Howler of the Month (archive)

"I'm uncomfortable with Ahmadinejad's rhetoric. But the person I'm more concerned about is Netanyahu, because his track record is that he not only says but he does."

John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, equating Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu; The Irish Times, January 28, 2012. (link to source)

We Couldn't Have Said it Better (archive)

"It is sobering to observe how few professors of Middle East studies at American or European universities seem able or willing to grasp the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone display any interest in its visceral anti-Westernism or ferocious anti-Semitism. Today, very few academics seek to elucidate its core ideology or long-term goals, let alone acknowledge their incompatibility with liberal democracy, human rights, or a stable world order."

Robert S. Wistrich, professor of modern history and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in his article, "Post-Mubarak Egypt: The Dark Side of Islamic Utopia"; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, January, 2012. (link to source)

CAMPUS WATCH, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.

The Latest on Campus

Power, Knowledge and the Universities [incl. Joseph Massad]
February 6, 2012 - Al Jazeera

Saudi Largesse at Georgetown and Harvard
February 6, 2012 - Phi Beta Cons (National Review Online)

Eastern High School Grad Returning to Middle East
February 6, 2012 - The Salem Leader

Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center: Propaganda for Teachers
February 5, 2012 - American Thinker

Expert Shares Ideas for Peace in Israel [on Norman Finkelstein]
February 5, 2012 - Western Herald (student newspaper of Western Michigan University)

BDS Conference Opens With Criticism of UN, Israel [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
February 4, 2012 - The Daily Pennsylvanian (student newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania)

Barnard College and the Case on Racism [incl. Joseph Massad]
February 2, 2012 - New Voices Magazine

Middle East Studies Shifts Toward the Modern [incl. Beshara Doumani]
February 2, 2012 - News of Brown University

Penn University Fraternity Overstepping Bounds [incl. Hamid Dabashi]
February 2, 2012 - The Island Now (Williston Park, NY)

Arabic Professor Resigns for 'Good Reasons' [on Haider Bhuiyan]
February 2, 2012 - The Red and Black (student newspaper of the University of Georgia)

Blog

Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center: Propaganda for Teachers

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Mon, 6 Feb 2012, 11:33 AM | Permalink

In an article written for Campus Watch and appearing at American Thinker, journalist Stephen Schwartz takes a detailed look at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies Outreach Center, which provides incredibly biased and shoddy teaching materials for K-12 teachers, and its relationship to Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding:

In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal donated $20 million dollars each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. In the years since, Georgetown has earned considerably more press for its use of the prince's largesse, through which it renamed an extant center founded in 1993 as the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). This is due in no small part to the efforts of the center's director, John Louis Esposito, America's foremost apologist for ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. The result of the Saudi-Esposito lash-up has been the emergence of ACMCU as an academic institution that promotes vigorously the "Palestinian narrative" and hostility to Israel.

Harvard's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program has developed at a much slower pace, and as a result, it has received considerably less media attention. . . . Harvard also runs a Center for Middle East Studies (CMES), which includes an Outreach Center directed by one Paul Beran. The Outreach Center has been "awarded National Resource Center status by the US Department of Education's Title VI program and serves educators, students and the general public on topics related to the Middle East region."

To read the entire article, please click here.

Campus Watch on Facebook

By Campus Watch | Thu, 26 Jan 2012, 12:32 PM | Permalink

Campus Watch (CW) now has a Facebook page, 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. CW West Coast Representative Cinnamon Stillwell will be the administrator.

Please click here to access the Campus Watch Facebook page.

Farewell to UCLA's Sondra Hale

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Tue, 10 Jan 2012, 3:31 PM | Permalink

Sondra Hale

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.

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

By Winfield Myers | Fri, 23 Dec 2011, 10:17 AM | Permalink

Lisa Hajjar

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.

Campus Watch Blog Archive