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02/22/2006:

"Attack on America’s Middle East Studies"

...Since Sept. 11, private advocacy groups that promote U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the war on terror have targeted professional academics who disagree with right-wing agendas. Although the assault on academic professionals who disagree with U.S. foreign policy is not new, the right-wing thought police have been churning the political rhetoric against professors who express “patriotic incorrectness.”

“The neoconservatives have a knee-jerk understanding of Israel and the Middle East,” Beinin said. “They can’t win in a fair intellectual fight; their ideas are passé.”

Beinin explained that right-wing advocacy groups, such as Campus Watch and The David Project compile offensive dossiers on people that contain selective quotes from professors taken out of context.

On their web site Campus Watch states their campaign “supports the unencumbered freedom of speech of all scholars regardless of their views” but that “academic freedom does not mean freedom from criticism, to the contrary no one enjoys privileges in the free marketplace ideas.” The campaign established “The Columbia Project,” which will provide detailed studies of what they believe are “problems with Columbia University’s Middle East Studies faculty.” In the coming months they will be publishing these studies.
dissidentvoice.org