Here are 117 nominees. The report is thirty pages of PDF.
Tucson, Arizona Saturday, 24 November 2001
Conservative group's list of 117 chastises academe's war critics
By Emily Eakin
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Rev. Jesse Jackson made the list for remarking to an audience at Harvard law school that America should "build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls."
Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Stanford University, earned a place for his opinion that "If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity."
And Wasima Alikhan of the Islamic Academy of Las Vegas was there simply for saying "Ignorance breeds hate."
All three were included on a list of 117 anti-American statements heard on college campuses that was compiled by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative, nonprofit group devoted to curbing liberal tendencies in academia.
The list, part of a report posted on the group's Web site (www.goacta.org/Reports/defciv.pdf) last week, accuses several dozen scholars, students and even a university president of unpatriotic behavior after Sept. 11.
Calling professors "the weak link in America's response to the attack," the report excoriates faculty members for invoking "tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil" and pointing "accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself."
Reports from advocacy groups are issued all the time. What has gotten this one, titled "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It," more attention than usual is that one of the council's founding members is Lynne V. Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.
A recent speech by Mrs.
Cheney calling for colleges to offer more courses on American history is prominently excerpted on the report's title page, and she is identified on the council's Web site as "chairman emeritus."
But Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman in her office, said Mrs. Cheney was no longer involved with the council, created in 1995. She added that Mrs.
Cheney "has seen" the report - although she has not read it.
Mrs. Cheney did provide a statement, however, that Thompson read. The council "has been supportive of the need to teach American history, a cause I think is important," the statement said. "Faculty members have the right to express their opinions freely," it continued, and groups like the council "have a right to dispute those opinions when they disagree."
The report's authors approvingly cite Mrs. Cheney's comment that adding courses on Islam now "implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault."
They declare they are acting to protect free speech. "It is urgent that students and professors who support the war effort not be intimidated," they write.
But the council is facing mounting criticism from scholars who say that singling out individuals - for remarks taken out of context - is misleading and offensive.
Todd Gitlin, a professor of communications at New York University, called the report "a record-breaking event in the annals of shoddy scholarship," adding, "it's a hodgepodge of erratically gathered quotations, few of which are declarations of heartfelt opposition to American foreign policy."
Gitlin, a longtime leftist who said he has draped an American flag across the balcony of his New York City apartment and published an essay denouncing anti-American sentiment abroad, was surprised to learn he was on the list. His disloyal act? Telling a journalist who asked him to describe the mood on his campus that "there is a lot of skepticism about the administration's policy of going to war."
Other scholars went further, comparing the report's list of names to McCarthy-era blacklisting. "It has a little of the whiff of McCarthyism," said Hugh Gusterson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"We're criticizing the dominant campus orthodoxy that so often finds that America and Western civilization are the source of the world's ills," said Anne D. Neal, vice president of the council and a co-author of the report. "Looking at these representative comments, it appears they have stifled to a great extent opposing views."
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