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Congress:
Stop Subsidizing Biased Middle East Studies
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In return for receiving taxpayer funds for foreign regional studies,
universities must agree, according to Title VI of the Higher Education
Act (HAE), to conduct "public outreach" programs aimed at K-12
teachers and the general public.
Problem is, as shown in research by Campus Watch and others, the
Middle East studies centers betray a relentless bias in their Outreach
programs against the United States and its allies, especially Israel,
while showing a willful blindness to radical Islam. Three examples:
- Gilbert Achcar
of the University of London began a lecture
at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2011 by
declaring, "Don't expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I'm an
Arab." Achcar went on to declare that "The Shoah
[Holocaust] ended in 1945, but the suffering of the Palestinians is
never-ending."
- Ilan
Pappé of the University of Exeter in the U.K. spoke
at UCLA in February 2012 and charged Israel with being a
"settler-colonial state" that engages in
"criminality" by its very existence. He also offered this
apologia for Palestinian terrorism: "Peace is not the only
means of bringing an end to an oppression, in this case
colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing."
- Sherman Jackson of
the University of Southern California said at Harvard in November
2013 that the U.S. Constitution "can be challenged, modified or
even abandoned" to conform to Islamic law, or Shariah.
To remedy this torrent of bias, critics convinced the U.S. Congress to
pass reforms in 2008 requiring that government grants be made on the
condition that the Outreach programs "reflect diverse perspective
and a wide range of views and generate debate on world regions and
international affairs." In other words, don't just offer the usual
anti-American screeds but also something mainstream.
However, the 2008 legislation failed to provide an enforcement
mechanism to hold universities accountable and so, in the end, it proved
toothless.
To fix this problem, a group of ten organizations announced on
September 17 an effort
to cut off taxpayer support from biased, anti-American, and anti-Israel
Middle East studies programs at American universities.
Those ten organizations are: the Middle East Forum, Accuracy in
Academia, AMCHA Initiative, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and
Jurists, Endowment for Middle East Truth, Louis D. Brandeis Center for
Human Rights Under Law, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon
Wiesenthal Center, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, Zionist
Organization of America.
 This initiative
calls on Congress, when reauthorizing HEA (which is now underway), to
take two small steps to address the problem of bias:
First, require universities receiving Title VI funds to establish
grievance procedures in case programs do not in fact "reflect
diverse perspective and a wide range of views."
Second, instruct the U.S. Department of Education to establish a
formal complaint-resolution process such as that already in use to
enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
These two steps should help. But if they do not fix the problem,
Congress should defund any Title VI Middle East studies centers that
flout the law, mislead the public, and undermine the country's security.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. ©
2014 All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes.
Related
Topics: Middle East studies
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