Setting The Record Straight

Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.

Campus Watch Responds:

Following its first conference on "Islamophobia production," the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project—a project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley—has unveiled a 68-page report in collaboration with the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist organization posing as a defender of civil rights. Titled "Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States," the report alleges that a number of public figures are guilty of contributing to the scourge of "Islamophobia" supposedly sweeping the nation.

Middle East Forum founder and president Daniel Pipes is included in a section (beginning on page 15) on "The Worst" of these offenders and as proof, the report cites the usual collection of his quotes, all taken out of context or selectively edited to obscure the fact that Pipes has repeatedly stressed that "militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution."

Towards the end of this section (on page 19), the report also mischaracterizes Campus Watch:

Pipes also launched Campus Watch, a website that included 'dossiers' on professors and academic institutions he considered to be too critical of Israel or too sympathetic to Islam and Muslims.

In fact, Campus Watch does not maintain dossiers on professors or academic institutions. Dossiers posted at CW's launch—in September 2002—stayed on the site for two weeks after which, having served their purpose, they were removed.

CW is, however, critical of the field of Middle East studies--and produces work to that effect--based on the five problems outlined in our mission statement: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Being "too critical of Israel or too sympathetic to Islam and Muslims" has nothing to do with it. We are interested in bringing scholarship and objectivity back to the field, not in advancing specific narratives.

Executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, UC Berkeley alumnus, and CW contributor Stephen Schwartz summed up this report perfectly when he wrote that, "'Same Hate, New Target' is a garish political pamphlet, filled with splashy graphics and panic-mongering rhetoric." Indeed.

(Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell)