MESA Turns Down Campus Watch Ad

My latest essay, which appears this morning at FrontPage Magazine, satirizes the Middle East Studies Association's (MESA) refusal to run an advertisement for Campus Watch in the program for their annual convention, which begins tomorrow in Montreal.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

In a surprising act of corporate courage, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has dismissed an attempt by Philadelphia-based Campus Watch to place an ad in the program for MESA's upcoming annual conference in Montreal.

The text of the rejected ad read:

Campus Watch: Working to Improve Middle East Studies since 2002.

The bad news arrived in the form of a terse email from Amy W. Newhall, Ph.D., the executive director of MESA. She wrote from her office at the University of Arizona:

MESA's advertising policy states, ‘MESA reserves the right to refuse ads it deems inappropriate or in conflict with MESA's objectives.' On this basis, we will not accept the ad from your organization.

Sincerely,

Amy W. Newhall

MESA is the umbrella organization for practitioners of Middle East studies (MES) in North America. Based in the Arizona desert, insiders say it breaks through the wall of silence imposed on its members by Campus Watch through stealth outreach efforts that include: frequent appearances on national and international broadcast and cable news networks and radio; articles and citations in newspapers and magazines from around the world; countless classes involving thousands of students on thousands of university campuses worldwide; thousands of publications, including academic and non-academic journals and books; and frequent public speaking gigs in every state and province and scores of foreign countries.

The organization is known to be a fearless defender of academic freedom, even in the face of intense internal pressure to increase its intellectual diversity. This spirit is exemplified by former MESA president Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, who once said, "The FBI should investigate how [Walid] Phares, an undistinguished academic with links to far right-wing Lebanese groups and the Likud clique, became the ‘terrorism analyst' at MSNBC."

To read the rest, go here.