The Anti-Israel Brigade Rallies Around San Francisco State U.

Opponents of the the Middle East Forum/Campus Watch campaign to end San Francisco State University’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Hamas-dominated An-Najah University in the West Bank have reacted with a level of hysteria reserved for critics of academe. CW West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell takes on the baseless accusations of “McCarthyism,” “slander,” “harassment,” and “hatemongering” at the Independent Journal Review:

Predictably, SFSU’s General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) rushed to defend MOU architect and faculty adviser Rabab Abdulhadi (who is also director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative) with a cliché-ridden statement accusing Campus Watch and other “Zionist organizations” of “racism,” “Islamophobia,” and, most absurdly, “anti-Semitism.”

. . . The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), of which Abdulhadi is a founding member, accused MOU opponents of engaging in “McCarthy-like tactics.”

Abdulhadi herself resorted to the same tiresome banalities, describing Campus Watch’s effort to end the MOU as a “McCarthyist attack” and “a witch hunt campaign.” She maintained that the campaign “seeks to whip up hysteria, Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia to divert attention from Israeli criminality.”

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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