[Ed. Note: At the request of Inside Higher Education, in lieu of presenting the entire article, we’re offering a brief summary, the introductory paragraph, and those paragraphs in which Campus Watch is cited.
Summary: The Task Force on Middle East Anthropology has written “Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility after 9/11: A Handbook for Scholars and Teachers.” Today, Inside Higher Education has a story on the handbook, along with a few comments from me. Winfield Myers]
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At least one leader of a group that has been highly critical of Middle Eastern studies programs praised the handbook. “This handbook demonstrates the effectiveness of Campus Watch’s efforts to restore intellectual balance to Middle East studies. Surely, absent the work over the years of Campus Watch and critics of higher education, this new document would never have been written, and the abuses it attempts to correct would continue unchecked,” said Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch.
He added: “If professors heed the handbook’s calls to create a classroom environment in which civil disagreement is welcome, inflammatory language is eschewed, and topics outside the purview of the subject being taught are avoided, we will witness a revolution in higher education; that is precisely what we have been working for.”