CAMPUS WATCH, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. 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. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.

The Latest on Campus

Quote of the Month (past quotes)
	"Most Americans would probably think that if there were rockets being fired into Vermont from Canada, we'd have the right to respond to that." Gregory Gause, director of the University of Vermont's Middle East Studies Program, commenting on Israel's strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza to Fox News 44 of Burlington, Vermont, December 30, 2008. (link to source)

A Chill on 'The Guardian' [on libel tourism]
January 15, 2009 - The New York Review of Books

Blessing from a Tyrant [incl. Carl Ernst, William Chittick]
January 6, 2009 - Front Page Magazine

Wrong Blurb Can Ruin A Novel's Future [incl. Denise Spellberg]
January 6, 2009 - The Sydney Morning Herald

Khan Exhibits Bias About Israel's War With Hamas [Letter to the Editor; on Muqtedar Khan]
January 5, 2009 - Delaware Online

Vatican Reaffirms That "Theological Dialogue" Cannot Take Place With Muslims [incl. John Esposito]
January 5, 2009 - Dhimmi Watch

Anti-Zionism and the Abuse of Academic Freedom: A Case Study at the University of California, Santa Cruz
January 2009 - Institute for Global Jewish Affairs

Democracies Not At Fault In Hamas-Israel Bloodshed [Letter to the Editor; on Muqtedar Khan]
January 4, 2009 - Delaware Online

No Hate Speech Allowed: This Blogger's Declaration of Independence [incl. Norman Finkelstein]
January 4, 2009 - Pajamas Media

Middle East Studies on the Mend?
January 4, 2009 - The American Thinker

Khan Wrong to Blame West for Latest War [Letter to the Editor; on Muqtedar Khan]
January 3, 2009 - Delaware Online

Blog

Middle East Studies on the Mend?

By Winfield Myers | Mon, 5 Jan 2009, 10:54 AM | Permalink

Campus Watch adjunct scholar Jonathan Schanzer poses that question in his latest article, published yesterday at The American Thinker. Did the subjects treated by some panels at the latest conference of the Middle East Studies Association demonstrate some progress in Campus Watch's longstanding efforts to bring intellectual diversity to the field?

Here is Schanzer's introduction:

In recent years, Campus Watch (CW) analysts have leveled a barrage of criticism against the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) as a bastion of groupthink for scholar-activists peddling a politicized agenda. CW's current director, Winfield Myers, noted that its "reputation has been shattered by years of politicized scholarship, one-sided teaching, and bullying students." Jonathan Calt Harris, formerly with CW, called the organization a "hive of academic opposition to America, Israel, and, in the larger sense, rationalism itself." After years of responding to such criticism with cries of "McCarthyism," MESA just might be owning up to a few of its failures.

The 2008 MESA conference, held in Washington, DC in November, consisted of 12 sessions over four days with more than 1,500 scholars and professionals in attendance.

In recent years, even after the 9/11 attacks, MESA has failed to offer useful information on the Middle East and Islam and almost completely ignored American national security issues. Not surprisingly, critics charged that MESA was increasingly irrelevant.

This year, MESA actually hosted several panels to correct the problem. Indeed, MESA's 2008 lineup reflected real improvements from 2007. Though few in number, there are positive indications that MESA may grasp, at least in some small way, why critics charge that the field has become a den of corruption and activism posing as scholarship.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

"Setting The Record Straight" Annual Update

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Mon, 22 Dec 2008, 5:50 PM | Permalink

In December 2007, we alerted readers to a new Campus-Watch.org feature called Setting The Record Straight. The section (which can be accessed by passing one's mouse over the "About Campus Watch" category in the left-hand tab and clicking on "Setting The Record Straight") is designed to correct false accusations made against Campus Watch. As we explained at the time:

Campus Watch readers are no doubt familiar with the numerous smears, false allegations, and hysterical accusations leveled against us by our opponents. Frequent charges of "McCarthyism," "censorship," "silencing professors," and "threats to academic freedom" are hurled at Campus Watch by those unaccustomed to the rigors of simple criticism. The hermetically sealed world of academia lends itself to this paranoid mindset and its ideologically sympathetic defenders have adopted a similar approach.

This attitude is even more prevalent in the field of Middle East studies, which was thrust into the spotlight after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and, more often than not, found wanting. Middle East studies academics are none too pleased at the justifiable criticism that has resulted. But instead of addressing the politicization, shoddy scholarship, and apologetics at the heart of the matter, those on the receiving end of Campus Watch's critiques tend to go on the attack, as do their allies. And truth is the first casualty.

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Joel Brinkley: Right on Falk, Wrong on Academia

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Thu, 18 Dec 2008, 6:07 PM | Permalink

Stanford University journalism professor and former New York Times foreign policy correspondent Joel Brinkley has written a commendable article in the San Francisco Chronicle questioning Princeton University professor emeritus of international law Richard Falk's role as special representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Falk is charged with investigating alleged Israeli human rights abuses against the Palestinians or, in other words, drumming up false charges against Israel on behalf of a "human rights council" that includes the Organization of the Islamic Conference, among other unsavory participants. As Brinkley puts it:

The Human Rights Council is already an embarrassment to the United Nations. Certainly reasonable people can criticize Israel, just as they can find fault with the Palestinians. But the council's pathological obsession with Israel is its defining characteristic, and Falk is its embodiment.

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Vassar's Joshua Schreier Promises Zero Objectivity

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Fri, 12 Dec 2008, 4:26 PM | Permalink

Biased Middle East studies professors are nothing new, but what about a professor who actually states in his course syllabus that he has no intention of presenting a scholarly, balanced approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict? This is how Vassar College history professor Joshua Schreier introduces the syllabus for his fall 2008 course, "The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict":

Students should keep in mind that this course is NOT designed to present "an objective" account of a "two-sided" conflict. The fact that there are supposedly two sides does not obligate us to portray each as equally right and/or equally wrong. The goal, rather, is to understand why the conflict arose, and what sorts of power inequalities have made it continue.

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