Thirteen years after Campus Watch (CW)'s inception in 2002, radical, politicized Middle East studies academics remain indignant that an organization dared confront them with the horror of outside criticism, which they falsely equate with censorship, McCarthyism, and other paranoid clichés. In the latest CW research, Cinnamon Stillwell reports on a recent Stanford University lecture in which Joel Beinin -- Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) -- not only boasted that he and his radical "generation of Middle East scholars" had overtaken the field, but deplored CW's ascension in the "post-second intifada-9/11 environment" and mischaracterized its purpose. Her article appears today at American Thinker:
Beinin has been a frequent subject of CW's attention, and for good reason. His long history of anti-Israel, anti-American bias -- not to mention his engaging in the last bastion of desperate Middle East studies academics: false death threat allegations against critics -- is well-known. Indeed, he boasted at the Stanford lecture, "I have no problem with anybody calling me a radical," although his strenuous objections to external criticism indicate otherwise.