Campus Watch Responds:
In an essay titled, “Nazism, Zionism and the Arab World,” Annette Herskovits, writing for Dissident Voice, attempts to mount a valiant defense of Gilbert Achcar—professor of development studies and international relations at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, author of the 2010 book, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, and the subject of a November, 2011 Campus Watch article—but gets more than a few facts wrong in the process.
Herskovits confuses the relationship between Campus Watch and Frontpage Magazine publisher David Horowitz, while engaging in conspiracy mongering. After claiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that the publication of Achcar’s book “raised the ire” of David Horowitz, she continues:
Last November, an article in the web FrontPage Magazine, edited and published by Horowitz, launched a smear campaign against Achcar. Focusing on a presentation by Achcar under the auspices of Middle East Studies of the University of California at Berkeley, the article appeared on a host of kindred websites, such as that of Campus Watch, an organization founded by Daniel Pipes, a main purveyor with Horowitz of Islamophobic material and whitewashing of Israel.
Herskovits later claims that the CW article is an example of hasbara (Hebrew for “public relations”) when its authors simply presented the facts from Achcar’s lecture. She then writes:
The authors of the FrontPageMag article, Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene, seem not to be concerned about historical context. They mix innuendo, distortion and falsehood, quote out of context and misquote, then add in one or another point of dogma. They do not at any point counter Achcar with contrary evidence. Instead, they speak in generalities, e.g., Achcar’s book ‘masks its outlandish conclusions with scholarly apparatus while confirming the biases of the left-leaning, anti-Israel Middle East studies establishment.’
Herskovits goes on to exhibit the type of paranoid resistance to outside criticism of academia with which CW is accustomed:
Pro-Israel propaganda outlets like Frontpage Magazine carry little weight with scholars of the Middle East, but they are significant actors in sustaining the upside-down view of the Israel-Palestine conflict in America. They use intimidation to inhibit free speech on campuses, and poison the well of public discourse.
They advise students to take notes and report on professors, which especially intimidates junior, untenured faculty. They post on their websites telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of departments and faculties which get harassed by angry phone calls and swamped by hate mail.
Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.
Turning reality on its head, Herskovits then states that:
Pipes and Horowitz encourage confrontation and creating disturbances, followed by complaints that their freedom of speech was curtailed.
Herskovits concludes her piece with more conspiracy mongering:
Campus Watch and Horowitz’ Freedom Center are only two pieces in a large network of pro-Israel pressure groups operating on campuses.
(Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell)