CAMPUS WATCH
As is becoming increasingly clear, most of America’s campuses reject free speech, free inquiry, and scholarship and instead promote rigid ideological conformity to the ever-more-radical leftist dogmas proclaimed by our cultural elites. Since Sept. 11, 2001, two aspects of the leftist religion have come to the fore as never before: the preference, intellectually at least, for Islamic civilization over Christian civilization, and Palestinians over Israel.
"There’s definitely a wave," said Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, which in September began Campus Watch, a program that monitors Middle East studies departments in American colleges. "Anti-Semitism has moved from the right to the left."
"Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, monitors and critiques Middle East studies in North America, with an aim to improving them," says its website. "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."
Like American academe in general, said Pipes, Middle East studies departments are dominated by anti-Western, anti-American ideologues. They sympathize with Palestinians and even with Islamic extremists because those two groups hate the United States. "Israel is a close ally of the United States, and the left doesn’t like it," he said. "[Academics are] sympathetic to enemies of the United States."
Campus Watch publishes information about the antics of pro-Islamic Middle East studies professors and exposes attempts to intimidate pro-Israeli professors and students. The project’s website features quotes from the leading anti-American lights of Middle East studies and the names of those who have chosen to ally themselves with them. "Following the launch of Campus Watch on Sep. 18, 2002, this site received about 200 e-mails from faculty and graduate students requesting to be listed on www.campus-watch.org in solidarity with academics we identified as apologists for suicide bombings and militant Islam listed on this site. . .," reports Campus Watch. "The fact that these individuals insist on declaring solidarity in public with academics that Campus Watch has identified as apologists for Palestinian and Islamist violence is important information for university stakeholders to be aware of, so we are posting their names, in compliance with their wishes."
A new campus divestment movement has sprung up and made rapid rhetorical progress, demanding divestment from Israel as previous activists demanded divestment from South Africa. Of course, these activists fail to demand divestment from human rights violators far worse than Israel, such as Sudan or Communist China.
Said Pipes, "Instead of examining questions such as, ‘What is the nature, broadly speaking, of Islam? What is in the Koran? What is jihad?’ these academic experts do something else. These questions require specialized knowledge. . . and our institutions of higher learning, particularly the specialists, are not helping."
Pipes pointed to Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers of Sand as one of three factors behind the establishment of Campus Watch. The book "laid out the intellectual indictment of this field," he said. "Also, the heat on campus. In addition, the war against terrorism is much deeper. It is a battle against totalitarian ideologies. On our side, those in our country who are equipped to fight the battles are not there."
Pipes said threats of cutting off government funding should be used to make Middle East studies shape up. "I like to say that our universities need adult supervision," he said. "Our hope is by focusing on this high-profile issue of the Middle East, we can say, ‘Hey, look at this going on on the campuses.’. . . We call ourselves the honest auditors of an intellectual Enron."
Unfortunately, Pipes noted, this problem is not confined to higher education. "High schools, the National Education Association, the educational system. . .," he said. "They are proselytizing for Islam in books in the schools."
"Previously, studies of the Middle East had followed a European model that emphasized the humanities, including languages," wrote Leslie Carbone in FrontPage December 9. "This old-school model, redolent of dusty Oxford and Heidelberg scholars, could be stuffy and esoteric at times, and presumed the superiority of the West, but it grasped the importance of history, particularly ancient history, in this region and had no trouble facing basic facts like the fact that the Koran commands holy war."
That model is gone, but perhaps could return. "I’ve kind of given up on Europe, but I haven’t given up on America," said Pipes.
Campus Watch may be reached at 1500 Walnut St., Suite 1050, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102 (e-mail: [email protected]; website: www.campus-watch.org).
