Sara Roy: ‘This One-Sidedness Dissuaded Readers from Reading the Piece to the End’ [of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies]

A Tufts Fletcher School editor rejects a review written by Harvard professor Sara Roy on a new book about Hamas for too “one-sided”...in favor of Hamas:

...Your review was evaluated by several of our editors and an external editor for objectivity. Unfortunately, they disagreed with my decision to publish your review for the following reasons: despite their agreement with many of your points, all reviewers found the piece one-sided. This one-sidedness dissuaded readers from reading the piece to the end; ultimately, this last point is the most important. Although I found your arguments valuable, if readers consistently feel this way, I am unable to move forward with a piece...

A common flaw in the academic world: Many who study a subject or region become its advocates. All the more serious when you’ve been living in Gaza studying Hamas. The reviewer found the book, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad

by Matthew Levitt insufficiently nuanced and too tough on Hamas.

Roy once used the occasion of “a Holocaust memorial lecture to suggest that Israelis are Nazis” and delivered what must be described as a fawning introduction to Norman Finkelstein during a recent visit to Brandeis.

See more on this Topic
Interim Harvard Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler ’87 Dismissed the Faculty Leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
George Washington University’s Failure to Remove MESA from Its Middle East Studies Program Shows a Continued Tolerance for the Promotion of Terrorism