Campus Watch Issues Challenge to Juan Cole

[Winfield Myers is director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.]

University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is desperate for you to know that he is eminently qualified to speak publicly on the Middle East. He is, we are told in the opening paragraph of his recent response to the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg,

[a] Middle East expert who lived in the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, travels widely there, speaks the languages, writes history from archives and manuscripts and follows current affairs ...

But from this triumphalist beginning, the story takes a tragic turn...

[Ed. note: The partial text of “Juan Cole: The Ted Williams of Middle East Studies?” follows.]

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.
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