Juan Cole: Shameless Opportunist

Campus Watch director Winfield Myers examines University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s recent change of heart regarding Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A former Erdoğan apologist who participated in a 2016 regime-sponsored conference in Turkey, Cole—from a safe distance—now condemns the Turkish strongman for persecuting academics. How convenient.

Myers’s article is posted at the New English Review’s Iconoclast Blog:

It’s a pity – though hardly a surprise – that this change of heart comes two years too late to help thousands of Turkish academics fired and jailed in the aftermath of the failed July, 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan. But when Turkey’s professoriate was under direct attack from the government in the immediate aftermath of the failed July, 2016 coup attempt, Cole was hobnobbing with the Erdoğan’s academic supporters at an Istanbul hotel.

To read the entire article, please click here.
Cinnamon Stillwell analyzes Middle East studies academia in West Coast colleges and universities for Campus Watch. A San Francisco Bay Area native and graduate of San Francisco State University, she is a columnist, blogger, and social media analyst. Ms. Stillwell, a former contributing political columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written on a wide variety of topics, including the political atmosphere in American higher education, and has appeared as a guest on television and talk radio.
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