Georgetown’s Middle East studies faculty are perhaps the most radical and intolerant in the U.S. |
“Islamists, Apologists, and Fellow Travelers: Middle East Studies Faculty at Georgetown University,” a new in-depth study published by Campus Watch, exposes the growing radicalization of Georgetown University’s Middle East studies (MES) faculty over several decades. The Georgetown Review, a student-written publication at the school, broke the story Monday. Accuracy in Academia summed up the study’s grim conclusions: “Amid years of reports that Georgetown’s Middle East Studies program was being compromised by apologists for violent extremists, if not outright terrorists, the school has, if anything, doubled down on its approach.” The report details how, from the 1970s until today, Georgetown professors have worked successfully to change the terms of debate over the Middle East, American foreign policy, Israel, the growth of Islamism, and threats emanating from the region. The nefarious shift has leveraged the widespread adoption of postcolonial discourse, popularized by the late Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism, to cast the West and Israel as imperialist villains who subjugate and victimize the Muslim majorities throughout the Middle East.
Dividing the MES faculty into “old” and “new” guards, it explores how successive generations of scholars built upon the politicized work of their predecessors. From Arab nationalism to Third World studies to today’s rabid anti-intellectualism, Georgetown’s professors adopted and promoted virtually every politicizing trend academe offered over the past forty years.
Most disturbingly, the report demonstrates how over the past decade Georgetown’s faculty have used the $20 million gift of (now arrested) Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to transform the faculty from Islamist fellow travelers such as John Esposito to actual Islamists like Jonathan Brown, who has defended slavery in Islam.
A reporter for Washington Free Beacon, which covered the study, contacted all active professors covered for comment, but none responded. The paper also said Georgetown’s press office didn’t respond to “repeated requests to comment.”
The entire report may be read here.
