Academic Malfeasance: U. of Arkansas Disinvites Phyllis Chesler

Phyllis Chesler

The spring disinvitation season is in full swing. In addition to celebrity provacateurs, serious scholars have had the welcome mat yanked by the very people who invited them. Phyllis Chesler is the latest scholar subjected to this treatment after the Saudi-funded King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, rescinded its invitation for her to speak about honor killings and forced marriages. Winfield Myers, Middle East Forum director of academic affairs and Campus Watch, provides an account today at the Daily Caller:

The latest speaker to be “disinvited” from an American college is prominent feminist scholar Phyllis Chesler, whose participation in a University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, symposium on honor killing earlier this month was withdrawn days before the event. Behind the cancellation lies a sordid tale involving faculty machinations, threats from a dean, and at least one shattered window. Together, they offer a case study on the intellectual and moral corruption of academe.

Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at the City University of New York whose pioneering scholarship exposed the horrors of honor killing, forced marriages, and other brutalities women suffer in Muslim lands and beyond. She was invited to deliver a lunchtime lecture on “Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings” at a conference on “Violence in the Name of Honor: Confronting and Responding to Honor Killings and Forced Marriage in the West” on April 13-14, cosponsored by the law school and the Saudi-funded King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies.

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Saudi/Gulf Funding Islamophobia

Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.