About Campus WatchMission StatementCampus 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. Why Middle East Studies MattersMiddle East studies have a special importance due to its many subjects at the heart of the public debate, such as Islamism in the Middle East and West, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Qatar, and others. Specialists have an extensive but subtle influence on the way North Americans see this range of topics. They:
What Campus Watch Does
Campus Watch will continue its work until the problems it addresses are resolved. Campus Watch GoalsCampus Watch seeks to have an influence over the future course of Middle East studies through two main avenues:
Our Ideal of the UniversityThe universities of North American are treasured institutions that build on the work of many generations. They are a trust that in no sense - not legally, not financially, and not morally - belongs to the academics who happen to administer and serve them at present. Stakeholders have not merely a right but an obligation to safeguard these vital institutions from being harmed. We call on the society at large to take an active interest in developments at the university in general, and in Middle East studies in particular. John Dewey of Columbia University and Arthur Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins University came together with other educators in 1915 to found the American Association of University Professors, an organization designed to preserve the integrity of the academy from a donor-driven agenda. Their 1915 Declaration of Principles set standards that we believe remain valid today: the freedom of the academic teacher entail[s] certain correlative obligations The university teacher should, if he is fit for his position, be a person of a fair and judicial mind; he should, in dealing with such subjects, set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators and he should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves.1 Campus Watch calls upon Middle East studies specialists to recognize their "correlative obligations." Replies to Our CriticsUnfortunately, Middle Eastern studies specialists responded to the launching of Campus Watch with a campaign of vilification and distortion. Lest there be any confusion, we wish to make explicit several points in response:
1 Reprinting published in Academic Freedom and Tenure: A Handbook of the American Association of University Professors, Edited by Louis Joughin, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. Appendix A., pp.155 - 176. |
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