<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; professor</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/professor/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 14:36:34 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Kansas Journalism Prof to NRA: &#8216;Next Time, Let It Be Your Sons and Daughters&#8217; Who Are Shot</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/kansas-journalism-prof-to-nra-next-time-let-it-be-your-sons-and-daughters-who-are-shot/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kansas-journalism-prof-to-nra-next-time-let-it-be-your-sons-and-daughters-who-are-shot</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/kansas-journalism-prof-to-nra-next-time-let-it-be-your-sons-and-daughters-who-are-shot/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:15:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Dogan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Campus Roundup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Guth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy Yard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NRA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University of Kansas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205653</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[David Guth's wish for the children of his political enemies to be murdered. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/David-Guth1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205654" alt="David-Guth1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/David-Guth1-450x333.jpg" width="270" height="200" /></a>A regular column dedicated to reporting on the slanted teaching, mis-administration and sheer insanity of our nation’s colleges and universities.</i></p>
<p><b>Top News:</b></p>
<p>• University of Kansas journalism professor David Guth <a href="http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/20/university-of-kansas-professor-david-guth-suspended-for-repulsive-anti-nra-tweet/">has been suspended</a> from his teaching duties after he responded to the horrific Navy Yard shooting by stating his wish on twitter that the next crazed gunman would kill the children of members of the National Rifle Association. Guth’s tweet read: “#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.” In a statement released by KU, Ann Brill, dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications in which Guff taught, stated, “While the First Amendment allows anyone to express an opinion, that privilege is not absolute and must be balanced with the rights of others. That’s vital to civil discourse. Professor Guth’s views do not represent our school and we do not advocate violence directed against any group or individuals.”</p>
<p>• A textbook used to teach Advanced Placement History at Guyer High School in Denton, <a href="http://www.dailypaul.com/299365/high-school-ap-history-book-rewrites-the-2nd-amendment">incorrectly summarizes the Second Amendment</a>, making it appear that it pertains only to soldiers in a “state militia” and not to ordinary citizens. The summary provided in the text reads, “The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.” By contrast, the actual Second Amendment to the United States Constitution holds that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The textbook is also used at an indeterminate number of other high schools.</p>
<p>• A student who attempted to pass out copies of the United States Constitution on Constitution Day, September 17, at Modesto Junior College in California was told that his actions <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/19/california-college-bars-student-from-handing-out-copies-constitution/">violated the rules of the College</a>. The student, 25-year-old Robert Van Tuinen, was confronted by an intimidating campus security guard who claimed that he could only do so in a tiny free speech zone, and that he was required to fill out forms to schedule his distribution of materials in advance.  Van Tuinen caught the exchange on video and is being supported by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education which called the incident “depressing and nauseating.” The College claims to be “looking into the incident.”</p>
<p>• The regents of Colorado University, in a unanimous vote, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/an-unexpected-and-important-education-victory-in-colorado/">passed a resolution</a> adding “political affiliation” to the school’s non-discrimination policy, thereby ensuring that conservative students are protected from professors who might penalize them for their political views in class. The University will also conduct a study to determine whether professors are respectful of students who differ with their (typically leftist) views in the classroom.  These decisions put into place protections that Students for Academic Freedom, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, first attempted to enact in 2003.</p>
<p><b>Further news from the campuses:</b></p>
<p><b>Sex Ed at UCLA</b> [NationalReview.com]</p>
<p>When two freshman sisters at UCLA were told their mandatory orientation on sexual harassment would include a section on sex education, they respectfully requested exemption from that part of the program. As Catholics, Angelica and Bella Ayala did not want to participate in the sex-ed presentation — which discussed, among other topics, how to put on a condom and how to ask someone to have sex with you — because contraception and premarital sex violate their moral code. But the two girls were swiftly reprimanded for their small protest and told they were required to attend another session, even if it violated their conscience.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358880/sex-ed-ucla-alec-torres">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Professor Claims Navy Yard Shooting Was Staged </b>[The College Fix]</p>
<p>A Florida Atlantic University communications professor known for conspiracy theories has posted a series of pictures, audio clips, memos and news reports on his blog that he believes adds up to indicate the Navy Yard shooting in Washington D.C. was staged.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/14658/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Ultra-liberal Professor Disrupts College Republican Meeting with Vulgar Rant </b>[FoxNews.com]</p>
<p>From that great bastion of academic freedom known as Temple University comes another example of a liberal professor bullying conservative students with a bevy of F-bombs.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/19/ultra-liberal-professor-disrupts-college-republican-meeting-with-vulgar-rant/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Journalism Professor Says He Hopes for Murder of NRA Members’ Children </b>[CampusReform.org]</p>
<p>A journalism professor at the University of Kansas (KU) turned to Twitter on Monday to suggest he would like to see the murder of children of National Rifle Association (NRA) members at the hands of a deranged gunman.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=5086">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>The Right Stuff on Campus</b> [NationalReview.com]</p>
<p>It’s easy for conservatives to write off college campuses as impenetrable liberal strongholds and to regard women students in particular as a lost cause. But three efforts to reach young women with conservative ideas — a magazine, a speaker recruitment, and a campus-based organization — demonstrate that conservatives can make some headway.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358548/right-stuff-campus-karin-agness">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>High School Textbook Rewrites Second Amendment–Literally </b>[Breitbart.com]</p>
<p>The authors of United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination have taken it upon themselves to change the Constitution of the United States. The high school textbook contains a summary of each Amendment that alters the initial intent in which they were created.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/18/School-Textbook-Changes-Constitution">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Professors Launch Howard Zinn Read-In To Protest Conservative Viewpoints </b>[The College Fix]</p>
<p>An observance in adoration of the late historian Howard Zinn – a controversial Marxist known to spew anti-American, anti-Western opinions in his textbooks and an admitted social activist - has been organized by Purdue University professors, who have asked their peers across the country to take part in a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/howardzinnreadin">Howard Zinn Read-In this November.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/14636/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>&#8216;Students of Color Only&#8217; </b>[InsideHigherEd.com]</p>
<p>A Texas Christian University professor reached out in an e-mail to a group of students he deemed to be “of color” to help them succeed in his class. But the move backfired with at least one student, who was insulted at being included for her perceived ethnicity.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/16/texas-christian-professor-sets-debate-invitation-minority-students#ixzz2fmBQ8WlY">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Middle East Map Stirs Controversy on Campus</b> [Daily Aztec]</p>
<p>On the first week of school San Diego State students enrolled in an Arabic 101 class received a map of the Middle East highlighting Arabic-speaking countries.</p>
<p>Days later, a call for action was issued by <a href="http://myemail.constantcontact.com/ACTION-ALERT--SDSU-Professor-Wipes-Israel-Off-the-Map-.html?soid=1109317602219&amp;aid=AymQfQRqhmY">Stand With Us,</a> a pro-Israeli nonprofit organization, to take a stance against the map, which had omitted Israel and labeled the territory as Palestine.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2013/09/middle-east-map-stirs-controversy-on-campus/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>College Set to Host Former-Terrorist Bill Ayers for ‘Queering Education’  Speech </b>[CampusReform.org]</p>
<p>Bill Ayers, a professor known for engaging in terrorist activities in the 1970s, is set to speak at Gettysburg College (GC) next Tuesday, Campus Reform has learned.</p>
<p>According to the event’s <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/img/CROBlog/5103/ayersgettysburg.jpg"><b>poster</b></a>, Ayers will deliver a speech on “queering education” which will be  sponsored by nGender, a program at GC that meets bi-weekly to “dialogue on gender issues,” according to the <a href="http://www.gettysburg.edu/about/offices/college_life/cps/student/dialogue/"><b>school’s official website</b></a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=5103">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>California College Forbids Passing Out Constitutions &#8230; On Constitution Day</b> [TheFire.org]</p>
<p>MODESTO, Calif., September 19, 2013—In a stunning illustration of the attitude taken towards free speech by too many colleges across the United States, Modesto Junior College in California told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013—Constitution Day.</p>
<p><a href="http://thefire.org/article/16246.html">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Community Considers Political Speech on First Amendment Day </b>[Daily Tar Heel]</p>
<p>For sophomore Lea Palmer, the right to free speech comes with a risk.</p>
<p>“I’d be worried about walking back into a classroom after saying I was conservative, just because of the looks I’d get from people,” said Palmer, who is a member of UNC’s College Republicans.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/09/political-views-0924">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>University&#8217;s Young Democrats President is a Convicted Child Sex Offender </b>[CampusReform.org]</p>
<p>The president of the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) Young Democrats chapter is a convicted child sex offender, Campus Reform has learned.</p>
<p>Bill  “Billy” Wayne Johnson, who is listed on the <a href="https://utpa.collegiatelink.net/organization/youngdems"><b>school’s official website</b></a> as the primary contact  for the student organization, was registered as a sex offender in April of 2010, according <a href="https://records.txdps.state.tx.us/SexOffender/PublicSite/Application/Search/Individual.aspx?IND_IDN=5999771&amp;SearchType=Name&amp;ResultsUrl=%2FSexOffender%2FPublicSite%2FApplication%2FSearch%2FResults.aspx%3FSearchType%3DName%26FirstName%3DBilly%26LastName%3DJohnson%26Birthdate%3D%26Sex%3D0%26Race%3D0%26CountyCode%3D0"><b>to Texas DPS SEX Offender registry.</b></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=5097">Read more</a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/kansas-journalism-prof-to-nra-next-time-let-it-be-your-sons-and-daughters-who-are-shot/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>16</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>To Hire a Murderer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/to-hire-a-murderer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=to-hire-a-murderer</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/to-hire-a-murderer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:46:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boudin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Columbia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=184195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kill a cop, get a prestigious academic appointment at Columbia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/to-hire-a-murderer/boudin/" rel="attachment wp-att-184257"><img class=" wp-image-184257 alignleft" title="boudin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/boudin-350x350.jpg" alt="" width="280" height="280" /></a>Convicted cop killer and Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin is now teaching as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s notorious School of Social Work, the <em>New York Post</em> revealed.</p>
<p>Amazingly, the communist revolutionary had been lecturing at the school for several years unnoticed by the media until now. She serves as director of the school&#8217;s &#8220;Criminal Justice Initiative.&#8221;</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no question Boudin has expertise in criminality &#8212; after years as a fugitive, she served 22 years in prison for her role in an assault on an armored-car in which two police officers and a Brinks security guard died. She also has longstanding ties to Columbia, having plotted with her Weather Underground comrades in 1970 to plant bombs in Butler Library on the university&#8217;s Morningside Heights campus.</p>
<p>After years of lying low, Boudin, now 69 years of age, has been thrust back into the spotlight as grizzled leftist director Robert Redford prepares to release his new movie, <em>The Company You Keep</em>, based on a novel about Weather Underground fugitives. Boudin was also recently named the Rose Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence by New York University Law School. Last month at NYU she delivered a lecture on “the politics of parole and re-entry.”</p>
<p>Boudin was <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=16674">paroled</a> in 2003 after telling officials that she took part in the $1.6 million robbery because she felt guilty for being white. Security guard Peter Paige and Nyack, N.Y. police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O&#8217;Grady died in the 1981 attack. Nine children subsequently grew up without their fathers.</p>
<p>The crime that Boudin participated in was a joint action by the Black Liberation Army and May 19th Communist Organization. It was perpetrated to raise money for an insurgency against the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Boudin&#8217;s boyfriend at the time David Gilbert, also complicit in the robbery, remains in prison. Wholly unrepentant, he still writes self-important, pompous propaganda pamphlets romanticizing his wasted life.</p>
<p>Chesa Boudin, the illegitimate son of Gilbert and Boudin, was raised by Weather Underground leaders and Obama buddies Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Somehow the son received a Rhodes scholarship &#8212; and despite his lack of talent his political views and radical pedigree make him a shoo-in for a devalued cultural ornament such as a MacArthur &#8220;Genius Grant&#8221; or Nobel Peace Prize in the near future.</p>
<p>Kathy Boudin and the Columbia School of Social Work did not respond to a request for comment, but Associate Dean Marianne Yoshioka spoke to the <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/outrage_puQlvJIeZxsT7nFZds0HIJ">New York Post</a>. Yoshioka, who reportedly hired Boudin way back in 2008, said the Marxist murderer has been “an excellent teacher who gets incredible evaluations from her students each year.”</p>
<p>&#8220;Of the hundreds of students Boudin has taught, Yoshioka said, just three have expressed qualms about her criminal background, and only one &#8216;switched out&#8217; of a class because of those concerns,&#8221; according to the newspaper.</p>
<p>Of course, Boudin has an appropriate academic background for the School of Social Work. She received one of the most worthless advanced academic degrees America has to offer &#8212; the education doctorate (Ed.D.) &#8212; from Teachers College, Columbia University. Bill Ayers received his Ed.D. from the same school two decades earlier.</p>
<p>The schools of the Ivy League, and Columbia University in particular, have long been friendly to America&#8217;s enemies, both foreign and domestic.</p>
<p>The name of the Columbia School of Social Work, an indoctrination factory for those determined to poison the minds of the young, has long been synonymous with sedition and treason.</p>
<p>At Columbia, social work isn&#8217;t about helping people and the school doesn&#8217;t even pretend to educate students. The school&#8217;s website greets visitors with, “Would you like to become a social change agent and leader? Consider applying to Columbia University School of Social Work.”</p>
<p>The neo-communist apostles of depravity and engineered social collapse, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, both taught at the Columbia University School of Social Work in the 1960s.</p>
<p>But even before that tumultuous decade, Columbia opened its doors to anti-American totalitarians. In the 1920s the campus hosted “Casa Italiana,” which served as an outreach office for the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Columbia honored Iran&#8217;s Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, inviting him to give a keynote address in 2007.</p>
<p>The faculty has long had a fondness for cop killers and those who love them.</p>
<p>Death row groupie <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/dorner-folk-hero-of-the-left/">Marc Lamont Hill</a>, whose love of cop killers manifested itself in an ode to Mumia abu-Jamal, and revolutionary Angela Davis are scheduled to speak at the social work school on Friday at “Beyond the Bars: Moving Forward.” It&#8217;s the third annual conference on criminal justice organized by students and faculty at the school.</p>
<p>Davis ran for Vice President in 1980 and 1984 on the Communist Party USA ticket. Before that she traveled to the Soviet bloc and did extensive propaganda for America&#8217;s enemies at the time. Stateside, when she was young Davis attended New York&#8217;s Little Red Schoolhouse, known for its Communist teachers and student body, at the same time as Boudin.</p>
<p>Boudin&#8217;s hire by a prestigious university was only a matter of time. In the morally topsy-turvy world of Columbia, the blood on Boudin&#8217;s hands is a &#8220;selling point, not something from which to recoil in disgust and horror,&#8221; as one pundit notes.</p>
<p>That Boudin killed police officers is impressive enough to left-wingers, but add in the fact that she did it for political reasons and you may have an academic superstar in the making.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/to-hire-a-murderer/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Sheikh Al-Bouti Dies By the Means He Promoted</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-durie/sheikh-al-bouti-dies-by-the-means-he-promoted/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sheikh-al-bouti-dies-by-the-means-he-promoted</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-durie/sheikh-al-bouti-dies-by-the-means-he-promoted/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 04:26:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Durie]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cleric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sunni]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=182863</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Assad-supporting cleric meets the same bloody fate he prescribed for infidels and blasphemers. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-durie/sheikh-al-bouti-dies-by-the-means-he-promoted/000_nic6201239-jpg-1000x297x1/" rel="attachment wp-att-182924"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-182924" title="000_Nic6201239.jpg.1000x297x1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/000_Nic6201239.jpg.1000x297x1-450x262.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="157" /></a>On March 21, Sheikh Dr Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti of Syria was killed, along with 40 others, by a suicide bomber at the Iman mosque in Damascus.</p>
<p>A 2009 publication edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin listed the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. Al-Bouti was no. 23.  He was Imam of the Ummayyad Mosque and Dean of the Department of Religion at Damascus University, where he had taught Islam for more than half a century. Aged in his eighties, Al-Bouti was regarded as one of the eminent Sunni jurists of the modern era.</p>
<p>Al-Bouti had long been a critic of Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.  More recently, the Brotherhood&#8217;s spiritual leader Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawy has been fanning the flames of unrest across the Middle East, reaching millions of viewers on Al-Jazeera.  When asked the question on Al-Jazeera TV,  &#8220;Is it permissible to target those who support the [Syrian] regime, especially government scholars?&#8221; Al- Qaradawy replied: &#8220;We should fight to kill all those who work for the government, whether civilians, army, scholars, or ignorant.&#8221;  Al-Qaradawy has also mocked Al-Bouti (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WNaReoAGRU">here</a>) and called him a mad imbecile (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbLSgkrEhfU&amp;feature=youtu.be">here</a>) and threatened him with Allah&#8217;s wrath and people&#8217;s anger if he did not repent.</p>
<p>Also stirring the pot from the safety of Saudi Arabia has been <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21564913-influential-rebel-preacher-who-needs-tone-things-down">Adnan al-Aroor, an exiled Syrian Sunni Cleri</a>c, who has cursed Al-Bouti and called for his death.</p>
<p>The loss of Al-Bouti will be sorely felt by the Assad regime.  Well-known for his opposition to revolution, he was the most senior Sunni cleric who still supported Assad.</p>
<p>Al-Bouti&#8217;s support was consistent with a sharia principle which states that it is unlawful for Muslims to revolt and take up arms against their Muslim ruler, even if he is unjust.  Most scholars agree that this is forbidden.  Ibn Taymiyyah made the famous comment that &#8220;sixty years under an oppressive ruler are better than one night without any ruler.&#8221;</p>
<p>Muhammad himself said:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The best among your rulers are those whom you love and they love you in turn, those who pray (make supplication) for you and you pray for them. The worst of your rulers are those whom you hate and they hate you in turn, and you curse them and they curse you.&#8221;</p>
<p>Someone asked: &#8220;O Messenger of Allah! Shall we confront them with swords?&#8221;</p>
<p>The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: &#8220;No, as long as they hold prayers among you (i.e. as long as the ruler is a Muslim). If you see from your rulers what you hate, hate the action they do but do not rebel against them.&#8221;  (<em>Sahih Muslim)</em></p></blockquote>
<p>In order for Muslims to rebel, the ruler should first be declared to be a <em>kaffir</em> &#8220;unbeliever&#8221; who has abandoned Islam.  Declaring Muslims to be <em>kaffir</em> is known as the practice of <em>takfir</em>. There have been many <em>takfir</em> rulings against President Assad and his supporters in recent times to justify fighting and killing them (for example <a href="http://ahlusunnahwaljamaah.com/2012/02/14/takfeer-alawi-assad/">these two</a> rulings against Assad and Alawites on a Salafist website).</p>
<p>It is not surprising that in a statement released after Al-Bouti&#8217;s death, President Assad, after declaring Al-Bouti to be a martyr, <a href="http://www.syriaonline.sy/?f=Details&amp;catid=12&amp;pageid=5379">pledged to continue to work to eliminate &#8220;<em>takfiri thinking</em></a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>In recent years there have been concerted efforts by leading Muslim scholars to suppress the practice of <em>takfir</em>, notably the <a href="http://www.ammanmessage.com/http://www.ammanmessage.com/">Amman Message</a>, sponsored by King Abdullah of Jordan and signed by over 500 leading Muslim scholars, including Al-Bouti and Al-Qaradawy. Nevertheless many Muslims accept the use of <em>takfir</em> against apostates from Islam, against groups regarded as heretical such as the Ahmadis, and against those who, like Salman Rushdie, are considered to be blasphemers.</p>
<p>Islam has a long doctrinal tradition of warfare &#8211; the institution of jihad &#8211; which offers Paradise to those who die fighting. Indeed in Islam, all warfare should be religious, because it is forbidden to wage war without a religious mandate.</p>
<p>The principle of Islamic law that Muslims should not take up arms against Muslim rulers is pragmatic.  It helps protect Islamic societies from being torn apart by sectarian conflict.  The dogma of jihad and practice of <em>takfir</em>, if invoked by competing parties in a conflict, can produce extraordinary devastation, as was witnessed in the Iran-Iraq war, in which there were more than a million &#8220;martyrs.&#8221; It was on such grounds that Al-Bouti supported Assad &#8211; and opposed the more radical <em>takfiri</em> Muslims, who now constitute the opposition forces in Syria.</p>
<p>His distaste for armed rebellion notwithstanding, Al-Bouti was a theological conservative who endorsed the classical principles of Islamic jihad.  In <em>Fiqh Al-Sira </em>(&#8220;Jurisprudence of the Life of Muhammad&#8221;) he defined the doctrine of jihad to consist of the duty of Muslims to impose Islamic government on the world if they have sufficient military force. In support of this principle he cited Sura 9:123:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>As well as the words of Muhammad:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: &#8216;None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,&#8217; and whoever says, &#8216;None has the right to be worshipped but Allah&#8217;, Allah will save his property and his life from me [i.e. from Muhammad], except justly [i.e. he has committed a crime], and his account will be with Allah?&#8221;  (<em>Sahih Al-Bukhari</em>)</p></blockquote>
<p>Al-Bouti also taught that atheists, idolaters and polytheists could be fought against, to compel them into Islam, while Christians and Jews could be permitted to live alongside Muslims provided they submit to sharia law and pay tribute to the Islamic authorities.  He pooh-poohed the distinction often made between offensive and defensive jihad:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;It is nonsense to want to distinguish the two aspects of defensive and offensive warfare in the struggle for the cause of Allah.  The legitimacy of jihad does not depend upon the right of attack or defense as such; it is based upon the necessity of establishing an Islamic society which follows the laws and principles of Islam, therefore it matters little how one pursues jihad towards this end, whether offensive or defensive.&#8221; (<em>Fiqh Al-Sira</em>, from the French translation of Z. Diab, pp. 187-188).</p></blockquote>
<p>Like many other leading Muslim scholars, Al-Bouti issued a fatwa endorsing &#8220;martyrdom operations&#8221; &#8212; suicide bombings &#8212; in Israel.  This fatwa was cited by Nawaf Hayel Al-Takrouri in <em>Martyrdom Operations in Islamic Jurisprudence</em> (<em>al-Amaliyat al-Istishhadiyya fi Mizan al-Fiqhi</em>) along with 31 other similar rulings:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;These operations are one hundred percent legal if the one who carries it out intends to inflict defeat upon the enemy, but not to kill himself. If he intended to kill himself, he has committed suicide and he is not a martyr. His intention must be to inflict defeat upon the enemy and not death [to himself]. Allah might save him supernaturally.&#8221;</p>
<p>Then he [Prof. Al Bouti] gave an illustration.  He said:</p>
<p>&#8220;A man says, &#8216;Since I am tired of life, I am going to carry out a [martyrdom] operation.&#8217; This [person] would be committing suicide.</p>
<p>Someone else says, &#8216;I am pursuing jihad in the cause of Allah to strike the enemy. If I die, that is good; if I don&#8217;t die, that is better.&#8217; This [person] will be a martyr, Allah willing. Furthermore, this an act of vengeance.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>It is a bitter irony that this respected scholar was killed at the end of a long and productive life by someone who was acting out the very belief he had promoted against Israelis: that a Muslim who blows himself up to inflict defeat upon &#8220;the enemy&#8221; has not committed suicide, but is a martyr enjoying the delights of paradise, provided his intentions are &#8220;good.&#8221;</p>
<p>Muslim armies down the centuries have found the doctrine of jihad to be a potent weapon against their non-Muslim foes. However bellicose dogmas, which even &#8220;moderate&#8221; Muslims, such as Al-Bouti espouse, have the capacity to tear societies apart in a bloodbath if conditions for their implementation are triggered. The recent slaughter of 41 civilians in the Iman mosque in Damascus was but a microcosm of the larger theologically-driven tragedy which is engulfing Syria, and threatens to make mince-meat of much of the Middle East. For too long Arab states have tolerated and even invested heavily in the promotion of jihadist dogma in their societies.  Those who stoke the fires of jihad better watch out for the blowback.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-durie/sheikh-al-bouti-dies-by-the-means-he-promoted/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Blood-Lusting Hate Speech of the Anti-Gun Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-blood-lusting-hate-speech-of-the-anti-gun-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-blood-lusting-hate-speech-of-the-anti-gun-left</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-blood-lusting-hate-speech-of-the-anti-gun-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:03:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Erik Loomis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NRA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unhinged threats of murder and violence flood social media. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-blood-lusting-hate-speech-of-the-anti-gun-left/121218_nra_protest_lg/" rel="attachment wp-att-170126"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170126" title="121218_nra_protest_lg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/121218_nra_protest_lg-450x328.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="197" /></a>In the aftermath of the horrific Newtown, Conn., school massacre, Americans from all parts of the political spectrum agree that we need to pay more attention to mental health issues. Public death threats and incitements to violence must be taken seriously. The incendiary witch hunt against law-abiding, peaceful gun owners is neither noble nor effective. It&#8217;s just plain insane.</p>
<p>Over the past week, I&#8217;ve witnessed a disturbing outbreak of off-the-rails hatred toward gun owners and Second Amendment groups. Whatever your views on guns, we can all agree: The Newtown gunman was a monster who slaughtered his own mother, five heroic educators and 20 angel-faced schoolchildren. He ignored laws against murder. He bypassed Connecticut&#8217;s strict gun control regulations, and he circumvented the Sandy Hook Elementary School&#8217;s security measures. Every decent American is horrified and heartsick by this outbreak of pure evil.</p>
<p>But tens of millions of law-abiding men and women own and use guns responsibly in this country. The cynical campaign to demonize all armed men and women as monsters must not go unanswered. What&#8217;s most disturbing is that the incitements are coming from purportedly respectable, prominent and influential public figures.</p>
<p>Consider the rhetoric of University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis. He teaches &#8220;U.S. environmental history, the Civil War, late 19th and early 20th century America, labor history, and the American West&#8221; in the university&#8217;s history department. Online, however, Loomis is a militantly unhinged foe of all things conservative.</p>
<p>This week, the nutty professor took to Twitter to rail against law-abiding gun owners and the National Rifle Association. &#8220;Looks like the National Rifle Association has murdered some more children,&#8221; Loomis fumed. &#8220;Now I want Wayne LaPierre&#8217;s head on a stick,&#8221; he added. (LaPierre is executive vice president and CEO of the NRA.) Loomis was just warming up.</p>
<p>&#8220;F**k the National Rifle Association and its policies to put crazy guns in everyone&#8217;s hands,&#8221; Loomis tweeted. &#8220;You are g*dd*mn right we should politicize this tragedy. F**k the NRA. Wayne LaPierre should be in prison,&#8221; he spewed.</p>
<p>&#8220;Can we define NRA membership dues as contributing to a terrorist organization?&#8221;</p>
<p>If all that wasn&#8217;t clear enough, Loomis also re-tweeted the following message from a fellow left-winger: &#8220;First f**ker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death.&#8221;</p>
<p>When the conservative group Campus Reform called attention to the craziness, Loomis whined about a &#8220;right-wing intimidation campaign.&#8221; Sane university professors shook their heads. University of Tennessee law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds explained the anti-NRA syllogism at work:</p>
<p>&#8220;(1) Something bad happened; (2) I hate you; so (3) it&#8217;s your fault. This sort of reasoning has played out in all sorts of places over the past century, with poor results. One would expect a history professor to know better.&#8221;</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Loomis is not alone. Famed author Joyce Carol Oates also took to Twitter to blame the entire membership of the NRA for one evil-doer&#8217;s massacre. &#8220;Another NRA-sponsored massacre for Christmas 2012,&#8221; Oates wrote. She then accused any politicians who supported the NRA of &#8220;felony homicide.&#8221; And then she mused hopefully for mass shootings against the NRA: &#8220;If sizable numbers of NRA members become gun-victims themselves, maybe hope for legislation of firearms?&#8221; Shockingly, actress Marg Helgenberger of the TV show &#8220;CSI&#8221; cheered her on: &#8220;One can only hope, but sadly I don&#8217;t think anything would change.&#8221;</p>
<p>In Texas, state Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias threw fuel on the fire. Cobarruvias is the Democratic Party precinct chair in Houston, Texas, and holds a seat on the Texas State Democratic Party&#8217;s executive committee. On his Twitter feed, Cobarruvias labeled the NRA a &#8220;domestic terrorist organization&#8221; and called for the assassination of NRA leaders and supporters: &#8220;Can we now shoot the #NRA and everyone who defends them?&#8221;</p>
<p>So, it&#8217;s come to this: Advocating beheadings, beatings and the mass murder of peaceful Americans to pay for the sins of a soulless madman. But because the advocates of violence fashion themselves champions of non-violence and because they inhabit the hallowed worlds of Hollywood, academia and the Democratic Party, it&#8217;s acceptable?</p>
<p>Blood-lusting hate speech must not get a pass just because it comes out of the mouths of the protected anti-gun class.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-blood-lusting-hate-speech-of-the-anti-gun-left/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>64</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Professor and America&#8217;s Cultural Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/obamas-professor-and-americas-cultural-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-professor-and-americas-cultural-crisis</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/obamas-professor-and-americas-cultural-crisis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 May 2010 04:24:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academic traditions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti semites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[artist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assault]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[celebrity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Click]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cornel west]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cornell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cornell west]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[half-century]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intellectual icon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inverse correlation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jeremiah-wright]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literary merit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pamphlet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spiritual mentor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=60917</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Cornel West is a Rosetta Stone of our national disaster.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/west.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60922" title="west" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/west.gif" alt="" width="375" height="324" /></a></p>
<p>No man more exemplifies the Left’s half-century assault on America’s intellectual and academic traditions than celebrity professor and intellectual con artist Cornell West. Thrust into cultural prominence most recently thanks to his ties to President Obama, to whom he has acted, together with the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, as a spiritual mentor, the radical West also typifies the decline and degradation of standards in the American university. As David Horowitz illustrates in his devastating new pamphlet, “Obama’s Professor and America’s Cultural Crisis,” West is an improbable intellectual icon – an apologist for racists and anti-Semites; a cheerleader for Marxism; and a perpetrator of books of pseudo-cerebral nonsense that are celebrated by his legions of fans in inverse correlation to their literary merit. For anyone wishing to understand America’s current cultural predicament, the destructive career of Cornel West shows with alarming clarity the grave damage that the progressive onslaught has wrought.</p>
<p>We have kept printing costs down and are offering bulk copies at just $1.00 per booklet for orders of 25 or more, or $3.00 for a single copy.</p>
<p>To make an order, <strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=RKTF5FVRQEM7">click here</a></strong>.</p>
<p>To read the pamphlet, <strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/HurricaneWest.pdf">click here</a></strong>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/obamas-professor-and-americas-cultural-crisis/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>37</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Dershowitz vs. Tenured Extremists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/steven-plaut/dershowitz-takes-on-tenured-extremists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dershowitz-takes-on-tenured-extremists</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/steven-plaut/dershowitz-takes-on-tenured-extremists/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 May 2010 04:14:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academic publication]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aviv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carlo Strenger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[democratic nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[depaul university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dersh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dershowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dr. Gerardo Leibner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eloquent speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extremist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governors.  He]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[harvard university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[honorary doctoral degree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph Klafter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judd Ne]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[name]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Norman Finkelstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[petition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prof alan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prof. Chaim Gans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prof. Joseph Klafter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prof. Moshe Zuckerman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prof. Uri Hadar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor alan dershowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rachel Giora]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TAU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TAU President]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tel aviv university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=60350</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No academic freedom of speech for the defenders of Israel.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/alandershowitz1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60406" title="alandershowitz" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/alandershowitz1.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="397" /></a></p>
<p>One individual who is extremely effective in upsetting the academic radical Left is Professor Alan Dershowitz from Harvard  University.  Dershowitz, &#8220;Dersh,&#8221; has long been the nemesis of the far Left, especially academic radicals.  They like to blame him (falsely) for the firing of Norman Finkelstein from DePaul University.  [Actually <a href="http://97.74.65.51/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=76b162c1-1038-400b-b112-87c09c917227">DePaul fired Finkelstein</a> because he had never published a single academic publication.]  And Dersh’s defense of America and of Israel drives them to conniptions.  But it are not only radical Americans professors who find Dershowitz enraging.</p>
<p>Without warning, academic freedom of speech has become the leading topic of discussion in Israel.  The local newspapers and TV shows are filled with debates about “censorship” in academic institutions. Suddenly, everyone in Israel can see the anti-democratic nature of Israel’s academic fifth column.  And Israel owes Prof. Alan Dershowitz a debt of gratitude for exposing the damages of Israel’s anti-Israel academic far Left, the academic copperheads who support the enemies of their country in a time of war.</p>
<p>Receiving an honorary doctoral degree at Tel Aviv  University just recently, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/full-text-of-alan-dershowitz-s-tel-aviv-speech-1.289841">Dershowitz gave a dramatic and eloquent speech</a> denouncing the anti-Israel Israeli Left dominating if many universities across the nation nowadays. The entire speech can be read <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/full-text-of-alan-dershowitz-s-tel-aviv-speech-1.289841">here</a>. Tel  Aviv University is arguably the worst den of tenured extremists and academic communists in Israel.</p>
<p>In the speech, Dershowitz defended the rights of extremist academics to exercise freedom of speech, or – in his words – the right to be wrong.  But he also defended the rights of others to denounce and criticize them, something the Israeli semi-fascist Far Left has been <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4879">attempting to suppress</a> and prohibit.  Dersh explained that it is misleading when such people whine about being denounced.  Sure, they claim they are only engaging in “criticism” of Israel. But to the contrary, Dershowitz described how these people are engaging in treason, delegitimizing Israel itself, calling for world boycotts of Israel and calling for it&#8217;s annihilation. They even go so far as to organize boycott campaigns against their own country and their own universities with foreign anti-Semites. Dersh named several Tel  Aviv University anti-Israel extremists, including some in Boston that day attempting to organize a boycott of Israel’s engineering university, the Technion, for being a “war machine.”</p>
<p>Dershowitz then denounced the Tel Aviv University Stalinist professor Shlomo Sand, who is really an expert on the French cinema, for writing a shocking propaganda book.  In it Sand claims not only that Israel has no right to exist, but that there is actually no such thing as a Jewish people.  Dershowitz proceeded to denounce far-leftist McCarthyists for insisting that freedom of speech belongs only to people who agree with them.  He denounced far-leftist professors at Israeli universities who harass and persecute students who dare to disagree with the leftist propaganda being force-fed them, comparing their behavior to those who sexually harass students.  He denounced the in-classroom indoctrination conducted by leftist Israeli academics.  He insisted that <em>students too are entitled</em> to academic freedom, and that includes the right to disagree with the indoctrination by radical leftist professors.</p>
<p>The Tel Aviv  University audience listening to Dershowitz repeatedly interrupted him with loud applause.  But the members of the tenured Left squirmed in their seats.  It did not take them long to open fire in retaliation.</p>
<p>Within days, a group of Tel Aviv  University professors denounced Dershowitz and challenged <em>his</em> right to the freedom of speech and to criticize <em>them</em>.  A <a href="http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=39842">petition of anti-Israel radicals</a> and a few fellow travelers who teach at Tel  Aviv University was collected (a handful of the signatories are <em>not</em> identified with the ultra-Left), and it was published on a pro-terror, radically anti-Israel, far-leftist website.   Since then the web has been crawling with anti-Dershowitz smears on countless blogs.</p>
<p>Those 46 Tel Aviv  University faculty members signed the petition denouncing Dershowitz for mentioning by name two of TAU’s most radical anti-Israel academics and their seditious boycott-Israel activities:  <a href="isracampus.org.il">Rachel Giora and Anat Matar</a>.  How dare Dershowitz mention TAU academics by name, the petition shrieks and moans.</p>
<p>By name, you say?  The very same Anat Matar collected and <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/Extra%20Files/IsraCampus.Org.il%20-%20Seth%20Frantzman%20-%20TAU%20Ivory%20Towers%20of%20Critique.pdf">distributed photo and personal information</a> about an Israeli army officer, with the banner headline “War Criminal” and “Murderer,” in a poorly disguised call for the officer to be harmed.   The Israeli Attorney General is now investigating Matar for this (she has been arrested before for her violent behavior in anti-Israel protests.)</p>
<p>And let us take a better look at just who these 46 great “defenders of academic freedom and freedom of speech” are, these people who denounce Dershowitz because he dares to exercise his own freedom of speech.</p>
<p>Among the signers of the petition, claiming that Dershowitz’s words “remind them of the darkest regimes in human history” when he criticizes anti-Israel extremists, are:</p>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Chaim Gans of TAU law school, a far-leftist anti-democratic extremist who organized a petition demanding that an IDF woman colonel be prevented from teaching a course in the school because he did not like her opinions.  See <a href="http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/01/assault-on-academic-freedom-by-tel-aviv.html">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Gadi Algazi, a Marxist historian at TAU who recently led a march of Arabs supporting Hezb’Allah terror – see <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Gadi%20Algazi%20-%20joins%20demonstrators%20carrying%20Portrait%20of%20Nasrallah.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Uri Hadar, a psychology professor, who recently organized a conference at TAU to support the Hamas and Hezb’Allah.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Ben%20Dror%20Yemini%20blasts%20TAU%20over%20Hamas%20Conference.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal, an educational psychologist and an anti-Zionist Marxist extremist, who produces anti-Jewish propaganda for the UN and thinks Zionism is the obstacle to peace.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Daniel%20Bar-Tal.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Dr. Gerardo Leibner, who teaches history, a communist and anti-Zionist agitator. See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Joel%20Amitai%20-%20Gerardo%20Leibner%20-%20Battles%20against%20Judaizing.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Dr. Orly Lubin, literature lecturer and anti-Israel propagandist.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20TAU%20-%20Orly%20Lubin.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Adi Ophir, an extremist philosophy professor, who recently led the “Israel Apartheid Week” pogrom in the UK.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Adi%20Ophir%20and%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20The%20Defaming%20Duo.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Anat Biletzki, philosophy professor, a leader in the Boycott Israel movement. See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Anat%20Biletzki.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Prof. Moshe Zuckerman, history professor, anti-Israel extremist.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Moshe%20Zuckerman%20-%20Azmi%20Bishara.htm">thi</a>s.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Judd Ne’eman, a rabidly anti-Israel film professor.  See <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Yehuda%20Neeman.htm">this</a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In addition, the two professors who organized the violent protests at TAU a few years back against the opening of a synagogue on the campus (but have no problem with a mosque) are on the list.</p>
<p>The stories about censorship filling the Israeli newspapers also concern the censorship of the governors of Tel Aviv  University by the new president of the University, Prof. Joseph Klafter.  He <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175337">refused to “allow” the</a> Governors of his own university to take a vote in their own plenary session.  In part inspired by Dershowitz’s speech, those Governors sought to condemn Tel  Aviv University’s anti-Israel academic extremists and tenured traitors.  In response to the censorship by Klafter, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175337">one leading Governor and donor to the university has resigned</a> from the Board. He is likely to be followed by others.  Under the “constitution” of Tel Aviv  University, the Board of Governors is supposed to be the supreme power in control of the university, with the president subordinate to it.  But that is obviously not how the institution is run.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the radical progressive psychology professor Carlo Strenger has taken it upon himself to act as Klafter&#8217;s button man. <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Carlo%20Strenger%20-%20I%20accuse.htm">Strenger has a long track record of promoting the far leftist</a> agenda and is on record <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Carlo%20Strenger%20-%20I%20accuse.htm"><em>opposing </em>freedom</a> of speech for non-leftists because its exercise by non-leftists constitutes McCarthyism and “incitement.”   (For years, Israeli leftists have used the term “incitement” to refer to any opinion with which they disagree.)  <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/strenger-than-fiction-a-triumph-of-academic-freedom-at-tel-aviv-university-1.290205">Strenger attacked Tel Aviv University Governors in the Israeli media for their attempt</a> at criticizing the school’s tenured extremists.  He also accused the Governors of lying, something that no doubt will now cost the university in terms of its ability to raise funds.</p>
<p>While writing a toady defense of the worst radicals at Tel  Aviv University, including the notorious <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand%20-%20justifier%20of%20Arab%20terrorism.htm">anti-Semite Sand</a>, Strenger badmouthed Dershowitz and the Governors.  He denied that <a href="http://jiw.blogspot.com/2009/10/shlomo-sand-tel-aviv-uni-ppromotes-his.html">Sand’s “book”</a> is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic at all, insisting it is nothing more than a call for peace.  Actually Sand’s “Invention of the Jewish People” book <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42111">carries crackpot themes generally to be found</a> on Neo-Nazi websites about how today’s Jews are imposters <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/21499">and converted “Khazars</a>.”  Naturally, Strenger also denied that any TAU professors ever indoctrinate students or harass non-leftist students.  <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/strenger-than-fiction-a-triumph-of-academic-freedom-at-tel-aviv-university-1.290205">He found that “only” 140</a> students at Tel  Aviv University have filed complaints about being harassed when they disagree with leftist faculty members.  And that is just a tiny proportion of the entire student body, insists Strenger.</p>
<p>Strenger claims that the media misunderstood what Dershowitz said in his speech, and that Dersh’s comments about bullying professors from the Left were actually referring to professors in the US and not to any at TAU.  That should give Dershowitz a good laugh.  Whether Klafter is behind Strenger’s trashing of the TAU governors and toady piece is unclear.</p>
<p>Klafter and Strenger have also been joined by Prof. Galia Golan, an extremist professor of “Government, Diplomacy and Strategy.”  She was among the founders of the leftist protest group “Peace Now,” which seeks Israeli capitulation to Arab demands.  Writing on the YNET news site, Golan <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3888067,00.html">denounced those who dare to criticize</a> the academic far Left.   She repeated the familiar McCarthyist charges &#8211; that the exercise of freedom of speech by critics of the Left produces violence and so must be suppressed.  A bit amusingly, she accused those who criticize the Left of being “rich.” (If only that were so.) She singled out an Israeli Zionist student organization, <em>Im Tirtzu</em>, for condemnation because it dares to criticize far-leftist NGOs and professors.</p>
<p>Golan writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It is not clear just what is behind the present attack on Israeli civil society and academia.  Is it simply a misguided campaign by a small, inconsequential (but rich) minority on the extreme right?  Is it the lashing out of a weak government responding to outside pressure and criticism?  Or, is it, more likely, the expression of an ideology now in power – that of the right-wing, the Likud and its supporters? …The Knesset (parliament) committee called upon the Council for Higher Education to take the report of <em>Im Tirzu</em> and investigate what Committee Chair Zvulun Orlev called ”subversive and anti-Zionist.”  These (and more) are not isolated items. They add up to a policy, a campaign designed to cripple civil society, stifle criticism and eliminate opposition. They endanger the very essence of liberal democracy and of a free society, namely pluralism – of thought, deed, and expression.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Israel’s tenured Left is displaying growing hysteria.  It is being targeted, monitored and exposed by watchdog groups, similar to the <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a> group that operates in the US.  Campus Watch is also commonly denounced in hysterical terms as “McCarthyist” by the McCarthyist Left.  The main group in Israel exposing the extremists is <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/">Isracampus</a>.  A second watchdog is <a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/">NGO-Monitor</a>, which exposes the political bias and extremist agendas in anti-Israel Non-Government Organizations.  Israeli leftist professors, led by TAU’s Daniel Bar-Tal and Ben Gurion University’s David Newman, have repeatedly issued calls for the suppression of these groups, supposedly in the name of freedom of speech and democracy.</p>
<p>The hysterical reactions by people like Golan and the tenured signers of the anti-Dershowitz petition show how effective these watchdog groups are in exposing the seditious activities of Israel’s academic fifth column.  Today, those who expose and monitor the seditious Left are the real guardians of Israeli democracy.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/steven-plaut/dershowitz-takes-on-tenured-extremists/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>36</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Judeo-Muslim Civilization?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rima-greene/a-judeo-muslim-civilization/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-judeo-muslim-civilization</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rima-greene/a-judeo-muslim-civilization/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:03:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rima Greene]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christian civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMES]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Tsadik]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Davis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dhimmi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eastern Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Emily Gottreich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Identity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish studies program]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jews of islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Levy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lewis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim countries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nezar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North African]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oregon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oren Kosansky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[panel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Portland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[study]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uc berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UC-wide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university of california berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West Coast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yale Initiative]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=60223</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A UC Berkeley conference reimagines Muslim-Jewish relations -- and fails. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/here.jpg.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60231" title="here.jpg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/here.jpg.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="274" /></a></p>
<p>A conference at the University of California, Berkeley, on April 28-29, 2010 (and continued <a href="http://dhi.ucdavis.edu/?p=3398">at UC Davis</a> on April 30), “<a href="http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=25980">Muslims and Jews Together: Seeing From Without; Seeing From Within</a>,” was billed as a major international symposium for “the inauguration of the Program for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations at UC Berkeley and the establishment of a UC-wide and West Coast working group for the study of Muslim-Jewish relations .”</p>
<p>The conference was a collaborative effort between the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at UC Berkeley and the Jewish Studies Program at UC Davis. Its stated purpose was to use the frameworks of traditional Middle  East studies and Jewish studies to develop a new academic field focused on the historical interaction between Muslims and the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who once lived among them. Most of the participants were historians or anthropologists specializing in North African Jewry, particularly Morocco.</p>
<p>CMES chair Nezar AlSayyad introduced the conference with a discussion about “building bridges” by re-framing the term, “Jews of Islam,” into something that could be equated with Judeo-Christian civilization: something he called “Judeo-Muslim civilization.” CMES vice-chair and conference organizer Emily Gottreich echoed AlSayyed’s comments in her introduction to the first panel, describing the “Jews of Islam” as “an awkward and unfortunate” construction and seconding the notion of “Judeo-Muslim civilization.”</p>
<p>The emphasis throughout this first panel, which was titled “Framing,” was on synthesis, symbiosis, and challenging “the dichotomy.”  How does one teach about Jews in a Muslim country and teach about Muslims in a Jewish country? The first part of the question, however, cannot be answered, because very few Jews remain in the same Muslim countries where, prior to 1948, there were large, ancient communities. The reason for this exodus—the forced removal of Jews in response to Israel’s founding that year—went unexamined by panelists.</p>
<p>Oren Kosansky, an anthropology professor at Lewis   &amp; Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and the first speaker on this panel, brought up the concept of the <em>dhimmi</em>: the historical subservient, second class citizenship of Jews and other minorities in Muslim lands. Although <em>dhimmi</em> legal status entailed a whole series of humiliations and penalties for Arab Jews, Kosansky did not elaborate on the details. He claimed that the research on <em>dhimmi</em> status was “overstated” and that an “overly dyadic picture has been drawn, and relationships in daily life have been under-emphasized.” Religious identity was not the only identity, he continued, as there was also economic, gender, regional, and class identities. In what seemed to me a Western-centric omission, he left out clan or tribal identity. Kosansky then claimed that the “emergence of Zionism exaggerated the differences” between Moroccan Jews and Muslims. In fact, the function of Zionism was to rescue these Jews from intolerable environments.</p>
<p>During the discussion period for this panel, Lital Levy, assistant professor of comparative literature at Princeton  University and a panelist at the UC Davis “Muslim-Jewish” conference, contradicted Kosansky. She disagreed that Zionism had resulted in an exaggeration of differences, and she pointed out that Jews who had converted to Islam were still considered Jews. It was, she maintained, an identity, a specificity that stuck to the individual in the Middle  East over many centuries. She asked for a comment, but none of the panelists were willing to respond.</p>
<p>Daniel Tsadik, an assistant professor of Sephardic and Iranian Studies at Yeshiva  University in New   York and a visiting assistant professor at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, spoke next on the first panel. He claimed that the emphasis on religion blurs other, more significant, factors, and said he wished scholars would focus more on the reality of Jews and Muslims living together in a given place and as members of one society, rather than as majorities or minorities.</p>
<p>Tsadik questioned whether the framework of “Jews in Muslim lands” focuses on a true common denominator. He lamented the alleged political agenda of Jewish scholars attempting to “know the enemy,” as well as the dependence on written texts, which, he worried, could create unbalanced data. As an example, he brought up the edicts of the Iranian <em>ulema</em> (Muslim legal scholars), which record all the <em>fatwas</em> against Jews, thereby providing written evidence of a bleak fate. However, this “bleak fate” isn’t too far from the truth.</p>
<p>The major theme the following morning at the second panel, “Problematizing,” was to get beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict, or what participants described simply as “the Conflict.” Almost uniformly, speakers reiterated that “the Conflict” was not the eternal metaphor or model for the 1,400 year history of Muslim-Jewish relations; rather, it was a distorting mirror.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there were plenty of distortions of “the Conflict” on this panel. Joel Beinin, Stanford  University history professor and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1472">well-known</a> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7478">anti-Zionist</a>, claimed that Iraqi Jews fled to Israel in 1950-51 due to “collusion between the Israeli state and the Iraqi government of the time.” He offered no explanation or historical record of this alleged “collusion.”</p>
<p>It should be noted that Beinin was one of the signatories to a statement from California faculty members (posted <a href="http://usacbi.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/statement-from-california-faculty-members-in-support-of-sb118/">at the website</a> for the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel”) urging the UC Berkeley student senate to vote “yes” on a divestment bill. Fellow signatory, UC Berkeley Jewish studies professor Daniel Boyarin, chaired the second panel.</p>
<p>Matthias Lehmann, associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Indiana University, lamented that the conflict is always perceived as religious when it’s actually—according to his view and that espoused regularly by anti-Israel propagandists—between two nationalisms. To consider it a religious conflict, he continued, is “anachronistic, ahistorical, and irrelevant.” He said nothing about the role of radical Islam in furthering strife. Extending this theme, Sami Shalom Chetrit, a <a href="http://www.meforum.org/707/post-zionism-and-the-sephardi-question">Mizrahi professor</a> at Hebrew University who recited his poetry at the conference, said that calling it a religious conflict was “the big tragedy.”</p>
<p>During the roundtable portion of the second panel, Lehmann did question the lack of commentary—in a discussion by UC Irvine history professor Marc Baer on Jewish to Muslim conversions that conveniently left out the concept of <em>dhimmi</em>— on power differentials. Panel chair Daniel Boyarin softly interjected that power differentials depended upon whether the location was “<em>Dar al-Harb</em>” (house of war) or “<em>Dar al-Islam</em>” (house of Islam), to which the audience laughed knowingly. No one pointed out that <em>Dar al-Harb</em> and <em>Dar al-Islam</em> are religious concepts that just might relate to the supposedly non-religious conflict.</p>
<p>Considering the downplaying of such important concepts, one has to wonder if future students in the Program for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations will be able to ask questions pertaining to apostasy, infidels, honor killings, Jews as “apes and pigs,” or global jihad?  In addition, will the program offer an equal number of scholars to represent both Jews and Muslims?</p>
<p>The makeup of the conference certainly did not inspire confidence. The brochure stated that “scholars of Middle Eastern Studies have returned—after a long hiatus—to re-discover the importance of non-Muslims within Muslim societies,” leading one to expect an inter-faith dialog. Yet, the panels consisted mostly of Jewish academics—a pattern that predominates at Muslim-Jewish inter-faith conferences.</p>
<p>During the reception, I pointed this out to Susan Miller, UC Davis history professor and one of the conference organizers,  and she replied that it was “not an inter-faith conference, but an academic conference, and that is who is here. It is irrelevant who they are; what matters is what they say.” In other words, she skirted the issue.</p>
<p>There was only one Muslim panelist on the two panels I attended: Mohammed Kenbib, a specialist in Moroccan Jewish history at Mohammed  V University in Rabat, Morocco. At the reception I raised this omission to him directly by stating that “there should be more Muslims here.” To my surprise, he responded by leaning towards me and lightly kissing me on the forehead. “This is quite a warm, fuzzy event,” I said, smiling. His response was profound: “We are very far from the Middle  East here.”</p>
<p>Indeed, and so too is the Program for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations.</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><strong><em>Rima Greene wrote this article for </em><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a><em>, a project of the </em><a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a><em>.</em></strong></p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rima-greene/a-judeo-muslim-civilization/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>44</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Excuses for Islamists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/excuses-for-islamists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=excuses-for-islamists</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/excuses-for-islamists/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:00:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Golub]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american civil liberties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american civil liberties union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bernie Madoff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[charity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil liberties union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[critical perspectives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Pipes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eastern Law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eastern Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Erica James]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[faith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[five pillars of islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holy Land Foundation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jennifer Turner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jonathan Benthall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laila Al-Marayati]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Los Angeles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matthew Levitt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mona Atia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim charities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pillars of islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sally Howell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UCLA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ucla international]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ucla journal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=59254</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UCLA’s "see no evil" approach to terrorism financing.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/aclu.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59267" title="aclu" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/aclu.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="256" /></a></p>
<p>A conference at the University  of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on April 16,  2010, offered “<a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=8022">Critical Perspectives on the Criminalization of Islamic Philanthropy in the War on Terror</a>.” Co-sponsored by the UCLA International Institute, the Critical Race Studies Program, and the <em>UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law</em>—and including speakers from UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)—the conference proffered the usual apologist fare.</p>
<p>It was also an echo chamber. Of the approximately 30 people in attendance, 20 of them were academics. Several students showed up, in addition to the usual assortment of aging leftist revolutionaries.</p>
<p>The thrust of the conference was simple: The war on terror has led to a crackdown on Muslim charities, which has had a chilling effect on Muslims by rendering them unable to engage in <em>Zakat </em>(charity), one of the five pillars of Islam.</p>
<p>Unmentioned throughout this eight-hour infomercial was that the majority of the charities that have been investigated for financially aiding terrorism were found guilty and that decent Muslims are capable of giving to charities that do not foment bombings and beheadings.</p>
<p>Asli Bali, acting professor of law at UCLA, organized the conference and acted as one of the principal moderators. She responded to challenging questions from the audience by stating: “We will take three questions from presenters; others will have to wait.”</p>
<p>Jennifer Turner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Human Rights Program was the speaker over whom everybody seemed to be fawning. Her presentation was titled, “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity,” and, in typical ACLU fashion, she made excuses for Islamists’ bad behavior while bashing America.</p>
<p>She began by stating: “I’m not a social scientist. I am not here to offer any statistical analysis”—a fig leaf she employed to make wildly unsubstantiated claims, as when she announced that “the conviction in the Holy Land Foundation case was based on faulty evidence.” She didn’t bother to elaborate.</p>
<p>It turned out her “research” that had the entire room in a swoon consisted of the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>I did 120 interviews with American Muslims in Michigan and Texas. People reported that they were unable to give<em> Zakat</em>. Some had stopped giving entirely. Some felt fear of deportation or denial of citizenship.</p></blockquote>
<p>Turner excused her extremely small sample size with more platitudes about not being a statistician. She insisted that she did not ask leading questions, although the process was clearly an exercise in promoting victimhood. She did not verify the accuracy of her respondents or analyze any tax returns. In short, she relied on her own biased views to justify a predetermined conclusion.</p>
<p>University  of Michigan, Dearborn, history professor Sally Howell actually found oppression in increased giving. As she put it:</p>
<blockquote><p>Since 2001, there have been 14 new mosques, and 17 mosques have doubled in size. This is proof that people are not donating overseas.</p></blockquote>
<p>Howell followed this with more bizarre commentary:</p>
<p>“The Arab charity LIFE [Life for Relief and Development] had their board resign one year after Israel invaded Lebanon.”</p>
<p>Foiled again!</p>
<p>“As a result of restrictive policies” a board member of another charity, according to Howell, “embezzled $10,000.”</p>
<p>Yes: and as a result of inconvenient and restrictive securities laws, Bernie Madoff was forced to steal. It was all America’s fault.</p>
<p>“Does government get to decide what is good Islam and what is bad Islam?,” she asked.</p>
<p>No, but it does get to decide what constitutes funding terrorism.</p>
<p>Howell concluded, “The FBI has to show results or lose resources.”</p>
<p>Erica James, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) anthropology professor, offered proof—of nothing:</p>
<p>“I have an anthropology background. I am here to theorize what is happening.”</p>
<p>Her solution to the supposed problems faced by Muslim charities? “Defiant giving.”</p>
<p>During the question and answer period of this panel, an audience member—resorting to the usual name calling directed at critics of Middle East studies— proclaimed that “well-known bigot Daniel Pipes wrote an article about ‘stealth Islamists.’”</p>
<p>The panelists all nodded in agreement. There was no word on <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/1841/stealth-islamist-khaled-abou-el-fadl">Pipes’s findings</a> regarding UCLA law professor—and moderator at this conference—Khaled Abou El Fadl’s status as, in fact, a stealth Islamist.</p>
<p>Laila Al-Marayati, the chairperson of KinderUSA—a charity that terrorism analyst Matthew Levitt <a href="http://www.nysun.com/national/charity-drops-suit-against-terrorism-analyst/60635/">included</a> in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hamas-Politics-Charity-Terrorism-Service/dp/0300122586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1268664162&amp;sr=1-1">his book</a> on funding Hamas—portrayed the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as harmless. As she put it, “Hamas helps Palestinian children in Gaza. I don’t consider Hamas and Hezbollah as threats to me and my family.”</p>
<p>Jonathan Benthall of University College, London, gave a talk that can be summed up in one quote: “The United States is the key to the problem.”</p>
<p>Mona Atia, assistant professor of geography and international affairs at George Washington University, claimed that “Egypt has been a model of fighting terrorism.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, McGill University political science and Islamic studies professor Khalid Medani demonstrated willful blindness by opining, “Somalia is a place where Islamic terrorism is not possible because they are not organized.”</p>
<p>When asked if the definition of a terrorist was hard to prove, Medani responded, “You’re right. I try to critique them based on their own terms. I’m not a lawyer.”</p>
<p>No UCLA conference would be complete without <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6835">offensive</a> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8648">commentary</a> from a member of the Center for Near Eastern Studies faculty. This time, CNES director and anthropology professor Susan Slyomovics—speaking during a break with colleagues about a book she’s working on—said:</p>
<blockquote><p>If Jews can get reparations from Germany, then Palestinians should get reparations from Israel. After all, <em>what the Germans supposedly did to the Jews</em> [emphasis added] is what Israel is doing to the people of Palestine.</p></blockquote>
<p>All the while, she kept smiling and laughing. Nothing makes for a good academic sitcom like Holocaust denial from a prominent professor of Middle East studies.</p>
<p>Despite eight hours of groupthink, I was able to finally cut through the leftist clutter to determine why the U.S. is investigating Muslim charities: 9/11 actually did happen, and the majority of the charities accused of funding terrorism actually did.</p>
<p>Only a UCLA Middle East studies conference could deliberately fail to grasp this.</p>
<p><em>Eric Golub is the publisher of the <a href="http://www.tygrrrrexpress.com/">Tygrrrr Express</a> blog. He wrote this article for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank">Middle East Forum</a>.</em><em></em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/excuses-for-islamists/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>30</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Hard Indoctrination, Soft Indoctrination, and the Books that Change Us</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-swindle/hard-indoctrination-soft-indoctrination-and-the-books-that-change-us/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hard-indoctrination-soft-indoctrination-and-the-books-that-change-us</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-swindle/hard-indoctrination-soft-indoctrination-and-the-books-that-change-us/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:11:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Swindle]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Antonio Gramsci]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ball state university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[classroom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[communist propagandist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Zinn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoctrination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indoctrination u]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[outrageous cases]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[page thesis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[radical professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[undergraduate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[undergraduate political science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vantage point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[View]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=56351</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Indoctrination is not just about a radical professor abusing the classroom. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bellhooks1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56387" title="bellhooks" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bellhooks1.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="328" /></a></p>
<p>There  are few problems as misrepresented or misunderstood as that of indoctrination  in American schools. I went through my own schooling as a &#8220;progressive&#8221;  undergraduate and wrote a 90-page thesis on indoctrination blasting David  Horowitz for his claims about professorial practices at my alma mater,  Ball State University (BSU.) I am writing about it now, after having  had second thoughts and joining the Freedom Center’s Academic Freedom  Campaign.</p>
<p>Looking  back at my own education from the vantage point of four post-graduate  years in the university of the Real  World, I must re-ask myself: Did I experience indoctrination as an undergraduate  political science and English double-major at BSU?  Once, my answer  would have been an adamant &#8220;No.&#8221; My professors were professional.  None subordinated their teaching to their politics or attempted in a  blatant fashion to impose their prejudices on their students. Many went  out of their way to argue contrary views and even preface their remarks  with,&#8221;Now understand that just because I argue a point it does  not mean I believe it.&#8221; I was never assigned <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939" target="_blank">neo-communist propagandist</a> <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939" target="_blank">Howard Zinn&#8217;s</a> obscene <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060838655?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=fronmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0060838655" target="_blank"><em>A People&#8217;s History of the United States</em></a> or instructed to study it as though it were the Bible.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s partially because  of this that when I first met Horowitz I took such issue with what I  regarded as a wild caricature of what had been my college experience.</p>
<p>My answer now is different,  though. Because after debating the question of what constitutes indoctrination  for years, it&#8217;s clear that &#8220;indoctrination&#8221;does not just include  the extreme examples that Horowitz frequently used in <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/donate.html?key=WOWRPR5ZNKR8" target="_blank"><em>The Professors,  Indoctrination U</em> and <em>One-Party Classroom</em></a>. (Horowitz&#8217;s reason  for emphasizing these outrageous cases is not because he ignores the  more general problem but because if one cannot grasp the harsh as detestable  then the subtle will be all but invisible.) Indoctrination is not just  about a radical professor consciously setting out to use (and abuse)  the classroom as a platform for changing the world.</p>
<p>There are two kinds of indoctrination  students, parents, and everyone concerned with high education should  consider, which I will call “hard” and “soft.”</p>
<p>In <em>One-Party Classroom</em> Horowitz defines &#8220;indoctrination&#8221; in this fashion:  &#8220;Indoctrination  takes place when professors teach a point of view that is contested  within the spectrum of scholarly or intellectually responsible opinion  as though it were scientific fact.” He then admonishes:  “Professors  should make their students aware that such opinions are contested, and  must not teach their point of view as though it were fact. Students  should be provided with materials that would allow  them to draw their own conclusions about contested positions.&#8221;</p>
<p>This is a definition I embrace  and would have accepted if it had been put in front of me when I was  an undergraduate. (Unfortunately, Horowitz was presented by people I  trusted then as a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=130&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">McCarthyite</a> trying to control academic thought. Nothing  could be further from the truth.) Now lets refine it to understand the  differences in varieties of indoctrination.</p>
<p>In cases of hard indoctrination  the professor himself is a willing abuser of the academic classroom  and traducer of students’ academic freedom. He sets out to indoctrinate  students and to recruit them to his political cause. He takes a page  from Italian Stalinist Antonio Gramsci&#8217;s playbook and sees the university  as a “means of cultural production” that must be captured for the  revolutionary agenda. He decides that he will utilize his classroom  as a political tool. The purpose of his teaching is not to promote an  academic inquiry and inculcate an intellectual curiosity and scholarly  skepticism. His goal is to to fix the world by instilling a &#8220;progressive&#8221;  sensibility and perspective in his captive student audience.  Hard  indoctrination is an entirely conscious choice. It is indoctrination  by malice.</p>
<p>By contrast, in cases of soft  indoctrination the fault is one of omission and the academic culture  itself is the main instigator of the trend, the very absence of conservatives  on university faculties is a dramatic symptom of the problem. Professors  who practice soft indoctrination do so largely unconsciously and would  never think of forcing their students to make their political views match their own. The professor&#8217;s fault is to weight his course with leftist or “liberal”  texts and either fail to give adequate time to conservative views or  treat them with a comparable respect as a legitimate point of view with  which he may not agree. Horowitz has discussed the case of one such  professor in a recent article, &#8220;<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/02/indoctrination-in-american-colleges/" target="_blank">How Bad is the Indoctrination in our Colleges?</a>&#8221; This professor discussed the liberal  Warren Court’s transformative decisions without adequately presenting  the conservative and libertarian objections. By and large this is indoctrination  by ignorance and misdirection.</p>
<p>Looking back at my own education,  the syndrome that Horowitz discusses in this article is entirely common.  Yesterday I pulled one of my English major textbooks off my bookshelf  &#8212; <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312201567?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=fronmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0312201567" target="_blank">Falling IntoTheory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature</a></em> by David H. Richter &#8212; and flipped through the table of contents. I noticed  several names stood out with fading yellow highlighter behind them:  Helen Vendler, Gerald Graff, Terry Eagleton, Paulo Freire, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2217" target="_blank">bell hooks</a>,  Gertrude Himmelfarb, Janice Radway, Alan Purves. In other words: mostly  Marxists and neo-Marxist radicals. Himmelfarb, a well-known neoconservative,  is the single exception.</p>
<p>Did my professor consciously  victimize me and my classmates by assigning us this series of texts?  I don’t think so. But that does not mean he could not have provided  a much better educational experience if he had not been burdened by  the pieties of the Left and its dominance of his discipline. Is bell  hooks with her mantras about America’s alleged white supremacist capitalist  patriarchy really a vital voice for undergraduate English majors to  be exposed to in order to learn how to analyze texts? Is she really  consequential? Or is she actually there because she’s a black woman  expressing chic, leftist dogmas?</p>
<p>In assigning this book and  these readings my professor was pretty accurately introducing me to  the culture of literary studies at the collegiate level. This is what  he had to work with. Gramsci  has triumphed: Marxism has thoroughly  embedded itself within the discipline, as it has virtually all of the  liberal arts in Academia. Thus, a soft indoctrination is an inevitability.  One cannot prepare to become a professor of English without reading  a lot of Marxist texts. That&#8217;s what the field has been transformed into  over the course of the last 40 years.</p>
<p>So what&#8217;s to be done about  it?</p>
<p>Dealing with soft indoctrination  is in many ways easier than the hard variety. And here&#8217;s why: in the  university the student has tremendous freedom in shaping his education.  In the writing of papers and the selection of texts to read the student  is able to introduce authors of his own choosing into the discussion.  Professors who fall into the soft indoctrination category might not  bring conservative texts into the discussion on their own but given  their commitment to scholarly inquiry most are unlikely to aggressively  oppose them as a hard indoctrinating instructor might.</p>
<p>In fact under the canonical  documents of academic freedom, professors are obligated to require   texts presenting “divergent opionions” that challenge the classroom  orthodoxy. Here’s what  the 1915 <a href="http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1915.htm" target="_blank">Declaration of Principles on  Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure</a> &#8212; the most important statement of  academic freedom principles &#8212; has to say on the subject:</p>
<p>“The university teacher,  in giving instruction upon controversial matters, while he is under  no obligation to hide his own opinion under a mountain of equivocal  verbiage, 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; he should cause his students to become familiar with  the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine  upon the questions at issue; 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, and to provide them access  to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.”</p>
<p>So my advice to students: if  the reading list is one-sided or excludes views that dissent from the  leftwing orthodoxy bring this statement to the attention of your professor  and ask him to introduce intellectual diversity into his curriculum.  If he refuses, take it upon yourselves to widen the range of the classroom  debate.</p>
<p>This is the first step in  what will be a generational struggle to restore educational values to  the academic curriculum. If students can open the curriculum to diverse  views now they will do it when they&#8217;re the professors and administrators  decades hence. The goal is not to make the liberal arts conservative,  but to make them truly liberal, again &#8212; apolitical, skeptical,  and non-ideological. This is a task that may take a long time, but in  the process of attempting it you may just get yourself a quality education.</p>
<p>Tomorrow, in Part 2 of this article, I will discuss my transformation from a college leftist to a postmodern conservative working for the Freedom Center. I will also provide a summary of  the books that were instrumental in driving this change that has so baffled my friends, family, and former professors. Hopefully some of these texts might prove useful suggestions for conservative students looking to brighten the debate in classrooms darkened by the shadow of soft indoctrination.</p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-swindle/hard-indoctrination-soft-indoctrination-and-the-books-that-change-us/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Professor’s Islamist Call to Battle</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-professor%25e2%2580%2599s-islamist-call-to-battle</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:06:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cinnamon Stillwell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acceptance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali Mazrui]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aminah Beverly McCloud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Antonio Gramsci]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beginning of islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Binghamton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[God]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[innocent peoples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jonathan Usher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[louis farrakhan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[northern Nigeria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[outspoken proponent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reviving the islamic spirit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[september 11 2001]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sherman Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[South Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S. Constitution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why University of Michigan’s Abdal Hakim Jackson wants the end of liberty in the United States.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55350" title="D_Jackson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="413" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.manrilla.net/shermanjackson/">Sherman Jackson</a>, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is <a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eneareast/faculty/jackson.htm">a professor</a> of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the</p>
<p>September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/content/teach-takes-muslim-profiling">Teach-in</a> titled, “Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam,” that “the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam.”</p>
<p>But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.</p>
<p>Jackson made this abundantly clear at the <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/">Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention</a> in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society.” Jonathan Usher, who attended and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9101">wrote about the conference for Campus Watch</a>, described Jackson’s speech as nothing less than “a call to battle.” As he put it, “It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.” According to Usher, Jackson</p>
<blockquote><p>…believes that the Muslim and Western worlds are in conflict and competition, and that only one can end up dominant. Put simply, he wants to replace Western culture with Muslim culture.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>&#8230;Jackson expressed a desire to be included in American society—but not if any sort of cultural sacrifice were required. He said that adapting to Western culture would lead to being a Muslim in name only and advocated defining America by Muslim standards and imposing cultural and intellectual supremacy. He urged Muslims not to follow Western cultural authority, but rather to achieve their own cultural authority from the inside, as part of the system.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>…Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.</p></blockquote>
<p>Moreover, Jackson has a history of making such radical statements.</p>
<p>He co-authored a 2000 online book titled, <em><a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy.html">American Public Policy and American-Muslim Politics</a></em> and published by the Chicago-based <a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/index.html">International Strategy and Policy Institute</a>, whose mission is to “promote the correct understanding of Islam and Muslims in the United   States.” Jackson’s coauthors were DePaul University Director of Islamic World Studies <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=8627">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a> and State University of New York at Binghamton professor and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies Ali Mazrui. McCloud  is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html">a former board member</a> of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html?pagewanted=2">a follower</a> of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, while Mazrui’s <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/ali-mazrui">bio</a> notes that he is “one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s apartheid” and has also “argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy and supported its introduction in some parts of northern Nigeria.”</p>
<p>In the chapter, “<a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy4.html">Muslims, Islamic Law and Public Policy in the United States</a>,” Jackson cites the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s influential theories about altering societies not through politics, but through cultural and educational institutions. Jackson proposes that American Muslims approach the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America.” As he puts it:</p>
<blockquote><p>…it should be understood that once this is done, there are no Constitutional impediments to having these laws applied in the public domain. Muslims must be vocal and confident in articulating the public utility underlying the rules on things like <em>riba </em>[usury], adultery, theft, drinking, contracts, pre-marital sex, child-custody and even polygyny. This should all be done, however, in the context of an open acceptance of American custom (<em>urf</em>) as a legally valid source in areas where the shari’ah admits the reliance upon custom.</p></blockquote>
<p>As for the gradual acceptance of the more horrifying aspects of Sharia law, Jackson notes that “it would be foolish to deny that the prospects for American acceptance of such institutions as stoning, or flogging or amputation are virtually nil, at least for the foreseeable future.” But he concludes on a note only an Islamist could find comforting:</p>
<blockquote><p>…notions of what is cruel and unusual, of what is barbaric, of what is draconian (which is the real basis upon which America rejects these punishments) are a function of culture, not law. It is only through changes in American culture that American attitudes towards such things are likely to change. Thus, in the end, as in the beginning, we are brought face to face with the inextricable connection between American culture and Muslim self-determination. May God grant us the courage and the vision to rise to the task before us.</p></blockquote>
<p>This call to gradually replace the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution with seventh century notions of justice is both frightening and morally repugnant.</p>
<p>Despite a record of expressing such extreme views, Jackson has made a name for himself as a moderate and a reformer. His success in this charade stems in part from his willingness to break from his peers and  publicly discuss Islamic terrorism, its theological underpinnings, and the need for related reform. An <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4426">article</a> in the <em>Wesleyan Argus</em> quoted a November 2007 Jackson speech on “Jihad, Terrorism, and Modern Violence” at Wesleyan University:</p>
<blockquote><p>‘Muslims in the West must be active and vocal in their condemnation of current violations of <em>hirabah</em>,’ he insisted, referring to the Sharia law that outlaws any act of publicly directed violence that spreads fear and helplessness. According to Jackson, <em>hirabah</em> more than covers today’s conception of terrorism. He discussed the moderate Muslim unwillingness to publicly decry acts of terrorism and attributed it to the desire to not be seen as ‘Uncle Toms.’</p></blockquote>
<p>But Patrick Poole, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/09/whats_in_a_name_jihad_vs_hirab.html">writing for the <em>American Thinker</em></a> in September 2007, calls Jackson’s reasoning and motives into question. He describes Jackson as one of the <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/dezhen/jackson_terrorism.html">earliest proponents</a> of the “Islamic lexicon” and, in particular, an advocate for replacing the term <em>jihad</em> with <em>hirabah</em> in discussing Islamic terrorism. Poole and other skeptics allege that, in practice, this is nothing more than a semantic sleight of hand that serves to obscure the legitimization of terrorism within Islam and to further the Muslim Brotherhood’s <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/DN-dreher_09edi.ART.State.Edition1.4235f88.html">civilization-jihadist process</a>.</p>
<p>Poole notes that Jim Guirard of the Truespeak Institute is the “foremost advocate for this approach,” and that Sherman Jackson is among the scholars he relies upon for his findings. Poole points to an unclassified memo from Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin in which Jackson is cited as one of Guirard’s contributors, along with fellow Middle  East studies professors <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/07/georgetowns-john-esposito-a.html">John Esposito</a> of Georgetown University and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4788">Muqtedar Khan</a> of the University of Delaware. Summarizing Coughlin’s findings, Poole concludes that,</p>
<blockquote><p>…as Walid Phares and Stephen Coughlin have already revealed, many of the Western Muslim advocates of this new approach are directly tied to known Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the US. As Coughlin itemizes, Sherman Jackson is a “trustee” to the North American Islamic Trust, and affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, the first two of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the current Holy Land Foundation terror financing federal trial underway in Dallas, and the last was the original organizational wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. The hiraba-jihad terminology has also been endorsed by the Wahhabist Council for Islamic Education and the extremist mouthpiece Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That is telling in and of itself.</p></blockquote>
<p>Jackson is also considered an expert on the intersection of Islam and African-Americans (he is himself an African-American convert to Islam). His 2005 book on the subject, <em>Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection</em>, was <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Islam/%7E%7E/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE4MDgxNw==">reviewed favorably</a> by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/john-esposito-shills-for-another">radical Islam apologist</a> John Esposito, James H. Cone (the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Theology-Liberation-Ethics-Society/dp/0883446855/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1239212793&amp;sr=1-2">originator</a> of black liberation theology and stated <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/knowing_obama_by_the_company_h_1.html">inspiration</a> for controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” in Chicago), and DePaul professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/depaul-prof-aminah-beverly-mccloud">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a>. Beyond McCloud’s aforementioned affiliation with CAIR and the Nation of Islam, she played a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/04/depaul-university-director-of.html">pivotal role</a> in influencing Washington, D.C. PBS station WETA’s decision to cancel its airing of the laudable documentary on moderate Muslims, <em>Islam vs. Islamists,</em> in early 2007.</p>
<p>Jackson’s career may be peppered with associations and endorsements from some of the worst apologists and radicals from the field of Middle East studies—and his involvement in the obfuscating “truespeak” movement points to even more troublesome ties with Muslim Brotherhood front groups—but, ultimately, it is his own words that prove the most damning. His stated agenda clearly has nothing to do with moderation or reform; it is quite simply that of an Islamist.</p>
<p><em>Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:stillwell@meforum.org">stillwell@meforum.org</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>36</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Fight for Liberty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ashley-thorne/the-fight-for-liberty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-fight-for-liberty</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ashley-thorne/the-fight-for-liberty/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:01:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ashley Thorne]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[career]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[culture of fear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dalhousieuniversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fall of communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[father]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[father yuri]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human rights abuses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jamie glazov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loving tribute]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[name]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national association of scholars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor yuri]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet academy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yuri Glazov]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=54496</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The campus PC police and the culture of fear in academia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/statue.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54501" title="statue" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/statue.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="414" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[This article is reprinted from the <a href="http://www.nas.org/">National Association of Scholars</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>Jamie Glazov, editor of <em>Frontpage  Magazine</em>, has recently published a loving <a href="../2010/03/11/remembering-a-dissident/">tribute</a> to his father, Yuri  Glazov (1929-1998). Glazov tells how his father sacrificed his career and good  name as an academic (he was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a  professor at Moscow State University) to challenge the  corruption and oppression of the Soviet  Union. For denouncing Soviet human rights abuses, Yuri  Glazov was persecuted by the KGB, blacklisted from employment, and nearly sent  to Siberian labor camp.</p>
<p>Miraculously he was able to escape the Soviet Union and  move his family to the United  States and then to Canada, where he taught  Russian studies until his death of cancer. He never gave up the fight for  freedom in Russia. Today,  Dalhousie University, where Glazov taught  for twenty years, honors his memory by granting an <a href="http://russianstudies.dal.ca/Awards/index.php">award</a> in his name:</p>
<blockquote><p>the Professor <a href="http://russianstudies.dal.ca/Awards/index.php">Yuri  Glazov Memorial Award</a> will be given annually to a student who shows an  outstanding capacity to combine civic duty and charitable service with a love  for the humanities.</p></blockquote>
<p>As one who has lived in and visited Russia many  times—albeit after the fall of Communism—I can attest to the dark Soviet cloud  that still haunts this beautiful, broken country. Yuri Glazov’s courage to stand  up to injustice even though it meant endangering his career, his family, and his  life, was a response to what he knew to be true—that human life had dignity, and  that freedom was worth fighting for. Liberal education in all times and in all  places should foster such beliefs.</p>
<p>Today even in  the land of the free and the home of the brave, a culture of fear exists in  academia for those who dissent from politically correct orthodoxy. We don’t have  the KGB to contend with, but the campus PC police can often be just as menacing.  We draw attention to <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/11/remembering-a-dissident/">Glazov’s life</a> in hopes that our friends on campus will draw  boldness from his story and will have the courage to stand up for the pursuit of  truth and freedom, even in the face of persecution.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ashley-thorne/the-fight-for-liberty/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Times Finds A Lone Crazed Assassin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/peter-collier/the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/peter-collier/the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:05:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Peter Collier]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alabama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amy Bishop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biology department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blogosphere]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boston herald]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Braintree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brilliance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brother]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[burst of gunfire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[case]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[department colleagues]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harvard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Huntsville]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mass]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder spree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NewsReal Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[no doubt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[page]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[page profile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[perpetrator]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[piece]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political activist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political connections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[profile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ressentiment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saturday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[someone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[South Asian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tenure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[time bomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[town of braintree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university of alabama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[work]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[York]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51395</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the Grey Lady won't tell you about professor Amy Bishop.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bishop1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51443" title="bishop" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bishop1.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="347" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">Newsreal</a></strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html" target="_blank"><em></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html" target="_blank"><em>The New York Times</em>’ front page profile</a> on Saturday of professor Amy Bishop, who allegedly executed three University of Alabama Biology Department colleagues after being denied tenure, appears to be an exhaustively reported piece based on “numerous interviews with colleagues and others who knew her.” It portrays Bishop as violent and unpredictable, rejected by Harvard because of mediocre work and shunned by a series of neighbors and co-workers scared off by the suppressed rage that kept bubbling up to the surfaces of her social life, and also someone who may already have gotten away with the murder of her brother years earlier possibly because of her mother’s political connections in her home town of Braintree, Mass.</p>
<div>
<p>“Between brilliance and rage” is the caption of the photo of Bishop used by the<em> Times</em> for the story, although the piece makes no case for the former.  But is this all the news that is fit to print about the perpetrator of this murder spree in academe?  What about the “family source” who told the Boston Herald that Bishop was,</p>
<blockquote><p>“<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=144&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">a far left</a> political activist who was ‘obsessed’ with <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511" target="_blank">President Obama</a> to the point of being off putting”?</p></blockquote>
<p>What about the student who called her a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">“socialist”</a>? What about one report that Bishop complained about a rule issued by University  of Alabama administrators regarding underclassmen living on campus because she believed it was destructive of “diversity.”  And what about the crowning irony of this case, whether or not she made this complaint: that two of the colleagues she allegedly killed were black and one was South Asian, and that Bishop thus wiped out the 14 person Biology department’s entire diversity in one burst of gunfire?</p>
<p>Considering the politics of Bishop’s <em>ressentiment</em> might have helped fill out the Times’ portrait of a psychopathic time bomb who had already gone off several times in her disordered life on her way to the Big Explosion on February 12 in Huntsville. There is no doubt, as the blogosphere has already noted, that the paper would have pursued even the vaguest hint that Bishop had been a fan of Glenn Beck or was a Tea Party fellow traveler as a major story line. For the Grey Lady, only the politics of the Right is personal.</p>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/peter-collier/the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The New Israel Fund&#8217;s View of a &#8220;New Israel&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jacob-shrybman/the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jacob-shrybman/the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:02:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Shrybman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bike]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[check]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Committee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[decade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[democracy and human rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extremism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fund]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geneva]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Goldstone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inequality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[information]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[injustice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli men]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jacob Shrybman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jacob Shrybmanis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[media center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[men women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minute presentation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Naomi Chazan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new israel fund]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NIF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Noam Bedein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overwhelming majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[precondition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocket]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocket fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sderot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teheran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testimony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tirtzu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[training]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UN Headquarters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Voice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50375</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The anti-Israel organization shares Hamas' dream for Israel's future.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nif.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50380" title="nif" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nif.gif" alt="" width="470" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>When it was reported that the New Israel Fund (NIF) was paying around $8 million to organizations that provided the Goldstone Report with all of its condemnations of Israel, it became clear that the “New Israel” desired by the New Israel Fund is one with more than 9 years of consistent rocket fire.</p>
<p>Our organization, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">Sderot Media Center</a> (SMC), with a yearly budget of close to $200,000, worked tirelessly on a formal report that was requested by the Goldstone Commission itself, which encompassed the impact of the rocket fire on the residents of the Sderot region. We sent this <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=484&amp;q=3,6" target="_blank">formal report</a> accompanied by photographs and videos to depict to this UN committee, which did not visit Sderot, what it is like to live under either daily rocket fire or the threat of daily rocket fire over the course of then eight years. The Goldstone Committee then flew our director, Noam Bedein, to the UN Headquarters in Geneva to give a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=489&amp;q=2,3,6" target="_blank">30-minute presentation/testimony</a> in front of the committee on this daily reality lived in Sderot.</p>
<p>The New Israel Fund paid around $8 million to organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Report. As a cited provider of information for the Goldstone Report, I guess our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail.</p>
<p>As the only organization providing the human story of the near decade of rocket fire on Israeli men, women and children, the NIF clearly had no intention of helping sponsor our work.</p>
<p>A clear majority of the organizations mentioned in the Goldstone Report, 77%, are organizations that were paid by the NIF. Amongst those organizations, an overwhelming majority of the ones that were in favor of the report, 92%, are organizations that were paid by the NIF.</p>
<p>The New Israel Fund, an organization that supposedly prides itself on democracy and human rights, <em>“We fight inequality, injustice and extremism because we understand that justice is the precondition for a successful democracy</em>,” as defined in their “<em>About Us</em>” &#8212; strategically and financially ignores the human rights of Sderot men, women, and children that have endured this rocket lifestyle since 2001. The one organization located in Sderot that was paid by the NIF was an organization called the Other Voice &#8212; that led a bike ride from Sderot to the Gaza border. Apparently, organizations in Sderot are only worth NIF money if they are speaking out for Gaza residents and riding a bike.</p>
<p>The head of the NIF, Naomi Chazan, has led the response to this Im Tirtzu report by touting terms like “democracy” to describe what she is supporting, and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149056.html" target="_blank">“fascists”</a> is what she has called those who criticize the NIF. A well educated professor like herself should know that democracy is not achieved by Hamas viciously controlling a prisoner population and using them as shields from a sovereign army and paying the UN to enable Hamas to further persevere doesn’t help. A democracy does not put over 100,000 Gaza children through summer military training camps. So, in attempting to bring down the only democracy in the world with international war crimes, Chazan hopes to create her “New Israel” democracy where Hamas can cause the death of more of their children, train more of them to fight Jews, and freely fire rockets at neighboring Israeli children.</p>
<p>A well educated professor like herself, Chazan should know that calling people and organizations that criticize the NIF “fascists” is embarrassingly hypocritical &#8212; while she pays and supports the ongoing actions of terrorists who use their own civilians to target other civilians. The Sderot Media Center criticizes the NIF and Naomi Chazan. So are we that risk our lives day-in and day-out to show the world that rockets are targeting civilians, and whom the popular liberal newspaper <em><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1135894.html" target="_blank">Haaretz described as a</a></em> “tiny organization that fights to make Sderot’s voice heard” &#8212; are we fascists? Our center runs a therapeutic drama program, in which traumatized high school girls share and express themselves with psychology professionals. Are these traumatized Sderot girls fascists?</p>
<p>If one reads the report put out by Im Tirtzu about the NIF paying for 77% of the Israeli condemning UN Goldstone Report, one will see how NIF paid more than half a million dollars to Physicians For Human Rights-Israel to send an Israeli condemning report to the Goldstone Committee that completely ignored the over 9,000 psychological patients in Sderot. This is just one example of the strategic financing of biased information that shaped the Goldstone Report.</p>
<p>If the public and donors of the New Israel Fund allow this organization to continue, it will be an upside-down “New Israel” where girls expressing  their trauma are considered fascists and a democracy is where children are put through terrorist training and used as human shields.</p>
<p>I guess, along with an invitation to last week’s Islamic Revolution anniversary rally in Teheran, our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail.</p>
<p><em>Jacob Shrybman is a writer for the Sderot Media Center <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">(SderotMedia.org.il).</a></em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jacob-shrybman/the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>10</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Capitalism and the Jews &#8211; New York Times Book Review</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:19:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[accident]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[basic economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catholic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[catholic university of america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christians jews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Collection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commercial success]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dante]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Denial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[essay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[essay collection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[going to hell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guilt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[halakha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerry Z. Muller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerry Z. Muller - Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jews and gentiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Karl Marx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[misfortune]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moneylenders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[question]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resentment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[roman catholic church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self hatred]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sodomites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[success]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[survey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Suspicion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university of america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wonder]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50472</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The question of why so many Jews have been so good at making money is a touchy one. For hundreds of years, it has been fraught with suspicion, denial, resentment, guilt, self-hatred and violence. No wonder Jews and gentiles alike are so uncomfortable confronting Jewish capitalistic competence. Still, in his slim essay collection “Capitalism and [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The question of why so many Jews have been so good at making money is a touchy one. For hundreds of years, it has been fraught with suspicion, denial, resentment, guilt, self-hatred and violence. No wonder Jews and gentiles alike are so uncomfortable confronting Jewish capitalistic competence. Still, in his slim essay collection “Capitalism and the Jews,” Jerry Z. Muller presents a provocative and accessible survey of how Jewish culture and historical accident ripened Jews for commercial success and why that success has earned them so much misfortune.</p>
<p>As Muller, a history professor at the Catholic University of America, explains it, much anti-Semitism can be attributed to a misunderstanding of basic economics. From Aristotle through the Renaissance (and then again in the 19th century, thanks to that Jew-baiting former Jew <a title="More articles about Karl Marx." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/karl_marx/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Karl Marx</a>), thinkers believed that money should be considered sterile, a mere means of exchange incapable of producing additional value. Only labor could be truly productive, it was thought, and anyone who extracted money from money alone — that is, through interest — must surely be a parasite, or at the very least a fraud. The Bible also contended that charging interest was sinful, inspiring Dante to consign usurers to the seventh circle of hell (alongside sodomites and murderers). In other words, 500 years ago, the phrase “predatory lending” would have been considered redundant.</p>
<p>Lending at interest was thus forbidden across Christian Europe — for Christians. Jews, however, were permitted by the <a title="More articles about the Roman Catholic Church." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Roman Catholic Church</a> to charge interest; since they were going to hell anyway, why not let them help growing economies function more efficiently? (According to Halakha, or Jewish law, Jews were not allowed to charge interest to one another, just to gentiles.) And so it was, Muller explains, that Judaism became forever fused in the popular mind with finance. In fact, Christian moneylenders were sometimes legally designated as temporary Jews when they lent money to English and French kings.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Rampell-t.html">Book Review &#8211; &#8216;Capitalism and the Jews,&#8217; by Jerry Z. Muller &#8211; Review &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/capitalism-and-the-jews-new-york-times-book-review/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Intellectuals and Society</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-wargas/intellectuals-and-society/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=intellectuals-and-society</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-wargas/intellectuals-and-society/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:02:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Wargas]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[auto mechanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bois]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[capitalist society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Beard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chomsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil engineer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cloward]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Equality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[equality of opportunity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[equality of results]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evidence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Expert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[feedback mechanisms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Frances Fox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[frances fox piven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[H.G. Wells]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incentive structure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[income]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[infamy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[insularity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intellectual landscape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intellectuals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[issue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ivory tower]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Dewey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lincoln]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literature professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Eric Dyson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Milton Friedman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moral of the story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opportunity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Piven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[race and economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tangible goods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[three decades]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[today]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[W.E.B. Du]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49650</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Thomas Sowell does not put much faith in Ph.D. degrees.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/noamchomsky.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49655" title="noamchomsky" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/noamchomsky-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>In 1980, during a debate for Milton Friedman’s <em>Free to Choose</em> series, Frances Fox Piven, of Cloward-Piven infamy, tried to lecture Thomas Sowell on race and economics. Her contention was that equality of opportunity had failed and what black people needed was a strong dose of socialism. “That’s why equality of results became an issue…for black people in the United   States,” she said, “and they expressed their concern….”</p>
<p>“No, you expressed it, damn it!” Sowell shot back. “It’s what you choose to put in the mouths of black people.”</p>
<p>The moral of the story is that Thomas Sowell does not put much faith in Ph.D. degrees. Three decades later, at age seventy-nine, he once again pounces on armchair theorists and assorted ivory-tower types in his newest book, <em>Intellectuals and Society</em>. Sowell identifies his targets as “people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas.” In other words, ideas are the finished products of their labor. This category could include writers, philosophers, and the literature professor who thinks <em>Hamlet</em> is about a young man struggling with the horrors of capitalist society.</p>
<p>These intellectuals are different from others not only because of their interests, but because of their method of operation and the incentive structure that comes with it. Unlike carpenters, who produce tangible goods, or scientists, who produce theories that must be tested against results, the dealer in pure ideas is cut off from the normal feedback mechanisms that filter faulty notions out of the intellectual landscape. An auto mechanic who can’t fix transmissions is bound to go out of business, just as a civil engineer who designs a bridge that collapses is apt to suffer some problems with his career.</p>
<p>Not so with intellectuals. “Not only have intellectuals been insulated from material consequences, they have often enjoyed immunity from even a loss of reputation after having been demonstrably wrong.” Their insularity can also lead to dilettantism, as the intellectual is not constrained from wandering into fields completely outside his or her own. The pattern is clear: Chomsky the linguist becomes Chomsky the foreign-policy wonk. Michael Eric Dyson the minister becomes the expert on everything racial. Your anthropology professor becomes an expert on healthcare economics.</p>
<p>Though his main topic is focused, Sowell’s context is wide. He discusses economics, war, the law, the media, politics, and race. For decades, these subjects have been the canvases on which intellectuals have painted their grotesque portraits. Sowell documents not only the disastrous ideas themselves—straight out of the mouths of characters like John Dewey—but discusses why those ideas have failed so miserably.</p>
<p>Sowell is one of the greatest debunkers of our time, capable of laying waste to vast fields of demagoguery through slash-and-burn logic and empiricism. No one throws the wrench in the leftist chain quite like him. The most devastating chapter of the book is the one entitled “Intellectuals and Economics,” in which Sowell obliterates common claims about “income distribution,” poverty, and inequality. His <em>bête noire</em> is the person for whom evidence is merely optional filigree. (Who needs evidence when one is flying under the banner of “social justice”?) Bromides about the “widening gap” between rich and poor don’t consider that individuals are constantly moving between income brackets, as Sowell illustrates. Looking merely at statistical abstractions creates the illusion that “the rich” and “the poor” are merely static, immutable categories, rather than mere classifications through which many different people are constantly passing.</p>
<p>Intellectuals’ perverse desire to see some sort of “plan” imposed on society has made for a decidedly sordid history of their ilk. The Progressives of the early twentieth century, for instance, were bona fide racists, and the academic extension of their ideas was the eugenics movement. It comes as no surprise, then, that the revolutionary creeds of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism were especially intriguing to the intelligentsia, despite their being mislabeled today as “conservative” or “right wing” movements. Sowell reminds us that these ideologies were originally considered left wing by the intellectuals themselves. Lincoln Steffens, who glorified Soviet Communism, also reserved praise for Mussolini. Other radical socialists who shared his sentiments included British novelist H.G. Wells and American historian Charles Beard.</p>
<p>Still more saw the ultimate promise of collectivism in the Nazi movement. During the 1920s, W.E.B. Du Bois, prominent black historical figure and devoted communist, became so fascinated with Nazism that he decorated the magazine he edited with swastikas. This love affair was not a one-night stand, either. As late as 1936, Du Bois remarked that “Germany today is, next to Russia, the greatest exemplar of Marxian socialism in the world.”</p>
<p>The ease with which intellectuals migrate from one squalid “ism” to another has necessitated some revisionism on their part. It was only after the West fully realized the horrors of the Italian and German dictatorships that the intellectual Left disowned them in a massive act of historical face-saving. Writes Sowell: “The heterogeneity of those later lumped together as the right has allowed those on the left to dump into that grab-bag category many who espouse some version of the vision of the left, but whose other characteristics make them an embarrassment to be repudiated.”</p>
<p>If there’s any weakness with the book, it’s that Sowell is himself an intellectual, making it easy for left-wing bloggers to dismiss him even if they can’t refute the book’s arguments. There are differences, however, between this book and the putrid machinations of a Noam Chomsky or a Cornel West: Those intellectuals are so sure of their ideas they have no doubt they’d make the perfect blueprint for society. Sowell, on the contrary, has never advocated anything except leaving people alone. Also, part of intellectuals’ decidedly anti-intellectual strategy, as Sowell points out, is their inoculation against empirical evidence. That socialism killed millions in the twentieth century, and that quasi-socialist policies have wiped out inner cities in America, makes no difference to the tenured cultural studies professor.</p>
<p>Sowell, then, while being an intellectual according to his own definition, is in practice far more scientific and accountable. His awareness of human fallibility is straight out of Burke or Hayek. The absence of this quality in radicals is what makes today’s intellectual climate so uninviting. Sowell writes: “Because the vision of the anointed is a vision of themselves as well as a vision of the world, when they are defending that vision they are not simply defending a set of hypotheses about external events, they are in a sense defending their very souls—and the zeal and even ruthlessness with which they defend their vision are not surprising under these circumstances.”</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><em>Robert Wargas is a writer and graduate student who lives on Long Island, NY.</em></p>
<p><strong>To order Intellectuals and Society, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Thomas-Sowell/dp/046501948X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1265783449&amp;sr=1-1">click here</a>. </strong><em><br />
</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-wargas/intellectuals-and-society/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>57</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Roger Kimball: Howard Zinn Professor of Contempt &#8211; National Review Online</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/roger-kimball-howard-zinn-professor-of-contempt-national-review-online/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=roger-kimball-howard-zinn-professor-of-contempt-national-review-online</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/roger-kimball-howard-zinn-professor-of-contempt-national-review-online/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:17:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Academy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amazon sales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[author]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[broken bottles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chamber]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cliche]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contempt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[decades]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[echo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[echo chamber]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[February]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[historian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history of the united states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Zinn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[initial print]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[January]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[january 27]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[left wing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national review online]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[number]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PRINT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[roger kimball]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roger Kimball - National]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[run]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[saith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sense]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tribe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48671</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With Howard Zinn, contemporary American academia found its court historian. Zinn, who died January 27 at 87, was like a gigantic echo chamber, accurately reproducing — and actively reinforcing — every left-wing cliché with which the academy has abetted its sense of election these past several decades. “You see how smart he is,” saith the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With Howard Zinn, contemporary American academia found its court historian. Zinn, who died January 27 at 87, was like a gigantic echo chamber, accurately reproducing — and actively reinforcing — every left-wing cliché with which the academy has abetted its sense of election these past several decades. “You see how smart he is,” saith the tribe, “he thinks exactly as we do.” Zinn’s biography tells us that he was the author of “more than 20 books.” But only one matters: A People’s History of the United States. Published in 1980 with appropriately modest expectations — it had, I read somewhere, an initial print run of only 5,000 copies — the book went on to sell some 2 million and is still going strong. Its Amazon sales rank as of February 1, 2010, was 7. Seven. That’s a number most authors would climb over broken bottles to achieve 30 days after their books were published. Here it is 30 years on.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/423758/professor-of-contempt/roger-kimball">Professor of Contempt &#8211; Roger Kimball &#8211; National Review Online</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/roger-kimball-howard-zinn-professor-of-contempt-national-review-online/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Class Warfare in the Classroom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/malcolm-a-kline/class-warfare-in-the-classroom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=class-warfare-in-the-classroom</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/malcolm-a-kline/class-warfare-in-the-classroom/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:01:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm A. Kline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american individualism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[antagonist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assault]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bad luck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[catholic institution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christopher craig]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[class positions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[class struggle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[collective guilt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Craig]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[December]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dominant class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dr. Craig]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economic system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emmanuel college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[english professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[helping the homeless]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[homelessness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[institution of higher learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Katrina]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Katrina New  Orleans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Orleans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nightly news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[percent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal responsibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political novel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poverty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President George W]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[radical teacher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[responsibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[result]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reviewer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ruling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ruling class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SSI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TANF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teacher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.

Census]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[way]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48581</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Radical professors are teaching students to wage the “class struggle.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48618" title="classwar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/classwar.jpg" alt="classwar" width="512" height="384" /></p>
<p>In Boston, an English professor is trying to sell his class on society’s collective guilt when said students are already believers in personal responsibility.</p>
<p>“We must encourage students to access the antagonist class positions of texts in order to demonstrate how the oppositional voices contained in them identify evidence of class struggle,” Christopher Craig writes in the December 2009 issue of <em>Radical Teacher</em>, “a socialist, feminist and anti-racist journal on the theory and practice of teaching.” “Through this critical process, we can show how the values and interests of the dominant class are not universal but repressive, intended to keep the power relations between the ruling and working class one-sided.”</p>
<p>“For most of us, learning to read texts this way helps us to see through the ruling class ideology that exists in everything from literature to the nightly news.” Craig teaches at Emmanuel College, a Catholic institution of higher learning.</p>
<p>“Hence, our ability to grasp and practice this kind of criticism provides us and our students with the tools necessary to understand literature from a class-based perspective and to acknowledge the ideological forces that attempt to shape our lives,” Craig argues.</p>
<p><em>Radical Teacher</em> is published by the board of trustees of the <a href="http://www.academia.org/search/?cx=004572606133216989943%3Ajomzqa66gtu&amp;cof=FORID%3A11&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=University+of+Illinois&amp;sa=Search&amp;siteurl=www.academia.org%2F#912" target="_blank">University of Illinois</a>.</p>
<p>“They had been encouraged to understand homelessness, unemployment, and crime, for example, as the result of various levels of personal responsibility or just bad luck,” Craig writes of his students. Craig teaches a course on the Political Novel.</p>
<p>“They are respectful, hard working and open-minded,” Craig writes of his students. “But their liberalism is rooted strongly in the idea of American individualism.”</p>
<p>“They see helping the homeless as an opportunity to integrate people back into an economic system where possibility flourishes. One needs only to learn the skills necessary for success..”</p>
<p>As you may have guessed, Craig has a problem with this view. “Most of them have not considered thoroughly how political policies contribute to creating inequitable conditions,” Craig states. “They correctly link the horrific consequences of Hurricane Katrina to the Bush administration’s failure to respond (pro)actively to the catastrophe, for instance.”</p>
<p>“But they have difficulty theorizing how the economic inequalities that existed in New Orleans before Katrina result from ruling class policies.” Craig fails to note that few characterized the pre-Katrina New Orleans as a free market mecca, at least for legal industries.</p>
<p>“They are unaware of Clinton’s assault on welfare in the 1990s,” Craig claims. “They have not heard about Bush’s deep budget cuts to social programs, his attempts to cut Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing, how his ‘Ownership Society’ allowed the wealthy to own more and be taxed less, or how the poverty rate increased to 12.7 percent of the American population under his administration (The Nation September 26, 2005),” Craig says of his sophomore classes.</p>
<p>“I suspect that my impassioned expression of these conditions offends students who are active in service learning,” he laments.</p>
<p>One hopes that it also unnerves those who double check his sources. As we have reported before, the Clinton assault on welfare consisted of renaming it Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), adding requirements that public assistance recipients seek employment and moving millions of cases to other federal programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI). “Differences between TANF and SSI benefits are substantial, and the transition from [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] AFDC to TANF may have increased incentives for recipients who were potentially eligible for SSI to apply for benefits and for states to encourage such efforts,” the Social Security Administration reports. “Between December 1996 and December 2003, the nonelderly SSI caseload increased by 8.6 percent (SSA 2004b, 21).”</p>
<p>Moreover, if President George W. Bush made such an attack on domestic spending, why did it balloon when his party controlled the executive and legislative branches of government? By the way, on those 2005 poverty numbers, the U. S. Census bureau reported in 2007 that, “the nation’s official poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006. There were 36.5 million people in poverty in 2006, not statistically different from 2005.”</p>
<p>Despite his pessimism about getting his message across to his charges, Dr. Craig’s ratemyprofessors.com ratings indicate he is making some headway. His reviews are mostly favorable.</p>
<p>“An awesome, awesome man who makes you think every time you go to class,” one reviewer wrote. “In the semester I had him I’ve never thought so much about American Society. Very depressing, but soul searching is good. He is beauuutiful.”</p>
<p>“Taking a class with him is life changing, literally,” another reviewer wrote. “He’s brilliant.”</p>
<p>“This man keeps it real,” another reviewer claimed. “The class I had with him was a[n] 8 A.M. class and I looked forward to it. Will talk about the real things in life.”</p>
<p><em>Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of </em><a href="http://academia.org/" target="_blank"><em>Accuracy in Academia</em></a><em>. </em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/malcolm-a-kline/class-warfare-in-the-classroom/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>13</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Howard Zinn’s History of Hate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/howard-zinn%e2%80%99s-history-of-hate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=howard-zinn%25e2%2580%2599s-history-of-hate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/howard-zinn%e2%80%99s-history-of-hate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:37:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academic circles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academicians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[account]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[admirer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aggregate sales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boston university professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college lecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[embodiment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[England]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Markets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hand]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history classes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history of the united states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[household name]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Zinn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lecture circuit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[million sales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New England]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nicaragua]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Noam Chomsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[number]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[part]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[perspective]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poverty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[result]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slavery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[standard-bearer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[story]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teaching]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wellspring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[young americans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zinn]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48434</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For the late Marxist historian, America was always the enemy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48435" title="432803681_00abee5883" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/432803681_00abee5883.jpg" alt="432803681_00abee5883" width="500" height="333" /></p>
<p>Howard Zinn, who died of a heart attack last week at the age of 87, was a scholar of extraordinary influence. Indeed, few academicians did more than the late Boston University professor to poison the minds of so many young Americans with a vulgar narrative of history in which the United States was forever cast as the villain.</p>
<p>The author of more than twenty books, Zinn was best known for his 1980 publication of A People&#8217;s History of the United States. Though its first press run consisted of a mere 4,000 copies, by 2003 the book had topped a million sales over the course of multiple editions. Today the title&#8217;s aggregate sales are approaching the two-million mark. A People&#8217;s History is assigned as required reading in high schools and colleges across the United States, not only in history classes but also in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women&#8217;s studies. As a result, its author became a household name in academic circles and emerged as one of the most sought-after speakers on the college lecture circuit. As his colleague and admirer Noam Chomsky said last week, “The happy thing about Howard was that in the last years he could gain satisfaction that his contributions were so impressive and recognized. He could hardly keep up with all the speaking invitations.” Added Chomsky, Zinn&#8217;s “historical work changed the way millions of people saw the past.”</p>
<p>On this count, Chomsky was correct. At its root, A People&#8217;s History is a Marxist tract that paints the United States as the wellspring of earthly evil– a wretched embodiment of sexism, racism, and imperialism and a scourge not only to most of its own population, but also to a vast portion of humanity around the globe.</p>
<p>Zinn&#8217;s portrayal of America, the world&#8217;s standard-bearer for capitalism, reflected his deeply held conviction that free-markets breed greed, vice, and suffering. Having long maintained that “capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes,” Zinn in March 2009 rejoiced in saying, “[T]he American capitalist system is falling apart. And good! I&#8217;m glad it&#8217;s falling apart.” He cited capitalism as the reason “why we have 45 million people without health care,” “2 million people homeless,” and “millions and millions of people who can&#8217;t pay their rent.”</p>
<p>In A People&#8217;s History, Zinn claims to present American history through the eyes of those whom the raging tide of capitalism has engulfed in poverty and oppression: American Indians, blacks, slaves, women, and the ever-exploited “workers.” In 1995 Zinn wrote candidly about the political agenda that underlay his work:</p>
<blockquote><p>“I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In an interview three years later, Zinn elaborated that his goal in producing A People&#8217;s History had been neither to write an objective history nor to write a complete one:</p>
<blockquote><p>“There&#8217;s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was [that] the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”</p></blockquote>
<p>When confronted by critics who suggested that his book was “not an unbiased account,” Zinn shot back:</p>
<blockquote><p>“So what? If you look at history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated, it’s a different story.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In keeping with that perspective, Zinn wrote America&#8217;s story as an uninterrupted narrative of depravity. Born in sin, the nation, as Zinn saw it, would forever be morally defective – at least until such time as its leaders might finally awaken to the healing splendors of Marxism.</p>
<p>In Zinn&#8217;s telling, America&#8217;s “Founding Fathers … created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.” The Declaration of Independence, Zinn said, was not so much a revolutionary statement about the God-given rights of man and the principles of limited government that logically flowed from it, as it was a cynical effort to manipulate people into rebelling against the King of England for the sole purpose of further enriching a handful of already-wealthy “white males.” And for good measure, Zinn condemned “the English invasion of North America” as “a barbarous epoch of history” that was “ruled by competition,” and whose noteworthy hallmarks included “deception,” “brutality,” “slavery,” the “massacre of Indians,” and “conquest and murder in the name of progress” – all as a result of the “powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property.”</p>
<p>The Pilgrims who came to New England “were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians,” Zinn explained – portraying those natives essentially as a peaceful network of brothers who had long lived in idyllic harmony with one another, until the fateful moment when white “invaders” (as Zinn put it) first arrived on the shores of North America.</p>
<p>From Zinn&#8217;s account, one would never learn that the history of American Indians was replete with inter-tribal conflicts of great violence, or that slave-trafficking played a very significant role in a number of Indian societies. Indeed, long before the first Europeans arrived in the New World, an elaborate slave-trading network had developed among the Indians of the Northwest coast, where slaves constituted as much as 10 to 15 percent of some tribes&#8217; populations. But in Zinn&#8217;s version of history, the only slavery that mattered was the white-on-black variety. The vices of nonwhites were deemed insufficiently interesting to merit mention. The lines between good and evil were drawn with clarity and boldness. There were no shades of gray; there was only white wrongdoing on the one hand, and the radiant goodness of nonwhites on the other.</p>
<p>As Zinn saw things, America&#8217;s moral failings were not merely the stuff of yesteryear. When the professor looked at modern America&#8217;s physical and social landscape, he saw nothing worthy of redemption. Rather, he saw a nation engaged in “the poisoning of the air, the seas and rivers”; a nation beset by profound economic injustice; and a nation that spent far too much money on its weapons of war, but far too little on the teeming masses who had been dealt a most unfortunate hand by capitalism&#8217;s unpredictable caprices. All of these flaws, Zinn maintained, were the bitter fruits of the free market.</p>
<p>Where there was crime, Zinn saw “a class of criminals” who had been “bred by economic inequity.” Criminals, in Zinn&#8217;s calculus, were merely people engaged in understandable rebellion against the “fierce competition” and “the contrasts of wealth and poverty” that epitomized America&#8217;s “culture of possession.” He explained that American society, “so stratified by wealth and education,” lent itself “naturally to envy and class anger.” And of course Zinn saw racism, observing not only that “a disproportionate number of prisoners in American jails” were “poor and non white,” but also that black children were “four times as likely as white children to grow up on welfare.” All these things, Zinn reiterated, were the result of capitalist society&#8217;s failings.</p>
<p>The disgust that Zinn plainly felt for America stood in sharp contrast to his more benign view of the most notorious Communist dictatorships of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. For example, Maoist China was, in the professor&#8217;s estimation, “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people&#8217;s government, independent of outside control.” Castro&#8217;s Cuba, similarly, “had no bloody record of suppression,” according to Zinn. And the Marxist Sandinista dictators of Nicaragua in the 1980s were allegedly “welcomed” by the people of that country, while the opposition Contras – who were supported by the United States, and whose presidential candidate emerged victorious when a free election was held – were described by Zinn as a “terrorist group” that “seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua.”</p>
<p>During the Cold War, Zinn supported the Soviet Union in its rivalry against the United States. And in a pamphlet titled Terrorism and War, which he penned after 9/11, Zinn depicted America as a veritable terrorist state, while painting its jihadist enemies as freedom fighters who were bravely defending themselves against the ravages of U.S. imperialism.</p>
<p>Just as Zinn held the United States in contempt, so did he despise America&#8217;s closest ally in the Middle East, Israel. Zinn maintained, for instance, that “after the Six-Day War of 1967 and Israel&#8217;s occupation of territories seized in that war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Sinai peninsula),” he personally “began to see Israel not simply as a beleaguered little nation surrounded by hostile Arab states, but as an expansionist power.” Missing from Zinn&#8217;s narrative was any acknowledgment of the fact that Israel&#8217;s role in the war was purely one of self-defense against an impending Arab invasion, and that the territories Israel captured in the battle were acquired not as a result of aggression, but in the course of a desperate fight for survival against the Jewish state&#8217;s would-be Arab exterminators.</p>
<p>During his long career as a professor and public speaker, Howard Zinn&#8217;s hatred for Israel and America alike became dominant themes of his writing and his pedagogy. As noted, he was more than candid about his burning desire to make his teaching of history “a political act.” His ultimate objective was to influence new generations of young students into becoming revolutionaries whose hatred for the United States would impel them to work toward “a transformation of national priorities” and a comprehensive “change in the system.” “The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel,” Zinn said in hopes that someday “our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.”</p>
<p>That “world” was the Marxist utopia that had led to the deaths of so many throughout history – and that one of America’s leading historians encouraged his students and readers to pursue by any means necessary.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/howard-zinn%e2%80%99s-history-of-hate/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>196</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Joseph Massad at UCLA: Gay-Bashing 101</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:04:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Golub]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academic jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[answer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arabic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arabic transliteration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[audience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barry White]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[barry white music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bigotry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[claim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CNES]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Columbia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conjunctions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conspiracy theory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cultural imperialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deficient]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[delightful mixture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[despot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eastern Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[epistemological]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Golub]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[expensive cars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[figment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gay agenda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gay sexuality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[homosexuality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[imperial politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inadequacies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intellectual history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph Massad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[material]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minority group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mixture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim honor killings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim world]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nothing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[perverse logic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[queer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[queer issue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sex discussion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sexuality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sexuality in islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[topic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UCLA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ucla center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[week]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western plot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[word]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Columbia professor claims that homosexuality is an imperialist plot against the Arab and Muslim worlds. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48328" title="massad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/massad.jpg" alt="massad" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=7892">lecture</a> last week at the UCLA <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4420">Center for Near Eastern Studies</a> (CNES) offered a mixture of intellectually deficient material mixed with a dash of bigotry. It was delivered by Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University.</p>
<p>The topic of Massad’s lecture was “<a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=7892">Pre-Positional Conjunctions: Sexuality and/in Islam</a>.” While <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7386">past CNES lectures</a> resulted in <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8648">Israel-bashing</a> and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6835">anti-Semitism</a>, UCLA finally decided to honor its commitment to diversity by attacking another minority group. This time, homosexuals had their turn in the multicultural bile wheel.</p>
<p>From inception to completion, Massad’s lecture was nothing more than gay-bashing. This was on par with the thesis of Massad’s 2007 book, <em>Desiring Arabs,</em> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4253">which posits</a> that gay sexuality among Muslims does not exist. Rather, it is a Western plot designed to undermine the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Massad echoed many of these bigoted themes in his lecture. He explained that “Queer is about resistance to Islam.” Similarly, he said that “There is no Arabic transliteration of queer. It is a judgmental notice of deviance.” In a particularly striking claim, Massad insisted that, for Muslims, concepts like “hate and sexuality are only translatable to English-speaking people.” Muslim honor killings, presumably, are only a figment of non-Muslims imagination.</p>
<p>Massad also used the occasion to present a novel – and decidedly homophobic – conspiracy theory. “Queer is an imperialist term,” he announced. “It is part of the Anglo-American gay agenda.” Indeed, according to Massad, “queer is an example of cultural imperialism.” It followed, by his perverse logic, that the “use of ‘gay’ in Iran is imperial politics.” The claim called to mind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad notorious speech at Columbia University, in which he assured the audience that there are no gay people in his country. It’s notable that the views of a theocratic despot should find such staunch backing in the hear of supposedly progressive academia.</p>
<p>Most bizarrely, Massad admitted he was “very interested in talking to people about their sexual experiences if they want to tell me.” Ostensibly, Arabs and Muslims would have been excluded from that discussion, since Massad also claimed that “there is no such thing as Iran/Arab/Muslim sexuality. Sexuality is an English notion.”</p>
<p>During a question and answer period, an audience member brought up Massad’s apparent discomfort behind the word “queer.” What word should be used instead, the questioner wanted to know? Challenged on his views, Massad offered up an answer that revealed much about the close-mindedness of modern academia. “I am not sure any discourse is necessary,” he said.</p>
<p><em>Eric Golub is the publisher of the <a href="http://www.tygrrrrexpress.com/" target="_blank">Tygrrrr Express</a> blog. He wrote this article for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>37</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Class Warfare Entrenched</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/class-warfare-entrenched/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=class-warfare-entrenched</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/class-warfare-entrenched/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:28:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Dogan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Student Center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[collective guilt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[english professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guilt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
<p>An English professor is trying to sell his class on society’s collective guilt.</p>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>An English professor is trying to sell his class on society’s collective guilt.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/class-warfare-entrenched/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 2595/2764 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 10:00:12 by W3 Total Cache -->