Donald Trump |
This despite Trump's receiving more minority votes than did Mitt Romney in 2012, and the support of the same white working-class population that twice voted for biracial President Barack Obama.
It was not millions of American voters, but the professors themselves who exhibited bigotry, fear, and anger.
Muqtedar Khan |
Similarly, Rhodes College Islamic studies professor Yasir Qadhi suddenly feared "for the safety of my wife in a hijab, of my children in the streets, of minorities everywhere struggling to understand what happened." He maintained that white Americans' racist, irrational fear of "melanin content" led them to support Trump.
Reza Aslan, University of California, Riverside creative writing professor, tweeted hysterically, "Someone please tell me how I tell my kids that the president whose picture will soon be on their classroom wall hates them, wants them gone."
University of Denver Center for Middle East Studies director Nader Hashemi bemoaned "the new white extremism in middle America," while accusing Trump of being "so radical and so extreme" that ISIS is "celebrating" his victory.
Juan Cole |
Omid Safi, director of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center, insulted a significant percentage of the electorate by angrily demanding of white evangelical Christians, "When you had to choose between your white privilege and your Jesus, how did you live with yourself putting Jesus on the bottom?" Here's a rhetorical question: would Safi would have directed such ire at his fellow Muslims, let alone substituted Muhammed for Jesus, were the tables turned?
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, encapsulated the arc of anti-populist hysteria in one sentence: "Trump's victory will stand as America's Brexit moment where Islamophobia, anti-immigrant discourses, economic dislocation, and nativist sentiments got masterfully mobilized to win an election."
Hamid Dabashi |
Such was the reaction of a childish, insulated, arrogant professoriate to the results of a democratic election with which it did not agree. Instead of proffering scholarly or strategic analysis, Middle East studies academics indulged in America-bashing, race-baiting, and histrionics. That is, they exemplified the elite attitudes that doubtless drove many voters to support Trump.
Michael Lumish is an analyst on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the proprietor of Israel Thrives. He holds a Ph.D. in American History from the Pennsylvania State University and has taught at Penn State, San Francisco State University, and City College of San Francisco. He co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell (stillwell@meforum.org), the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.