To the Editor:
The article “Middle East Forum’s Web Site Lists CU Professors” (Oct. 21, 2002) did everything but address the real issue that Columbia students should care about: what Professors Dabashi and Massad allegedly said that merited their being listed on the Campus Watch web site. Spectator’s article failed to so much as touch on the question of what the professors reportedly said and whether they admit to or deny having made the statements at issue. Instead, you wasted a great deal of space focusing on a total red herring: the professors’ legally and logically baseless argument that the Campus Watch site somehow suppresses freedom of thought of Middle East issues on campus.
For the record, the First Amendment does not protect people against criticism--people have no Constitutional right to conduct an unchallenged disinformation campaign on Middle East issues or on any other matter in the University community. Thus, the Campus Watch web site in no way implicates the professors’ legally protected academic freedom. In fact, the web site is itself an exercise in academic freedom--the last time I checked, the purpose of a university is to have a vigorous and candid exchange of ideas, not to provide agenda-driven professors with a passive audience. I urge all students to go to the web site and find out for themselves the type of slanted Middle East scholarship their tuition dollars may be supporting. Perhaps in future Spectator articles we will find out whether Professors Dabashi and Massad are willing to own up to what they reportedly said.
Eric Epstein, Law ’03
Oct. 23, 2002
To the Editor:
Last Monday’s front page story (“Middle East Forums Web Site Lists CU Professors,” Oct. 21, 2002) starts with the sentence, “A website devoted to monitoring professors who allegedly promote anti-Israeli views has opened a new front.” However, it seems from the article that this website monitors professors for their alleged anti-American views and not anti-Israeli ones. Nowhere in the story is any indication that the site or the people behind it are focused on anything but what they view as anti-Americanism. Even the injured professor complains that the site tries to “incriminate me as anti-American, Anti-Israeli, and pro-terrorist”, in that order. The prominent but unsubstantiated labeling of anti-American as anti-Israeli was confusing and unhelpful for the important issues discussed--McCarthyism versus freedom of speech and academic freedom.
Ram Avrahami, GSAS
Oct. 23, 2002