Free Republic

The Department of Education has started requiring universities that receive federal funding for Middle East Studies centers to report on how their programs are including diverse perspectives and a wide range of views. This is a very important first step to ensure that Middle East Studies programs do not succumb to political one-sidedness. For several years, critics have charged that many of these programs have become highly politicized, monolithically anti-Israel sources of miseducation and bias. The new requirement sends a welcome signal to universities that the Department is now looking more closely at this issue, although there is still more...

Until last year, Hassan Diab was leading the quiet life of a Canadian sociology professor. Prof. Diab was teaching at both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, was said to be a popular colleague and teacher. After leaving the violence of his native Lebanon and earning his doctorate in the United States, Prof. Diab, 54, received his Canadian citizenship and appeared to settle into Ottawa. There, friends said he was a secular man with an interest in sociology and Middle East studies, and was not without a warm side. "He has a great rapport with students," said Carleton professor...

December 12, 2007, 7:00 a.m. Taking Sides on Title VIMiddle East Studies reform goes partisan. By Stanley Kurtz In “Saudi in the Classroom,” I explained how the Saudis are using federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) as a kind of Trojan horse to gain influence over American K-12 education. Unfortunately, House Democrats seem willing to let the Saudis get away with it. Although the Senate has already passed a very reasonable bipartisan compromise on Title VI (crafted by Senators Kennedy and Enzi), the House appears to have buckled...

Two professors recently warned readers to beware of the Israeli Lobby in the United States. Although they admitted that this network has not been much in evidence on American campuses, they did note the efforts of Jewish philanthropists to redress the imbalance of so-called Middle East Studies Departments. As we pointed out, that fundraising effort is dwarfed by those with deep pockets who support the status quo in higher education. Meanwhile, The Jewish Week in New York is warning students that they could expect more conflict in the coming school year. Their concerns are probably well-founded. Middle East studies courses...

NEW YORK - Columbia University president Lee Bollinger plans "specific steps" soon in response to allegations that professors and lecturers at the Ivy League university made vitriolic and malicious comments against Israel in classes. Bollinger made the pledge in a Wednesday phone call to Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman. Bollinger didn't detail the character of the steps, but emphasized "the matter will be handled immediately." New York's Columbia University was recently embarrassed by reports that Middle Eastern professors are exploiting their academic standing to express extreme political views on Israel, using slanderous and defamatory statements. The allegations against the...

Secrets, Donors and the Edward Said Chair Columbia University’s newly established Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies is noteworthy for several reasons. The position is named for the recently deceased professor best known for his defense of Palestinian “resistence.” And Rashid Khalidi, an overt supporter of Palestinian violence and – according to a just-published biography of Yasir Arafat from Oxford University Press – a former PLO press spokesman[i], has joined Columbia to fill the post. But there is something even more objectionable about this chair: It is anonymously endowed and Columbia University – perhaps against the law – refuses...

Defund Middle East Studiesby Daniel PipesNew York Sun February 24, 2004 Here's a prime example, one that involves me personally, of how the radical Left and the Islamists, those new best friends, readily deceive.It has to do with a proposed piece of U.S. legislation passed by the House, the "International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003," known familiarly as H.R. 3077, and awaiting action by the Senate. H.R. 3077 calls for the creation of an advisory board to review the way in which roughly US$100 million in taxpayer money is spent annually on area studies, including Middle East studies,...

Here’s a prime example, one which involves me personally, of how the radical Left and the Islamists, those new best friends, readily deceive.It has to do with a proposed piece of U.S. legislation passed by the House, the “International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003” (known familiarly as H.R. 3077), and waiting action by the Senate. H.R. 3077 calls for the creation of an advisory board to review the way in which roughly US$100 million in taxpayer money is spent annually on area studies (including Middle East studies) at the university level.This board is needed for two reasons:...

Congress Weighs Anti-U.S. Biases At Key Colleges: Columbia, NYU Cited in Testimony New York Sun, June 20-22, 2003 (Front page) By Timothy Starks - Staff Reporter of the Sun WASHINGTON -A House subcommittee yesterday held a public hearing to investigate whether anti-American views pervade federally funded international-studies programs on college campuses -- including Columbia and New York University -- and to get ideas for what, if anything, should be done about it. . The hearing came as Congress moves to renew the Higher Education Act, and as a key group of Senate Republicans considers whether Congress should intervene in an...

Feb. 25, 2003 The professor is a terrorist By Daniel Pipes It was quiet in [Cooper Hall] 464 Thursday night, where [Sameeh] Hammoudeh's 6 p.m. Arabic IV class was scheduled to meet. Two students who hadn't heard of his arrest came to class, and a substitute was assigned to teach in Hammoudeh's place. Hammoudeh missed teaching his Arabic class last week due to a slight inconvenience: he had just been charged with racketeering and conspiracy to murder. In fact, he was one of eight men indicted at a US District Court in Florida as "material supporters of a foreign terrorist...

For some time now, I have been criticizing the field of Middle East Studies. Despite the discipline's refusal to study terrorism, and despite the field's one-sided hostility to American foreign policy, practitioners of Middle East studies have been raking in millions of taxpayer dollars (including a substantially increased post-9/11 subsidy) on the claim that their work strengthens our national security. That money needs to be substantially cut. Just as important, the remaining subsidy need to be turned from an open-ended entitlement, effectively controlled by its recipients, into a program that is supervised on the model of other federal grants...

The software is blocking the posting of material from the callous, cynical, hate-filled, hypocrite lefties at CounterPunch. I'm going to go ahead and provide a link under this vanity for the following reasons: 1) To further publicize the Middle East Forum's important new website, Campus Watch, which is devoted to monitoring and countering the extreme political radicalism and anti-Westernism dominant in academic Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies. 2) So y'all can have a good laugh at how the lefties HOWL when the merest shadow of their tactics of academic insurgency are applied to them. (Somebody call the WHAAAAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!) CounterPunch article...

An important new organization that promises to focus public concern on "blame America first" bias in the academy is in danger of being discredited. The Middle East Forum, under the direction of Daniel Pipes, has established a project and website called, "Campus Watch." Campus Watch is designed to monitor Middle East Studies in the United States, analyzing and criticizing errors and biases, and drawing public attention to controversies over funding, academic appointments, etc. Campus Watch maintains that Middle East Studies in the United States is dominated by professors who are actively hostile to America's interests in the world. The organization's...

Here is their "About Us" page: About Campus Watch The Problem American scholars of the Middle East, to varying degrees, reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East.Examples: There may be a war on terrorism underway, but the scholars downplay the dangers posed by militant Islam, seeing it as a benign and even democratizing force.With only one exception, every American president since 1948 has spoken forcefully about the benefits to the United States from strong and deep relations with Israel. In contrast, American scholars often propagate a view of Middle...