One of the political science professors at our Univ. who happens to be from Pakistan, has always been very well balanced on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Though others have disagreed, and the local mosque bared him Pro-Israeli & a lot more.
After September 11th, when the debates on the causes of the NYC attacks & the root cause of hatred towards US around the world were explored, he was invited to nearly all the presentations. His views (which I think were ok & at least gave all sides of the story) though welcomed by faculty and students, didn’t go quite well with others. Later on, he felt that he was being pressured & questioned from different groups & even the reviews of local newspapers were very critical in nature.
Everyone criticized his ideas on biasness of US Foreign Policy as well as Palestinian Freedom struggle.
Anyway, I was forwarded this article, which shows how Pro-Israeli interest groups are trying to wage a war against those professors/academic institutions that they consider being Pro-Palestine and accuse them of being Anti-Semitic.
Web Site Fuels Debate on Campus Anti-Semitism
A Web site started last week by a pro-Israel research and policy group, citing eight professors and 14 universities for their views on Palestinian rights or political Islam, has opened a new chapter in a growing debate over campus anti-Semitism.
In a show of solidarity with those named on the Web site, nearly 100 outraged professors nationwide — 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.
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. Those named have differing interests, and differing academic status: John Esposito of Georgetown, for example, is interested primarily in political Islam, and considered a leading scholar in the field, whereas some others are young professors known mostly for criticizing Israel.
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The response from Judith Butler, a comparative literature professor at Berkeley, circulated on the Internet, providing boilerplate for many other professors: “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. “This is about McCarthyism, freedom of expression. It’s very important that it not be made into a Jewish-Muslim kind of thing. I am most concerned for my Jewish students, that they might feel that they shouldn’t take my class, that the atmosphere would be intimidating, or that they couldn’t express their opinions.”
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So what is the agenda of this website?
The Problem
American scholars of the Middle East, to varying degrees, reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East.
Examples:
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There may be a war on terrorism underway, but the scholars downplay the dangers posed by militant Islam, seeing it as a benign and even democratizing force.
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With only one exception, every American president since 1948 has spoken forcefully about the benefits to the United States from strong and deep relations with Israel. In contrast, American scholars often propagate a view of Middle Eastern affairs that sees Zionism as a racist offshoot of imperialism and blames Israel alone for the origin and persistence of the Palestinian problem.
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While Americans overwhelmingly supported the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991, the Middle East specialists just as overwhelmingly rejected that use of force; and the same divide has recurred in 2002 with the prospect of a military campaign against Iraq.
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Scholarly offerings frequently present in a benign light such hostile actors as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Syrian Ba’th regime, and other Middle East despotisms. In contrast, they emphasize and often exaggerate the faults of Israel, Turkey, Egypt, and Kuwait. They blame Washington, not Tehran, for the hostile relations between these two states.
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I believe most public universities in the USA, have professors who are well balanced on US Foreign policy as well as the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I donno what’s the situation in Euro but maybe someone can enlighten us here.