Setting The Record Straight

Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.

Campus Watch Responds:

The second anonymous blogger to attack Campus Watch within a week--one Mainstreet--is no better than the first at getting facts straight. Moreover, he made these errors in publicizing yet another error-laden attack, from the 13th, by Cecilie Surasky (whose name Mainstreet misspells):

That organization of course is Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes [sic] effort to monitor American college professors for their unwillingness to keep Israel criticism off campus, to remain silent. Pipes is well known for his audacious attempts to silence American professors with threats of blackmail, including arrogant demands from tainted professors that they submit their course curriculums to him, personally, for approval. There is a history of professors deprived of tenure because of organizations like Campus Watch.

I'm not kidding. Check out Pipes' org here: http://www.campus-watch.org/

But this latest attempt at censorship, this attack against Rashid Khalidi really pissed off Cecile Sarasky [sic] of Muzzlewatch:

CW does not monitor professors for the (awkwardly phrased) offense of being unwilling to "keep Israel criticism off campus, to remain silent." Our critiques of Middle East studies are not based on one's opinion of Israel, but on the presence of politicized, tendentious scholarship and teaching--on substituting indoctrination for education.

But what a tall order we would have if we took it upon ourselves to monitor professors who failed to keep critics of Israel off campus! In a large state university, there may be 2,000, 3,000 or more professors of various ranks. If an anti-Israel speaker appeared on campus, we would then be obligated, if the anonymous blogger MainStreet is correct, to critique every professor on the payroll, since the mere presence of such a speaker would prove the failure of every professor to "keep Israel criticism off campus."

Such are the costs of vigilance; such are the fruits of awkward sentence structure.

As for attempts to censor Khalidi, as we have stated so many times before, we have no power to censor anyone, nor do we seek it. We cannot issue subpoenas; we have no coercive powers. Perhaps someday the far left will stop asserting that criticism is a synonym for censorship, but that day did not arrive with Mainstreet's post.

More seriously, MainStreet charges that CW founder Daniel Pipes blackmails professors into silence. This is mendacious and absurd: where is the evidence of such illegal action? And when has he ever demanded that any professor submit his syllabus to him ("personally," no less) for approval? Such charges are sheer fantasy.

Given the extraordinary number of inaccuracies per line in Mainstreet's short post, his decision to write anonymously was perhaps the only wise choice he made in this whole sordid enterprise.

(Posted by Winfield Myers)