The following is a collection of the false accusations made against Campus Watch since its inception in 2002 for allegedly sending “spies” and “informers” into university classrooms:
Will Marble, The Daily Penn, December, 2012: “Lustick [Bess W. Heymen Chair of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania Ian Lustick] added that he has had students in his classes act as ‘spies’ for Campus Watch and other organizations.”
Annette Herskovits, Dissident Voice, May, 2012: “They advise students to take notes and report on professors, which especially intimidates junior, untenured faculty.”
Alice Bach, The Huffington Post, November, 2010 “In spite of the Campus Watch groups [sic] . . . in which right-wing student informers report on ‘pro-Palestinian’ lectures, classes, or campus events . . . .”
Dorit Naaman, Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, April, 2010: “Campus Watch, which asked students to spy on their professors and track their ‘anti Israeli’ record on a public website . . . .”
David Newman (Ben-Gurion University political geography professor), The Jerusalem Post, February, 2010: “At the beginning of this academic year, some university student magazines allowed [student group] Im Tirtzu to publish (paid) advertisements requesting that students report to them any critical comment which might be voiced by their lecturers in courses dealing with Israeli politics and society. This is a copy of the vicious, anti-democratic campaign instituted some years ago by Campus Watch in North America, which turns students into spies in the name of a specific political ideology.”
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, September, 2008: “Campus Watch, a website that . . . stealing a page from AIPAC’s playbook, encouraged students to report comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel.”
Joanna Walters, The Guardian, November, 2008: "[Under the heading, ‘Academic Spies’] In 2006, most academics at the University of California Los Angeles were horrified when a conservative group began offering students money to tape lectures and turn over materials distributed by professors who they felt focused more on political issues than their course subjects. . . . [T]he UCLA pay-to-spy body followed similar (non-paying) monitoring bodies set up at other institutions - and the creation in 2002 of Campus Watch.”
George S. McCleod, Bangkok Post, May, 2007: “One controversial group is Campus Watch, which pays students cash rewards to report dissident professors.”
Hatem Bazian (senior lecturer in Near Eastern studies and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley), My Occupied Territory Blog, April, 2006: “He [Bazian] said he knew of students in his classroom who attended just so they could write down what he says, essentially spying on him, and transmitting that information to other private organizations.”
Michael Massing, New York Review of Books, June, 2006: “Campus Watch encouraged students to take notes on lectures by professors critical of Israel, with the goal of ‘exposing’ them on the MEF Web site . . . .”
David Faris, The Critical Condition, November, 2005: “At Penn, one of my semesters as a teaching assistant was deeply marred by an undergraduate Campus Watch spy who admitted on Day One that he was there only to monitor the professor.”
Kristine McNeil, The Nation, November, 2002: "[T]he [CW] site’s McCarthyite ‘Keep Us Informed’ section . . . encourages students to inform on their professors . . . .”
