posted November 11, 2002

The War on Academic Freedom

Kristine McNeil

Campus Watch in the Media
The War on Academic Freedom
by Kristine McNeil
The Nation
November 11, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=mcneil

The year since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act has brought an ever-growing enemies list from our nation's thought police. First there was Senator Joseph Lieberman and Lynne Cheney's American Council of Trustees and Alumni report unveiled last November--"Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It." The forty-three-page document purports to advocate the preservation of academic freedom and dissent while being all about suppressing both when the views expressed conflict with blind support for US foreign policy.

In attempting to smear dozens of "unpatriotic" professors, the organization laid the foundation for the Middle East Forum's recent blacklisting project, Campus Watch--a website that hopes to do for students and professors what Project TIPS would have done for mail carriers and plumbers.

Based in Philadelphia and headed by anti-Arab propagandist Daniel Pipes, Campus Watch unleashed an Internet firestorm in late September, when it posted "dossiers" on eight scholars who have had the audacity to criticize US foreign policy and the Israeli occupation. As a gesture of solidarity, more than 100 academics subsequently contacted the Middle East Forum asking to be added to the list...

More @ Campus Watch -- http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/327