US students to report 'biased' academics
by Michael Hoare
Straits Times
https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/7991/us-students-to-report-biased-academics
The war on terror is also raging in cyberspace.
Students in the United States are being asked to report academics who, they feel, have extremist Islamic views or are against going to war with Iraq.
An online 'blacklist' website, www.campus-watch.org, names American campuses - including Harvard and Stanford - and professors it feels teach biased courses on the Middle East.
Until last week, it even contained dossiers on individual academics.
Set up by the right-wing-sponsored Middle East Forum in mid-September, the site 'monitors the attitudes of American professors and universities towards Islamic fundamentalism, often erroneous and biased teachings and writings'.
Critics have called it everything from a witch hunt to modern-day McCarthyism, after the 1950s McCarthy inquiry into communist activities in the US.
The Philadelphia-based director of the Middle East Forum, Mr Daniel Pipes, compared his role to an auditor in the intellectual equivalent of the Enron debacle.
'I believe that the scholars dealing with the Middle East are doing a poor job and by doing a critique of their work, they will improve. The monopoly that is never discussed does a poor job,' he told The Straits Times.
According to the site, 'academics seem generally to dislike their own country and think even less of American allies abroad'.
And they are downplaying the dangers posed by militant Islam during the war on terror.
Although he was unsure of the exact numbers, Mr Pipes said the site had received more than 2,000 pieces of mail, mostly from students, and more than 100,000 hits since Sept 18.
The site surveys 21 universities, but he hopes to add hundreds of North American institutions to his list.