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Islam Awareness Week 2008 is underway at the University of Pennsylvania. Organized by the Muslim Students Association, Islam Awareness Week also has academic sponsors, including the university's Middle East Center. While "awareness" may be a laudable goal, blatant proselytizing is another matter entirely. Yet today's event, "State and Need for Dawah in the West," promises just that. Here is the description (received by e-mail; emphasis added): Harvard Chaplain and well-studied individual of Islam, Taha Abdul-Basser will deliver the Friday sermon on the lack of Dawah (invitation) on the part of Muslims in North America, not only to convey a message...

This weekend, the "Popular Palestinian Conference 2008" will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], "Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives" and subtitling the conference, "Palestinians in the US: Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our Narrative." Unfortunately, this "narrative" is a false one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual victims, and the United States an accomplice in...

While the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has long dominated the field, its highly politicized leadership's inability to withstand criticism, inattention to radical Islam, and apologetic approach towards the West's foes has left many Middle East studies scholars feeling unwelcome by their umbrella professional organization. Enter the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Founded last year by Professors Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, ASMEA offers an alternative to MESA's post-colonialist biases and a venue for studying those elements of Islam and the Middle East that MESA's leaders ignore or downplay.ASMEA's emergence is cause for optimism....

The free-speech rights of a University of Wisconsin pro-life club were violated recently, and the incident has been posted on the popular video-sharing website YouTube. Pointers for Life, a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point pro-life club, recently obtained permission from the school to place 4,000 white crosses on campus grounds. The display was meant to symbolize the 4,000 unborn babies who are aborted every day in the United States. However, the display was vandalized on May 1 by Roderick King, a university sophomore and student senator. While King was knocking over the white crosses, he stated that the pro-life group had...

On June 15-16, a conference will take place at the University of Southern California titled, "How Free is the University?" Sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, the conference features an impressive lineup of speakers, all addressing the subject of academic freedom in higher education. As Northern California Representative for Campus Watch - a conference co-sponsor - I will be speaking on a panel titled, "Middle East Studies Departments: Who influences and controls them?" In doing so, I hope to shed light on the crucial part played by Middle East studies in the ongoing politicization of the classroom. On a related...

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue. The sixth novel in the series, Prince of Fire, begins with a horrific terrorist attack at the Israeli embassy in Rome, explores the origins of the modern state of Israel, and ends in an archaeological excavation trench in Provence. Figuring throughout is the handsome and mysterious Paul Martineau,...

In his 2002 Commentary article, "Jihad and the Professors," Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes makes a compelling case for "the nearly universal falsification of jihad on the part of American academic scholars." Rather than acknowledging the aggressively military nature of jihad (otherwise known as "holy war"), such academics would have us believe that it consists either of defensive warfare, a struggle for spiritual and personal improvement, or the promotion of social justice. Here are a few of the quotes he cites in the article: Jihad as "usually understood" means "a struggle to be true to the will of God...

The poster advertising New York University’s “Academic Freedom in the Age of Permanent Warfare” conference featured a scolding Statue of Liberty pointing an accusatory finger and stating: “YOU! Stop Asking Questions. You’re Either With US or You’re With the TERRORISTS!” The speakers and attendees gathered around the pastry-laden table at NYU’s new Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center last week didn't appear to be oppressed or under attack. But once they wiped the sugar from their mouths and stood up to speak, they assured the audience that they were, in fact, victims in an “age of permanent warfare.” According to keynote...

The proliferation of dubious conferences on "academic freedom" continues unabated. And, in each case, biased and politicized Middle East studies academics are a major component.In October, 2007, the University of Chicago hosted, "In Defense of Academic Freedom," an event whose unifying theme was "the notion that Jewish groups have degraded the quality and breadth of discussion in the media and in Washington." Hardly the stuff of self-described progressives, but such is the state of discourse in the corridors of academia today. Then there was the "DePaul Academic Freedom Conference" earlier this month. It featured the usual suspects, all alleging "academic...

History professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Joel Beinin, went on "extended leave" from Stanford in 2006 due to what he described as the university's "minimal institutional interest in the study and teaching of the modern Middle East." Since that time, Beinin has been serving as director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. But was it scholarly concerns or mounting criticism that caused Beinin to leave Stanford for AUC? In a 2006 interview with Egypt Today, Beinin was portrayed as a victim of "conservative reaction" on the part of Middle...

Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history – often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors. History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district in 2005 for this very reason. The textbook is now causing controversy in California and...

When it comes to off-the-wall commentary on the Middle East conflict, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is the gift that keeps on giving. If there's anti-Israel propaganda to be found, one can be sure Cole will be peddling it at his ironically named blog, Informed Comment. His labeling of Gaza in September, 2007 as "the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo" is a case in point. As noted by Noah Pollack at Contentions, Cole's latest blog ramblings ratchet up the hysteria another notch. Not content with alleging persecution of the self-defeating...

In the latest issue of City on a Hill Press, the student newspaper for the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), reporter Marc Abizeid spins a bone-chilling tale of silenced professors and a Middle East studies field threatened by a shadowy network of "radical pro-Israel interest groups." At the helm of this nefarious conspiracy is of course Campus Watch, which Abizeid paints as a ruthless organization bent on censoring anyone who strays from the straight and narrow. The problem is none of it's true.Much like the disaffected academics he profiles in the ominously titled, "Silencing Debate on the Middle...

Earlier this year, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. It was founded in 1957 by Gustave E. Von Grunebaum, a scholar at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and the first president of the Middle East Studies Association. Grunebaum sought to establish at UCLA a groundbreaking Middle East and Islamic Studies program featuring an array of experts in languages, culture, and history. Unfortunately, the best-known UCLA professors specializing in the region today, far from embodying the classical approach to the discipline in which knowledge is the overriding goal, exemplify...

After a contentious two-year campaign waged by the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) and other supporters, a mural dedicated to the late Columbia University English and comparative literature professor Edward Said was unveiled at San Francisco State University (SFSU) last week. Former SFSU Arabic professor Fayeq Oweis – now teaching the same subject at Santa Clara University – was the lead artist for what's been labeled the "Palestinian Cultural Mural." The mural does include various symbols said to be associated with Palestinian culture, but it is Said's likeness that looms largest. This is perhaps appropriate for it was Said's...

In the growing list of acceptable bigotries proliferating among those who inhabit the ever-so-progressive Ivory Tower, it seems that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans are fair game. Just ask University of Delaware political science and international relations professor Muqtedar Khan (also a Pentagon consultant and Brookings Institute Fellow), who refused to share an academic panel yesterday at the University of Delaware with Campus Watch Associate Fellow Asaf Romirowsky. My Campus Watch colleague, Director Winfield Myers, references the story at the Campus Watch blog and Michael Rubin has all the details at NRO's The Corner. I've been given permission to post...

As part of the "Islam Awareness Week" currently taking place at the University of Pennsylvania, a discussion titled, "Don't Believe the Hype: How the Media and Hollywood Portray Muslims and their Faith" will take place on October 24. Looking at the description of the event, it's clear that the usual platitudes about "Islamophobia," "racism," and "misconceptions" will be employed to mask the need for honest examination and, ultimately, reform in combating Islamism: This event will seek to address the way Western media has created an unwarranted sense of fear towards Muslims. This speaker panel will address the heavy-hitting issue of...

UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies lecturer and adjunct professor at Boalt Hall School of Law Hatem Bazian is back in the headlines. Campus Watch readers will no doubt recall Bazian's infamous call for an "intifada in this country" at a 2004 anti-war protest in San Francisco, not to mention the numerous examples of his participation in radical, and, ostensibly, pro-Palestinian activities across the nation. The latest case being Bazian's lecture at UC Berkeley on October 6, given as part of a series hosted by a student group called Islamic Awareness of Berkeley. The lecture was attended by Ethan Strauss, a...

We've all heard the refrain, "anti-Zionism doesn't equal anti-Semitism" a million times from those desperate to convince themselves (Jews among them) that their single-minded obsession with and disproportionate condemnation of the world's only Jewish state has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism. Others simply use that line as a fig leaf to try and conceal their outright opposition to Israel's continued existence and, not coincidentally, the Jewish people. But, as we've seen time and time again, the virulently anti-Zionist rhetoric that has been allowed to gain ground on America's college campuses, both among faculty and student groups, tends to result...

During a speech last month at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, President Bush hearkened back to the destructive legacy of self-perpetuated U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War as a warning to those who would effect the same outcome today in Iraq. In doing so, he tapped into a firestorm of criticism, particularly from liberals who were outraged that someone else was using the analogy they themselves have been pushing relentlessly since 9/11. Indeed, America's military response to the Islamic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 has engendered nothing but opposition from the keepers of the 1960s...

California State University, Fresno (CSUF) is in the process of developing The Middle East Studies Project, a collection of interdisciplinary courses that, by 2009, it hopes to offer as a minor in Middle East studies. But, already, some in the Fresno community are raising red flags about what direction CSUF's Middle East Studies Project will take. Considering the biased nature of Middle East studies departments across the country – and California is no exception – their concerns are not unwarranted. The website FresnoZionism.org, which bills itself as "a pro-Israel voice from California's Central Valley," recently posted an item on CSUF...

What's ailing contemporary Middle East studies? A symposium earlier this month at Stanford University provided a clue.A paranoid fixation on imagined American and Israeli "empire"; the refusal to accept legitimate criticism; an insulated, elitist worldview; an inability to employ clear, jargon-free English; and a self-defeating hostility towards the West: these vices and more were made clear at "The State of Middle East Studies: Knowledge Production in an Age of Empire." Professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University Hamid Dabashi captured the symposium's theme by asserting that the "Middle East is under U.S./Israeli imperial domination" and that America...

Stanford Middle East history professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association Joel Beinin is known for letting his one-sided political perspectives invade the classroom. As former Stanford professor Steven Zipperstein told The Jewish Weekly of Northern California in 2002, "It's said that Joel Beinin doesn't believe in balance as an intrinsically crucial goal in academic life. …The charge is accurate, and he would acknowledge it, I think." Allyssa Lappen wrote about Beinin for Campus Watch in 2004 and she encapsulates his less-than-savory viewpoints in the following passage: He denounces American "imperialism" on Al-Jazeera Television. A former Zionist,...

Hatem Bazian is a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies, a member of the faculty advisory board in the religion, politics and globalization program, and an adjunct professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies. Along with teaching courses in Islamic law, religious studies and Arabic, Bazian, a Palestinian native, also devotes an inordinate amount of time to pro-Palestinian activism. Unfortunately, the bulk of this activism is centered on organizations, publications, speeches, and events that demonize Israel and, at times, the United States.As documented...

Throughout the academic year, Columbia University holds a series of seminars, bringing together members of the university faculty and, as they put it, "experts and specialists in nonacademic pursuits," and "authorities in many fields of scholarship as speakers in guests" to focus on a variety of topics. The Middle East Seminar taking place today (5/2) at Columbia promises a "carefully-defined and informed evaluation of stubborn problems in a region that symbolizes mounting instability and proliferating crises." So who did Columbia choose to invite as a speaker, out of all the notable possibilities, to address this pressing issue? None other than...

A conference on media coverage of the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict being held tomorrow (April 3) at the University of California, Los Angeles, looks to be yet another opportunity for anti-Israel invective. Titled "Covering Lebanon," the conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Conference speakers include UCLA history professor Gabriel Piterberg, who specializes on the Near and Middle East. Piterberg is best known for teaching a course extolling the virtues of the father of Orientalism, Edward Said, and another that examines "the dispossession of the Palestinians by the state of Israel during and after the 1948 war, the...

A widely-publicized attack on supporters of Israel by two leading academics commits a fair number of inaccuracies not the least of which is their characterization of controversies surrounding the Israel Lobby as they manifest themselves on American campuses. “In September 2002, for example, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neoconservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in a recent report which also appeared in abbreviated form in the London Review of Books....

Earlier this year, Columbia president Lee Bollinger affirmed his commitment to promoting intellectual diversity at the Morningside Heights campus. It's difficult, however, to see how that commitment can co-exist with the $15 million "diversity" hiring initiative announced earlier this week. Although superficially comparable to Harvard's $50 million pledge to increase the number of women among its faculty, the Columbia program is different in four important—and disturbing—ways. 1.) Bollinger isn't Larry Summers. Regardless of the propriety of Summers' original remarks, his subsequent reaction—apologizing profusely, admitting that his statement was misguided—could be construed as an admission by Harvard's leadership that it had...

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST Liberals Hold 'Name Coulter's Book' Contest A "Name Ann Coulter's Next Book" contest launched by campusprogress.org, a fledging liberal Web site and offshoot of the slightly crazed Center for American Progress, challenged students to come up with appropriate titles. According to the Web site, the rules for the contest were simple: The book title had to be the same format as Coulter’s books — a single word followed by an explanatory subtitle, as in Coulter's "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism." According to the Washington Post's Reliable...

An actual debate on the merits of racial preferences has taken place on an American campus, Utah State University. Whether the Guinness World Records book is interested in this news is not certain. I know I am. Astonishingly, the university administration did not step in to halt the proceedings on the grounds that feelings might be hurt. The debate was civil, with some booing and cheering on both sides. Some students seemed a bit testy or angry. But as one student sponsor of the debate said, "That's part of politics and discussing divisive issues." This breakthrough raises a startling question:...

The university exists for the free exchange of ideas, right? Then why is it that representatives of one half the argument – the conservative half – need bodyguards and metal detectors when they speak on North American campuses, and their leftist counterparts almost never do? Consider three suggestive parallels of how the Right needs security and the Left is welcomed. Government officials. In September 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Likud (conservative) prime minister of Israel was to speak at Concordia University in Montreal, but he never made it. Nearly a thousand anti-Israel protestors rioted prior to the event,[1] smashing windows...

After arriving in the United States with a diploma from Leningrad University (a university with such alumni as Vladimir Lenin, Ayn Rand and President Vladimir Putin), I realized that I had the extremely unmarketable skills of a Marxist-Leninist philosophy professor. Moreover, English was not my strong suit. So I became a staff writer for a Russian newspaper in San Francisco and free-lanced for émigré publications in New York and Los Angeles. Eventually, I decided “To bring my English to the level of my Russian" (as the Russian-born American novelist Vladimir Nabokov quipped) and enrolled at San Francisco State University. I...

SFSU sentence for Menaker doesn't sit well with some ALEZA GOLDSMITH Bulletin Staff The verdict is finally in. Tatiana Menaker must perform 40 hours of community service for a nonprofit community group with a charitable purpose after she made comments to pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a San Francisco State University rally in May. No specific nonprofits were suggested in the verdict. But she cannot volunteer with any organization that is solely identified with a community she most closely relates to: Russian emigres, the Jewish community or the state of Israel. "It's the epitome of hypocrisy," said Menaker's attorney Alexander Anolik. While...

Campus Watch Attacked in AAUP Report Professors Association Castigates CW, Recognizes Its Rights Nov. 28, 2003, Philadelphia – A professors’ syndicate report this month accused Campus Watch, an academic freedom watchdog, of being a “source of efforts to discourage lawful speech” in the post-9/11 environment. To this, Campus Watch responds by noting that this report underscores a continuing reluctance by American professors to address significant failures in Middle Eastern studies departments. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) report, “Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis”, finds that Campus Watch (CW) has “denounced professorial departures” from what...

"The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the students' immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters of question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness in judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.” So asserted Columbia University’s John Dewey in 1915 as founding president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Such statements touch at the very heart of Campus Watch, a project designed to review and improve...

"'Intellectual thugs," huffed Rashid Khalidi, now of Columbia University. "Cyber-stalking," whined Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. "Crude McCarthyism" sniffed David Bartram of the University of Reading. "Totalitarian" thundered Jenine Abboushi of New York University. What so outrages these academic specialists on the Middle East? It's called Campus Watch (campus-watch.org), and it's a project I started a year ago today to "review and critique Middle East studies in North America, with an aim to improving them." Campus Watch provides peer review of a vital topic - think how many problems come out of the Middle East. Given the centrality...

IMMEDIATELY after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration said all the right things about Muslims and Arab-Americans. President Bush visited a mosque in Washington and met with Muslim leaders. He also declared, on national TV, that Muslims and Arab-Americans were not behind the 9/11 terror (which they weren't) and that it was un-American to blame them. But his positive words have been followed by bad deeds. A litany of anti-Arab and Muslim actions, including numerous ramifications of the Patriot Act, "voluntary" interviews and special immigration registration would be a vast list. Two recent actions dramatically illustrate insensitivity...

Debating Campus-Watch.org Fox News: Hannity & Colmes September 27, 2002 http://www.danielpipes.org/article/471 COLMES: A new battle is brewing on our nation's campuses, concern about what they feel is a growing anti-Israeli bias in the college classroom. The Middle East Forum has launched a Web site to monitor the situation. The site, campus-watch.org, specifically lists professors and universities for their alleged controversial views. Is this a public service or a smear campaign? Joining us now from Washington is the man behind the site, director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, and coming to us from Mountain View, California, one of the...

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...

Web Site Fuels Debate on Campus Anti-SemitismBy TAMAR LEWIN Web site started last week by a pro-Israel research and policy group, citing eight professors and 14 universities for their views on Palestinian rights or political Islam, has opened a new chapter in a growing debate over campus anti-Semitism.In a show of solidarity with those named on the Web site, nearly 100 outraged professors nationwide — Jews and non-Jews, English professors and Middle East specialists — have responded to the site by asking to be added to the list.The Web site, Campus Watch (www.campus-watch.org), with "dossiers" on individuals and institutions...

The software is blocking the posting of material from the callous, cynical, hate-filled, hypocrite lefties at CounterPunch. I'm going to go ahead and provide a link under this vanity for the following reasons: 1) To further publicize the Middle East Forum's important new website, Campus Watch, which is devoted to monitoring and countering the extreme political radicalism and anti-Westernism dominant in academic Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies. 2) So y'all can have a good laugh at how the lefties HOWL when the merest shadow of their tactics of academic insurgency are applied to them. (Somebody call the WHAAAAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!) CounterPunch article...

An important new organization that promises to focus public concern on "blame America first" bias in the academy is in danger of being discredited. The Middle East Forum, under the direction of Daniel Pipes, has established a project and website called, "Campus Watch." Campus Watch is designed to monitor Middle East Studies in the United States, analyzing and criticizing errors and biases, and drawing public attention to controversies over funding, academic appointments, etc. Campus Watch maintains that Middle East Studies in the United States is dominated by professors who are actively hostile to America's interests in the world. The organization's...

Here is their "About Us" page: About Campus Watch The Problem American scholars of the Middle East, to varying degrees, reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East.Examples: There may be a war on terrorism underway, but the scholars downplay the dangers posed by militant Islam, seeing it as a benign and even democratizing force.With only one exception, every American president since 1948 has spoken forcefully about the benefits to the United States from strong and deep relations with Israel. In contrast, American scholars often propagate a view of Middle...