That is the question as everyone concerned about the future of Columbia University, Middle East studies, and academic integrity await word from Morningside Heights. Although Massad called the Angry Arab from Cairo and reported that he had been awarded tenure, the silence from Columbia’s administration could mean, as Martin Kramer speculates, that Massad’s ad hoc tenure committee has approved him and sent the case to the provost, from which it could go to CU’s president and board of trustees.
I have assembled a compendium of Massad’s writings to provide, in a single convenient document, a resource to shed light on the nature and content of his work. In the introduction, I characterize Massad’s scholarship:
Massad is not merely vitriolic in his criticism of America, Israel, Jews, and his detractors. He is intellectually vulgar, a purveyor of racialist conspiracy theories and counterfactual historical revisionism who has bullied his own students. He makes a mockery of scholarly obligations to dispassionate research and reporting with his naked political advocacy and villainizing of opponents. Moreover, he juxtaposes events or individuals with little or nothing in common in an attempt to invert our moral universe, cloud our understanding of history, and thwart our ability to learn from the past.
