Campus Watch Attacked in AAUP Report

Nov. 28, 2003, Philadelphia – A professors’ syndicate report this month accused Campus Watch, an academic freedom watchdog, of being a “source of efforts to discourage lawful speech” in the post-9/11 environment. To this, Campus Watch responds by noting that this report underscores a continuing reluctance by American professors to address significant failures in Middle Eastern studies departments.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) report, “Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis”, finds that Campus Watch (CW) has “denounced professorial departures” from what it views as “acceptable.” The report even equates Campus Watch to “the activities of the John Birch Society in the 1960s.”

Campus Watch sees the AAUP report, with its nonsensical comparison to the John Birch Society, reflecting a persistent and seemingly willful lack of understanding of CW’s purpose. CW consists of Middle East specialists seeking to balance the anti-American and generally radical leftist discourse in their field. CW focuses on five problems in Middle East studies: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. The project has released documented studies of these failings, posted on its website at www.Campus-Watch.org.

“We find it amusing that the professorate compares Campus Watch to the John Birch Society in the effort to discredit our work. We are troubled, however, that the AAUP shields poor scholarship – it’s rather like the American Bar Association protecting lawyers who break the law,” says Daniel Pipes, founder of Campus Watch. “The AAUP should be condemning the shortcomings of professors of Middle Eastern studies, not sheltering them.”

“AAUP needs to understand that Campus Watch does nothing to discourage free speech,” adds Jonathan Calt Harris, managing editor of Campus Watch. “Rather, we shed light on the radicalization of U.S. professors in Middle Eastern studies. Interestingly, the AAUP report itself lists some of those activities. For example, it mentions University of New Mexico history professor, Richard Berthold, who told students that ‘anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote.’ and some City College of New York faculty who blamed ‘American colonialism’ for the September 11 attacks.”

CW, however, is grateful that the professors’ association does acknowledge CW’s constitutional right to critique Middle Eastern studies (when it notes that CW is “sheltered by the same freedom of expression that we seek for ourselves”).

Campus Watch is a project of the Middle East Forum, a 501(c)3 organization that works to define and promote American interests in the region and to shape the intellectual climate in which U.S. policy is made.