Philadelphia – July 17, 2019 – A new Campus Watch report exposes the radicalism and intellectual conformity of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at the University of Texas, Austin.
“Middle East Studies at UT-Austin: Biased Professors, Politicized Classrooms” proves that
Whether designing anti-Israel curricula for secondary education, accepting funds from Islamist organizations, teaching from radical sources, or producing scholarship that advances an anti-American, anti-Western agenda, professors in CMES have clearly been hired and promoted with an eye to their ideological purity.
Among our findings:
- Kamran Scot Aghaie produced high school “exercises” in which teachers divide students into “advantaged” Jews and “disadvantaged” Palestinian Arabs. Teachers stand in as world powers who “intentionally and unfairly side against Arabs to suggest the existence of favoritism to Jews.”
- Samy Ayoub is a grantee of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Muslim Brotherhood-related organization promoting the Islamization of knowledge through the replacement of Western scientific and other inquiries with Islamic traditions of scholarship.
- Denise Spellberg’s book Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an falsely claims Jefferson’s ownership of a Qur’an signifies his endorsement of its principles. Although he promoted religious pluralism, Jefferson never promoted Islam or approved its tenets.
- Benjamin Claude Bower assigns his students Houria Bouteldja’s unapologetically racist Whites, Jews, and Us: Towards a Politics of Revolutionary Love, which advises black women raped by black men to keep silent “to protect the black community” and praises former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stating “there are no homosexuals in Iran.”
Winfield Myers, director of academic affairs and Campus Watch at the Middle East Forum and co-author of the report, notes: “UT-Austin’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies provides a safe haven for professors who’ve abandoned rigorous research and teaching for the kind of politicized, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western approach that sadly typifies the field nationwide. Students, parents, alumni, and anyone alarmed when radical indoctrination replaces genuine education should demand their tax dollars support balanced, objective scholarship rather than mendacious, biased propaganda.”
Tell the administration of UT-Austin you do not support politicized classrooms and scholarship:
Gregory L. Fenves, President
president@utexas.edu
Tel: 512-471-1232
Maurie McInnis, Executive Vice President and Provost
provost@utexas.edu
Tel: 512-471-4363
Ann Huff Stevens, Dean
College of Liberal Arts
ann.stevens@austin.utexas.edu
Texas Exes, Official Alumni Association:
alumni@texasexes.org
Tel: 512-840-5700
Fax: 512-870-9529
The Middle East Forum promotes American interests through activist, intellectual, and philanthropic efforts.
For immediate release
For more information, contact:
Winfield Myers
Middle East Forum Director of Academic Affairs &
Director of Campus Watch
myers@meforum.org
215-546-5406, ext. 102
