Free Republic

What do Middle East studies professors do when they're not in the classroom? Write books? Engage in research? Advance important scholarship? Conduct outreach to students? In the case of two anti-Israel activist professors—Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine history professor, and Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies and director of the Middle East studies program at the University of San Francisco—plotting strategies for furthering the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is the unfortunate answer. In his latest Al-Jazeera op-ed, LeVine conducts an interview with Zunes on the all-important question, "Can the BDS Movement Go Global?"...

On August 5, 2012, Stephen Zunes—professor of politics and international studies and director of the Middle East studies program at the University of San Francisco—made his seventh appearance at the hilltop Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley (UUCB) in the northern enclave of Kensington. Zunes is a regular at UUCB, no doubt because his views are in line with the church's "Social Justice Council," which, according to their website, "sponsors forums focussing [sic] on social justice topics" in pursuit of the quixotic goal of "working towards a better, more just world." Accordingly, there were copies of the British-based newspaper Positive News...

Capitalizing on the success of “Glee,” the Oxygen Channel has come up with “The Glee Project,” a reality TV talent competition in which contestants vie for a coveted spot on the show’s namesake. Currently about to conclude its second season, “The Glee Project”—in keeping with the high school-era outcasts that inhabit “Glee”—put out a call for the awkward, the overweight, the disabled, the curiously little, the racially ambiguous, the sexually confused, the openly gay, the transitioning transgenders, and, of course, some plain old cute guys, no doubt to corner the teenage girl market.Notable among this season’s contestants is 19-year-old Aylin...

I have a confession to make: I watch a lot of TV, and I’m not going to pretend that all or even most of it is educational. This would hardly be considered unusual except that I’m a serious political person who does serious political work and people like us aren’t supposed to admit that we watch a good amount of—let’s face it—trashy TV. The way I look at it, we all need a little fluff in our lives, especially after a day spent reading and writing about the decline of Western civilization. And as the cliché goes: if you can’t...

Engagement with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is the consensus among elite opinion and certainly among the ranks of North American Middle East studies academics, the "experts" tasked with informing the public and, often, policy-makers on foreign policy in the region. Since the Egyptian revolution, these academics have whitewashed the Muslim Brotherhood, downplayed its Islamist agenda, and urged U.S. cooperation—a policy suggestion the Obama administration has clearly taken to heart. Many have been shocked by the speed with which the Obama administration has pursued this policy of outreach. The current debate within Congress about the potential influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on...

The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP)—a program of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender (CRG)—recently held its third annual conference, "Critical Discourses on Islamophobia: Symbols, Images, & Representations." As in previous years, speaker after speaker decried an imaginary racist, imperialist, Orientalist Western juggernaut, while disregarding the very real predations of Islamism. The first day of the conference brought in approximately eighty people at its peak, including a number of women in hijab (head scarf), typing furiously on laptops. Others sported keffiyehs and dreadlocks; a smattering of Arabic and French could be heard; and a scruffy,...

Academic self-congratulation reached new heights at the University of California, Los Angeles on March 21, 2012, with "An Event Honoring Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl." Abou El Fadl—Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law and chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA—was feted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, the UCLA School of Law Journal of Near Eastern and Islamic Law, the UCLA School of Law Muslim Law Students Association, and the UCLA School of Law Critical Race Studies Program. Eighty students, professors, and community members gathered to commemorate "the world's leading authority on...

This just in from the UCLA Newsroom: UCLA is launching a series of public lectures, academic courses and programs aimed at fostering civil discourse and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.UCLA Chancellor Gene Block will be among those teaching courses, along with experts on mediation and professors who have opposing viewpoints on politically charged issues.'It is our obligation to equip students for success in a complicated and interconnected world,' Block said in an email announcing the effort to the campus community. 'From UCLA alumnus Ralph Bunche, who won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts as a mediator in the...

As we, and many others, noted last week, there's a video circulating around the internet of infamous Israel-defamer and former DePaul professor Norman Finkelstein slamming the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling it a "cult" whose goal is the elimination of Israel. As one would expect, Finkelstein's--perhaps former--comrades in the anti-Israel world are none too pleased with his break from the party line. One of them, As'ad AbuKhalil--California State University, Stanislaus political science professor and purveyor of the "Angry Arab News Service"--provides a "critique" at al-Akhbar in which he makes the following admission: Finkelstein rightly asks whether the real...

The rabidly anti-Israel University of California, Los Angeles anthropology and women's studies professor Sondra Hale has retired. Her list of dubious achievements is long and, over the years, Campus Watch has chronicled a good number: Hale was one of the founding members of the organizing committee for the Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel. At the time of its inception, she touted her prominent involvement, telling the Daily Bruin in February, 2009 that, were it to go into effect, "foreign exchange and cooperative programs with Israel would cease."At an October, 2009 conference at the Center for Near...

As'ad AbuKahlil—a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus—spoke last month at a day-long "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley titled, "Building Solidarity with the Arab Spring." It consisted of a number of "workshop sessions" at the Valley Life Sciences Building, followed by a "plenary session" at the Multicultural Center, and was co-sponsored by the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, the Berkeley Muslim Students Association PAC, the International Socialist Organization, and the Syrian American Council. AbuKhalil's workshop on "The U.S. and the Arab Uprising" was held in a tiny, hot, windowless room filled with students wearing hijabs and keffiyehs....

As one of a handful of Bay Area conservative columnists, I'm no stranger to pushing buttons. Indeed, I welcome feedback from readers, whether positive or negative. I find the interplay stimulating, but I am often bemused by the stereotypical assumptions made by my critics on the left. It's not enough to simply disagree with my views; I have to be twisted into a conservative caricature that apparently makes opponents feel superior. They seem not to have considered that it's possible to put forward different approaches to various societal problems and not be the devil incarnate. But in some ways I...

Faculty members at departments of Jewish Studies in the USA are evidencing anti-Israel (anti-Semitic) tendencies as do their colleagues in Middle East Studies. The field of Middle East studies is notorious for producing apologias for radical Islam, particularly where anti-Israel and, at times, anti-Semitic sentiment is concerned. These same tendencies are also increasingly common in an unexpected sector of university life: Jewish studies. An open letter dated March 3, 2011, and signed by 30 University of California Jewish studies faculty members, is a case in point. The letter to the Orange County District Attorney concerns the orchestrated disruption of a...

Just when it seemed as though the misuse of language and imagery associated with the Holocaust could get no worse, along came "Never Again for Anyone." A national speaking tour designed to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, "Never Again for Anyone" traveled the U.S. from January 25 through February 19, 2011, landing at the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California on February 17. The event was a benefit for the virulently anti-Israel organization, the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA). The purpose of the tour was pernicious: to draw a connection between the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Israelis cast as the new...

Moustafa Bayoumi, associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, gave a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) last month titled, "How Does It Feel To Be a Problem: Why Arabs and Muslim Americans Are at the Heart of Today's Culture Wars." Bayoumi is the editor of How Does it Feel To Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, a collection of biographical stories about young, Brooklyn-based Arab-Americans that the CMES website describes, among other things, as "a catalog of mistreatment and discrimination."Baymoui's narrative of Arab victimhood...

The Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles and the UCLA School of Law's Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law co-sponsored a lecture (podcast available here) last month by Khaled Abou El Fadl, chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program, with the vague title "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside." The flyer for the lecture promised "an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West," yet Abou El Fadl delivered neither. Instead, his audience of 35 -- comprising mostly seniors and left-wing students -- witnessed a meandering, repetitive...

Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California at Berkeley, provided the introduction at a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) event at Berkeley on October 26, 2010, called "What Can American Academia Do to Realize Justice for Palestinians?" Bazian is an endorser of the Israel Divestment Campaign and a signatory to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He is a committed anti-Israel propagandist and activist.

The unceremonious and unjust firing of Juan Williams by National Public Radio (NPR) earlier this week came as no surprise to me. I had long been aware of Williams's admirable propensity for espousing politically-incorrect truths on certain subjects, even as he remained a staunch liberal overall. Watching Williams on Fox News and reading his columns over the years, I've disagreed vehemently with him many times on matters of foreign policy, but when the subject has turned to race and ethnicity, I've found him to be refreshingly honest. In fact, I was moved to take note of Williams's excellent book on...

Since our last update, the number of corrections in Campus Watch's "Setting The Record Straight" section has grown exponentially. Hardly a day goes by when Campus Watch (CW)'s opponents aren't hard at work hurling false accusations, smears, and paranoia in our direction. The nature of the fabrications generated by CW's critics over the years has remained predictably static, and they tend to fall into just a few categories. The most ubiquitous are the histrionic allegations that we "silence," "censor," "harass," or "intimidate" academics; that we engage in "blacklisting"; that we interfere in tenure decisions; that we represent a threat to...

As if we needed another reason not to vote for retread California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, I just learned via a BookTV talk by former South Vietnamese, and now American, U.S. Marine veteran and author Quang Pham that Brown tried to block Vietnamese refugees from settling in California when he was governor in the 1970s. At the same time, he's always been soft on illegal immigration from Mexico and South America and friendly to Castro and Cuba. So one can surmise that the left-leaning Brown didn't want the Vietnamese refugees to settle in California because they were anti-Communists (and with...