Earlier this year, a firestorm erupted when Connecticut College philosophy professor Andrew Pessin’s 2014 Facebook comments, in which he compared Hamas in Gaza to a “wild pit bull . . . chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape,” were deemed “racist” and “dehumanizing” by student activists, colleagues, and administrators alike. Meanwhile, Middle East studies academics regularly emit commentary that is unambiguous in its bigotry, tastelessness, and vulgarity, to nary a peep. Not coincidentally, the vitriol is directed at targets academe finds politically unpopular: Israel, pro-Israel Jews, and anti-Islamists. In the latest Campus Watch research, appearing today at American Thinker, CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell take a look at the worst of the worst:
A glaring example occurred in late 2014, when UC Irvine history professor Mark LeVine posted an expletive-laden, unhinged rant on Facebook calling for the destruction of Israel. . . . In this age of selective campus hypersensitivity, it’s difficult to imagine correspondingly genocidal language being directed at any other country. Given that he’s the authorof Heavy Metal Islam, LeVine’s juvenile language might be chalked up to his rock ‘n’ roll persona, but it is hardly befitting the temperament of a scholar.
