Hamid Algar, professor emeritus of Persian and Islamic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, spent much of his nearly half-century-long academic career celebrating the “genius” of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. |
We at Campus Watch are hardly strangers to morally obscene apologias from professors of Middle East studies. But even long experience doesn’t equip one for the likes of Hamid Algar, the retired UC Berkeley professor who made a cottage industry of fawning over his beloved “Imam,” the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Writing for National Review, Campus Watch Fellow A.J. Caschetta details Algar’s foul record:
Hamid Algar turns 80 years old this year. For 45 years (1965–2010) he used his position as professor of Persian and Islamic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, to celebrate the “genius” of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, denounce American foreign policy, and spread lies and conspiracy theories about Israel.
For most of those years, Algar squandered his rhetorical talents as head cheerleader for the Iranian Revolution, promoting it as “the greatest event of contemporary Islamic history” and sanitizing the image of its monstrous leader, Khomeini. A British-born convert to Shia Islam, Algar met with Khomeini on numerous occasions, both before the Revolution, in Paris, and after it, in Tehran.
