Joel Beinin Lies about Me

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/166#K

In an interview published in Egypt Today, Beinin states that I “could not get a permanent academic position, despite the fact that his father [allegedly] tried to engineer one for him at Harvard.” This brief statement contains two major errors of fact.

I did get a tenure-track position and turned it down, preferring to write than teach.
My father had zero role in my being appointed to a teaching position at Harvard and he recused himself from any decisions concerning me. (Egypt Today itself signals its doubts about Beinin’s accuracy by adding “allegedly” in square brackets.)

Comments: (1) By simply inventing biographical falsehoods about me, Beinin again reveals what a shoddy “scholar” he is.

(2) What relevance my career in the 1970s and early 1980s has to my current work is beyond me. Maybe Beinin’s next history project should be to locate and publish my 6th-grade marks?

(3) Once Beinin raises the topic of my early career, how can I resist pointing out that Harvard’s doctoral program in history turned him down but awarded me a Ph.D.?

(4) Beinin, like too many American academics, suffers from an advanced case of credentialitis, the disease that places more emphasis on qualifications than achievements. (Nov. 6, 2006)

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Stanford University

Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes, a historian, has led the Middle East Forum since its founding in 1994 and currently serves as chairman on the board of directors. He taught at Chicago, Harvard, Pepperdine, and the U.S. Naval War College. He served in five U.S. administrations, received two presidential appointments, and testified before many congressional committees. The author of 16 books on the Middle East, Islam, and other topics, Mr. Pipes writes a column for the Washington Times and the Spectator; his work has been translated into 39 languages. DanielPipes.org contains an archive of his writings and media appearances; he tweets at @DanielPipes. He received both his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard. The Washington Post deems him “perhaps the most prominent U.S. scholar on radical Islam.” Al-Qaeda invited Mr. Pipes to convert and Edward Said called him an “Orientalist.”