Campus Watch in the Media

Strategies on Academic Freedom [on "Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility after 9/11: A Handbook for Scholars and Teachers, by Laura Bier, Ilana Feldman, et al.]

by Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Education
January 15, 2007

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/15/freedom

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3028

[Ed. Note: At the request of Inside Higher Education, in lieu of presenting the entire article, we're offering a brief summary, the introductory paragraph, and those paragraphs in which Campus Watch is cited.

Summary: The Task Force on Middle East Anthropology has written "Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility after 9/11: A Handbook for Scholars and Teachers." Today, Inside Higher Education has a story on the handbook, along with a few comments from me. Winfield Myers]

Post-9/11, many of the most intense debates about academic freedom have involved Middle Eastern studies. There have been numerous cases in which candidates for jobs or tenure have been opposed at least in part because of their views on the Middle East, with recent flare-ups at Barnard College and Wayne State University. At least 15 of the professors named by David Horowitz in his book last year on "the 101 most dangerous academics" study the Middle East — a proportion that is notable when considering that Middle Eastern studies programs are relatively small, and most students never take a course in the subject...

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At least one leader of a group that has been highly critical of Middle Eastern studies programs praised the handbook. "This handbook demonstrates the effectiveness of Campus Watch's efforts to restore intellectual balance to Middle East studies. Surely, absent the work over the years of Campus Watch and critics of higher education, this new document would never have been written, and the abuses it attempts to correct would continue unchecked," said Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch.

He added: "If professors heed the handbook's calls to create a classroom environment in which civil disagreement is welcome, inflammatory language is eschewed, and topics outside the purview of the subject being taught are avoided, we will witness a revolution in higher education; that is precisely what we have been working for."

Note: Postings in "Campus Watch in the Media" do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch.

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