhood--with whom we already attempted an alliance during the Cold War that had the unintended consequence of helping perpetuate Islamism throughout the West--represents a unique threat and that our relationship will end up resembling the antagonism between the U.S. and the theocratic regime in Iran. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Farewell to UCLA's Sondra Hale

2012-01-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

The rabidly anti-Israel University of California, Los Angeles anthropology and women's studies professor Sondra Hale has retired. Her list of dubious achievements is long and, over the years, Campus Watch has chronicled a good number:

Hale was one of the founding members of the organizing committee for the Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel. At the time of its inception, she touted her prominent involvement, telling the Daily Bruin in February, 2009 that, were it to go into effect, "foreign exchange and cooperative programs with Israel would cease."
At an October, 2009 conference at the Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)--for which she served as chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee--Hale equated the pro-Israel groups StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) with "Nazis" and "McCarthyists."
In response to widespread criticism regarding the blatantly anti-Israel and, at times, anti-Semitic nature of a January, 2009 "Human Rights and Gaza" CNES symposium, Hale penned an op-ed in the Daily Bruin, slamming UCLA student and member of Bruins for Israel, Ben Meiselman, for having the temerity to publish a piece criticizing the symposium.
Hale was one of the signatories to a ridiculously conspiratorial 2002 open letter warning that Israel would use the Iraq war to perpetrate "ethnic cleansing" against the Palestinians.
Shifting focus to her other specialty, Africa, Hale suggested in November, 2007 that Islamist-perpetrated genocide in Darfur could be prevented by sending in "mediation, negotiation, healing and psychotherapy . . . professionals to work with people when tensions are building up."

UCLA now has an opportunity to make amends for Hale's years of agitprop and politicization of her discipline by filling her position with someone who will pursue disinterested, rigorous scholarship.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

Willful Blindness Toward Terrorists at UCLA a Decade After 9-11

2011-12-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

In a Campus Watch essay published today at FrontPage Magazine, Judith Greblya reports on a recent roundtable discussion at the University of California, Los Angeles, at which Lisa Hajjar of UC-Santa Barbara and others attacked America, Israel, and the West and issued apologias for terrorists. Sadly, it's what close observers of contemporary Middle East studies have come to expect from our leading universities.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted a roundtable discussion last month titled, "After a Decade of the 'War on Terror': The Middle East, Human Rights and American Muslims." Sponsored by the UCLA School of Law Critical Race Studies Program, the event featured UCLA law professor Asli Bali, University of California, Santa Barbara sociology professor Lisa Hajjar, and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Southern California attorney Ahilan Arulanantham. The audience of approximately twenty people was comprised mostly of law and graduate students, along with a few members of the community.

According to the introduction, the speakers were to "examine this decade on the war on terror in the broader context of the international community," but the two-hour event quickly descended into a forum for America-bashing. All three speakers called the existence of Islamic terrorism into question and, what's worse, behaved as if the attacks of September 11, 2001 never occurred.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

Rashid Ghannoushi: John Esposito's Islamist in Tunis

2011-12-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

In an article written for Campus Watch that appears at American Thinker, journalist Stephen Schwartz examines the beliefs of Tunisian political leader Rashid Ghannouchi. Although Georgetown's John Esposito has spent years whitewashing Ghannouchi's reputation, Schwartz exposes the Tunisian as a radical Islamist:

Rashid Ghannoushi (or Rachid Ghannouchi in French) is the ideological elder of Tunisia's Ennahda, or the Renaissance Party, the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. He arrived in Washington on Monday, November 28, 2011, in the halo of a skewed electoral victory by his party in the small North African country's recent elections.

In addition to being the man controlling Tunisia's main Islamist movement from behind the scenes, without an elected post and the responsibility that it would bring with it, Ghannoushi comes to America as someone who was, to a significant extent, lifted to power by the support of American Middle Eastern studies establishment. Indeed, the successful rise of Ghannoushi is symbolic of the American academic penchant for enabling and justifying radical Islam. A key advocate in this enterprise was the notorious professor John L. Esposito, director of Georgetown University's Saudi-financed Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

The 'Angry Arab' Goes Mad

2011-12-08T09:47:00.001-08:00

Writing for Campus Watch, Rima Greene and I report on a recent lecture from the self-described "Angry Arab," California State University, Stanislaus professor As'ad AbuKhalil. Our article appears today at Frontpage Magazine:

As'ad AbuKahlil—a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus—spoke last month at a day-long "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley titled, "Building Solidarity with the Arab Spring." It consisted of a number of "workshop sessions" at the Valley Life Sciences Building, followed by a "plenary session" at the Multicultural Center, and was co-sponsored by the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, the Berkeley Muslim Students Association PAC, the International Socialist Organization, and the Syrian American Council.

AbuKhalil's workshop on "The U.S. and the Arab Uprising" was held in a tiny, hot, windowless room filled with students wearing hijabs and keffiyehs. . . . AbuKhalil, author of the "Angry Arab" blog, was introduced as "the most influential Arab blogger in English and Arabic." Wasting no time living up to his self-caricature, he presented the demise of Israel as his life's work, referred repeatedly to the "usurping Zionist entity," and characterized the U.S. as the source of all that ails the Arab world.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Using the 'Arab Uprisings' to Bash America and Israel

2011-11-18T09:50:00.001-08:00

Judith Greblya, writing for Campus Watch, reports on a recent lecture at UCLA on the "Arab uprisings" that devolved into a forum for America and Israel bashing. Her article appears today at Frontpage Magazine and it begins like so:

On Thursday November 10, 2011, approximately sixty people gathered for a lecture hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles's Center for Near Eastern Studies. The event was titled, "Taking Stock: The Arab Uprising on the Eve of Their First Anniversary" and it featured two history professors, James Gelvin of ULCA and Juan Cole of the University of Michigan.

Though the two-hour event promised to illuminate the various particulars and multi-layered realities of the Arab uprisings, it quickly dwindled into a platform for the type of postcolonial, anti-American, and anti-Israel rhetoric typical to the field of Middle East studies, and certainly to the notoriously biased Gelvin and Cole.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Juan Cole: Critic of Democracy, Apologist for Tyranny

2011-11-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

Juan Cole, among the highest-profile Middle East scholars in the U.S., delivered a lecture on Iran's response to the so-called "Arab spring" at New York University recently. Alan Jacobs, a student of Middle East studies in New York City, filed a report for Campus Watch that appears today at FrontPage Magazine:

Few professors in the controversial world of Middle East studies boast more about their own notoriety than Juan Cole, a man who believes the consistent criticism of his public positions to be a sign of distinction. Yale University's decision not to hire him for an endowed chair five years ago due to insufficient scholarship led him to publicly charge that George W. Bush and the CIA torpedoed his candidacy. When organizations such as Campus Watch publicize Cole's outlandish commentary, he cries "censorship" and labels them "McCarthyite."

His latest lecture at New York University—a collaboration with Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi-American assistant professor of Arab culture and politics at NYU—dealt with Iran's response to the "Arab Spring." In a packed room of over 100 mostly Iranian and Arab-American students, Cole analyzed the Islamic Republic of Iran from a "classical realist" perspective. If one didn't know any better, one would have departed the lecture believing that Iran justifiably protects its own interests; that America is a malignant and aggressive force and Israel its trigger-happy satellite; that Turkey's Islamist Freedom and Development Party (AKP) is headed by a practical and liberal Prime Minister Erdogan who promotes "Middle Eastern multiculturalism"; and that a moderate Islamist party in Tunisia called Ennahda does the same.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

The Middle East Studies Establishment vs. Walid Phares

2011-11-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

In an article for Campus Watch published today at American Thinker, I address the recent attacks against Walid Phares from three of the most biased, politicized professors in the field of Middle East studies: As'ad AbuKhalil of California State University, Stanislaus; Duke University's Ebrahim Moosa; and Omid Safi of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It begins like so:

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced last month that Walid Phares -- a Lebanese-American Christian, adjunct professor of jihadist global strategies at the National Defense University, and former Middle East studies professor at Florida Atlantic University -- would be a special adviser on the Middle East and North Africa, it elicited howls of fury from the usual suspects. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding case and the chief Islamist organ in the U.S. -- sent a letter to the Romney campaign stating CAIR's predictable objections, while publications such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and Mother Jones followed suit with error-filled hit pieces.

Phares's moral clarity on Islamism and jihadism do not sit well with those who would rather engage in apologetics and obstructionism. This explains why his fiercest opponents have included some of the worst from the field of Middle East studies.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Gilbert Achcar's Anti-Zionism of Fools

2011-11-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

Writing for Campus Watch, Rima Greene and I report on a recent lecture by the University of London's Gilbert Achcar at UC Berkeley, as part of a University of California speaking tour. Our article appears today at Frontpage Magazine:

"Don't expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I'm an Arab."

So declared Gilbert Achcar—professor of development studies and international relations at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies—at the outset of his lecture last month at the University of California, Berkeley. Those in the audience hoping for scholarly objectivity were thus informed that Achcar's ethnicity trumped intellectual independence and that, despite evidence to the contrary (Nonie Darwish, the founder of Arabs for Israel, comes to mind, as do the majority of Israel's Arab citizenry), an Arab could not be pro-Israel. One had to give him credit for at least confirming his biases up front.

A Lebanese-born, self-described "academic, writer, socialist, and anti-war activist," Achcar was on a University of California speaking tour to discuss his 2010 book, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. His UC Berkeley lecture was sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) and was held in its Saudi-largesse-provided Sultan Room, with a glowing introduction from CMES vice chair Emily Gottreich. The audience of around 75 students and adults had to strain at times to discern Achcar's words, delivered as they were in a heavy accent and low tones, but the crowd appeared politically sympathetic.

To read the entire article, click here. If so inclined, please e-mail your concerns and comments to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley (cmes@berkeley.edu) and to the Jewish Studies Program at UC Davis (jst@ucdavis.edu).

Academic Pay to Play: Radical Islamists Fund One of Their Own in Ontario

2011-10-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Ingrid Mattson's appointment to the new chair in Islamic studies at Ontario's Huron University College--and the radical Muslim organizations who supported the establishment of the chair--offer a textbook example of the pernicious influence Islamist groups can play in higher education. Campus Watch director Winfield Myers critiques this process in an article published yesterday at American Thinker, "Academic Pay to Play: Radical Islamists Fund One of Their Own in Ontario":

Huron University College (HUC) in Ontario announced Friday morning the appointment of Ingrid Mattson, a professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), as the first London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at its Faculty of Theology.

The move validates widespread concern, as revealed in this Campus Watch article by Canadian journalist Barbara Kay and a letter from concerned faculty and friends at HUC, both published in May, that the support of several Islamist groups in funding the chair would lead to the appointment of a radical Islamist as the first holder. In Ingrid Mattson, the funders' wishes have been fulfilled.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

Pining for a 'Kent State Moment'

2011-10-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

I was just saying to a friend the other day that the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters around the country are probably pining for a Kent State moment. That is they're trying desperately to relive the '60s, to be part of a true grassroots movement, and to make of themselves victims and martyrs. Lo and behold, Donny Deutsch at MSNBC has said the same thing.

Kramer vs. Khalidi

2011-10-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

Excellent piece of historical sleuthing by Martin Kramer, who finds that Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi has been peddling yet another Israel-bashing falsehood. In Khalidi and company's world view, there's always a sinister conspiracy involving someone with a Jewish name behind everything.

Exodus, myth and malpractice | Martin Kramer on the Middle East

www.martinkramer.org

Did an ad man named Edward Gottlieb commission Leon Uris to write his famous book Exodus? Rashid Khalidi says so. He's wrong.

Praise for the Prez?

2011-10-07T12:49:00.001-07:00

This is a little after the fact, but in a major departure from my usual thoughts on the Commander-in-Chief, I would like to thank President Obama, and our military and intelligence services, for ridding the planet of al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone attack last week. I don't often agree with Obama on matters domestic and I found his approach to foreign policy soon after taking office (i.e. The Apology Tour) nauseating, but in retaining, and in some cases, stepping up the policies of the Bush administration in the war on terror, he has earned my praise. Of course, his supporters on the left have been disappointed and disgusted by these very same policies and Obama has yet (when hell freezes over, I suspect) to acknowledge that the Bush administration was correct in treating Islamic terrorism as an act of war, not of mere criminality. But actions speak louder than words and if he keeps up the aggressive anti-terror campaign, it will be difficult for GOP candidates to keep trotting out related criticism as a campaign strategy. Just sayin'.

"The Sing-Off" Stands Out From the Pack

2011-10-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

TV singing competitions are a dime a dozen, but the third season of the best of the bunch started a couple weeks ago and aired last night: The Sing-Off. It's got the standard format (cheesy host--Nick Lachey--and three judges), but what makes it different is that it's an a cappella (i.e. no instruments; voices only) competition. The groups are really talented and they come up with some very creative arrangements. I even bought a few of the songs from iTunes last season. Here's Vocal Point giving one of my favorite performances from last night.

Shana Tova!

2011-09-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

Obama's Gaffes

2011-09-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

Countless books were dedicated to "Bushisms," Dan Quayle was the biggest moron of all time, Sarah Palin is a rube, and all Republicans are stupid and uneducated. Meanwhile, Obama's endless gaffs, Freudian slips (saying "Jews" by mistake right after "billionaires"? Hmmm...), and complete and utter lack of decorum--doesn't anyone in the White House know this stuff?--are ignored. Gee, wonder why? Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times blog explores the latest (and see yesterday's blog for the "Intercontinental Railroad" Obama built).

John L. Esposito: Apologist for Wahhabi Islam

2011-09-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

Journalist Stephen Schwartz has produced a new, essay-length examination of the career and baleful influence of Georgetown University professor John Esposito. Although Campus Watch has published many articles on Esposito over the years, Schwartz's latest is the most comprehensive thus far. It appeared recently at American Thinker:

Three things are immediately obvious when one examines the biography of John Louis Esposito, American academic expert on Islam. The first is that -- as noted by his official biographical listing of more than forty-five books and monographs, along with his standing as editor of several reference series -- he seems indefatigably prolific, though the bulk of his writings present interpretations of contemporary phenomena rather than original research. The second is that he luxuriates in honors, including those bestowed by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other parties in whose objectivity about Islamic affairs few can believe. Finally, his work has provided an unremitting "explanation" that amounts to a committed defense of radical, rather than traditional, Islam. Esposito aspires to become the chief interlocutor between the U.S., if not the West as a whole, and the Muslim lands -- especially the extremist elements in Islamic societies.

To read the rest of the essay, please click here.

Reprinted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch Blog.

Berkeley-CAIR Islamophobia Report: 'No There, There'

2011-07-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

Stephen Schwartz, writing for Campus Watch, reports on the latest in "Islamophobia production" to emanate from the University of California, Berkeley, in league with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His article appears at American Thinker:

In April, Berkeley's Law School, also known as Boalt Hall, cosponsored a conference with the University's Center for Race and Gender (CRG) on "Islamophobia Production and Re-Defining Global 'Security' Agenda for the 21^st Century." The event followed a divisive March seminar at the University's Hastings law campus in San Francisco, "Litigating Palestine," which was little more than a forum for anti-Israel bombast. On June 23, America's premier Islamist organization, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), unveiled a report prepared in cooperation with UCB-CRG's Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) titled, "Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States."

. . . "Same Hate, New Target" is a garish political pamphlet, filled with splashy graphics and panic-mongering rhetoric. Its message is distinct: while the East Coast Islamist enablers focus on prettifying the condition of American Muslims, West Coast denizens concentrate on the American Muslim as a victim of the Republican political agenda, in need of "positive" assistance.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

An Open Letter to Alice Walker and Her Fellow Flotilla Travelers

2011-06-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

Richard L. Cravatts, director of the Communications Management Program at Simmons College, writing for RightSideNews:

. . . Your own obsession with the human rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people, and your comment that you seek “justice and respect” for Palestinian children alone, indicates that you and your fellow flotilla activists have already decided which children are deserving and which are not. True justice would be justice for Israelis and Palestinians alike, each with sovereign nations living “side by side in peace,” but that is not your concern at all. Your evident contempt for Israel’s right to self-determination, or even its right to protect the lives of its citizens— the purpose of the blockade you so cavalierly and recklessly intend to violate—demonstrates quite clearly that the safety and human rights of Jews are irrelevant to your world view in which the only individuals deserving of justice are those who you and other “progressives” define as victims, including your favorite Third World victim of the moment, the Palestinians.

Read it all.

Georgetown and the Islamist Money Changers

2011-06-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

In an article commissioned by Campus Watch published today at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz examines the effort of Georgetown's John Esposito to secure $325,000 from the Organization of the Islamic Congress via the tainted hands of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His findings will interest members of the Georgetown community and beyond who are concerned about Islamist funds being channeled to American universities, and who bemoan Georgetown's abandonment of its Catholic roots:

John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) at Georgetown University, is the leading defender of radical Islam in U.S. higher education -- if not in the entire Western academy. He and his enterprise have returned to the public eye with the exposure that, in 2006-07, they were offered $325,000 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to hold a conference on Islamophobia at the university.

A 57-member international body headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was founded in Morocco in 1969 to "protect" the Islamic sites in Jerusalem from Israel. It defines "Islamophobia" with considerable and questionable latitude, as any criticism of Muslim individual, institutional, ideological, legal, or cultural behavior. Combating Islamophobia as it conceives it, OIC seeks to prevent free discussion about Islam or the lives of Muslims under, for example, the radical Islamists dominating Saudi Arabia and ruling Iran.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

Manzar Foroohar: The California Faculty Association's Secret Weapon

2011-06-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

Investigative journalist Lee Kaplan, writing for Campus Watch, reports on the professor behind the California Faculty Association's 2009 anti-Israel resolution, Manzar Foroohar, and warns that a boycott and divestment resolution may soon follow. His article appears today at Frontpage Magazine; it begins like so:

When the California Faculty Association (CFA) adopted a resolution in 2009 condemning Israel for its military incursion into Gaza, it reinforced the fear that academic unions would be the next front in an ongoing propaganda offensive against the Jewish State. Amidst the ensuing controversy, one of the key players in the resolution's formation—Manzar Foroohar, an Iranian immigrant and history professor specializing in the modern Middle East and Latin America at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo—came to the fore. However, the extent of her involvement was never publicly acknowledged. In fact, Foroohar authored and championed the resolution, which was presented by the CFA Peace & Justice Committee (Committee), unanimously adopted by the CFA Board of Directors on February 7, 2009, and passed by the CFA General Assembly in Sacramento on April 4-5 that same year.

. . . the campaign to delegitimize Israel through the CFA didn't stop with the 2009 resolution. It may have opened the door for a future resolution to boycott and divest from Israel, which union leadership—responding to this author's interview requests during and after the closed-door 74^th CFA Assembly in San Francisco on April 8-9, 2011—refused to confirm or deny is in the works.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

Saree Makdisi's One-State Solution: A Delusive 'Just Peace'

2011-06-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Gideon Spitzer reports today at FrontPage Magazine on a recent lecture at the University of Pennsylvania by UCLA professor of English Saree Makdisi. The most recent in a long line of anti-Israel speakers sponsored by Penn, Makdisi pushed the so-called one-state solution, which if implemented would destroy Israel as a Jewish state:

Recently, UCLA professor of English and advocate of a single state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict Saree Makdisi spoke in the student union at the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture, sponsored by the Penn Middle East Center (MEC), the English Department, the Greenfield Intercultural Center, and the Penn Arab Student Society, represented another in a series of events sponsored by the university-funded Middle East Center that brought known anti-Israel speakers to Penn, including UCLA's James Gelvin, Stanford's Joel Beinin, artists Reza Kanazi and Radio Rahim, and numerous film screenings. To get a better sense of the level of bias at MEC, consider the following: in the first four months of 2011, the MEC underwrote eight events co-sponsored by Penn for Palestine and associated groups, but none by the Penn Israel Coalition or other pro-Israel campus groups. Moreover, by inviting an English professor like Makdisi, whose academic specialty is eighteenth and nineteenth-century British poetry, MEC privileges his anti-Israel politics over his lack of specialized knowledge of the Middle East.

To read the rest of Spitzer's report, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

Letter to Campus Watch: Qaddafi Money Tied to Co-Sponsor of Huron University College Chair of Islamic Studies

2011-05-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Campus Watch has just published a letter signed by concerned residents of London, Ontario, home of Huron University College (HUC). On May 11, CW published an article by Canadian journalist Barbara Kay, "The Dumbing Down of Due Diligence at Canada's Huron College," a shorter version of which appeared May 13 in Canada's National Post. Kay detailed the questionable sources of funding for a new chair in Islamic studies at HUC. The signatories of the latest letter also signed an April 5 letter to HUC interim principal (president) Trish Fulton explaining their concerns about the funding.]

We thank Campus Watch for publishing the excellent essay of Barbara Kay on the establishment of a Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College in London, Ontario funded mainly by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC). Your coverage sparked quite a bit of media interest in Canada and, at last, this matter is getting public attention.

This report is coming to you from a number of the individuals who signed the original letter of concern to Huron University College. (It is not signed by all of them because we want to get the information contained in this communication out quickly and we do not have the time to contact and receive a reply from all the signatories.) As the message is too long for a letter to any editor, we hope you will publish this on your web-site as an update to Barbara Kay's essay.

The rest of the letter is posted here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog.

Tariq Ramadan Discovers His Inner Flower Child

2011-05-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

Stanford University senior Jonathan Gelbart, writing for Campus Watch, reports on a recent lecture there by Tariq Ramadan. His article appears at American Thinker:

Tariq Ramadan -- a member of the world's most famous Islamist family, as the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan el-Banna -- spoke at Stanford University on April 12, 2011, in a lecture entitled, "The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism."

. . . Ramadan is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and despite his extensive writings on that subject, he adhered closely to the title of his talk, rarely mentioning religion until the question and answer session.

In the first of what would become a series of open-ended, philosophical questions, Ramadan began by asking the audience how to find meaning in the relatively short time they are given on earth. "What is the meaning [of all this]?" he asked rhetorically. After pausing for a moment, he added an unexpectedly blunt and morbid caveat: "One day you will not be able to pose that question -- because you are all going to die." The audience responded with nervous laughter.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

The Dumbing-Down of Due Diligence at Canada's Huron College

2011-05-17T10:52:00.001-07:00

In an important new Campus Watch essay, Canadian journalist Barbara Kay exposes the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated organizations behind the donation of $2 million to found a new chair in Islamic studies at Huron University College, a Canadian institution affiliated with the University of Western Ontario.

For various reasons, some quite innocent, many Western universities are keen to establish Islamic Studies programs on their campuses. And for various other reasons, some quite pernicious, Islamist organizations are keen to see Islamic Studies programs established at Western universities. To this end, allegedly to foster "understanding" of Islam, the latter are eager to establish Islamic Studies programs with boodle of such heft and shininess that salivating committees tasked with the decision of whether to accept or refuse the gift throw caution to the winds. But closer inspection of certain controversial donor groups might suggest that their real agenda is twofold: Islamist colonization of the institution, and image-laundering.

One such potential scenario may be in progress at Huron University College, an affiliate of Canada's prestigious University of Western Ontario (UWO). Huron offers undergrad degrees in a variety of majors, as well as post-baccalaureate and professional degree programs in theology. The College has recently accepted a $2 million endowment for a new Chair in Islamic Studies within the College's historically Anglican Faculty of Theology.[1] Most of the money will be provided by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)[2]. The IIIT contribution amounts to around half the endowment.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch Blog.

Radical Islam at UC Berkeley Law

2011-05-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

Writing for Campus Watch at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz reports on a recent conference at UC Berkeley Law School in which "Islamophobia production" took center stage. It begins like so:

The exploitation of the University of California's Bay Area law schools as a platform for Arab and Islamist propaganda continues. A convocation on "Litigating Palestine," replete with extreme rhetoric against Israel, was held at Hastings Law School in San Francisco on March 25-26, 2011--without official endorsement by Hastings--and on April 20-21, an equally radical conference took place at UC Berkeley Law School. It was held in Boalt Hall and presented to the wider public via streaming video.

The Berkeley event was hosted by the University's Center for Race and Gender (CRG) and titled, in the style of post-modern academia, "Islamophobia Production and Re-Defining Global 'Security' Agenda for the 21^st Century." Within CRG, the function appeared under the rubric of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, directed by Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies. Conference publicity stated that the speeches "will be published in UC Berkeley's Islamophobia Studies Journal, inaugural edition, Fall, 2011."

. . . The heaviest hitters on the speakers' list, with regard to their widespread public activities, were CAIR executive director Nihad Awad, Hamza Yusuf, and Hatem Bazian. The three appeared on an April 21, 2011, evening panel, which dealt with "Community Partnership" and was moderated by Munir Jiwa, director of the GTU Center for Islamic Studies.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Cross-posted at the Campus Watch Blog.

Pushing 'Islamophobia' at UCLA

2011-05-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

In an article posted today at Frontpage Magazine, Campus Watch contributor Judith Greblya reports on UCLA professor Khaled Abou El Fadl's latest exercise in obfuscation:

Should an academic lecture on Sharia (Islamic law) become a platform for promoting fear of "Islamophobia"? This is exactly what occurred on April 14, 2011, when the University of California, Los Angeles, held the third and final lecture from Khaled Abou El Fadl—Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law and chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA—in the series, "Sharia Watch: AView from the Inside." The lecture was cosponsored by UCLA's School of Law, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law, and Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program.

The receptive audience of approximately 30 people consisted mostly of members of the local Muslim community and graduate students from UCLA's Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department.

In her introductory remarks, UCLA law professor Asli Bali explained that the aim of the series was, "to better understand Sharia, as there is a lot of misinformation on what it is in the West." But, as in previous lectures, only 15 minutes of the hour-long lecture were actually devoted to Sharia; the bulk of the lecture focused on Islamophobia in America and the West.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Cross-posted at the Campus Watch Blog.

Anti-Israel Jewish Studies

2011-04-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

In a Campus Watch-sponsored article posted today at Israel National News, Judith Grebyla and I discuss the sad state of affairs amongst the ranks of Jewish studies academia in California:

The field of Middle East studies is notorious for producing apologias for radical Islam, particularly where anti-Israel and, at times, anti-Semitic sentiment is concerned.

These same tendencies are also increasingly common in an unexpected sector of university life: Jewish studies. An open letter dated March 3, 2011, and signed by 30 University of California Jewish studies faculty members, is a case in point.

Posted at the "Stand with the Eleven" website, along with a similar statement by 100 UC Irvine faculty members, the letter states:

As faculty affiliated with Jewish Studies at the University of California, we are deeply distressed by the decision of the District Attorney in Orange County, California, to file criminal charges against Muslim students who disrupted Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech on the UC Irvine campus last year. While we disagree with the students' decision to disrupt the speech, we do not believe such peaceful protest should give rise to criminal liability. The individual students and the Muslim Student Union were disciplined for this conduct by the University, including suspending the MSU from functioning as a student organization for a quarter. This is sufficient punishment. There is no need for further punitive measures, let alone criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions.

While it might seem counter-intuitive for Jewish studies academics to support such an endeavor, a closer look demonstrates that many of the signatories are harsh critics of Israel.

Continue reading "Anti-Israel Jewish Studies"

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog

'Litigating Palestine' at a Public-supported Law School

2011-04-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Writing for Campus Watch at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz reports on a recent conference at the Hastings School of Law. True to form, participants represented an intellectual homogeneity that would have once been thought scandalous but which is now a route to scandal. Here are his opening paragraphs:

The University of California's Hastings College of the Law recently demonstrated its utility in the "lawfare" offensive against Israel by hosting a conference on March 25-26, 2011, titled, "Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?" The event drew about 75 law students, faculty members, and pro-Arab activists. Police were present at the entrances to the building, as well as at the door of a second room where the proceedings were visible on video, and a large sign warned that disruptive individuals would be excluded.

Hastings was to officially cosponsor the conference, with a welcoming address by its dean, Frank Wu. But both were canceled after local Jewish leaders expressed their objections to the one-sided character of the conference in a meeting with Wu and other Hastings officials.

Hastings faculty opposed the decision to withdraw sponsorship, and law professor George Bisharat, who set up the conference, told Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle that "opponents had wrongly accused the conference of 'Israeli-bashing.'" In fact, that's exactly what took place at the conference. The anti-Israeli rhetoric of the participants was notably extreme, and even bizarre.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog

Torturing the Truth at Duke Divinity

2011-04-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Jay Schalin of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy attended and reported on a conference at Duke University's Divinity School at which Duke's first Muslim chaplain chose to demand respect rather than earn it. Schalin's article, commissioned by Campus Watch, appears at American Thinker:

Should we automatically accept--at face value--Duke University's first Muslim chaplain, Abdullah Antepli, as part of an emerging loyal, moderate American Islam, simply because he insists that we do so?

Perhaps not, when all his words and associations are taken into account. He seems eager to join hands with others -- Muslim, Christian, and secular -- who express animosity toward this country and Western societies in general. And at one recent event, he attacked the citizens of his adopted country for their failure to blindly assume Muslim immigrants mean them well.

"Being a Muslim in the United States is another form of torture, a psychological torture, an emotional torture, and it's just getting worse," he declared at the "Toward a Moral Consensus against Torture" conference at Duke University on March 25-26. The conference attracted approximately 100 left-wing academics, theologians, and members of the local activist community for some old-fashioned America-bashing.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

Cross-posted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog

Hatem Bazian's Pernicious Misuse of 'Never Again'

2011-03-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

Writing for Campus Watch, Rima Greene and I report on the participation of UC Berkeley's Hatem Bazian in the "Never Again for Anyone" tour. Our article is posted today at Frontpage Magazine:

Just when it seemed as though the misuse of language and imagery associated with the Holocaust could get no worse, along came "Never Again for Anyone." A national speaking tour designed to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, "Never Again for Anyone" traveled the U.S. from January 25 through February 19, 2011, landing at the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California on February 17. The event was a benefit for the virulently anti-Israel organization, the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA).

The purpose of the tour was pernicious: to draw a connection between the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Israelis cast as the new Nazis and "Never Again" transformed into the Palestinian rallying cry. Accordingly, the flyer for the event juxtaposed a photo of Jews fleeing Warsaw in 1944 with a photo of Arabs appearing to do the same from Tulkarm, in the British Mandate of Palestine, in 1948. Conveniently omitted was any context for the photos: the former group was fleeing extermination and the latter voluntarily abandoning their homes at the behest of an Arab leadership who tried and failed to exterminate the Jews.

In an attempt to lend an air of credibility to this exercise in propaganda, the tour featured Hajo Meyer, an 87-year-old Auschwitz survivor-turned fanatical anti-Zionist. Joining Meyer at several locations was Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Bazian—who gave the introduction at a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) event at UC Berkeley in October 2010—is a notorious anti-Israel activist. He is also the director of the "Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project," a program of UC Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender.

Continue reading "Hatem Bazian's Pernicious Misuse of 'Never Again'"

Cross-posted at the Campus Watch blog.

How Does It Feel To Be a Victim? Ask Prof. Bayoumi

2011-03-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

In a Campus Watch-sponsored article posted today at Frontpage Magazine, Berkeley resident Rima Greene and I write about a recent talk at UC Berkeley by Brooklyn College's Moustafa Bayoumi. It begins like so:

Moustafa Bayoumi, associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, gave a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) last month titled, "How Does It Feel To Be a Problem: Why Arabs and Muslim Americans Are at the Heart of Today's Culture Wars."

Bayoumi is the editor of How Does it Feel To Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, a collection of biographical stories about young, Brooklyn-based Arab-Americans that the CMES website describes, among other things, as "a catalog of mistreatment and discrimination."

Baymoui's narrative of Arab victimhood extends beyond America's borders—he is also the editor of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: the Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How it Changed the Course of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict, as well as co-editor of The Edward Said Reader; victimization has long been a staple of his academic career.

Continue reading "How Does It Feel To Be a Victim? Ask Prof. Bayoumi"

Update: For a detailed analysis of the numerous errors and distortions in Bayoumi's book, read Robert Cherry (a professor of economics at Brooklyn College)'s "Sound and Fury---The Bayoumi Uproar" at MindingtheCampus.com.

Cross-posted at the Campus Watch Blog

Using the Holocaust to Bash Israel at UCLA

2011-03-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from the Campus Watch blog:

Concordia University (Montreal) professor Joseph Rosen spoke recently at UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, and Eric Golub reported on the lecture for Campus Watch. Golub found Rosen's talk, "Traumatic Memory Discourses in Israel: Holocaust History, Territory and Self-Critique," unconvincing. Here's the beginning of Golub's article, which appears today at FrontPage Magazine:

In the never-ending quest amongst Middle East studies academics to demonize Israel, a trendy new approach has appeared: employing the Holocaust.

A recent lecture co-sponsored by UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, "Traumatic Memory Discourses in Israel: Holocaust History, Territory and Self-Critique," fit the pattern. It was delivered by Joseph Rosen, a postdoctoral fellow in Montreal at Concordia University's department of history & the Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence.

Rosen's emphasis on the "cultural production of the memories of violence in relation to contemporary sites of suffering and oppression" was intended to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict from a psychological standpoint. Stated briefly, it holds that Israelis are so paranoid about a second Holocaust that they exaggerate the nature of threats and, in response, overreact. As a result, Israeli self-defense is conditioned not by facts on the ground, such as terrorism or openly genocidal enemies, but by irrational fear.

To read the rest of this report, please click here.

Norman Finkelstein's Conspiratorial Universe

2011-03-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

Gideon Spitzer, a political science and history major at the University of Pennsylvania, covered a recent lecture at Penn by the reliably bizarre Norman Finkelstein. His report, which was written for Campus Watch, appears today at Frontpage Magazine:

On January 25, 2011, anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein spoke in the student union at the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture—sponsored by the Penn Arab Student Society, Penn Race Dialogue Project, and Temple Students for Justice in Palestine—brought the former academic to campus despite DePaul University's 2007 decision to deny Finkelstein tenure because of his "inflammatory style and personal attacks" on his peers.

The event, which lasted over two hours, attracted an audience of about 200, composed both of members of the local community and Penn students, including a substantial contingent of Penn Israel Coalition members.

Continue reading "Norman Finkelstein's Conspiratorial Universe."

Ingrid Mattson: No Longer Leading ISNA, but Still Advancing Radical Islam

2011-02-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from the Campus Watch Blog:

In our latest examination of Ingrid Mattson of Hartford Seminary, journalist Stephen Schwartz finds that although Mattson's presidency of the Islamic Society of North America ended recently, she remains a leading apologist for radical Islam. Schwartz's article appeared at American Thinker:

Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary, recently ended a term as the first female and first Muslim convert to serve as president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). But she promises to continue her career as a promoter of radical Islam.

As an example of her ideological commitment, Mattson is advertised as a prominent participant in a conference to be held at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis/St. Paul on February 24/26, 2011. The conference program is breathtaking in its triumphalist view of Islam and its relations with the world. Titled "Shared Cultural Spaces" and benefiting from a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) -- paid for by federal tax revenue -- the Minnesota conference program announces very little that is "shared" by Islam and other cultures, but rather is replete with uncritical glorification of Islamic history.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Professors Push Israel to Negotiate with Hamas

2011-02-07T10:45:00.001-08:00

Janet Doerflinger, writing for Campus Watch, examines the propensity of Middle East studies academics to whitewash Hamas and to insist that Israel negotiate with its open adversary. Her article appears at American Thinker and it begins like so:

Prominent Middle East studies professors argue that Israel should conduct negotiations with Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip. Thus, they demand that Israel -- a sovereign state -- negotiate with a terrorist organization responsible for murdering and maiming many innocent Israelis and dedicated to Israel's destruction.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

Khaled Abou El Fadl: UCLA's Professor of Fantasy

2010-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

In a Campus Watch-sponsored article posted today at American Thinker, Eric Golub and I report on a lecture by UCLA professor Khaled Abou El Fadl:

The Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles and the UCLA School of Law's Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law co-sponsored a lecture (podcast available here) last month by Khaled Abou El Fadl, chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program, with the vague title "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside."

The flyer for the lecture promised "an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West," yet Abou El Fadl delivered neither. Instead, his audience of 35 -- comprising mostly seniors and left-wing students -- witnessed a meandering, repetitive lecture that had little or nothing to do with the stated premise.

It turns out Abou El Fadl's lecture had little or nothing to do with the truth, either. It was filled with smears directed at Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes, who has responded at his blog (read "Answering Khaled Abou El Fadl"), and fabrications involving Steven Emerson and Robert Spencer. Both are quoted in the article rebutting Abou El Fadl's untruths and Spencer has responded at his blog (read "Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic Khaled Abou El Fadl lies about Sharia, freedom fighters").

As we note in the conclusion to the article:

For the chair of UCLA's Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program -- and the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at UCLA's School of Law -- this is inexcusable. Now that this information is publicly available, will Abou El Fadl's superiors take steps to prevent a repetition?

We call on law school dean Rachel F. Moran to investigate this incident and to look more generally at Abou El Fadl's record. We call on UCLA chancellor Gene Block to draw a clear line against dishonesty among his faculty.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Case Western's Alice Bach Smears Campus Watch, Claims Victimhood

2010-12-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

The latest from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch Blog:

In "Whose Land Is It Anyway," a self-congratulatory, error-ridden Huffington Post essay from November 29, Alice Bach, who teaches religious studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, mischaracterizes Campus Watch, attributes a false quote to it, and presents herself as a stalwart defender of truth victimized by evil conspirators.
Bach is terribly upset by claims that new rules pertaining to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act could prohibit institutions from receiving federal funds should they be found guilty of countenancing anti-Semitism. Such institutions are already subject to rules which forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. But while Bach doesn't seem disturbed by those strictures, the possibility that federal tax dollars may be withheld in the case of anti-Semitism is enough to cause her to bleed almost 1,800 words of purple prose.

Continue reading "Case Western's Alice Bach Smears Campus Watch, Claims Victimhood"

Robert Pape: Blaming Suicide Bombings on the 'Occupation'

2010-11-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from the Campus Watch Blog:

In a Campus Watch article published today at FrontPage Magazine, Jared Sorhaindo reports on a recent lecture on suicide bombings that University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape delivered at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. As Sorhaindo demonstrates, Pape's thesis to explain these horrendous acts of terrorism does not hold up under scrutiny:

Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, gave a lecture titled "Cutting the Fuse: Moving Beyond the War on Terror" on October 28, 2010, at Georgetown University. The room in which it was held was packed to full capacity, which gives an idea of his celebrity.

Pape has garnered much attention and influence in recent years for his thesis that the vast majority of suicide bombings—"well over 95 percent of them," as he put it— are motivated by foreign military occupation. The goal is tactical: to kick out the occupying power. Pape expanded on this thesis, noting that he approaches the study of suicide bombings as an oncologist approaches the study of lung cancer and, as such, has concluded that foreign occupation triggers suicide bombings in the same way smoking triggers lung cancer. Therefore, he proposed, ending foreign occupation should eliminate the majority of suicide bombings. The remaining examples would just be "flukes," such as victims of lung cancer who never smoked a day in their life.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Bias Expected, Evidence Optional for NYU Professor

2010-11-22T09:45:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from the Campus Watch Blog:

A Campus Watch reporter attended a recent event at NYU at which Middle East studies professor Zachary Lockman displayed a shocking disregard for the need to approach historical evidence in an unbiased manner--or indeed, on the need for documentary sources in the writing of history. Alan Jacobs's article appears today at American Thinker:

An audience of 40 journalism students and die-hard fans packed the TV studio at New York University's Carter Journalism Institute on Wednesday, November 3. Visibly excited to meet cartoon journalist Joe Sacco after a discussion of his work with NYU's Middle East professor Zachary Lockman, a number of students arrived early to get their copies of Sacco's new graphic novel, Footnotes in Gaza, and his older work, Palestine, autographed. After thirty or so Starbucks espressos were discarded and most phones were silenced, the "conversation," part of an NYU series entitled "Primary Sources: Coverage in Context," began on schedule. The conversation focused mainly on Footnotes in Gaza, which employs comic strips to chronicle alleged Israeli abuses in Gaza in 1956.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Joel Beinin's Love Letter to the 'New Protest Generation'

2010-11-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from the Campus Watch blog:

Stanford University professor Joel Beinin, who has a long history of making inflammatory statements about America, Israel, and his critics, remained true to form in a recent lecture for a local cable channel. Stanford senior Jonathan Gelbart's report, filed for Campus Watch, appears today at FrontPage Magazine:

Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin made the latest in a series of appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program "Other Voices" on November 2, 2010. The subject of the show was "Israel-Palestine: A New Protest Generation" and, as before, it provided a platform for Beinin's anti-Israel animus.

The show began with a brief discussion of what Beinin delightedly called the "overall decline" of the United States, evidenced by the "failure even at the crude military level in both Iraq and Afghanistan" and the resulting inability to employ the military "as an instrument of policy."

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

The Feminist Politics of Islamic Misogyny

2010-11-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

Noted feminist (in the true sense of the word), author, and emerita professor at the City University of New York, Phyllis Chesler (about whom I've written), takes a critical look at the scholarship of Columbia professor Lila Abu-Lughod in an article commissioned by Campus Watch and published at American Thinker:

Studying honor killings is not the same as sensationalizing them -- but Columbia University professor Lila Abu-Lughod disagrees. Moreover, she believes that indigenous Arab and Muslim behavior, including honor-related violence, is best understood as a consequence of Western colonialism -- perhaps even of "Islamophobia."

On October 25, 2010, at the American University of Beirut, Abu-Lughod admonished feminists who ostensibly sensationalize honor killings, a position which, in her opinion, represents "simplistic, civilizational thinking." She "warned that an obsessive focus on the so-called honor crime may have negative repercussions" and that "people should be wary of classifying certain acts as a distinctive form of violence against women." (Her remarks are summarized in a press release published by the university. According to the university, the article on which the speech is based will be published early next year in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.)

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Juan Cole Blames the West (Again)

2010-11-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog:

University of Michigan professor of Middle East history Juan Cole spoke recently at Auburn University; Auburn alumnus Drew White attended for Campus Watch and filed a report published today at FrontPage Magazine:

Juan Cole's recent lecture at Auburn University in Alabama was a jarring reminder of the importance of pursuing accountability from our academics. Speaking in the Haley Center's primary auditorium to a room overflowing with students and a smattering of aging hippies, Cole provided an hour-long lecture on America's relationship with the Middle East. While the seating arrangement was not uncomfortable, the lighting and the acoustics left something to be desired.

The overarching theme of the lecture was that the United States, specifically the Bush administration, was to blame for our problems with the Muslim World. Speaking in the "deep south," Cole's message was apparently tailored to an audience that undoubtedly was more conservative than those he normally faces. He couched his more extreme views in a nuanced, casual vocabulary that nevertheless failed to obfuscate them.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Jewish Theological Seminary Hosts Islamic Triumphalists

2010-11-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog:

Recently the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, which bills itself as "the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism worldwide," joined forces with the Muslim Brotherhood-founded Islamic Society of North America to host two apologists for radical Islam. Campus Watch was there, and our coverage appears at American Thinker:

Audience members in the packed Jewish Theological Seminary auditorium just down the block from Columbia University might have been gratified to see hijabs and yarmulkes adorning the heads of Muslims and Jews coming together for interfaith dialogue on the evening of October 25. The title of the event, "Islam in America: Assimilation and Authenticity," drew a large, mixed crowd, perhaps three hundred strong, eager for interreligious conversation. The anticipation of imams and rabbis in reserved front seats, or students filling other rows to the brim, was understandable -- isn't this, after all, the conversation Muslims and members of other faiths need to start having?

This optimism at the prospect of dialogue between mainstream Muslim organizations and their Jewish and Christian counterparts resurfaces often, and rarely for good reason. Monday night was no exception.

The event, a joint project of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Islamic Society of North America, featured several high-profile speakers, including JTS Chancellor Arnie Eisen; the Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, President of the Union Theological Seminary across the street from JTS; and two familiar faces from ISNA's side: Ingrid Mattson, the immediate past president of ISNA who moderated the panel and said little, and Sherman Jackson, a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Michigan and a convert to Islam who specializes in Islamic law and the black Muslim-American experience.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Hatem Bazian: Berkeley's Israel Boycott Advocate

2010-11-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

In a Campus Watch-sponsored article posted today at Frontpage Magazine, Berkeley resident Rima Greene and myself write about a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) event held recently at UC Berkeley, which featured radical academic Hatem Bazian. It begins like so:

Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California at Berkeley, provided the introduction at a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) event at Berkeley on October 26, 2010, called "What Can American Academia Do to Realize Justice for Palestinians?" Bazian is an endorser of the Israel Divestment Campaign and a signatory to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He is a committed anti-Israel propagandist and activist.

In his introduction, Bazian was unabashed about promoting a politically active role for academia . . .

To read the entire article, please click here.

UCLA: Where 'Queer Studies' and Middle East Studies Meet

2010-10-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

In a Campus Watch-sponsored article posted today at the American Thinker, comedian/political commentator Eric Golub writes about the bizarre intersection of queer studies and Middle East studies at a UCLA conference:

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) is a delightful contradiction of incompatible notions. On one hand, the professors take hard-left stances on sexuality and gender issues, claiming to staunchly support the rights of gays and women. Yet they also worship at the altar of radical Middle East studies professors who act as apologists for Sharia law and other policies completely at odds with Western "liberalism."

The UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2010, which took place on October 8-9 and counted CNES among its sponsors, was a case in point. The panel discussion I attended, along with all of fifteen people, was titled "Trans-lating the Middle East." Let me "trans-late" and save others the time of attending future UCLA conferences on the subject. Gays in the Middle East are persecuted. It really is that simple. But that didn't stop participants from engaging in the usual anti-Western, jargon-laden rhetoric.

Continue reading "UCLA: Where 'Queer Studies' and Middle East Studies Meet"

Juan Williams: Politically-Incorrect in 2006, Politically-Incorrect in 2010

2010-10-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

The unceremonious and unjust firing of Juan Williams by National Public Radio (NPR) earlier this week came as no surprise to me. I had long been aware of Williams's admirable propensity for espousing politically-incorrect truths on certain subjects, even as he remained a staunch liberal overall. Watching Williams on Fox News and reading his columns over the years, I've disagreed vehemently with him many times on matters of foreign policy, but when the subject has turned to race and ethnicity, I've found him to be refreshingly honest.

In fact, I was moved to take note of Williams's excellent book on the subject, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America, in a September 13, 2006, SFGate column titled "African American Figures Break From Pack." As I noted at the time, Williams was shunned by liberals (black and otherwise) for straying from the party line, while conservatives welcomed him into the fold--much like today. Only this time, Williams is being pilloried for speaking the uncomfortable truth in regards to Muslims, rather than African Americans.

In the interest of shedding light on the current brouhaha by looking back at that episode, I'm reprinting the opening of my column below:

When Juan Williams set out to write his new book, "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America," he had no idea what he was getting into. Williams' scathing critique of African American leadership in the post-civil rights movement era, as well as his emphasis on what he calls the "culture of failure" within the black community, catapulted him into the realm of controversy.
No sooner had the book hit the shelves than Williams was met with a hailstorm of criticism. In calling into question the overreliance on "victimhood" by today's African American leaders and instead promoting personal responsibility, education, achievement and the traditional family structure, Williams was treading dangerous waters. For it has become almost an article of faith among mainstream black Americans that racism is solely to blame for the problems afflicting the black community. To say otherwise is simply taboo.
It didn't take long for Williams to find himself on the receiving end of the usual barrage of epithets applied to black figures who stray from the party line. During interviews to discuss his book, Williams described receiving a torrent of angry e-mails calling him an "Uncle Tom," "Oreo" (as in black on the outside, white on the inside) and worse. In other words, Williams was accused of not being a "real" black man. Were such accusations to come from outside the black community they would certainly be considered racist. But for some reason, the assumption that all blacks must think alike has become accepted by the African American establishment.
Conservatives, on the other hand, both black and otherwise, embraced Williams as one of their own. Having long espoused many of the same ideas, conservatives found in Williams' book both a pleasant surprise and a confirmation of their own political philosophies. All of a sudden, Williams was making the rounds on conservative talk-radio shows and book sales were growing.
But Williams is certainly no conservative. He's a registered Democrat and a columnist for the Washington Post and a senior correspondent for National Public Radio, neither of which are known for being particularly right-wing. In addition, Williams is one of the liberal-to-moderate contributors in the Fox News stable of political analysts. But on this particular issue, he seems to have bridged the political divide. While black conservatives had been saying largely the same thing for many years, it took someone of Williams' mainstream stature to bring it to the fore.

Sound familiar?

Read the rest here.

(And yes, I did praise then-Senator Barack Obama in the column for, seemingly, bucking the trend of black victimhood in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In light of what we know today, his sincerity is debatable.)

Update (10/29): Speaking of deja vu, Investigative Project on Terrorism founder Steven Emerson recounts his experience being blacklisted by NPR for the "crime" of addressing radical Islam and therefore, offending its apologists: "Juan, I Know Just How You Feel."

Beshara Doumani and the 'Ironies of Palestinian History'

2010-10-18T11:59:00.001-07:00

In an article written for Campus Watch and posted today at Frontpage Magazine, Jonathan Gelbart reports on a recent lecture at Stanford University:

UC Berkeley history professor Beshara Doumani came to Stanford University on September 29, 2010, to give a lecture sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies titled, "The Iron Law and Ironies of Palestinian History." He was introduced by notorious Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin, who managed to insert his repeated, and unfounded, claim that academic freedom in the post-9/11 era is "very much still in jeopardy." Beinin, quoting from Doumani's faculty bio, noted that he specializes in "recovering the history of social groups, places and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East." This seemingly innocuous description belied a very specific, partisan subtext.

Continue reading "Beshara Doumani and the 'Ironies of Palestinian History'"

'Zaytuna College' and Its Continuing Media Circus

2010-09-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

Re-printed from Winfield Myers at the Campus Watch blog:

In an article written for Campus Watch and posted today at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz demonstrates that in spite of numerous media claims that Zaytuna is "America's first Islamic college," it is in fact neither first nor much of a college; that title belongs to the American Islamic College in Chicago. Schwartz examines Zaytuna's radical founder, Hamza Yusef Hanson, and the school's meagre offerings:

With the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year, it was doubtless predictable that mainstream media as well as the educational trade press would resume its biased and inaccurate publicity, only lightly presented as reportage, on Zaytuna College. Based in Berkeley, California, Zaytuna is an effort to establish an "Islamic university" headed by the American Muslim preacher Hamza Yusuf Hanson.

Much coverage of the Zaytuna scheme unquestioningly accepts descriptions of it as "America's first Islamic college." That, for example, was how it was described in a September 9, 2010 feature published by StateUniversity.com, a website and print directory of public colleges, titled "First Muslim College Opens in United States." The description is inaccurate in that the American Islamic College (AIC) in Chicago was established in 1981 as "a private, not-for-profit, four-year college offering programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies."

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Who're You Calling a 'Bigot'? Middle East Studies Professors Attack Opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-30T09:57:00.001-07:00

In an article written for Campus Watch and posted at the American Thinker, Brendan Goldman takes a look at the response of Middle East studies academia to the proposed Ground Zero mosque:

John Esposito, director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, having observed that a large majority of Americans oppose an Islamic center at ground zero, could not decide whether American society now more closely resembles that of Birmingham, Alabama circa 1963 or Nazi Germany on the eve of Kristallnacht:
[Newt Gingrich is] somebody...from the South [who] can remember the problem of racism and civil rights. He's also reportedly a Christian.... He's got to remember how a theology of anti-Semitism led to a history of pogroms that ultimately led to the Final solution.

Such callous historical analogies were but one component of a concerted effort by a group of Middle East studies professors to discredit the opponents of the ground zero mosque, whom they helpfully labeled "rural rednecks," "so-called Christian ministers," and "the Israel lobbies."

Continue reading "Who're You Calling a 'Bigot'? Middle East Studies Professors Attack Opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque"

Norton Mezvinsky: Chelsea Clinton's LaRouchite Uncle

2010-07-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

The latest from Campus Watch, written by CW director Winfield Myers and Middle East Forum adjunct scholar Asaf Romirowsky and posted at the American Thinker:

Norton Mezvinsky told the New York Daily News this week that he wasn't invited to the wedding because of a family feud with his nephew that stemmed from his support for his disgraced brother, former Iowa Representative Edward Mezvinsky, whose plans to move to New York and write a book after his release from prison were opposed by nephew Marc.

But there's another reason the Clintons might want to keep the Mezvinsky -- who says he's the "senior male member of the family, and Marc's only uncle" -- well away from Rhinebeck on Saturday: Mezvinsky's ties to the conspiracy mongering anti-Semite Lyndon LaRouche.

Continue reading "Norton Mezvinsky: Chelsea Clinton's LaRouchite Uncle"

Campus Watch "Setting The Record Straight" 2010 Update

2010-07-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

Since our last update, the number of corrections in Campus Watch's "Setting The Record Straight" section has grown exponentially. Hardly a day goes by when Campus Watch (CW)'s opponents aren't hard at work hurling false accusations, smears, and paranoia in our direction.
The nature of the fabrications generated by CW's critics over the years has remained predictably static, and they tend to fall into just a few categories. The most ubiquitous are the histrionic allegations that we "silence," "censor," "harass," or "intimidate" academics; that we engage in "blacklisting"; that we interfere in tenure decisions; that we represent a threat to "academic freedom"; and that most hackneyed cliché of the Left's vocabulary—that we practice "McCarthyism." Only in the insulated world of academia would mere criticism and accountability be likened to state-sponsored repression. Moreover, the irony seems to be lost that eight years after CW's 2002 launch, such academics are still busy talking—about being silenced.

Continue reading "Campus Watch 'Setting The Record Straight' 2010 Update"

Rashid Khalidi Appeals for Funds for Ship to Run Israeli Blockade of Gaza

2010-07-20T14:38:00.000-07:00

The latest from Campus Watch director Winfield Myers, writing at the Campus Watch blog:

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, has signed an appeal for funds to outfit a ship--to be named The Audacity of Hope after Barack Obama's second book--that will challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza in September or October, according to a report by Robert Mackey at The Lede, a blog of the New York Times. His wife Mona is also a signatory.

The appeal is posted at the site USTOGAZA.ORG, which says the ship will sail from the US to the Eastern Mediterranean, where it will join ships from "Europe, Canada, India, South Africa and parts of the Middle East." The appeal employs the word "we" when speaking of the upcoming trip, which gives the impression that the signatories intend to be aboard.

The site's opening paragraph is laden with falsehoods of commission and omission...

Continue reading "Rashid Khalidi Appeals for Funds for Ship to Run Israeli Blockade of Gaza"

Why Jay Nordlinger Left the Left

2010-07-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

In his latest Impromptus column, National Review senior editor (and very charming fan of my name) Jay Nordlinger describes how anti-Americanism--and the self-loathing antipathy towards liberal democracies in general--fueled his departure from the Left. This is a common theme among those who have traveled from Left to Right--or somewhere in between--and it certainly sounds familiar to this ex-lefty:

...Reading some of the reaction to my blogpost, I was reminded why I left the Left, many years ago. Happened sometime during college. I was getting curious about the world: wondering about the Soviet Gulag, for example, and the boat people from Vietnam. I would try to raise those issues with those around me. I was immediately suspect as a fascist: "But what about capital punishment here in America? The death penalty, man. What about Agent Orange, man, and My Lai?"

Okay, okay, we could talk about those — we talked about them constantly. But couldn't we talk about the Gulag and the boat people a bit, too? No, we couldn't: because the United States was so sinful, we had to run it down full-time. We had no right to criticize other countries. (This did not apply, strangely, to South Africa, Chile, the Philippines . . .)

Some readers may recall a common line from the Soviet Union in the first years of the Cold War: "But what about the Negroes in the South?" That tended to shut down all conversation.

I don't know about you, but I find it very hard to talk to people who, when you mention the extreme cruelty of Hamas, the Castros, and so on, go right to the United States and its own offenses, real or imagined. Very hard. We simply live on different moral planets.

I guess I spend most of my time, as a journalist, criticizing or bemoaning the United States. I have a complaint a second, it seems: our litigiousness, our racial screwiness, our politicalcorrectness, our violence, the grotesque nature of our popular culture. But, you know? The liberal democracies, including the United States, aren't what's wrong with the world.

{snip}

Back to my college days, one last time, please — and to the matter of why I left the Left. I concluded that I was on a side: on the side of the United States, of liberal democracy, of man (if you will pardon the grandiosity). I was not a neutralist. I was not a pox-on-both-your-houses guy. I was not a moral-equivalence guy. I knew that the United States and the West weren't perfect, heaven knows. But I also knew that we weren't what ailed the world — that we were, on balance, a force for good.

This was a less common view than you might expect — in my environment, at that time.

Recently, I was talking to a composer friend of mine, who made a journey from left to right (as I did, but later in his life). I asked him how it happened. He said he had gone to West Berlin in the 1980s, to study. And the people around him — West German lefties — said, "You know, there's really no difference between our side and their side. It's all the same, really. We're no better than they are."

But my friend had eyes to see — and he could see that it wasn't true. He saw, starkly, the difference between a free and open society, and an unfree and closed one. That made all the difference.

I had eyes to see, too. There was a big, big difference between the democratic world and the anti-democratic world. The people around me weren't Communists; they didn't carry around copies of Das Kapital (some of them did); they didn't believe in the "withering away of the state" and all that jazz. They just thought that America was just as bad as anyone else — and that, therefore, we had "no right to talk." I disagreed.

To repeat what many of my fellow righties have said, there is no way — no way — that America's enemies can defeat America. Only Americans can do that. How do you lose? For one thing, you lose moral reason. And here is one way of knowing if you're having trouble in the moral-reason department: When you hear about Hamas — about something awful it has done — is your instinct to hate and condemn George Bush? The Patriot Act? Gitmo? That instinct is a crazy one. And destructive.

Read the whole thing.

Muqtedar Khan Wants Muslims and Christians to Unite--Against Israel

2010-06-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

Campus Watch has followed Muqtedar Khan's career for several years, and yesterday Jared Sorhaindo reported on a recent lecture in which Khan once again demonstrated his radicalism. "Muqtedar Khan Wants Muslims and Christians to Unite--Against Israel," appeared yesterday at FrontPage Magazine. Here's a taste:

On June 17, Georgetown University held the event "Evangelicals & Muslims: Perspectives on Mission & Partnership" at its Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The last of its four panel discussions wrestled with the question: "Can Muslims and Christians be Partners in Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation?"

....

Khan, who spoke first, refused to appear on a 2007 academic panel with an IDF veteran who had served in the West Bank, yet somehow maintains a veneer of moderation. A fairly charismatic speaker, he got off the ground quickly by claiming a moral equivalence between Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden. "We must condemn the extremists in our midst," he said, patting himself on the back for denouncing bin Laden. While Robertson has undoubtedly made controversial statements, comparing him with bin Laden, whose terrorist organization has murdered thousands of people in the United States and abroad, is appalling and absurd.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

Joel Beinin's Old Time Religion of Israel Bashing

2010-06-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Today Campus Watch reports from and on Stanford University: Stanford senior Jonathan Gelbart attended a recent on-campus lecture featuring two Stanford professors, including Joel Beinin. In "Joel Beinin's Old Time Religion of Israel Bashing," which appears today at FrontPage Magazine, Gelbart writes that Beinin lived up to his reputation as a vitriolic critic of Israel:

Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin joined colleague Steven Zipperstein, a professor of Jewish culture and history, for an event on June 2, 2010 titled "Israel and Palestine: How To Talk About It and What To Talk About." It was co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies—the first such joint sponsorship in the history of the two programs. Beinin lived up to his reputation for holding views whose outlandishness is matched only by the ferocity with which he clings to them.

Beinin began his opening remarks by lamenting the "unhealthy" state of the Arab-Israeli conflict debate—something he chalked up to the allegedly disproportionate influence of pro-Israel groups. Invoking the typical "Israel Lobby" paranoia, he claimed that organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) discreetly control the debate with publications such as Commentary Magazine and think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to Beinin, these organizations routinely "attempt to ban [anti-Israel academics] from speaking [on college campuses] and attack them politically when they come up for tenure." Using alarmist rhetoric, he claimed this behavior is tantamount to "a McCarthyite campaign of exclusion."

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

California's Middle East Studies Profs Target Israel

2010-06-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

My latest Campus Watch article, which appears today at Frontpage Magazine, examines the involvement of California Middle East studies academics in the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, including a petition supporting the recently failed divestiture effort at UC Berkeley:

In recent months, two University of California campuses, Berkeley and San Diego, have been embroiled in fierce debates following the introduction of anti-Israel divestiture resolutions by their respective student senates. Both were defeated, but not before a number of California's Middle East studies academics signed a petition supporting divestment.

The petition is posted at the website for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which is dedicated to the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. The list of names reads like a Who's Who of California's anti-Israel academics.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Middle East Studies Profs Usurp New Roles to Censure Israel over Gaza Flotilla

2010-06-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

The latest Campus Watch Research, by Brendan Goldman, appeared Sunday at American Thinker. In "Middle East Studies Profs Usurp New Roles to Censure Israel over Gaza Flotilla," Goldman examines the lack of objectivity and willingness to ignore the facts about the incident by leading members of the Middle East studies establishment:

"The martyrs of the [Gaza flotilla] ships are heroes," writes Mark LeVine, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. "They are warriors every bit as deserving of our tears and support as the soldiers of American wars past and present."

In the aftermath of the death of nine mercenaries on the deck of the Gaza-bound Turkish vessel, the Mavi Marmara, professors of Middle East studies lined up to denounce the Jewish State. Ignoring overwhelming video and documentary evidence of the activists' radical agenda and affinity for violence, these professors asserted that the "Freedom Flotilla" of the six Gaza-bound vessels were on a purely "humanitarian" mission.

"Those ships were just bringing aid to the impoverished Palestinians," said New York University professor of modern Middle Eastern History Zachary Lockman. "It's not [the Palestinians'] fault they are under Hamas rule." Has Lockman already forgotten that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinians in January 2006?

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

When Jerry Brown Rejected Vietnamese Refugees

2010-06-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

As if we needed another reason not to vote for retread California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, I just learned via a BookTV talk by former South Vietnamese, and now American, U.S. Marine veteran and author Quang Pham that Brown tried to block Vietnamese refugees from settling in California when he was governor in the 1970s. At the same time, he's always been soft on illegal immigration from Mexico and South America and friendly to Castro and Cuba. So one can surmise that the left-leaning Brown didn't want the Vietnamese refugees to settle in California because they were anti-Communists (and with good reason).

Here's a snippet from a Silicon Valley Mercury News article titled, "After the fall: Vietnamese remember 'Black April' 35 years later":

By Christmas of 1975, an estimated 130,000 Vietnamese refugees had been sponsored by churches and families who provided them with new homes in the United States. According to an article in Vietnam magazine, an American publication, the only state that initially resisted the influx of boat people was California, where Jerry Brown was then in his first term as governor. Brown's administration reportedly attempted to prevent planes loaded with refugees from landing at Travis Air Force Base.
Brown received a stinging rebuke from White House photographer David Hume Kennerly, who had photographed the evacuation. According to the article, Kennerly said Brown had "no compassion for your fellow human beings."
Four years later, while positioning himself for a presidential bid, Brown created a task force to help boat people find homes in the state. A spokesman for his current campaign for governor, Sterling Clifford, declined to comment on Brown's previous positions.

Judging from comments left on online articles and threads on the subject, Brown won't be receiving the votes of California's substantial Vietnamese-American community. They have a long memory.

Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World

2010-06-03T15:06:00.001-07:00

Watch this for some much-needed comic relief.

And here's some very useful info (calling CNN and the NY Times!): "Facts Beyond the Spin: Israel Delivers Massive Aid to Gaza."

Ali Mazrui Revives Jewish Race Science at Columbia U. Conference

2010-05-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, American Thinker published Campus Watch correspondent Brendan Goldman's eyewitness account of a recent lecture delivered at Columbia University by Ali Mazrui, a professor at SUNY Binghamton. It is one of the most disturbing reports we've seen at Campus Watch, and that's saying something! It begins like so:

"The population of Jews in the US is three percent ... but [their 'genius'] leads to their controlling so much power that even presidents are scared [of them]. Whether [President Barack] Obama will be able to escape the notion that three percent of the country is so powerful that the top gentile in the land cannot criticize Israel is not clear."

The above statement was made not by a Hamas or KKK leader, but by Ali al-Amin Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at SUNY Binghamton. He was addressing the Ifriqiyya Colloquium Conference, held on the top floor of Columbia University's International Affairs Building, on Thursday, May 6. Mazrui is a darling of the far left, appearing prominently in venues such as Democracy Now, as well as at Islamist forums like the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

To read the rest of this important article, please click here.

Suad Joseph, President-elect of MESA, Defends Status Quo of Middle Eastern Women

2010-05-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

In an article commissioned by Campus Watch and appearing today at FrontPage Magazine, Reut Cohen reports on a recent lecture at UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies by Suad Joseph, the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA):

On May 7, 2010, UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) and the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies co-sponsored the lecture, "Rethinking Arab Women as 'Subjects.'" The talk was delivered by Suad Joseph, a Lebanese-born professor of anthropology and women's studies at UC Davis, and president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the principal professional organization for scholars of the region. Joseph, who has co-edited a book with CNES director Susan Slyomovics, is considered a pioneer in the field of Middle East women's studies, accolades which—as is, sadly, often the case—translates into apologetics for the oppression of Middle Eastern women.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Everyone Draw Mohammed Day

2010-05-20T11:06:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of solidarity with "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day," I'm linking to a blog of that same name--plus several related items from blogger and photojournalist Zombie, and one from El Marco--that do the honor for me (I can't draw or photoshop) , as well as posting a mini-version of the Danish cartoons that started it all (hat tip: GM's Place):

Everyone Draw Mohammed Blog

Zomblog: The New Free Speech Movement

ZombieTime: Mohammed Image Archive

Zombie Revisits the Mohammed Archive at Pajamas Media

El Marco: CARTOONS TO DIE FOR – Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

And if anyone's offended by this post, well, too bad. That's what free speech is all about.

UC Berkeley Conference Conjures Up An Imaginary 'Judeo-Muslim Civilization'

2010-05-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

In an article written for Campus Watch and posted today at Frontpage Magazine, Rima Greene reports on a conference at UC Berkeley on the imaginary concept of a "Judeo-Muslim Civilization." It begins like so:

A conference at the University of California, Berkeley, on April 28-29, 2010 (and continued at UC Davis on April 30), "Muslims and Jews Together: Seeing From Without; Seeing From Within," was billed as a major international symposium for "the inauguration of the Program for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations at UC Berkeley and the establishment of a UC-wide and West Coast working group for the study of Muslim-Jewish relations ."

The conference was a collaborative effort between the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at UC Berkeley and the Jewish Studies Program at UC Davis. Its stated purpose was to use the frameworks of traditional Middle East studies and Jewish studies to develop a new academic field focused on the historical interaction between Muslims and the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who once lived among them. Most of the participants were historians or anthropologists specializing in North African Jewry, particularly Morocco.
CMES chair Nezar AlSayyad introduced the conference with a discussion about "building bridges" by re-framing the term, "Jews of Islam," into something that could be equated with Judeo-Christian civilization: something he called "Judeo-Muslim civilization."

Continue reading "UC Berkeley Conference Whitewashes History in Positing a 'Judeo-Muslim Civilization'"

The Illogic of Campus Watch's Critics

2010-04-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

Teaching Middle Eastern Affairs is certainly more problematic than other regions. Due to the geopolitical realities of the ME, it is more politicized as an academic subject than any other region. As a result, academics dealing with the Middle East have the tendency to espouse political views that might affect both what topics will be covered and how. Subsequently, the study of the Middle East suffers from high levels of politicization and the academic content subordinating political views or ideologies.

Who wrote the above passage?

1) Campus Watch

2) A Campus Watch basher
Based on Campus Watch (CW)'s long record of combating the politicization of Middle East studies, number one would seem to be answer. But it turns out that the above statement, with which, incidentally, CW agrees entirely, was penned by a blogger who accuses us—get this—of politicizing Middle East studies!

Continue reading "The Illogic of Campus Watch's Critics"

Click here to read a related correction.

The Professor’s Islamist Call to Battle

2010-03-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

My latest Campus Watch article, which is posted today at Frontpage Magazine, demonstrates how University of Michigan professor Sherman Jackson's history of radical statements contradict his image as an alleged moderate:

Sherman Jackson, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.

Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan Teach-in titled, "Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam," that "the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam."

But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.

Jackson made this abundantly clear at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, "The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society." Jonathan Usher, who attended and wrote about the conference for Campus Watch, described Jackson's speech as nothing less than "a call to battle." As he put it, "It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West."

To read the entire article, please click here.

Fort Hood and the Academic Apologists

2009-11-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

My latest Campus Watch article, which is posted at The American Thinker, examines the reaction of Middle East studies academia to the shooting rampage at Fort Hood and finds it predictably apologetic:

In the wake of the horrific attack at the Fort Hood military base in Texas earlier this month, and the mounting evidence that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated by Islamist beliefs, the media has turned to Middle East studies "experts" for enlightenment. Instead, what the media, and, by extension, the American public, has received is the moral relativism and obfuscation that too often meets any effort to address Islamism or jihadism in an intellectually honest manner.

Continue reading "Fort Hood and the Academic Apologists"

Fort Hood Shooter: Another Lone Gunman?

2009-11-06T10:56:00.001-08:00

In August, 2006, I wrote an SFGate column that could have been written about Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. It's reprinted below in its entirety:

The Myth Of The Lone Gunman
Cinnamon Stillwell
Wednesday, August 9, 2006

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the claim has often been made that no further acts of terrorism have occurred on U.S. soil. But anyone following the news closely knows better.
While there has not yet been another large-scale attack, a number of terrorist plots have been broken up and a variety of suspicious crimes and incidents have occurred across the nation. But each time, authorities seem to have made every effort to downplay the terrorism angle.
News of the shooting rampage at Seattle's Jewish Federation building last month involved the usual avoidance of the term "terrorism." Instead, the attack was labeled a hate crime and the perpetrator, Naveed Afzal Haq, just another in a long line of lone gunmen with a history of mental instability. As Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels put it, "This was a purposeful, hateful act, as far as we know by an individual acting on his own."
While this may be true, trying to separate Haq's actions from the larger context of the war on terrorism is tunnel vision at its worst. It is not just hate that motivates such acts, but ideology. One needn't be a bona fide member of an Islamic terrorist group to share their outlook.
Haq made his motivations quite clear when he told a 911 operator during the attack that he was a "Muslim American" who was "angry with Israel" and the United States for the war in Iraq. "I want these Jews to get out … I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East," he added.
Indeed, it was Haq's "anger" that led him to stake out the building of a prominent Jewish organization, hide behind a vestibule, kidnap a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint as she entered the building and then proceed to shoot six women, including one who was 17 weeks pregnant, almost all in the stomach. One of the victims died on the scene and several remain in the hospital.
There are also questions about Haq's background that should at least raise a flag or two. His father, Mian Haq, founded the Islamic Center of the Tri-Cities, which is affiliated with Saudi-financed Wahhabist organizations. An engineer, Mian Haq and other members of the local Pakistani American community work for the nearby Hanford Site (a nuclear reservation). The junior Haq was not known to be an observant Muslim, and a Christian evangelical organization in the Tri-Cities area claims that he was baptized last year. But Haq was clearly identifying himself as a Muslim at the time of the shooting.
The prosecutor in the case, Norm Maleng, did concede that the attack involved "the seeds from which the war on terror springs." In fact, just 48 hours before Haq's killing spree, Al-Jazeera ran a video of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri exhorting "Muslims everywhere … to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the crusaders." And it appears that that's exactly what Haq did.
Officialdom in Denial
This was the hardly the first time that a Muslim seemingly unconnected to organized terrorist groups nevertheless acted out their agenda. Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes even came up with a term to describe this phenomenon: Sudden Jihad Syndrome.
Pipes and other scholars, such as Robert Spencer, have been tracking these cases for years. It is not certain that Islamist ideology was the motivation in each instance. But strangely enough, authorities almost always dismissed the possibility from the onset. Either that or they jumped on the "no possible known motive" bandwagon. The following examples bear this pattern out:
March 2006: Mohammad Taheri-azar plowed into a group of students at the University of North Carolina with his SUV. Afterward, he surrendered to authorities with a 911 call, telling them that he was trying to "punish the government of the United States for [its] actions around the world." Meanwhile, in a letter to the police, Taheri-azar spoke of exercising "the right of violent retaliation that Allah" had given him. Nonetheless, local officials and university officials immediately ruled out terrorism, leading several student groups to hold an "anti-terrorism" rally in protest.
September 2005: University of Oklahoma engineering student Joel Henry Hinrichs III blew himself up outside a packed stadium in what was dubbed a suicide. But it was more likely a botched suicide bombing. Beyond incriminating evidence found in his apartment, Hinrichs had connections to a local mosque and appears to have been a convert to Islam. Nonetheless, university officials and authorities studiously avoided the term "terrorism" and instead focused on Hinrichs' alleged history of personal problems.
January 2005: The Coptic Christian Armanious family, originally from Egypt, was found dead in their home in Jersey City, all with their throats slit. Hossam, the father, had been debating religion with Muslims on a Middle Eastern chat room and had received at least one death threat. The entire family had been involved in converting Muslims to Christianity, and the daughter, Sylvia, was particularly outspoken. When her body was found, it was discovered that she had been stabbed in the chest and the wrist, precisely where she wore a tattoo of a Coptic cross. Authorities chalked up the case not to religious hatred or terrorism but to a robbery gone bad. But questions remain about the true impetus for the murders.
August 2003: Saudi Mohammed Ali Alayed slit the throat of former friend and fellow Houston Community College student Ariel Sellouk, almost decapitating him in the process. The fact that Sellouk was Jewish and that Alayed had broken with him right after becoming a more devout Muslim played no part in the trial. Not only was the term "terrorism" avoided, even "hate" and "anti-Semitism" were left out of the equation. To this day, Alayed's motive remains a mystery as far as the official version is concerned.
October 2002: The "Beltway Snipers" John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo went on a killing spree across Maryland and Virginia, terrorizing the nation. Despite the fact that Muhammed was a convert to Islam and member of the Nation of Islam, authorities and media coverage focused solely on his troubled background and his ties to the military. Malvo was portrayed simply as a young victim of Muhammed's sinister tutelage. Rarely was jihad or terrorism mentioned. Later, Malvo's defense attorneys, attempting to illustrate their client's mental instability, presented the judge in his trial with Malvo's jailhouse drawings. Along with anti-American sentiments and drawings of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the burning towers of the World Trade Center, Malvo repeatedly emphasized jihad against America.
July 2002: Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet walked into Los Angeles International Airport on the Fourth of July (also his birthday) and opened fire at an El Al (the Israeli government-owned airline) counter, killing an employee and a customer. Hadayet also stabbed an El Al security guard before he himself was shot. Hadayet had been known to express hatred for Jews, Israel and the United States, and according to his political asylum application, which was denied, he had been involved with an Egyptian Islamist group. The initial conclusion was that there was "nothing to indicate terrorism" and that it was simply an "isolated incident," although officials finally dubbed the case an act of terrorism almost a year later.

It's possible that in these cases authorities were simply hesitant to release sensitive information that might have threatened the investigation at hand. But in a time when average citizens can access all sorts of information for themselves on the Internet, this policy of official denial is becoming untenable.
Besides, Americans deserve to know the truth about the threats to their lives and their country. It may be uncomfortable for some to swallow, but it helps no one, least of all those within the Muslim community working for reform, to shield the public from reality. For one cannot properly fight a battle if its true nature remains obscured.

Similarly, at a certain point, authorities will need to take the blinders off and start acknowledging that lone gunmen and Islamic terrorism are not mutually exclusive. As President Bush has repeatedly emphasized, "this is a different kind of war" and therefore a different kind of thinking is needed in order to win it. Unfortunately, it is our own officials who most seem to need an update.

Mogahed's Excuses Don't Add Up

2009-10-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about a controversial interview with Dalia Mogahed. Responding to a firestorm of criticism. Mogahed has since tried to backtrack. In an article posted today at Frontpage Magazine, I conclude that her excuses don't add up:

As reported last week by Campus Watch, Dalia Mogahed, appointee to President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and co-author, along with Georgetown University's John Esposito, of Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, appeared (by phone) earlier this month on the UK-based Islam Channel television program "Muslimah Dilemma" (view here and read the complete transcript here.)

Mogahed has been roundly criticized for appearing on the show and, in a transparent attempt at damage control, she told U.S. News & World Report last week she has experienced second thoughts about her decision. Stretching credulity, she claimed she "had no idea that the show's host or the other guest was affiliated with Hizb ut Tahrir," that she only "found out the affiliation on air, when the other guest was being introduced in the beginning," and that her staff "checked the show with a PR firm in Britain who told us there were no problems with it."

Continue reading "Mogahed's Excuses Don't Add Up"

Does Sharia Law Promote Women’s Rights? Obama Appointee Dalia Mogahed Thinks So

2009-10-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

My latest Campus Watch article, which is posted today at Frontpage Magazine, takes a look at Obama appointee Dalia Mogahed's curious views on women's rights and sharia law:

In thinking about women's rights, sharia law, or Islamic law, doesn't typically come to mind.

Yet, according to a survey conducted by Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and appointee to President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the two are closely intertwined. Her survey alleges that a majority of Muslim women believe sharia law should either be the primary source or one source of legislation in their countries, while viewing Western personal freedoms as harmful to women.

The survey's findings appear in the book, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, co-authored by Mogahed and John Esposito, Georgetown University professor and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, named for its Saudi royal benefactor. While Esposito is well-known as one of the foremost academic apologists for radical Islam, Mogahed is making her name as a shill for sharia law. Mogahed employs the Gallup poll, which has been criticized by knowledgeable authorities as misleading and unscientific, to portray sharia law as what Muslims women want.

Continue reading "Does Sharia Law Promote Women’s Rights?"

Campus Watch Quoted in World Magazine

2009-10-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

When Jill Nelson, a reporter for World Magazine, contacted Campus Watch for input on an article she was working on, we were only too happy to help. Her article, titled "Pro-Palestinian Junta," is based on a startling column that came out in March of this year. It was written by the indispensable and very brave Khaled Abu Toameh and it described the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel atmosphere on U.S. college campuses.

The following are the relevant portions of the World Magazine article:

Khaled Abu Toameh has endured years of criticism for his reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. An Arab Muslim with Israeli citizenship, he abandoned the government-controlled Palestinian media years ago for the free press in Israel and the West and has been writing about Palestinian affairs for almost three decades. He isn't afraid to criticize Palestinian leadership when criticism is due, and that candor has earned him a few enemies.

But not all of his enemies are from the streets of Gaza or the West Bank. During a tour of close to 30 campuses in the United States throughout the past year, Toameh encountered what he calls a "pro-Palestinian junta"-a group that goes beyond the usual suspects to include Westerners who have never set foot in Palestine or Israel, professors with an innate anti-Israel bias, and Jews who believe Israel has done more harm than good during its 61 turbulent years of existence.

{snip}

Toameh, who has been writing about Palestinian affairs for The Jerusalem Post since 2002 and has worked for NBC News since 1989, wasn't always well received during his U.S. campus tour. At DePaul University in Chicago in March, he was greeted with fliers for the event covered with swastikas. At another Illinois campus (Toameh says he can't remember which one) he saw fliers with devil-like features added to his photograph. "These people hate Israel so much that they will cheer any group or anyone that is against Israel. It's simply that. It's not that Hamas is so brilliant in their PR campaign. I think it's more out of hatred for Israel," Toameh told me.

Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, agrees with Toameh's assessment: "Hatred of Israel, and in a larger sense, the existence of a Jewish state, is at its heart. Years of propaganda painting Israel as an aggressive, colonialist, apartheid state and the Palestinians as freedom fighters justified in any course of action has taken its toll, to the point where this false narrative has been accepted as the truth, despite all evidence to the contrary. Those who refute the narrative are demonized and intimidated, while those who uphold it are glorified and rewarded. In this way, hatred of Israel has become the prevailing mindset on campus."

Winfield Myers, the director of the Middle East Forum's Campus Watch, says although Hamas supporters are far from a majority on U.S. campuses, their numbers are growing. Many professors-particularly those within the Middle Eastern Studies departments-peddle jihadist views to impressionable students, justifying terrorism for the sake of the oppressed.

Myers named University of California at Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian, who called for an intifada-or Palestinian uprising-against the United States during a rally in San Francisco in 2004, as a chief example.

In May at the University of California in Irvine, the Muslim Student Union hosted a series of speakers who claimed that Zionists are the "new Nazis" and the "party of Satan." A video on the university's website promoting the speaker series included a song in Arabic that said, "With all force we will drive them away. We will restore purity to Jerusalem." Campus administration did nothing in response.

The prospect of receiving Saudi oil money for Middle Eastern Studies programs may be another piece to the pro-Palestinian puzzle. As universities compete for funding, signs of censorship have emerged. Myers points to the recent decision by Yale University Press to remove the controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad from a book about the controversy, Jytte Klausen's The Cartoons that Shook the World, as a prominent example. The Yale decision came while it courted for funding the director of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's foundation.

To read the entire article, click here or here.

Remembering 9/11, Eight Years Later

2009-09-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

My contribution to Family Security Matters' "FSM Contributing Editors Remember 9/11, Eight Years Later" is the fourth entry from the bottom. And it's reprinted below in its entirety. I must admit, it's pretty dark, but judging by the other contributions, I'm not alone. Read on:

Eight years after the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11, it appears that America has largely drifted back into complacency. Certainly, many Americans still understand that the threat of repeated attacks remains real, but the sense of urgency has faded with time.

Meanwhile, the country's current leadership and its supporters are inhabiting the willful blindness of a pre-9/11 mindset, if not acting as apologists for and, in some cases, active supporters of America's enemies.

Misconceptions that began with the Bush administration continue unabated. There is an inability to grasp that, to quote Robert Spencer, the "stealth jihad," being visited by Islamists upon our educational, cultural, and governmental institutions is the greatest threat to Western civilization. The self-censorship of political correctness, the moral vacuity of multiculturalism, the surrender of creeping dhimmitude, and the corruption of Arab dollars and influence continue to ensure that we are not actively engaged in the ideological battlefield.

As someone who was galvanized into a political awakening and eventual transformation by 9/11, it has been disheartening to see the country slide back into somnolence. Indeed, I have wondered at times whether we have entered a post-post-9/11 age. I believe the memory still lingers in our collective consciousness, but it has retreated to the farther reaches.

When one looks at history, this depressing pattern emerges time and time again. One has to wonder if human beings generally don't learn from history, but rather, are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. Jolted out of slumber every so often by horrific events, we then sink back into oblivion once the threat no longer seems urgent. A few will always stand on the sidelines trying to bring attention to the looming threat of the day, but by and large, we only listen when forced.

Nonetheless, the fight must go on, for the alternative is far too frightening. That's something for all of us to remember on 9/11/09.

Read all entries in "FSM Contributing Editors Remember 9/11, Eight Years Later."

Guest on "The Gathering Storm" this Friday

2009-09-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'll be a guest this Friday, September 4th, at approximately 12:30pm (PST) on the Blog Talk Radio show, The Gathering Storm. I'll be discussing the latest news at Campus Watch, including the Yale University Press/Danish cartoon controversy.

Listen live or catch the archived version here.

Why Won't Yale Identify the 'Experts' Who Advocated Pulling the Illustrations of Muhammad?

2009-08-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

The latest at the Campus Watch blog from my colleague, Winfield Myers:

Why is Yale hiding behind the decision of anonymous "experts" to defend its decision to pull all illustrations of Muhammad from Jytte Klausen's forthcoming book, The Cartoons that Shook the World? What does it have to hide? Who was behind the decision?
Yesterday's New York Times reported Yale University Press's (YUP) decision to pull both the Danish cartoons of Muhammad along with all other illustrations of him slated to appear in Klausen's book, which examines—remarkably—the very controversy the 12 cartoons sparked in 2006, five months after their publication in the Danish newspaper Jylland- Posten in September, 2005.

The Times said that YUP and Yale University "consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous" that no illustrations should appear. It quotes John Donatich, YUP's director, as saying the experts recommendation to withdraw all images of Muhammad was "overwhelming and unanimous."

Continue reading "Why Won't Yale Identify the 'Experts' Who Advocated Pulling the Illustrations of Muhammad?"

Terrorist in the Ivory Tower?

2009-08-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

My latest Campus Watch article, which is posted today at Frontpage Magazine, explores the intersection of Middle East studies and Islamic terrorism. It begins like so:

Do the ranks of Middle East studies professors include terrorists? If the allegations against University of Ottawa professor Hassan Diab are proved true, the answer will be yes.

Diab, a Lebanese-born dual Canadian citizen and author of Beirut: Reviving Lebanon's Past, is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Ottawa and until recently taught a part-time summer introductory sociology course at Carleton University in Ottawa. His job ended last month following allegations by French authorities that Diab was the leader of a commando team that perpetrated the 1980 bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris. The bombing, which was attributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Special Operations (PFLP-SO), a splinter group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), killed three Frenchmen and an Israeli woman and wounded 20.

Continue reading "Terrorist in the Ivory Tower?"

Dabashi vs. AbuKhalil

2009-07-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

Campus Watch Director Winfield Myers has penned a blog post that ties into my recent article, "Ahmadinejad's Academics," by examining another rupture in the Middle East studies establishment in the wake of the protests in Iran. It seems Columbia University Iranian studies professor Hamid Dabashi has broken ranks with the left and in particular, fellow academic traveler, Cal State Stanislaus professor Asad AbuKhalil, on Iran. As Myers reports:

Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian specialist at Columbia University, is usually a reliable source of rabid anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli hysteria....Yet the Iranian-born Dabashi, writing in the Egyptian English-language newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly, has turned his purple prose on a fellow Middle East studies professor whose record of rants against the West equals his own: Lebanese-born Asad AbuKhalil of Cal State Stanislaus. Writing on his blog The Angry Arab, AbuKhalil asserted that an American conspiracy is behind the anti-government demonstrations in Iran...

Continue reading "Give Me that Old-time Schadenfreude: Dabashi vs. AbuKhalil"

Ahmadinejad's Academics

2009-07-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

My latest article for Campus Watch, which is posted today at Frontpage Magazine, takes a look at the changing (and not-so-changing) relationship between Middle East studies academia and contested Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It begins like so:

What a difference a popular uprising makes.

It seems like just yesterday that the Middle East studies establishment was busy defending Iran's theocratic regime and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the alleged predations of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Yet in the wake of the unrest in response to the stolen election, suddenly American academics have succumbed to intellectual honesty and moral clarity. Despite the best efforts of the Iranian regime to drum up conspiracy theories blaming the West for the uprising, the Iranians themselves have taken center stage.

This signals quite a shift. When Ahmadinejad, the supposedly elected leader at the heart of the current crisis in Iran, spoke at Columbia University in September 2007, his appearance was applauded by many academic apologists as a means of "reaching out."

Continue reading "Ahmadinejad's Academics"

The Professor's Obsession

2009-06-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

My latest for Campus Watch; posted at Frontpage Magazine:

Stanford Middle East history professor Joel Beinin's appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program "Other Voices" reliably produce anti-American, anti-Israel invective. In September 2008, Beinin declared, "The American empire is going down," and during a taping for the February 2009 show, "Gaza and the Future," he pronounced, "The United States aids and abets Israeli war crimes."

What Beinin labeled Israeli "war crimes" (i.e. defending its citizenry) and U.S. collusion therewith were central to his discussion, as the show aired soon after Israel's military incursion into Gaza in December 2008.

One might have thought Obama's election would make Beinin optimistic about the prospects for weakening U.S. support for Israel, but his mood was decidedly downbeat. Obama, Beinin predicted, would "act like all America presidents" by "pushing U.S. interests with foreign policy." (What country doesn't pursue its own interests with foreign policy?) But, Beinin allowed, if Obama were to simply issue a "statement" telling Israel "it's committing war crimes," "going against U.N resolutions," and that "the U.S. will no longer sell Israel weapons," "the Israel Lobby and AIPAC would crumble." The crowd of mostly aging hippies murmured in agreement.

Continue reading "The Professor's Obsession"

Who Speaks For Islam? Not John Esposito

2009-05-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

Stanford undergraduate and Stanford Review features editor Jonathan Gelbart has written an article for Campus Watch on radical Islam apologist John Esposito's recent appearance at Stanford. The article is posted at Frontpage Magazine and it begins like so:

Georgetown University Professor John Esposito is the media's favorite go-to man for questions about Islam. As the founding director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, he is also notorious for downplaying radical Islam. Stanford University hosted his latest round of apologetics on May 13.

Esposito, who spoke at Stanford last year, was on campus to promote the film version of his recent book (co-authored with Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. He was joined by the film's executive producer, Muslim convert Michael Wolfe. The 55-minute film claims to present the results of the "largest, most comprehensive study" of Muslim opinion ever done.

Continue reading "Who Speaks For Islam? Not John Esposito"

Whitman's Shampa Biswas: Instigator or Educator?

2009-04-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

Writing at his new blog, The Rubin Report, Gloria Center Director Barry Rubin points to Shampa Biswas, Whitman College Director of Global Studies and associate professor of politics, as an example of the "terrible, anti-democratic, and anti-American ideas" pervading higher education. As demonstrated in a glowing profile at the Whitman College web site and a 2007 convocation address, Biswas is yet another Edward Said acolyte helping to turn the field of Middle East studies (in which she specializes) into a forum for political activism and moral relativism.

Continue reading "Whitman's Shampa Biswas: Instigator or Educator?"

Recommended New Blog: The Rubin Report

2009-04-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

Anyone who keeps up on Middle East politics should know about Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research for International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal (MERIA). Rubin's books, articles, and mailing list have lent expertise, common sense, and wisdom to the complicated morass that is the Middle East. He has been a contributor to the Middle East Quarterly and many of his useful insights into the field of Middle East studies have been reprinted and referenced at Campus Watch.

Now Rubin has started his own blog: The Rubin Report. Here is the GLORIA Center announcement:

Dear readers:

We hope you enjoy getting articles from us and find it useful. We will continue to send out 1-3 articles a week. Many more pieces, which will not be sent out, appear on our http://www.gloria-center.org as does MERIA Journal.

However, since we don't have space for all our writings and also to keep up with the times, I have started a new blog called Rubin Reports at http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/ which contains many additional articles and shorter pieces. You are welcome to visit the blog, subscribe to it, and send out links if you so wish.

Do let me know if you have any questions

Best regards, Barry Rubin, Director,

GLORIA Center

Profbarryrubin@yahoo.com

Rubin's previous work has proven indispensable, and the Rubin Report will doubtless do the same. I recommend it highly.

Cross-posted from the Campus Watch blog.

On Hiatus

2009-03-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

As readers may have noticed, I've been on a blogging hiatus for some time now. Without going further into the details, I'll have to plead to a simple lack of inspiration. I'll post more information soon, but I just wanted to leave some sort of explanation for now. In the meantime, there's plenty in my archives for those who are so inclined.

Rashid Khalidi Gets Caught in a Lie

2009-02-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, has been caught in a lie. Khalidi concluded a January 8, 2009, op-ed that appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune with the following quote ascribed to former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon:

"The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people."

The problem is Ya'alon never made this statement and both publications have since had to excise it from the op-ed and issue corrections

Continue reading "Rashid Khalidi Gets Caught in a Lie"

Benny Morris Defends Israel on NPR

2009-01-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

I've suspected as much for a while, but it's now confirmed: Israeli post-Zionist historian Benny Morris has clearly had a change of heart. His interview today on NPR's "Forum with Michael Krasny" is really worth catching. Much to the consternation of NPR's liberal listenership (who have been indoctrinated by "pro-Palestinian" propaganda), Morris stood up for Israel admirably.

Catch the interview here once it's archived.

Qaddafi Goes to Georgetown

2009-01-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

In yesterday's "Best of the Web" (OpinionJournal.com), James Taranto took the New York Times to task for providing Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi an op-ed platform upon which to wax poetic about his supposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Qaddafi is a proponent of the "one-state solution," whereby Israelis and Palestinians are to live together in a single, secular, democratic state he terms "Isratine." He's even written something called the "White Book" outlining his proposal.

{snip}

...Not coincidentally, the one state solution is popular among the Middle East studies establishment, which, by and large, is obsessed with putting an end to the Jewish state. This may explain why Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) hosted a videoconference earlier this week on the very same subject given by none other than Muammar Qaddafi.

Continue reading "Qaddafi Goes to Georgetown"

Hamas's Academic Cheerleaders

2009-01-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

Those searching for wisdom on Israel's military campaign in Gaza from the leading voices in Middle East studies might want to look elsewhere. The reflexively anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, or in this case, pro-Hamas, viewpoints expressed by many of these "experts" betray the bias afflicting the field.

In my latest Campus Watch article, which was published today at Frontpage Magazine, I provide excerpts from op-eds and interviews with these academics that speak for themselves. Here's a sampling:
"…Hamas is the poor and impoverished representative of a poor and impoverished people. The obscenity of first demonizing Hamas and then blaming it for the vicious war crimes that Israel is perpetrating against Palestinians has now passed any measure of common decency. Hamas is the legitimate and democratically elected representative of Palestinian people - a grassroots organization deeply embedded in and integral to the Palestinian national liberation movement."

Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

"The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them."

Mark LeVine, professor of Middle East history, University of California, Irvine

"Hamas is not a monolith…yes, Hamas engages in terrorism, Hamas carries out certain terrorist actions, but Hamas is not just a huge monolith. There are multiple points of view and narratives within Hamas."

Fawaz Gerges, Christian A. Johnson Chairholder in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies, Sarah Lawrence College

"Hamas has been branded a terrorist organization by U.S. and Israel and much of the international community. I think that's very unfortunate…Hamas is first and foremost a deeply rooted political organization with social and cultural and other dimensions to it. It was elected. It has come forward many, many times to negotiate a truce with Israel, including recently…"

Beshara Doumani, associate professor of history, University of California, Berkeley

"Hamas is a group that has grassroots backing from the Palestinian people. Hamas has been leading a resistance against a colonial occupation. …I think any resistance against a colonial occupier is justified. …I would defend Hamas as actually, you know, doing practical things to fight Israeli colonialism."

Pranav Jani, assistant professor of English, Ohio State University
To read the entire article, click here.

Arab-Israeli Conflict Plays Out in the West

2008-12-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

Israel's long overdue military response to the daily barrage of Gaza rockets aimed at its citizens has led to the usual round of protest/counter-protest confrontations in the West. Whether it's here in the San Francisco Bay Area or across the United States and Europe, Arab protesters and those on the left who have bought into their false victimhood narrative are enraged. They have directed their hatred and vitriol towards the few pro-Israel counter-protesters who have shown up to counter their monolithic message, and in some cases rioting and violence has ensued.

For the most part, the mainstream media continues to tell only one side of the story and unsurprisingly, it's not the pro-Israel one. (Click here to watch a CBS5 clip on the protest in San Francisco). For those who wish to know the real story, Atlas Shrugs has photos and reports from citizen journalists, the last bastion of truth.

The insanity of blaming a nation for defending its citizens after years of turning the other cheek in the face of a ruthless campaign of violence and in the larger picture, a fanatical and genocidal enemy, is self-evident. And yet it goes on.

Thus it has always been and unfortunately, will likely be. Israel and her defenders must remain firm against a world (with the notable exception of the U.S., Australia and a few others) gone mad.

Update: Israel Matzav reports that "a Palestinian opened fire on a group of Israelis in a supermarket just outside of Copenhagen." There's more at Israel National News.

Update II: Check out Phyllis Chesler's "Gaza Comes to America. Hate Demonstrations Against Israel on the East and West Coasts" at Pajamas Media.

Update III: Past and future congressional candidate and retired Army Ltc. Allen West (who I interviewed in 2007) can be seen among the pro-Israel crowd in Atlas Shrugs' post on "Floridastan," and also here.

Update IV: Richard Landes reports on the latest Pallywood productions over at Augean Stables. He also notes that Hamas is victimizing its own people by not availing itself of Egyptian ambulances, probably for propaganda purposes, just like the fake blackouts and manufactured humanitarian crises.

On a similar note, Palestinian Media Watch has been circulating a video of a Palestinian girl who lost family members in Israeli air strikes blaming the true cause of the violence: Hamas.

And let's not forget the ongoing murder of alleged Gaza "collaborators."

The Christmas Kerfuffle Redux

2008-12-24T10:50:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. Time to revisit my 2005 SFGate column on the annual Christmas kerfuffle, that is. With this column (reprinted below), I tried to provide a Jewish, albeit secular, perspective on the ongoing and, in my opinion, needless controversy over Christmas. And last year, I expanded on the subject with a post titled, "Are Jews Oppressed by Christmas?" My answer was a resounding, "No!" Read on...

***

The Christmas Kerfuffle
Cinnamon Stillwell
December 20, 2005

Upon leaving a San Francisco shop last week, I wished the clerk a cheery "Merry Christmas," only to be met with a surly "Happy Holidays" in return. With that simple exchange, our positions at opposite ends of the political spectrum were revealed.

The celebration of Christmas has indeed been overshadowed by politics in recent years, to the point where every greeting is pregnant with meaning. And even non Christians are swept up in the Christmas kerfuffle.

As a member of the Jewish faith, I've never once felt intimidated, bothered or offended by Christmas. In fact, I grew up celebrating Christmas and still do to this day. Not the religious aspects, but rather the festive trappings of the holiday. I also light the menorah candles each year to mark Hanukkah. While this might earn me the disapproval of traditionalists on both sides of the fence, I confess it simply to illustrate that one holiday need not endanger another.

Yet the political battle over Christmas rages on. Conservatives are upset over what has been dubbed the "war on Christmas," while liberals accuse them of overreacting to what is essentially a non-event. But who's right?

Skeptics of the "war on Christmas" narrative often point out that the trappings of Christmas are everywhere. The commercialization of Christmas has led to an onslaught of retail madness in recent years; the evidence is all around us. But the religious underpinnings of Christmas (the birth of Jesus Christ), not to mention the actual name of the holiday itself, are at risk of disappearing from the public sphere.

All across the country, city halls, chain stores, and public squares are erecting "holiday trees" in lieu of Christmas trees. Nativity scenes are being banned in town squares, public buildings and even some malls. The singing of Christmas carols such as "Silent Night" in public schools and caroling in public parks and public housing are becoming rarities. Court cases brought by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have taken the clause that never appeared in the constitution to ridiculous levels -- and chipping away at Christmas is just one of the results.

The Wages of Diversity

The retail world has been the focus of much anti-Christmas activity. While profiting from the holiday, many stores seem to feel that specifying Christmas threatens the "inclusiveness" to which they seem to be pledged. A trip to Macy's, Nordstrom, Sears or just about any other department store these days will almost always result in the ubiquitous "Happy Holidays" greeting from employees as you pass through the door.

Target in particular has taken a lot of heat for allegedly eliminating the word "Christmas" from its stores. Although they deny this policy, a brief look around any Target store will prove otherwise. Whether it's the advertising, the store decorations or the favored greetings of employees, "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" has obviously overtaken Christmas. An online petition, signed by over 500,000 shoppers, produced a promise from Target to add more Christmas to the mix as the 25th approaches, but the result remains to be seen.

PC Greetings From the White House

Even President Bush, the supposed leader of a new Christian theocracy (to hear some on the left tell it), seems to have succumbed to the forces of political correctness. The White House recently sent out its Christmas card. But as has been the custom since the Clinton presidency, it was instead a "holiday card." There was nary a mention of the word "Christmas."

The bland holiday card angered many of Bush's supporters, while doing nothing to lessen the president's reputation among liberals as some sort of new pope. So one has to wonder why the White House promulgated a form of self-censorship with little or no reward involved. That Bush is the first president to honor Hanukkah and Ramadan at the White House certainly need not preclude mention of Christmas in the White House holiday card.

The excuse given by the White House for honoring this precedent is that one must be sensitive to the other holidays occurring at the same time of year -- Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and for the few pagans out there, Winter Solstice. But they really have nothing to do with the discussion. The federal holiday that the country is celebrating on the 25th of December is Christmas, period. With the exception of Hanukkah this year, which coincidentally begins on the 25th, that particular date does not belong to any other holiday. So what's wrong with acting accordingly?

Why is it that Christmas is the only holiday that must be downplayed so that other religions feel more "included"? We don't insist on calling the Muslim holiday of Ramadan by any other name, nor do we impose such restrictions on the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. In all fairness, we would have to label all religious and cultural occasions "holidays," not just Christmas. I wonder how long it would take for members of other religions to express their outrage? Yet when Christians fight back, as they are now with a concerted campaign to stem the anti-Christmas tide, they are ridiculed or vilified by their opponents.

This double standard when it comes to Christians can be seen in many spheres. A friend was shopping recently in one of those cute little neighborhood stores San Francisco prides itself on when she noticed that the man ringing her up was wearing a T-shirt that read, "So Many Rightwing Christians, So Few Lions." No doubt this was intended to be humorous, but the message has serious implications. Simply substitute the words "Jews," "blacks" or "gays" and the outrage would be immediate. But when it comes to Christians, such offensive rhetoric is somehow acceptable. There's even a term for it -- Christianophobia.

Often, the reason given by those who espouse this bigotry is that Christians themselves spew hatred toward other groups. But mostly what's being referred to is disapproval, not hatred. Criticism of another's lifestyle is not equivalent to hating someone or acting violently on hatred. While there will always be the few extremists, the majority of Christians espouse a peaceful approach to their fellow human beings. It would be nice if that fact were acknowledged now and then.

The Holiday With No Name

So what's at the heart of this campaign to erase Christmas? I argue that it's the creeping multiculturalism that has taken hold of our nation. Instead of a melting pot, we have a system whereby Christianity, the majority religion, is being subordinated to all the others in the interest of "equality." Accordingly, Christmas has to be diminished so that no feels left out.

But this sort of excessive pandering to "diversity" is becoming ludicrous. Have we become a nation of insecure adherents to psychobabble? Does the mere presence of Christmas really threaten non-Christians?

During such times, I'm reminded of my mother's childhood in Australia and her experiences being the sole Jewish child in what was essentially a Christian school. Far from feeling left out, she simply accepted the situation at face value. Jewish traditions were kept alive both at home and in a thriving Jewish community, so they didn't need to be shared by the entire school for her to feel secure. She was never insulted or put upon for being Jewish -- that's just how it was. The point is, simply being a member of a minority group is not tantamount to being oppressed.

Perhaps we should remember that lesson when thinking about the Christmas kerfuffle. And the next time someone wishes you a "Happy Holidays," wish them a hearty "Merry Christmas" in return.

Annual Campus Watch Corrections Update

2008-12-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

Campus Watch has been keeping very busy the past year issuing corrections to the numerous smears and false allegations made against us. From incorrect attributions to paranoid conspiracy theories regarding the "Israel lobby," Neocon cabals, and the like, the fun never ends!

Excerpts and links to our 2008 "Setting The Record Straight" entries are posted at the Campus Watch blog. Click here to access all corrections to date.

Joel Brinkley: Right on Falk, Wrong on Academia

2008-12-18T15:49:00.000-08:00

My latest at the Campus Watch blog:

Stanford University journalism professor and former New York Times foreign policy correspondent Joel Brinkley has written a commendable article in the San Francisco Chronicle questioning Princeton University professor emeritus of international law Richard Falk's role as special representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Falk is charged with investigating alleged Israeli human rights abuses against the Palestinians or, in other words, drumming up false charges against Israel on behalf of a "human rights council" that includes the Organization of the Islamic Conference, among other unsavory participants.

Continue reading "Joel Brinkley: Right on Falk, Wrong on Academia"

The Mumbai Atrocities: Where is the Outrage?

2008-12-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

In my latest SFGate column, I bemoan the indifference with which the horrific attack on Mumbai was met, as well as the complacency towards Islamism that seems to be on the rise. Here are the opening paragraphs:

It was often said after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that everything had changed. And for a few years afterwards, indeed it had. After decades of denial, America and its allies went on the offensive against Islamic terrorism, both militarily and morally. Most importantly, there was no hesitancy to name the enemy or to condemn his inhumanity.

But if the lack of outrage over the Islamic terrorist assault on Mumbai, India last month was any indication, everything has changed back.

Continue reading "The Mumbai Atrocities: Where is the Outrage?"

Update: Two earlier columns that strongly reflect my thoughts on this subject are Steven Emerson's "They're Winning" and Daniel Pipes' (with whom I work) "Still Asleep After Mumbai."

Latest inFocus Features Campus Watch

2008-12-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

The Winter 2008 issue of inFocus, the quarterly journal of the Jewish Policy Center (JPC), is now available and it concentrates on all things campus-related. My Campus Watch article, "Rashid Khalidi, Campus Watch & Middle East Studies," is among the offerings. In it, I take a look at the radical past and propagandistic career of Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, examples of other Middle East studies academics with radical associations, and Campus Watch's role in calling attention to such matters. Other contributors include Campus Watch adjunct scholar Asaf Romirowsky, David Horowitz, Alan Dershowitz, Larry Greenfield, Sarah Stern, and many more.

JPC executive director Matthew Brooks elaborates on the issue in a recent mailing, which is reprinted below:

Academia has become a hotbed for activist professors who preach anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israel rhetoric. Students are taught that the myriad problems in the Middle East are the fault of Israel and the United States. Programs teaching these and other Leftist canards are often funded by Arab petrodollars, or even federal taxpayer funds.

The JPC has solicited experts to identify and provide solutions to this mounting challenge that threatens future generations of Americans, and impacts the issues and policies we all care about.

This issue features an article by JPC distinguished fellow David Horowitz, who offers a first-hand account of how campus elements with radical agendas intimidate students and encourage Islamist hate speech to flourish.

The JPC is proud to publish in this issue a candid interview with distinguished Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, which highlights the depth of anti-Israel sentiment on campus.

We are also proud to print a great piece on alumni activism by JPC supporter Robert Lewit, who writes on behalf of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

This journal showcases writing from a broad coalition of campus watchdogs and scholarly organizations that seek to reform our universities. They include Campus Watch, the Association for the Study of Middle East and Africa, the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, and others. Here's the full table of contents:

David Horowitz - A Survey of Challenges on Campus

Cinnamon Stillwell - Rashid Khalidi, Campus Watch & Middle East Studies

Larry Greenfield - The Rise of Campus Anti-Zionism in California

Sarah Stern - The Wahhabi Jihad for Young American Minds

Mitchell Bard - Israel Studies Grows on Campus

Alan Dershowitz - Interview: Making the Case for Israel on Campus

Asaf Romirowsky - The Academy and the Palestinian Refugees

Michael I. Krauss - Challenging the Status Quo in Middle Eastern Studies

Erin O'Connor and Maurice Black - Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies

Patrick Coyle - Campus Conservatives Can Succeed With the Right Strategy

Robert Lewit - Trustees Can Hold Middle East Studies Accountable

Click here to access the Winter 2008 issue of inFocus online. Print issues are available with a subscription.

Vassar's Joshua Schreier Promises Zero Objectivity

2008-12-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

My latest post at the Campus Watch blog:

Biased Middle East studies professors are nothing new, but what about a professor who actually states in his course syllabus that he has no intention of presenting a scholarly, balanced approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict? This is how Vassar College history professor Joshua Schreier introduces the syllabus for his fall 2008 course, "The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict"...

Continue reading "Vassar's Joshua Schreier Promises Zero Objectivity"

R.I.P. Dan Kliman

2008-12-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Dan Kliman, 38, who was a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel (SFV4I). I knew Dan from my days as a Bay Area pro-America, pro-Israel grassroots activist, which included a year-long stint with SFV4I. Alongside Dan, other SFV4I members, and members of Protest Warrior, I counter-protested the local Israel-haters on many an occasion and it became an integral part of my political education. (Read some of my after-reports here, here, and here).

Dan was dedicated, passionate, and very in-your-face, both as an outspoken Zionist and a gay activist. Indeed, his proud defense of Israel as the lone haven for gays in the Middle East was a wonderful contrast to the confusion of groups such as Queers for Palestine (now ludicrously known as QUIT or Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism). To make his point, Dan would often hold aloft an Israeli flag and a rainbow flag side-by-side, no doubt causing great cognitive dissonance on the other side. Between Dan and my staunchly pro-Israel, Palestinian-American friend Gus, we helped prove that being pro-Israel need not spring from one's creed nor political affiliation.

The suspicious circumstances surrounding Dan's death (he allegedly fell into an out-of-use elevator shaft in the building where he was taking Arabic classes) are difficult to ignore, particularly since he was a man who did not shy away from making enemies. And among them, no doubt, were those who hated him for being an unapologetic Jewish Zionist. However, the SFPD are maintaining that it was an accident, so for now, we'll have to take a wait and see approach. (Go to Zomblog for a round-up of links on the case and a photo tribute).

Whatever the case, Dan Kliman will be sorely missed. May he rest in peace.

Rashid Khalidi, Campus Watch & Middle East Studies

2008-12-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

In an article appearing in the Winter 2008 issue of the Jewish Policy Center magazine inFocus, I take a look at the radical past and propagandistic career of Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi. Other examples of Middle East studies academics with radical assocations or sympathies come into play, as well as Campus Watch's role in shedding light on these important issues. Here are the opening paragraphs:

For a brief time during the 2008 presidential campaign, Columbia University's Edward Said professor of Arab studies Rashid Khalidi was the most famous Middle East studies academic in the country. Khalidi's relationship with now president-elect Barack Obama brought him national attention and unprecedented media scrutiny. At the heart of the controversy was Khalidi's role as a spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) when he lived in Beirut in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During those years, the PLO was listed by the State Department as a designated foreign terrorist organization.

But this was not the first time that Khalidi's PLO past had come back to haunt him. In 2004, Campus Watch (campus-watch.org), a project of the Middle East Forum, broke the story with a Washington Times article by Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Calt Harris titled, "Arafat Minion as Professor." Among other indicators, the authors pointed to a June 9, 1982, Thomas L. Friedman column in the New York Times describing Khalidi as "a director of the Palestinian press agency." Adding further confirmation, Middle East studies historian Martin Kramer, who has written extensively about Khalidi, recently augmented the compendium of attributions linking him to the PLO.

Propaganda As Scholarship

One need only examine Khalidi's history of anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric to perceive his ideological underpinnings, something that Campus Watch has been doing since its inception in 2002. Given its mission statement of "reviewing and critiquing Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them," Campus Watch has consistently pointed to Khalidi as an example of the politicization and apologia that has compromised the field. As far back as 1986, Daniel Pipes, who would go on to found both the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, reviewed Khalidi's book, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, and noted its transparent partisanship. As he put it, "Under Siege is propaganda parading as scholarship."

Continue reading "Rashid Khalidi, Campus Watch & Middle East Studies"

To Ban a Book: The Fuss Over "Jewel of Medina"

2008-12-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

My colleague, Campus Watch director Winfield Myers, has an article at Frontpage Magazine today examining the unnecessary controversy surrounding The Jewel of Medina, thanks in large part to University of Texas Middle East studies professor Denise Spellberg. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Political correctness is at its most parodic precisely when it seems beyond parody. The latest bit of history to support this adage is the Middle East studies establishment's reception of Sherry Jones's novel The Jewel of Medina (Jewel), a life of Aisha, the favorite wife of Muhammad. As Robert Spencer writes in his review of Jewel for the Winter 2009 issue of the Middle East Quarterly, Jones set out to "be a bridge-builder" who chose her historical sources selectively to ensure that her work would present a flattering picture of her subjects.

Enter Denise Spellberg, who teaches Islamic history at the University of Texas. She heard of Jewel pre-publication because Jones, in her naiveté, asked her then-publisher Ballantine, an imprint of Random House, to obtain an endorsement from Spellberg to splay across the back of the dust jacket. Spellberg is author of Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of Aisha bint Abi Bakr, which Jones cites as one of her sources. She is, in addition, a typical practitioner of the blatant bias toward things Muslim and, more particularly, Arab that has become almost ubiquitous among practitioners of Middle East studies. Put simply but accurately, this means that things Arab/Muslim = good; things American/Western = bad. Under this regime, dispassionate, fair-minded research that takes a critical look at the Middle East is more likely to be rewarded with professional ostracism than advancement.

Continue reading "To Ban a Book"

It's Tough Being Joel Beinin

2008-11-21T11:29:00.001-08:00

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.