CAMPUS WATCH, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.

The Latest on Campus

Quote of the Month (past quotes)
	"For political and military elites in Israel, and the War on Terror constituency in the US, the killing of Arabs and Muslims no longer requires any weeping or soul-searching. It's just what freedom-loving people do." Gabriel Piterberg, professor of history at UCLA, writing about Gaza in the January 29, 2009 issue of the London Review of Books. (link to source)

Obama and CAIR [incl. Ingrid Mattson]
February 6, 2009 - FrontPage Magazine

Col. U. Edward Said Professor Rashid Khalidi Caught Lying
February 6, 2009 - PoliGazette

Leading Islamic Reformer to Speak at Simon Fraser University [on Tariq Ramadan]
February 5, 2009 - Simon Fraser University News Online (Canada)

Afghani Issues Warrant U.S. Action [on Stephen Zunes]
February 5, 2009 - The Daily Beacon (Student newspaper of the University of Tennessee)

One-Sided Gaza Debate a Disservice to UCLA [incl. the Center for Near Eastern Studies, Lisa Hajjar]
February 5, 2009 - The Daily Bruin

Dr. John Esposito Gives Lecture on Islam and Current Events
February 5, 2009 - The DoG Street Journal (College of William and Mary)

Panel Addresses Obama's Middle Eastern Foreign Policy Challenges [incl. John Esposito, Paula Newberg, John Voll]
February 5, 2009 - The Hoya (Georgetown University)

MP Condemns Government on Libel Reform [on libel tourism]
February 5, 2009 - The Law Society Gazette (U.K.)

Gaza A Tough Topic [incl. Joshua Landis, Maurice Roumani, Housam Mohammed]
February 5, 2009 - The Norman Transcript

Columbia University Honors Edward Said With Conference on Orientalism [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
January-February 2009 - Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Blog

Rashid Khalidi Gets Caught in a Lie

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Thu, 5 Feb 2009, 2:53 PM | Permalink

Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, has been caught in a lie. Khalidi concluded a January 8, 2009, op-ed that appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune with the following quote ascribed to former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon:

The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.

The problem is Ya'alon never made this statement and both publications have since had to excise it from the op-ed and issue corrections. Here's the New York Times:

An Op-Ed article on Jan. 8, on misperceptions of Gaza, included an unverified quotation. A former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, was quoted as saying in 2002 that "the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." This quotation, while cited widely, does not appear in the Israeli newspaper interview to which it is usually attributed. Its original source has not been found, and thus it should not have appeared in the article.

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Balancing the Bias: Georgetown's Program for Jewish Civilization

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Mon, 2 Feb 2009, 1:07 PM | Permalink

Campus Watch Adjunct Scholar Asaf Romirowsky has an article in The Jerusalem Post that sheds light on a promising development in the world of Middle East studies. Here are the opening paragraphs:

What can be done to reverse the failures of Middle East studies in North America? Students today are subjected to radical views of the Middle East by professors who seldom brook dissent. Georgetown’s Program for Jewish Civilization (PJC) offers an alternative for students seeking to avoid the academic weaknesses that have so infected Middle East studies.

These analytical shortcomings are well documented: politicized curricula, agit prop substituting for solid teaching, and an unwillingness to ask difficult questions about Middle Eastern cultures are only some of many faults to plague the field in recent decades.

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UCLA Gaza Symposium: So Much for "Human Rights"

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Mon, 2 Feb 2009, 12:59 PM | Permalink

Blogger Eric Golub attended a symposium last month at UCLA featuring several Middle East studies academics and wrote about it for Campus Watch. His article was published today at Frontpage Magazine and it begins like so:

A "Gaza and Human Rights" symposium hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)’s Center for Near Eastern Studies instructed attendees on how best to spread anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism.

Attendees advocated for many unrelated leftists, from Lenin to Che Guevara, while students were busy texting, Twittering, and checking Facebook.

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Qaddafi Goes to Georgetown

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Fri, 23 Jan 2009, 12:39 PM | Permalink

In yesterday's "Best of the Web" (OpinionJournal.com), James Taranto took the New York Times to task for providing Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi an op-ed platform upon which to wax poetic about his supposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Qaddafi is a proponent of the "one-state solution," whereby Israelis and Palestinians are to live together in a single, secular, democratic state he terms "Isratine." He's even written something called the "White Book" outlining his proposal. The problem is, as Taranto put it:

Whatever appeal this idea may have in theory, in practice it is even more fanciful than the two-state solution. Even assuming that Israel's democratic institutions remain intact in form after the transition, "Isratine's" Jews would soon be outnumbered by Arabs, given demographic trends and the "right of return," which Gadhafi endorses.

In theory there is no reason an Arab majority in a democracy could not respect the rights of a Jewish minority. In practice, however, the Arab track record in this regard is dismal--and the Arabs of the disputed territories have been indoctrinated for generations in Nazi-style Jew-hatred--often, especially in recent years, with a religious justification. An actual "Isratine" would likely be another backward Arab-dominated regime, with Jews subjugated or worse. Israeli Arabs would be far worse off than they are today; Palestinian Arabs, probably not much better off.

Qaddafi is hardly a reliable source on the matter, particularly, as Taranto notes, in light of his persecution of Libya's now-nonexistent Jewish community, not to mention his past terrorist associations. Moreover, his "Isratine" op-ed is merely cleverly disguised propaganda aimed at the destruction of Israel.

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