Middle East studies scholars have for years turned a blind eye to subjects disruptive to their politicized narratives, such as the abuse of women in Arab lands, attacks by radical Muslims on Christians and Jews, and the utter failure of Islamism as a path to democracy. As A.J. Cashetta, a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Shillman Ginsburg Fellow at MEF, shows in his latest article for Campus Watch, all it takes for an Islamist politician like Turkey's Erdogan to gain the tacit support of Western scholars is a free trip to Istanbul. Writing today at the Daily Caller, Caschetta exposes these shameless hacks, which include Michigan's Juan Cole:
In the days after the July coup attempt against his regime, Turkey's tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused a group of scholars attending a conference in Istanbul of conspiring against him and directing the plot. After his widespread paranoid purge of Turkish academia, it seems Erdogan has now found a group of scholars he can live with.
Erdogan's lackeys in the Turkish press helped him whip up a frenzy against Turkish professoriate, and now his lackeys in the Turkish professoriate who survived the purge are propping up his regime. A conference held in Istanbul on October 8-9, titled "Envisioning a Post-crisis Regional Order in the Sharq Region," suggests an Islamist takeover of Turkey's secondary education.
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