University of California-Irvine history professor Mark LeVine has launched an unhinged Facebook rant, in which he calls for Israel to be "dismantled" and hurls insults at former AAUP president Cary Nelson, an opponent of BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) and a supporter of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's decision to withdraw an offer of tenured professorship to Steven Salaita. If you thought academic disputes were settled by reasoned argument, you haven't kept up with Middle East studies (or LeVine). In the latest Campus Watch research, CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell dissects this sorry episode today at FrontPage Magazine:
UC Irvine history professor Mark LeVine, who recently suffered a meltdown after being called "anti-Israeli," has since proven the point by posting this profanity-laden, unhinged rant on Facebook. . . . LeVine was commenting on a photograph from French freelance photographer Anne Paq, who, according to her bio, has been "based in Palestine since 2003," and who specializes in the sort of emotionally-charged—and,all too often, staged or manipulated—imagery regularly employed by Hamas and others to demonize Israel in the international media. Paq's photograph certainly elicited that reaction in LeVine.
