Shedding Light on the Professoriate

My most recent column for the Washington Examiner was published on the 16th. I'm late in posting it at Democracy Project, but here are some additional examples of perfidy among Middle East studies professors, and some observations, not found in the original essay. I argue that Middle East studies professors cry "censorship" whenever they're confronted with critiques of their work.

The article proved to have much longer legs than I'd anticipated, which I think is the result of having said something close to the right thing at the right time: academics have become so paranoid, so unused to receiving criticism from mere mortals (not that they believe in anything immortal beyond their own reputations), that directed critiques of their works send them into a collective tailspin.

That was certainly the case this round, in which I took on Lisa Anderson of Columbia University, as well as some lesser lights scattered around the country (the link is to a slightly modified form post at Campus Watch).

Academics have construed debates over what they say and write as efforts to censor them, as if merely reporting their words and critiquing their ideas is the equivalent of shouting them down or shutting them up.

Then again, if your public statements resemble what follows, you have every reason to try and prevent others from disseminating your words to the wider public.

For example:

Jessica Stern, Harvard: "Jihad has become a global fad, rather like gangsta rap."

Mansour Farhang, Bennington College: "If you put a gun to my head and said choose between Ahmadinejad and Bush, I might say, 'Shoot.'"

Or Fawaz Gerges, Sarah Lawrence College: "I really believe that both the Jews and the Palestinians, basically, are, have suffered from similar historical injustices."

And that's just from the repertoire of professors of Middle East studies. Throw in other disciplines, from so-called ethnic studies (that would be Ward Churchill's specialty--or is it former specialty?) to U.S. history to English literature and, most recently, the absurdities of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, and you'll discern a systemic problem with American higher education: the insistence by many professors on the left to attack America's institutions, freedoms, history, and people without consequence or debate.