Campus Watch Responds:
A Launch Good campaign to raise money for a “legal defense fund” for Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University (SFSU)'s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, makes several errors involving Campus Watch (CW) and Middle East Forum (MEF) President Daniel Pipes.
The fundraising drive text describes CW and MEF as “right-wing pro-Israel groups,” when neither CW nor MEF’s missions include being “right-wing” or “pro-Israel.” MEF promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western values from Middle Eastern threats, while CW critiques shoddy, politicized scholarship in the field of Middle East studies with the goal of reform.
It also accuses CW and MEF of subjecting Abdulhadi to “relentless bullying,” when, in fact, CW’s criticism of Abdulhadi revolves around her inappropriate and divisive anti-Israel, anti-American campus activism, including brokering SFSU’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with radical An-Najah University in the West Bank. The MEF/CW campaign to end the MOU is based on Najah’s documented history of promoting radicalism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. MEF/CW doesn’t believe taxpayer dollars should be used to promote a partnership with a terror-friendly institution, nor to fund a potentially dangerous student exchange program.
As to Abdulhadi’s “standing as a scholar, teacher and public intellectual,” she alone is responsible for any damage done in that regard. MEF/CW has simply called attention to her politicized academic record, which includes overseeing AMED courses titled, “Islamophobia: Roots, Development, and Contestation of Hatred,” “Comparative Border Studies: Palestine and Mexico,” and “Colonialism, Imperialism, and Resistance,” and a scholarship named after the late Columbia University anti-Israel professor Edward Said.
Meanwhile, the accompanying video narration for the fundraising drive makes the oft-repeated error of describing Freedom Center President David Horowitz as a co-founder of MEF. In fact, Daniel Pipes was the sole founder of the Forum. Moreover, it mischaracterizes Pipes as one of the “leading Islamophobes and anti-black racists.” Such tired and unfounded accusations of “Islamophobia” are, in truth, based on valid criticism of Islamism, while being an “anti-black racist” could be seen as an inadvertent compliment. Daniel Pipes is indeed an opponent of black racism or any other kind, for that matter.
(By Cinnamon Stillwell)