Hamid Algar turns 80 years old this year. For 45 years (1965–2010) he used his position as professor of Persian and Islamic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, to celebrate the "genius" of Ayatollah Ruhollah...

Watching as a variety of actors, known and unknown, attempt to tear the United States apart at the seams has me thinking about the intifada, the Palestinian "uprising" against or "shaking off" of Israel. The "protests" (riots?)...

Those concerned with the state of Middle East studies have a litany of common complaints: politicized professors that teach fringe academic theories, rampant anti-Semitism masking as criticism of Israel, instant capitulation to...

"We are witnessing right now in the United States one of the most remarkable uprisings of black people against the structural regime of racial domination," exclaimed Rutgers University law professor Noura Erakat. In a June 3...

Brown University, the Ivy League college founded in 1764, is the latest high-profile academic institution to go all in for Palestine, a country that does not exist. Columbia University's Center for Palestine Studies, a Ramallah...

"Ending capitalism, that is the ultimate solution," preached Rabab Abdulhadi, the radical, Israel-hating San Francisco State University associate professor of ethnic studies. Throughout the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and...

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the largest academic organization for the field, has a long and ignominious record of defending apologists for Palestinian terrorism and BDS advocates, even as it opposes efforts to...

New York University is no longer content to be the second most important anti-Zionist campus in New York City. Columbia University, with its Center for Palestine Studies, has first place locked up. But lately my alma mater has...

Howler of the Month (archive) "Those monarchies are so reactionary that they make Henry VIII and Louis XIV look like Tom Paine and Robespierre. They are the most — they are the most absolute monarchies in the world today." Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, characterizing the United Arab Emirates after it announced a peace agreement with Israel. From a transcript of his interview with Amy Goodman, "Israel & UAE Deal to Normalize Relations Is New Chapter in 100-Year War on Palestine"; "Democracy Now," August 14, 2020. (link to source)

We Couldn't Have Said it Better (archive) "Some of us came into history precisely to escape the passions of the moment, to gain the breadth of outlook that comes with a deeper historical perspective. We understand, as many of our contemporaries seem not to, that importing modern agendas into the study of the past makes us worse historians, less able to understand the past in its own terms." James Hankins, Professor of History at Harvard University, on the difficulties faced by history graduate students who resist the trendy methodologies and political ideologies that dominate the discipline. In "How to Renew Traditional Historical Studies in Graduate School"; the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, August 19, 2020. (link to source)

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.