The work of Campus Watch will be featured via two media appearances this week.
Tonight, Wednesday, September 26th at 6pm (PDT) and 9pm (EDT), I’ll be taking part in a discussion on Fausta’s Blog Talk Radio regarding the subject of libel tourism, the practice by which authors are sued for libel in countries other than where they reside. Along with host, blogger and Pajamas Media editor Fausta, the podcast will include blogger Siggy, and Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, the author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It and herself a target of libel tourism.
As I indicated in an August column posted at Campus Watch and titled, “Libel Tourism: Where Terrorism and Censorship Meet,” American journalists and academics investigating international terrorism funding have been finding themselves on the receiving end of libel suits originating in the UK, where libel laws tend to favor the plaintiff. The end result, in some instances, has been the effective censorship of their work.
Campus Watch has been following the caseof Alms for Jihad, a book co-written by UC Santa Barbara history professor Peter O. Collins and former State Department analyst J. Millard Burr. Alms for Jihad was the object of a threatened libel suit in the UK brought by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, which resulted in the publisher, Cambridge University Press, agreeing to retract its publication, destroy all unsold copies, and issue a public apology. Developments in the case continue as we speak.
Listen in tonight or catch the podcast in Fausta’s archives.
Tomorrow night, Thursday, September 27th, I’ll be interviewing with historian David Meir-Levy and his co-hosts on the public access Palo Alto-based cable television show, “Spotlight on the Middle East.” We’ll be discussing Campus Watch’s work and, in particular, our focus on Middle East studies academics in California, while fellow guest Sue Maltiel, executive director of Hillel of Silicon Valley, will address the issue from a student level. The show is produced once a month and then airs multiple times over the following month. It can be viewed by local cable subscribers and over the Internet at the show’s website.
We hope Campus Watch readers can tune in to one or both of these important discussions.
