Profs Cover for Muslim Brotherhood Front

The disturbing relationship between the field of Middle East studies and the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), continues to flourish. In the latest Campus Watch research, Andrew Harrod covers an IIIT panel discussion on Islamic sectarianism featuring Abdulaziz Sachedina, the International Institute of Islamic Thought Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University. His report appears today at Jihad Watch:

“I am simply a Muslim . . . one who submits to God,” neither Sunni nor Shiite, stated Abdulaziz Sachedina, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University, at a recent IIIT panel. Nonetheless, “The Need for Intra-Muslim Dialogue,” which took place before about thirty-five in the conference room of IIIT headquarters in Virginia following evening Muslim prayer, indicated why Islamic ecumenism remains largely a pious hope.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-linked IIIT is a promotor of the MB’s propagandistic “Islamization of knowledge” movement and the widely-used “Islamophobia” canard, with disturbingly deep connections to the field of Middle East studies. . . . Amidst such dubious characters appeared IIIT research director Ermin Sinanović. With no evident official concern, Sinanović teaches Middle Eastern politics to America’s future warriors as an assistant professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy.

To read the entire article, please click here.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  January 8, 2015 at 7:15 pm  |  Permalink

Georgetown Panel Promotes One-Way Interfaith ‘Dialogue’

Calls for “interfaith dialogue” between Islam and Christianity are well and good, but, all too often, the results are lopsided, dishonest, and calculated. In the latest Campus Watch research, Andrew Harrod reports on a conference at Georgetown University at which panelists John Esposito, Robert P. George, and Hamza Yusuf exhibited this sort of naiveté and obfuscation. His article appears today at Jihad Watch:

Princeton University professor Robert P. George lauded Imam Hamza Yusuf, the radical president of Berkeley, California’s Zaytuna College, as “my beloved friend, my brother” at a recent Georgetown University day-long conference. George, a Catholic conservative luminary, was disturbingly uncritical of the Islamic apologetics that suffused the “keynote conversation” for “Muslim Minorities and Religious Freedom: A Public Dialogue.”

Before an audience of about 120 in the Rafik Hariri Building‘s Fisher Colloquium, George emphasized ecumenical cooperation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, notwithstanding the latter’s assaults worldwide on non-Muslims. . . . Catholic school alumnus and founding director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, John Esposito, complemented George and Yusuf’s claims with his customary apologetics.

To read the entire article, please click here.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  January 2, 2015 at 4:46 pm  |  Permalink

UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies Refuses to Meet Title VI Requirements

In an op-ed in the Jewish Journal of Greater L.A., AMCHA Initiative co-founders Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith address the noncompliance of UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies with the requirements of Title VI funding, particularly in the wake of the campaign (which includes the Middle East Forum) to hold Middle East studies programs accountable for federal funding. As they put it:

What is startling is the brazen and public refusal by the CNES directors to abide by the requirement of the Title VI statute. In response to critics, including AMCHA Initiative, an official CNES statement recently released said that “those responsible for programming at CNES saw no reason to ‘balance’ the criticism (of Israel)…no reason to bring in speakers who would defend it.” In other words, Slyomovics, Hale and Piterberg did not just fail to live up to the “diverse perspectives” requirement of the federal grant which CNES asked for and received, but they never intended to honor it.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 31, 2014 at 4:23 pm  |  Permalink

Dreaming of ‘Palestine’s South Africa Moment’ at Columbia U.

Boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) activists dream of turning Israel into an international pariah on the level of Apartheid South Africa and are perfectly willing to lie, invent history, and distort the present to achieve their goal. All this was evinced at a recent event at Columbia University, which Mara Schiffren, a Harvard educated scholar of comparative religion, covered for Campus Watch. Her article appears at Frontpage Magazine:

Has the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement succeeded in bringing Israel to the point of South Africa when it ended apartheid and reformulated itself into a non-racist state? Despite the egregious falsity of the historical comparison, the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University recently held an informal debate on this question titled, “Palestine’s South Africa Moment? The Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement.” The audience of approximately 140 people—a mix of students, self-described Palestinians, activists, and fellow travelers—filled the Columbia Law School lecture hall.

Rashid Khalidi, Columbia’s Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, restated a point often made by political interlocutors, in an intonation that fully communicated his contempt:

“If you’re Palestinian and you live in certain places, say New York City, like myself . . . you are lectured that the Palestinians should be non-violent. . . . What usually follows that is . . . “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

By Winfield Myers  |  December 24, 2014 at 10:18 am  |  Permalink

UC Berkeley ‘Islamophobia Studies’ Protege Laments Israeli ‘Vegan-Washing’

It was just a matter of time before “vegan-washing” was unveiled as the latest diabolical tool in Israel’s arsenal for luring unsuspecting progressives to its defense. Shawndeez Davari Jadali, a research assistant for UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Studies Journal and a protege of Hatem Bazian, Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project director, authored an inadvertently hilarious column on the subject at Turkey Agenda. According to Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers:

Shawndeez, [a] graduate of UC Berkeley’s peace and conflict program, takes issue with Israel’s growing vegan movement, accusing the country of “enticing vegans from all over the world with a myriad of vegan eateries,” motivated by a desire “to conceal the violence embedded in the occupation of Palestine.” Alas, for the poor helpless Palestinians, this tofu-driven Zionist conspiracy is succeeding, as characterized by the “booming vegan tourism and international praise for the Israeli vegan movement.”

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 23, 2014 at 2:54 pm  |  Permalink

UCLA Prof Assigns Pro-Israel Book in Order to Trash It

Imagine for a moment that a Middle East studies professor known for being a critic of Israel, to the point where students have complained of bias, assigns his class a pro-Israel book. This exactly what happened in the case of UCLA history professor James Gelvin, but, as it turns out, there’s a twist. In the latest Campus Watch research, CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell lays out the details at American Thinker:

It seemed too good to be true: the required reading in UCLA history professor James Gelvin’s fall 2014 class, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1881 to Present, includes a pro-Israel book, Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel (2004). Described by the New York Times Book Review as “[e]specially effective at pointing to the hypocrisy of many of Israel’s critics,” the Washington Post Book World called it a “lively, hotly argued broadside against Israel’s increasingly venomous critics.”

Why would a professor so openly critical of Israel assign such a work? To balance his own unfavorable views on the topic, perhaps? To spark classroom debate on complex issues?

Not quite . . .

To read the entire article, please click here.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 19, 2014 at 12:30 pm  |  Permalink

‘Palestinian Rights Activism’ Panel Turns Perpetrators into Victims

Middle East studies professors who engage in anti-Israel activism like to fashion themselves the victims of persecution for their views, when, in fact, the opposite is true: academia celebrates such views, while shunning pro-Israel perspectives. In the latest Campus Watch research, Andrew Harrod reports on a recent panel discussion in Washington, DC, in which speakers such as Rashid Khalidi and Steven Salaita engaged in this sort of self-proclaimed victimhood, all the while turning Israel and its supporters into the perpetrators. His article appears today at Jihad Watch:

Israel is a twenty-first century “litmus test of a real commitment to justice,” the “Vietnam,” the “South Africa,” and “moral issue of our time” according to leftwing icon Angela Davis, quoted approvingly by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi on November 21 before an audience of about fifty. Khalidi’s panel discussion of “The Legal Assault on Palestinian Rights Activism” over a lunch of sandwiches and drinks at the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Washington, DC, headquarters twisted anti-Israel hatred and criminality into Israeli persecution of Palestinians.

To read the entire article, please click here.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 18, 2014 at 10:53 pm  |  Permalink

Mark LeVine Unhinged on Facebook

University of California-Irvine history professor Mark LeVine has launched an unhinged Facebook rant, in which he calls for Israel to be “dismantled” and hurls insults at former AAUP president Cary Nelson, an opponent of BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) and a supporter of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s decision to withdraw an offer of tenured professorship to Steven Salaita. If you thought academic disputes were settled by reasoned argument, you haven’t kept up with Middle East studies (or LeVine). In the latest Campus Watch research, CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell dissects this sorry episode today at FrontPage Magazine:

UC Irvine history professor Mark LeVine, who recently suffered a meltdown after being called “anti-Israeli,” has since proven the point by posting this profanity-laden, unhinged rant on Facebook. . . . LeVine was commenting on a photograph from French freelance photographer Anne Paq, who, according to her bio, has been “based in Palestine since 2003,” and who specializes in the sort of emotionally-charged—and,all too often, staged or manipulated—imagery regularly employed by Hamas and others to demonize Israel in the international media. Paq’s photograph certainly elicited that reaction in LeVine.

To read the entire article, please click here.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 12, 2014 at 12:46 pm  |  Permalink

Brandeis Center Responds to Hale/Wolf Op-ed on Title VI

Kenneth L. Marcus, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has written a letter to the editor of the Hill responding to an op-ed from UCLA’s Sondra Hale and UC Hastings law student Bekah Wolf. Predictably, Hale and Wolf equated the campaign (which includes the Middle East Forum) to hold Middle East studies programs accountable for providing the “diversity of perspectives” required by Title-VI federal funding with stifling free speech. As Marcus puts it:

Apparently, they believe that the First Amendment protects them against the unappetizing prospect of hearing views different than their own. . . . When Middle East Studies centers refuse to provide a podium for speakers who challenge their anti-Israel politics, they are the ones who stifle free speech on campus.

By Cinnamon Stillwell  |  December 10, 2014 at 4:11 pm  |  Permalink

Will Directors of Three Title VI Middle East Studies Centers Boycott Israeli Universities?

Three of six directors of federally-funded university Middle East studies centers who signed a letter pledging “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions” have yet to clarify whether they spoke for their centers or merely for themselves. They are:

• miriam cooke, Middle East Studies Center, Duke.
• John Esposito, Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown.
• Osama Abi-Mershed, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.

CW revealed in September that Abi-Mershed’s claim that “we are not tax supported” was refuted by his dean, who confirmed that, “the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies has been, and we hope will remain, a recipient of Title VI designation and support.”

Recently, New York University dean for the humanities Joy Connolly confirmed that in pledging to boycott Israeli academic institutions, incoming director of the taxpayer-supported Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies Helga Tawil-Souri speaks only for herself and not for her center or NYU. Lila Abu-Lughod, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and Gabriel Piterberg, who directs the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed earlier that their pledges were merely personal and will not affect the centers they lead.

Continue to full text of posting…

By Winfield Myers  |  December 5, 2014 at 3:43 pm  |  Permalink