Posted on 09/27/2002 8:43:42 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Furor erupts over Web site monitoring of Middle Eastern scholars
By RON TODT
The Associated Press
9/27/02 10:22 PM
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A pro-Israel organization has set up a Web site to monitor professors and universities for pro-Arab, anti-Israel bias -- a move some academics are decrying as campus McCarthyism and attempted intimidation.
The Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum said it organized the Campus Watch site to counter pervasive bias in universities' Middle Eastern studies.
The site names schools and specific professors. Forum director Daniel Pipes said the think tank hopes eventually to monitor 250 North American academic institutions.
"Our goal is to monitor, critique and improve Middle East studies," Pipes said. "We're not at universities because our views are not welcome. We're trying to create an alternative voice within the field."
Scholars whose articles are compiled into dossiers on the Web site include Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad of Columbia, John Esposito of Georgetown, Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and Snehal Shingavi of University of California at Berkeley. Dossiers are also listed on those institutions as well as a dozen others, including Stanford, Northeastern, the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina.
Opponents immediately called the effort "McCarthy-like" and an attempt to stifle opposition to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Professors listed on the site said they were bombarded with e-mail over the weekend.
In a show of support for those named on the site, about 100 other academics have asked to be added to the list.
Judith Butler, a gender theorist at Berkeley, wrote that she would like to be included in the list of U.S. academics "who oppose the Israeli occupation and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights of self-determination" and support an informed view of Islam.
The Campus Watch site accuses American Middle Eastern scholars of generally being biased against the United States and being apologists for unfriendly regimes.
University of Chicago historian Rashid Khalidi, who is quoted on the Web site as sympathizing with the Palestinian cause, called the site "slimy" and intended to chill opposition.
"What they're trying to do is exclude from public debate opinions that go against the neo-conservative consensus that dominates discussion of policy on Iraq or policy on the Israeli conflict by smearing us and calling us aliens," he said.
Pipes said he will not remove a "Keep Us Informed" page on the site that opponents say is an attempt to get students to turn in their professors. He said it gives students a place to complain about mistreatment.
"What you have in university is exclusion of alternate points of view," Pipes said. "You've got to subscribe to the party line and then you can make your career; if you don't, you're out."
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On the Net:
http://www.campus-watch.org
Did they go to jail for being Communists?
This "blacklist", what was it? Was it just a list of Communists?
I ask because this is always framed, by Hollywood, as "Washington DC against Hollywood!!" But the thing is, if being identified as a Communist simply meant that other Hollywood types knew you were a Communist and didn't want to work with you, that's not DC vs Hollywood... that's Hollywood vs. Communists!
I feel like I must.... MUST.... be missing something.
You should do some research. You will be pleasantly suprised. The Senator was not the nicest person in the world, but he DID find out that a lot of the top of the state department (including Alger Hiss) was/were in the pocket of the Soviets. It was phoo-pahhed until after the fall of the soviets. Then, evidence proved that most of McCarthy's allegations were true. The leftists shat themselves on NPR and pretended it didn't happen.
/john
Funny Rashid, I never heard of you until I read this. Sounds like what they are trying to do is get you and your putrid views out in the sunlight, not stifle them. You want to keep your opinions hidden for some reason. You yourself are the one that wants to "stifle" your own bizarre thoughts. You expect to keep your silly thoughts hidden from the rest of us, save for some impressionable young minds that haven't developed the skills to dicern truth from fiction yet.
The goal is to re-write history. Anything that shows Israeli actions to be less than exemplary will be called "biased."
Israel is a Socialist country. Do they hate America?
The new Book Invasion says it all...
That said...a person's socialist tendencies is not what makes him an "America hater" (a term thrown about so much that it is virtually meaningless).
One can hate the foreign policy decisions of the President and the Congress and still love America. Socialism doesn't enter into it.
America is a Socialist country too. The fact that alot of people still pretend it's a republic hardly means anything when you stack that mis-informed belief against the overwhelming body of government programs and government control over the means of production.
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