'Campus Watch' Monitoring Professors-Who is This Group?

[poe]

Who We Are

Campus Watch consists of American academics concerned about US interests and their frequent denigration on campus. Those interests include strong ties with Israel, Turkey, and other democracies as they emerge; human rights throughout the region; a stable supply and a low price of oil; and the peaceful settlement of regional and international disputes.

What We Do

Campus Watch will henceforth monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement and ignorance. Campus Watch will critique these specialists, and make available its findings on the internet and in the media. Our main goals are to:
• Identify key faculty who teach and write about contemporary affairs at university Middle East Studies departments in order to analyze and critique the work of these specialists for errors or biases.
• Develop a network of concerned students and faculty members interested in promoting American interests on campus.
• Keep the public apprised of course syllabi, memos, debates over appointments and funding, etc.
• Keep the public informed of relevant university events.
• Continuously post the results of our project on www.campus-watch.org, including articles, reports from campus and other relevant information.

Campus Watch: Keeping an Eye on Professors Who Teach About the Middle East
By Middle East Forum

Last week the Middle East Forum, which is directed by HNN contributor Daniel Pipes, established a new website known as Campus Watch. The website lists professors suspected of an anti-Israel bias and asks students to send in names and information. The site currently lists "dossiers" on eight professors, including Juan Cole, who is also a frequent HNN contributor. Mr. Cole reports to HNN that since the website was established he and the other professors listed on the site have been targeted by a relentless conspiracy of email hackers.

The following statement appears on the Campus Watch 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:

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.

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.

Campus Watch, the brainchild of right-wing Zionist Daniel Pipes, “publishes dossiers on professors, as well as some examples of their writings,” explains Will Youmans. “While the website dresses their monitoring as a purely academic exercise, it generates hostile phone calls and e-mails to listed professors and their families, as a profiled academic told me. Not only is this website inflammatory, but it clearly seeks to bring political pressure to bear on the professors and institutions. Under the guise of keeping the public informed, they are trying to force professors who do not share their unquestioning support for Israel to be silent.” Again, in Churchill’s case, it has generated death threats as well.

Indeed, the message of much of academe was clear: BLAME AMERICA FIRST,” states an ACTA report, Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About it, authored by Lynne Cheney.
www.campus-watch.org

[baldguy]

1. Brownshirts.

[Itascapark]

4. Mega Browhshirts

Yikes!!!

[mikehiggins]

2. Right wing zealots and fundy wackos

Probably find Scaife money behind it somewhere along the line.

[RPM]

3. little penis conservative wackjobs

they suck

[OHdem10]

5. Thak you for posting all this information

This very important to get to the public. There has been a drumbeat
of criticism to vitriol against especially Ivy League Schools
ans others with a Liberal bent. The same goes for Hollywood-it
seems to have picked up steam since the election. I wondered what
was going on. Thanks so much for your efforts.

IMO, Any "Institution" that is Liberal must be marginalized--only room for Conservative thought seems to be the agenda. Anti-War types
are the easier targets, then who is next.

Again thanks for the information.
OHDem10

[bemildred]

6. Authoritarian "conservative" political correctness thought police.

Think Joe McCarthy and the HUAC and you have the right idea.
They are anxious to stomp out ideas they dislike. Their idea of
free speech is you can say anything they like.

[Chipper Chat]

7. Anytime you see the word "concerned" you can bet ....

the group has right-wing ties & motives. Let's see,
where will the new "dissident professor prison" be located? In a red state no doubt. I vote for Kansas or Utah.

[ultraist]

8. "Minders" just like they had at the inaug ball

Short for mind controllers! A leg of the new Gestapo.

The Religious Reich must control the info that goes into the mind via all vehicles: college, the MSM, the churches, families, the internet, cartoons, (spongebob) school text books (creationism) etc.

[QC]

9. "university Middle East Studies departments"

Sounds to me like they are going after those who depart from the party line that Israel can do no wrong.

[G_j]

10. FAIR: ABC's Assist to Campus Conservatives:

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

ACTION ALERT:
ABC's Assist to Campus Conservatives:
Were censorship stories too good to check?

February 3, 2005

On February 1, ABC's World News Tonight offered an uncritical platform to
conservatives who complain that their free speech is being curtailed on
college campuses across the country.

ABC anchor Charles Gibson introduced the segment by saying that
conservatives "claim they are victims of a double standard on college
campuses," and seemed to boost that notion by saying, "There certainly is
evidence to suggest that colleges are bastions of liberal thinking.
Seventy-two percent of faculty members in one survey identified themselves
as left of center."

ABC correspondent Dan Harris ran down a series of examples to back up this
storyline, beginning with a community college that wouldn't allow a
screening of the movie "Passion of the Christ" because it had an R rating.
Harris went next to a soundbite from David French of the Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education: "You're going to get more political and
intellectual diversity at your average suburban mega-church than you are
at an elite university." Harris prefaced that statement by calling
French's group "non-partisan," seemingly an attempt to make an obviously
ideological soundbite seem less so.

Harris then moved on to Columbia University, "where Jewish students
complain about harassment from pro-Palestinian professors." ABC included
a clip from a documentary that makes a series of claims about allegedly
anti-Israel professors, but made no attempt to balance that with a source
who might challenge the arguments advanced in the documentary. The New
York Civil Liberties Union, for example, has concluded that "the major
academic-freedom problem arising out of the current Columbia controversy
is that a film produced by a Boston-based advocacy group has provoked
public officials and others to demand the punishment of certain identified
Columbia professors based largely on the ideological positions that these
professors have advanced in their writings and lectures." (NYCLU letter to
Village Voice, 2/2/05)

In a segment purportedly about free speech threats, ABC might have noted
these issues, which include death threats against pro-Palestinian
professors and the cancellation of at least one class because the teacher
thought its criticisms of Israel might be too controversial. That
Columbia instructor, Joseph Massad, has also publicly challenged the
accuracy of charges made against him in the documentary. Including these
aspects would have complicated the simple story ABC seemed to want to
tell, however.

Harris also cited another case popular on right-wing websites: As he put
it, this one happened at "Foothills College, where this freshman says he
was told to get psychotherapy after refusing to write an essay criticizing
the U.S. Constitution." The student, Ahmad Al-Qloushi, then appeared on
ABC and said, "I was attacked and intimidated because I love America."

ABC apparently felt no need to check Al-Qloushi's claim-- an unusual
journalistic decision, given that he is making a serious charge against a
specific instructor. The network might have at least discovered that the
name of the college is Foothill Junior College, not Foothills, as it is
called on many right-wing websites that have taken up Al-Qloushi's cause.
ABC might also have done well to examine Al-Qloushi's essay, which is
available on the Internet (he did not "refuse to write" it, as Harris
mistakenly reports). The essay is unresponsive to the assignment-- an
examination of a book which argues that the U.S. Constitution reflected
the elite interests of those who wrote it. Even conservative blogger
James Joyner (Outside the Beltway, 1/16/05), after reviewing Al-Qloushi's
work, called it "an incredibly poorly written, error-ridden,
pabulum-filled essay that essentially ignores the question put forth by
the instructor." "I'd have given the exam a failing grade, too," wrote
Joyner, who edits the journal Strategic Insights at the Naval Postgraduate
School.

It appeared that an attempt to balance these perspectives would come from
former university president Robert O'Neil. Harris reported that O'Neil
"says conservative students may be trying to protect themselves from ideas
they don't like." But O'Neil's soundbite fed ABC's storyline: "I think
there's a sense that, well, liberals have had their way and they've
advanced their views for quite some time. There should be balance."

Actually, "balance" is not a major principle in academia, where professors
are supposed to be chosen for the excellence of their scholarship, not for
their ideological views. But it is a professed value of journalism, which
makes this an odd comment by Harris:

"Many academics say conservatives are blowing a few isolated incidents way
out of proportion in order to launch a McCarthyesque witch hunt, which is
designed to intimidate professors, limit academic freedom and promote a
sort of affirmative action for conservative professors."

If "many academics" are saying this, why weren't they included in the
report, rather than being paraphrased by the correspondent? If ABC did
not want to give the professors attacked a chance to respond, the network
was at least obligated to check the accuracy of the stories the students
were telling-- and note that the full story was more complicated.


ACTION: Contact ABC and ask them why their report on conservative
complaints about free speech infringement did not evaluate the validity of
those complaints, and did not offer any experts who might challenge those
claims.

CONTACT:
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: [phone]
mailto:[e-mail]

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you
maintain a polite tone. Please cc [e-mail] with your correspondence.

[Tinoire]

11. Pipes' group. Pipes, US Institute of Peace, Favors Concentration Camps

Campus Watch is a charming group that popped up about 2 years ago and was vigorously discussed in the I/P forum. His site comes complete with forms to turn in professors who are teaching incorrect versions of the Middle Eastern History- especially the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But he didn't stop with his Gestapo Watch site. Now he's on to bigger and better things- concentration camps

((Bear in mind as you read that story that:


During August recess 2003, President Bush bypassed the Senate and appointed Pipes,
over the objections of Democrats and others,
to the board of the United States Institute of Peace.
The appointment won't be valid until the next Congress is sworn in, in January 2005. <1> (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/08/20030822-7.html)


Pipes, Board of US Institute of Peace, Favors Concentration Camps

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Pipes Favors Concentration Camps
Friday, December 31, 2004

That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn't a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

Pipes's little project requires him to attempt to justify the internment of American citizens (of Japanese ancestry) during World War II, a violation on several grounds of the Bill of Rights. I hope Asian-Americans realize that a key wing of the Republican Party, i.e. the Neoconservatives, wishes them ill.

If the American yahoos ever start putting people in concentration camps, I think we may be assured that they won't stop with the Muslims or the Asians, and Mr. Pipes will come to have reason to regret his imprudence and, frankly, his demonic implication.

posted by Juan @ 12/31/2004 06:25:13 AM

((Cole's post reprinted with permission))

===



Why the Japanese Internment Still Matters
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 28, 2004

For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.

(snip)

Also encouraging, the survey finds the more people follow TV news, the more likely they are to support these common-sense steps. Those who are best informed about current issues, in other words, are also the most sensible about adopting self-evident defensive measures.

That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully intimidated public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.

(snip)

Fortunately, the intrepid Ms. Malkin, a columnist and specialist on immigration issues, has re-opened the internment file. Her recently published book, bearing the provocative title In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise that in time of war, "the survival of the nation comes first." From there, she draws the corollary that "Civil liberties are not sacrosanct."

(snip)

She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls "threat profiling." These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane."


http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2309

You can read more about this gift from the bowels of hell here: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Daniel_Pipes

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist - so I said nothing.
Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat - so I did nothing.
Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist.
And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew - so I did little.
Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me."

- Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984

Moi? "Je trouve que le monde entier est absurde..."