The organization behind Campus Watch is Middle East Forum, and the brain behind Middle East Forum is Daniel Pipes. You know that Nadine and I approve of Pipes and admire his writing. Unlike the bloggers, he almost never hits a bad note. I guess this could be justified as an ad hominem argument, but you are the one who wants to consider the source. Pipes is a reliable source.
Well, as you know, I don't have that high an opinion of Pipes writing. My views are more mixed than yours. Don't know the man so I can't say anything about him as a person.
I saw that, on the website, that he disavowed any intent to harm anyone. Perhaps. But it's not hard to imagine that happening. In fact, in the present climate, the first thought one should have is that it's precisely what it will do. And the two things I mentioned will, I'm afraid, be only the tip of the iceberg.
The website looks to me as if the obvious result will be to inflame unbalanced folk to do alarming things.
I don't see how it could be used for repression. Academics publish in peer-reviewed journals, they speak to large audiences, their ideas are not kept private. Pipes is getting those ideas a larger audience.
If that were what he was doing, I would not have these kinds of problems. But he has not done that. Instead, he's put up a website in which faculty members are identified as targets. He doesn't say he disagrees with their point of view. He says the faculty members doing this are "outside the mainstream" which, in the present climate, is code for "unAmerican" or the latest rendition of that time filled canard, "Anti-American."
Ideas have consequences. Maybe the professors are nervous about the consequences of their ideas?
Well, there was a time in which people were harassed and killed for their ideas. In some parts of the world that is still true. I don't think you want us to go there.
Finally, I think this is all only political/personal not something about the "national welfare". My own guess is that Pipes and crew think that public opinion has turned a corner in their direction so it gives them an opportunity to destroy the careers and lives of folk they've intellectually opposed for some time. And you start by calling them anti-American because they criticize the US. The next step you take is to post their names on websites. Heaven help us with the next step. |
