September 11 ushered in a sustained campaign by the American Right and the Bush administration to delegitimise critical thought about the Middle East, Islam and the Arab world. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has borne much of the brunt of this campaign, some of it conducted by think-tanks with close links to Israel’s ruling circles. Such attacks on MESA date back to 1967 and the Arab-Israeli war. The role of organisations such as ADL, AIPAC, AVOT and ACTA is examined, as is Campus-Watch and the attempt to introduce legislation in 2003 to place university-level Middle East studies under much closer government control (via HR 3077).
1 American Council for Trustees and Alumni , ‘Defending civilization: how our universities are failing America and what can be done about it’ ( Washington, DC, The Council , November 2001).
2.
2 Martin Kramer , Ivory Towers on Sand: the failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America ( Washington, DC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy , 2001); http://www.campus-watch.com.
3.
see also Roger Hardy’sreview of Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: the politics of ideas in the Middle East , International Affairs (Vol. 73, no. 1, January1997), pp. 191-192 .
4.
Edward Said , Oleg Grabar and Bernard Lewis , ‘Orientalism: an exchange’ , New York Review of Books (12 August 1982), pp. 44-48 .
5.
5 The full text of the exchange with the remarks of the ‘seconds’ - Christopher Hitchens and Leon Wieseltier - was published in the Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 16, no. 2, winter 1987), pp. 85-104 .
6.
6 Kramer , Ivory Towers on Sand, op. cit., p. 36.
7.
7 Ibid., p. 37.
8.
8 Mission statement of the American Jewish Committee at: http://www.ajc.org/WhoWeAre/MissionAndHistory.asp.
9.
9 ‘President’s report concerning the outreach program of the Near Eastern Center’ (undated and unpublished, my personal files).
10.
10 Gary S. Schiff, ‘Middle East centers at selected American Universities: a report presented to the American Jewish Committee’ (Washington, DC, Academy for Educational Development, 1981), pp. 5-7 (unpublished, my personal files).
11.
11 Jordan Millstein, letter of 7 November 1981 to ‘Zionist activist/student’ accompanying the booklet (unpublished, my personal files).
12.
12 ‘The secret strategy of the Israeli lobby’ , The Middle East (December 1983), p. 29 .
13.
13 Jonathan Kessler and Jeff Schwaber , The AIPAC College Guide: exposing the anti-Israel campaign on campus ( Washington, DC, American-Israel Public Affairs Committee , 1984).
14.
14 ‘The AIPAC college guide: a survey of political activism (campus survey)’ (undated and unpublished, my personal files).
15.
15 ‘Resolution of the Board of Directors to be discussed at the business meeting’ (undated and unpublished, my personal files).
16.
Dan Evans , ‘Paper trail of deceit’, San Francisco Examiner (1 April 2002).
17.
17 Daniel Pipes , ‘The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!’ , National Review (19 November 1990).
18.
18 http://www.house.gov/ed_workforce/hearings/108th/sed/titlevi61903/kurtz.htm. Much of this testimony is a recapitulation of Kramer’s book.
19.
19 Information in the next two paragraphs is partly based on a report on the status of HR 3077 in National Coalition for History, Washington Update 10 (No. 7, 20 February 2004), http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-NCH&month=0402&week=c&msg=6TVRRgan222jFnJdLseTVg&u-ser=&pw=
20.
20 There are several different versions of the bill. These quotes are taken from the version Martin Kramer supports: http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2003_10_14.htm.
21.
21 Lawrence Summers , ‘Address at morning prayers’, Memorial Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts (17 September 2002), http://president.harvard.edu/speeches/2002/morningprayers.html.
22.
22 B’nai B’rith Anti Defamation League, ‘ADL releases new figures on anti-Semitic incidents: more than 1,500 acts reported across U.S. in 2002. Campus figures up 24 percent’ (26 March 2003), http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/4243_12.asp.
23.
23 Timothy Starks , ‘Universities resist efforts to require ideological diversity on campuses’ , New York Sun (15 April 2003).
