Setting The Record Straight

Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.

Campus Watch Responds:

In his Al-Ahram Weekly article, "Israel's New Settlements: US schools are becoming a major focal point for the Zionist movement," Hassan Nafaa makes several errors as he alludes to, but does not name, Campus Watch.

In order of appearance they are:

• He charges that CW is part of a "Zionist lobby," which it certainly is not. Rather, CW critiques Middle East studies in North America regardless of whether they address Israel.
• Nafaa calls CW's actions a "witch hunt against professors and scholars who voice objections to Israeli policies and America's support for them." In fact, we critique politicized, tendentious, and ahistorical scholarship--and agitprop substituting for teaching. Under no circumstances do we launch "witch hunts," a term Nafaa uses to allude to another cliche, McCarthyism. Both are groundless.
• Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer are first-rate scholars in their own right, not men "known for their utter pro-Israeli bias," as Nafaa asserts.
• Martin Kramer was not a co-founder of Campus Watch; it was founded by Daniel Pipes alone.
• Nafaa says that CW collects information from students on their teachers' "political opinions" and maintains "dossiers" on those we regard as anti-Zionist. In fact, the great bulk of our information is gained through reading a scholar's writings and lectures, the great bulk of which is available to anyone with an Internet connection; "political opinions" do not enter into the equation. As for dossiers, CW maintained a few dossiers for less than two weeks back in September, 2002. When they had served their purpose, they were removed, and no dossiers have existed on the site since then. Still, they exist in legend, especially among critics of CW who fail to perform any research on the organization before writing about it.

(Posted by Winfield Myers)