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Middle East Studies Under Siege
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on the trade towers in September 2001, the American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.) set up a special committee to report on Academic Freedom in a Time of National Emergency. (For the text of this report see www.aaup.org.) I was a member of that committee and, at the time, chair of A.A.U.P.’s committee on academic freedom and tenure. A year later, on October 4, 2002, The New York Times carried a story about the special committee’s work and I was quoted in it as stating “There are many more examples of attacks on critics of Israel than on students who are pro-Israel.” My comment was based on reported incidences in newspapers and magazines, and on conversations we had had with faculty and students on a large number of campuses. In response I got several, quite similar e-mails challenging my comment and demanding concrete proof for it. One e-mailer, who identified himself as a writer from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, asked to see my “data” for his ongoing research on “the polarization of campuses.” I replied that we were in the process of assembling data, that my comment was based on a “rough impression,” and that I would be back in touch with him when I had more information. Shortly after that, a friend forwarded me an e-mail from a right wing pro-Israeli list serve. In it the same man who had asked to see my data boasted that he had trapped me into admitting that I spoke on the basis of a “rough impression” and that he could now publicly denounce me as a bad social scientist since I had no hard data on which to make my claim. But he hesitated to do so—here was the ethical dilemma he was sharing with his allies—because his impersonation of a scholar would then have to be revealed. “I told her I was a researcher,” he said, “but I’m not; I’m an activist devoted to ridding our campuses of the pro-Palestinian presence.” I tell this story because it was my personal introduction to the well-organized lobby that, on campus and off, has been systematically attacking Middle East studies programs under various guises in order to achieve the end my e-mailer so clearly articulated. In this article I refer to this lobby in several ways, sometimes as the Israeli lobby or the pro-Israel lobby, although it should be noted that it is a lobby that has a particular position on Israeli politics, does not represent all Israelis, and is not the only representative of Israel. Its self-definition as the Israeli or pro-Israel lobby refuses this complexity; it insists that it represents “Israel,” as if current policies were the only ones possible, the only way to defend the right of that state to exist. Because I want to refuse the idea that this right-wing lobby represents “Israel” or is the only way to be “pro-Israel,” I also refer to the lobby as pro-occupation, by which I mean it is in favor of current Israeli policy. That seems to me a more precise description, though it is a more awkward locution. Although this lobby and its activism antedates September 11, it has become far more visible, efficient, and ruthless since then. It has gained powerful allies in Congress, has been able to take advantage of the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, and has, in collaboration with the tabloid media, succeeded in terrifying some liberal university administrators by charging that bias and anti-Semitism are rampant on their campuses. It’s tempting to draw a picture of a vast interlocking conspiracy—and it probably would not be all that far-fetched. But my commitment to serious social science, though not to quantification, suggests I take a slightly different tack, identifying the contexts which have enabled my e-mail correspondent and his colleagues to do their work and to find, sometimes unlikely, allies for their campaign. The assault on Middle East Studies scholars and programs, well underway at the end of the 1990's (vigilant attention to Edward Said’s every action and word is only one example) was, in a sense, legitimized by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the period immediately after the attacks Muslims were quickly identified with terrorism and there was an outpouring of racist antagonism. These were not necessarily organized by pro-occupation groups, but they created a climate in which anti-Palestinian sentiment could be encouraged as part of a general condemnation of Arabs and of Islam. For example, a week after the attacks, at Orange Coast College, in Costa Mesa, California, Professor Ken Hearlson, a conservative, born-again Christian, was accused of calling his Muslim students Nazis, terrorists and murderers. And there were other incidents of this kind. In the summer of 2002, when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill made a book, “Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations” by Haverford College religion professor Michael Sells, mandatory reading for all incoming students, protests ensued. A lawsuit was brought by a Virginia-based, conservative Christian group, Family Policy Network, representing, among others, three incoming freshmen, two Christian and one Jewish. In addition, the lower house of the North Carolina legislature sought to punish the university. The lawsuit demanded that the assignment be dropped in the name of freedom of religion, because it was taken to be advocacy for Islam rather than, as intended by the university, an attempt to educate students about an increasingly important world religion. Although the lawsuit and legislation were dropped (Chancellor Molly Broad stood her ground in a magnificent defense of academic freedom), the Family Policy Network filed another lawsuit to bar a conference on campus which it claimed endorsed Islam.
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