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Nearly
100 outraged professors in the U.S. — Jews and non-Jews, English
professors and Middle East specialists — have asked the site to
be added to their list.
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NEW YORK,
September 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – A website which was
launched on September 18, citing eight professors and 14 universities
for their alleged ‘anti-Semitic’ views on campus, has sparked fury
amidst U.S. academic circles, a U.S. newspaper reported Friday.
The New York Times said that in
response, and to show solidarity with those named on the Website,
Campus Watch, nearly 100 outraged professors in the U.S. — Jews and
non-Jews, English professors and Middle East specialists — have
responded to the site by asking to be added to the list.
The Web site, Campus Watch
(www.campus-watch.org), with "dossiers" on individuals and
institutions and requests for further submissions, is a project of the
Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, whose director, Daniel Pipes,
has long argued that Americans have not paid sufficient attention to
the dangers of political Islam, said the paper.
The Times added that the professors
who were named include two from Columbia, Hamid Dabashi and Joseph
Massad, and one each from Berkeley, Georgetown, Northeastern, the
University of Michigan, the State University of New York at Binghamton
and the University of Chicago.
Some of those who asked to be added
to the site said they were showing solidarity in opposing what they
see as an assault on academic freedom. Others were more interested in
showing that mainstream Middle Eastern scholars shared the views
criticized on the Web site, the paper reported.
The paper reported that Pipes claimed
the Web site was no threat to free speech. "We're engaged in a
battle over ideas," he said. "To bring in this notion of
academic freedom is nonsense. No one is interfering with their right
to say anything they want."
One comparative literature professor
at Berkeley, Judith Butler, sent to the website saying: "I have
recently learned that your organization is compiling dossiers on
professors at U.S. academic institutions who oppose the Israeli
occupation and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights of
self-determination as well as a more informed and intelligent view of
Islam than is currently represented in the U.S. media. I would be
enormously honored to be counted among those who actively hold these
positions and would like to be included in the list of those who are
struggling for justice."
Those named on the site said they
were heartened by the support. "It's a new genre springing up,
and I'm especially glad that it includes Jewish scholars," said
Professor Dabashi, who heads Columbia's department of Middle Eastern
and Asian language and cultures, reported the Times.
The site, a pro-Israeli think tank, was
launched to “monitor” the attitudes of American professors and
universities toward Islamic “fundamentalism” and the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
The site encourage students to “report”
their professors’ speech and acts under the banner of “keep us
informed”, asking then “to provide Campus Watch with reports on
Middle East-related scholarship, lectures, classes, demonstrations,
and other activities relevant to our work.”
Forum director Daniel Pipes, and Martin
Kramer, editor of the forum’s Middle East Quarterly, have been
prominent critics of Middle East studies as taught in U.S.
universities.
According
to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Pipes has
throughout his career exhibited troubling bigotry toward Muslims and
Islam. As early as 1983, even an otherwise positive Washington Post
book review noted that Pipes “displays a disturbing hostility to
contemporary Muslims...he professes respect for Muslims but is
frequently contemptuous of them," CAIR said on their website.
Recently,
Pipes questioned the origins of the Quran, Islam's revealed text, and
questioned whether the Prophet Muhammad ever existed. According to
Pipes, the night journey of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to
Jerusalem referred to in the Quran (17:1) never occurred.
Pipes
also displays a racist's distaste for Muslim immigrants who "wish
to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia." (Los
Angeles Times, 7/22/99) For Pipes, this sort of raw bigotry is nothing
new.
In 1990, he said: "Western European
societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned
peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of
hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but
Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review,
11/19/90).
