Why Is the Middle East Studies Association Trying to Stop the Online Publication of Islamic State Documents?

Middle East Forum Research Fellow Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi examines the curious opposition of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) to the New York Times and George Washington University partnering to develop a public online archive of the ISIS documents the newspaper retrieved from northern Iraq. His Campus Watch-sponsored article appears at the History News Network.

I have a personal stake in this debate: as a researcher of Iraqi origin, I have aimed to help scholars and others with my own archive of over 1,000 ISIS documents. My work inspired Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, who obtained the collection for the newspaper, and I helped her verify many of the documents in question. Yet MESA has launched self-righteous fulminations against the Times and Callimachi.

To read the entire article, please click here.

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Cinnamon Stillwell

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.