Criticism
In 2002 Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan who has been a target of Campus Watch, criticized MEF in Salon magazine, writing that "The Middle East Forum is not really a forum. Somebody rich in the community has set Pipes up with a couple of offices and a fax machine and calls him a director." Salon noted that "aside from Pipes, the Middle East Forum has a single researcher, whose job, according to the Web site, extends into fundraising." As of 2009 the MEF website lists over 20 staff members, the majority of whom are described as engaging in research or activism.
Professor Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and a former President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America, who is named on the Campus Watch website, offered this criticism:
Another effort to police dissent is focused on those who teach Middle East studies on college campuses. Middle East Forum, a think tank run by Daniel Pipes and supportive of the Israeli right wing, has established a Campus Watch website. After failing in his own pursuit of an academic career, Pipes has evidently decided to take revenge on the scholarly community that rejected him. ... Campus Watch notes that:
"Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them. Membership in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the main scholarly association, is now 50 percent of Middle Eastern origin."
Some Americans have foolishly believed that all U.S. citizens have equal rights regardless of their country of origin and that pointing to peoples' country of origin to discredit them is a form of racism. This too, is outmoded thinking according to Campus Watch. But imagine the uproar that would be created by the suggestion that because Daniel Pipes is Jewish he may be more loyal to Israel than to the United States.
One recent project of Pipes and his Middle East Forum is Campus-Watch, a website designed to police dissent on university campuses. Campus- Watch’s original statement of purpose, which was subsequently removed from the website due to criticism of its character, was to "monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance." Campus-Watch alleged that Middle East scholars "seem generally to dislike their own country and think even less of American allies abroad. The reason was that "Middle East studies in the US have become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them".
Read more about this topic: Middle East Forum
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)