Campus Watch has issued another lengthy correction against the almost daily accusations and paranoia against it from the U.S. Left and apologists for radical Islam. We’ll summarize the main ones. The source article provides a link for each complaint and for rebuttals.
What is Campus Watch (CW): “Campus 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.”
Founded eight years ago, the organization notes the irony that its critics, whose main complaint is being silenced by CW, continue shouting denunciations of it. (The Left often demands that its critics be silenced, as Prof. Steven Plaut has documented for us.)
Dorit Naaman, Alliance Atlantis Professor of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, names CW as part of a big conspiracy, based on a conference that CW was not involved in.
Failing to differentiate CW work from non-CW material in its archives, Nora Barrows-Friedman, writing for the Electronic Intifada, accuses CW of “smear campaigns” against two professors. Actually, CW wrote one article about one professor and nothing about the other. No campaign and no smear.
John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt, among others, keep accusing CW of being part of an Israel lobby that directs CW efforts. CW is an unaffiliated organization run by Daniel Pipes (shown in photo taken from a website ofhis).. CW challenges Mearsheimer and Walt to produce evidence of Israeli dictation. They do not; they just accuse.
In the Palestine Chronicle, Franklin Lamb calls the Zionist Freedom Alliance “a spin-off of Campus Watch.” CW replies, “That’s news to us.”
Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of political science Itzhak Galnoor claims that Israel-Academic-Monitor.com is connected to CW. It isn’t. [Prof. Steven Plaut, who founded the Israeli organization, probably was inspired by CW. They operate independently and in different countries.]
Sharmila Devi, in the National (Abu Dhabi), claims that Campus Watch criticizes professors for being “anti-Israel and pro-Islam.” “In fact, we critique professors for being anti-objectivity and pro-politicization.”
In the Socialist Worker, Brian Napoletano claims that CW denounces scholars who criticize Israel and routinely accuses them of anti-Semitism. No, CW criticizes scholars for the substance of their work. [Critics of CW ignore the substance of CW criticism.]
Ben-Gurion University political geography professor David Newman “calls Campus Watch a “disgrace for anyone who believes in the concept of freedom of speech.” The professor, like many of the other critics, mischaracterizes free speech. Free speech lets a professor present a lecture and lets CW critique it. If CW is not allowed to critique it, it is denied free speech.
David Newman accuses CW of McCarthyism, because some students go through CW to advise the public of campus discourse. Sen. McCarthy got people blacklisted, and without a hearing.
In “the National (Abu Dhabi), Jonathan Cook associates Campus Watch with the terms ‘neoconservative,’ ‘right-wing groups,’ ‘climate of fear,’ and ‘witch-hunt.’ The first two labels are misused as epithets. There is no climate of fear against leftist professors. Nobody is being hunted down.
“Guardian blogger Sunny Hundal relies on the old ‘according to one critic’ trick to make all manner of untrue and nonsensical accusations against Campus Watch. We’re still waiting for Hundal to disclose the mysterious identity of his unnamed source…" (Cinnamon Stillwell, CW, 7/29/10.)