The recent appointment of Ilana Feldman as the interim dean of George Washington University's (GWU) Elliott School of International Affairs is extremely concerning on several levels. Feldman is an active known supporter of the... 
A cohort of professors of Middle East studies at American universities are making common cause with the Iranian regime and using the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext for demanding that the United States lift its sanctions on... 
In February, the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in Doha, Qatar, hosted a panel titled "Global Islamophobia: Understanding its Roots, Challenging its Impact." It was a fitting venue for a... 
Last month, in one of the last public lectures before universities shut down in-person gatherings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Darryl Li, an assistant professor of anthropology and lecturer in law at the University of... 
For Stockton University Professor Nazia Kazi, President Barack Obama in his announcement of Osama bin Laden's May 2, 2011, killing was "easily washing the bloodstained hands of U.S. global dominance." Such America-hating... 
Modern Zionism "is a self-described colonial-settler project," stated Columbia University Rashid Khalidi last month at Washington, DC's Politics and Prose bookstore before a standing-room-only audience of about 120. This Edward... 
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." By contemporary Washington standards, James Bond's nemesis Goldfinger was naïve. He was only scheming to corner the world's gold supply by using a... 
Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) has called on the Department of Education to investigate Georgetown's use of Title VI federal funds to promote the boycott of Israel. 
Howler of the Month (archive)"This article posits a theorisation of decolonisation in relation to queer as it emerges from the settler-colonial context of Palestine, what I call decolonial queering. The first part provides a new reading of Zionist settler-colonialism, which I define as hetero-conquest. Its novelty lies in refocusing the question of colonialism in native grounded knowledge of queering, while showing the limitations of those existing studies whose frames emanate mainly from American and/or global north contexts of racism and homo-nationalism." Walaa Alqaisiya, Fellow of Gender, Conflict, and Sexuality in the Dept. of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics; "Palestine and the Will to Theorise Decolonial Queering"; Middle East Critique, Vol. 29, 2020, Special Issue on Queering the Middle East. (link to source) 
We Couldn't Have Said it Better (archive)"[T]he particular funding program at issue provides funding for Mideast studies to promote knowledge of the Middle East to serve U.S. foreign policy objectives. As a result of this mandate, the relevant funding law requires universities to pledge that their programs will be balanced. In other words, monitoring balance is not some bizarre or aggressive anti-academic freedom initiative, but just enforcing the law, –a law, admittedly, that previous administrations failed to enforce." David Bernstein, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, responding to criticism of President Trump's executive order that could impact Title VI funding for Middle East studies programs; Reason Magazine, December 12, 2019. (link to source) CAMPUS WATCH, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds. |
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