Comments: Prof Dessel is very cynical, and often inserts his own opinions about current world affairs into lectures that are supposed to be about world civilizations from their origins to 1500. For example, he often refers to the conflict with Iraq as "President Bush's war with Iraq." Once he even informed us that the only reason we were interested in removing Saddam was "for the oil." He also harps on the oppressor and the oppressed, and implies that the U.S. is no different from past empires, and always tries to use "class envy" throughout history and the present by explaining it in terms of the "haves" and "have nots," instead of actual historical events. On top of this, Prof Dessel discourages anyone from challenging his viewpoints.
http://noindoctrination.org/cgibin/display_record.cgi?uid=79
He also signed a petition by a bunch of academics who want the Israelis to kick Elad off the Jerusalem digs for "politicizing" Jerusalem archeology.
http://www.alt-arch.org/docs/petitiontext.txt
Dessel is a signer endorsing an attack by the Texas Freedom Network (a "mainstream voice to counter the Christian right") on a curriculum to teach the Bible as literature.
http://www.tfn.org/site/PageServer?pagename=endorsements
I'd say the Professor is a secular liberal pro-Pali Bush hater. Not that such views would incline one to find a Greater Palestine, mind you.
Wow, nice work! Thanks colorado tanker!