The Middle East Studies Establishment Goes Full
Warrior
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It's only to be expected. My colleagues and I at the Middle East Forum
have for over two
decades criticized the decline of Middle East studies; so now, its
syndicate, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), has for the first time in 14 years
replied in kind. The fusillade takes the form of a letter to Leslie Wong,
president of San Francisco State University (SFSU).
An-Najah National
University's logo.
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MEF's Campus Watch has documented
the disturbing ties between SFSU and An-Najah National University, a
radical institution in the West Bank lauded by Hamas
as a "greenhouse for martyrs" and described by the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy as a hotbed of "terrorist
recruitment, indoctrination, and [the] radicalization of students."
We believe that Najah's long and sordid record should make it an academic
pariah.
Specifically, we procured a copy of SFSU's Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) with Najah which revealed plans to set up faculty and student
exchanges. Finding this agreement with the "greenhouse for
martyrs" outrageous, MEF announced a nationwide campaign
on Sep. 15 calling on SFSU to cancel the MOU with Najah.
MESA, always eager to flaunt its anti-Zionist credentials, responded
with alacrity: on Sep. 19, its dual leadership of Beth Baron and Amy W.
Newhall issued a letter
to Wong that needs to be read in full to appreciate its factual
inaccuracy and moral obtuseness. It does three things: whitewashes
Najah's history, defends an SFSU faculty member from alleged
"harassment" by us, and smears MEF's motives.
(1) In the modern fact-free style of so many of its members, MESA does
not try to disprove our (extensively documented) charge
that Najah's long history of accommodating and promoting terrorists makes
it unsuitable as a partner with any American university. Rather, the
letter airily dismisses our factual argument as "baseless" and
"spurious," without so much as bothering to produce evidence
showing our errors.
Rabab Abdulhadi
teaches "Race and Resistance Studies" at San Francisco State
University.
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(2) We noted that Prof. Rabab Abdulhadi,
an SFSU professor, had stitched together the MOU and gave examples of her
dubious activities. MESA responded by accusing MEF of engaging in
"harassment of Rabab Abdulhadi ... for her political views."
MEF's critique of Abdulhadi, however, focuses not on her political views
but on her efforts to implement the bigoted BDS regimen against Israel
and to cement SFSU's relationship with a radical, terrorist-friendly
university. By this same logic, panning an actor's or athlete's poor
performance constitutes "harassment." This is an old story:
academics claim a unique immunity from being judged, as though they
possess a knowledge so esoteric that the rest of us ignorami should
unquestioningly defer to them.
(3) Going into full jihad mode, MESA dismisses MEF as one of several
"politically motivated nonacademic organizations which seek to
stifle perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... often by
alleging that such criticism [of Israeli policies] is anti-Semitic."
Reeling from these words, I drag myself off the floor to salute MESA's
audacious implication that it – a hotbed of political fractures (such as
between the pro-Tehran and pro-Riyadh factions) – stands above the fray;
and also, how it relegates my Ph.D. in history from Harvard to the
non-academic bin.
The Middle East
Studies Association's logo for 2016.
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As for the tired cliché that we seek to stifle others, I dredge an
obvious point from the hoary archive: as a
small, private organization, MEF could not silence anyone even if it wanted
to (which, incidentally, it does not). How many times need one repeat
this obvious fact?
Finally, our alluding to Najah as an organization that encourages
students "to anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and
violence" is not part of a common pattern but an unusual and
much-considered step that we stand by. Simply put, if Najah's support for
BDS and intifada, as well as its record of producing jihadis who murder
random Jews, does not amount to anti-Semitism, this term has no meaning.
The Middle East Forum regrets that SFSU signed an agreement with Najah
and that MESA has leaped into the fray with its slimy, sophistic letter.
But we cheerfully assure both institutions that Campus Watch, the Consumer
Reports of Middle East studies, will remain on their case so long as
the need continues for its services.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle
East Forum. © 2016 All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes.
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