That organization of course is Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes effort to monitor American college professors for their unwillingness to keep Israel criticism off campus, to remain silent. Pipes is well known for his audacious attempts to silence American professors with threats of blackmail, including arrogant demands from tainted professors that they submit their course curriculums to him, personally, for approval. There is a history of professors deprived of tenure because of organizations like Campus Watch.

I'm not kidding. Check out Pipes' org here: http://www.campus-watch.org/

But this latest attempt at censorship, this attack against Rashid Khalidi really pissed off Cecile Sarasky of Muzzlewatch:

Academic freedom, CampusWatch goes after Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi and PARC

"Is space opening up or shutting down for professors who criticize Israel or express sympathy for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement?

One answer is that academic McCarthyite group CampusWatch is, unfortunately, still in business. In fact, they just published yet another hopefully meaningless attack on the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and keynote speaker at their October conference, the preeminent Middle East scholar (and famously, former-friend-of-Obama) Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University’s Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies. Why do they want PARC to stop receiving funding from the Department of Education? Because in his speech at a conference on Palestine, Khalidi criticized Israel, and worse, criticized Campus Watch! Comical, yes. Imagine, one of the country’s most respected Middle East scholars having the audacity to criticize Israel and CampusWatch at a conference called “Palestine: What We Know.” CampusWatch’s Jonathan Schanzer smears Khalidi with a charge he denies, that he was ever an official spokesperson for the PLO, and insists:

While Khalidi undoubtedly has the right to express his opinion, the American public has as a right to know that they paid for it. PARC receives controversial Title VI funding from the U.S. State Department and the Department of Education for “Palestinian studies.” By inviting Khalidi, PARC spent fungible taxpayer money to bring a notorious former spokesman for a terrorist organization to Washington to rail against Israel and complain about a group that critiques him.

Meanwhile, Nora Barrows-Friedman’s new article in the Electronic Intifada about academic freedom suggests the answer to the question, is there more space on campus for debate on Israel/Palestine?, is both yes and no.

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, says:

“There seems to be diverging trends in relation to academic freedom for those who express sharply critical views of Israel or Zionism,” Falk remarked. “On the one side there is growing sympathy for the Palestinian struggle, and this is exhibited by the spreading BDS campaign. On the other side, there are increased efforts by organized Zionist groups to exert covert and overt pressure on university administrations to punish those seen as critics of Israel. As a result, we can expect some inconsistent outcomes in this period.”

Caught up in that tension are professors like UC Santa Barbara’s William Robinson who called down the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League and others for criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza: in June 2009, the university threw out charges of faculty misconduct. And Columbia’s Joseph Massad and Barnard’s Nadia Abu El Haj who both survived extensive campaigns to deny them tenure." 

Read on here: http://www.muzzlewatch.com/

Interesting stuff. Only in America.

The conservative plan to colonizeoccupy liberate Iraq has caused many people to seriously re-think their positions.

William Buckley now says the Iraq invasion is a failure.  George Will has come to much the same conclusion.  Francis Fukuyama abandoned the Neocons.  Condi Rice says the government made thousands of errors in the Iraq project.  And on Sunday, former CENTCOM Commander General Anthony Zinni said Rumsfeld should resign.  

But, while some are coming to be critical of the invasion, others are sticking to their guns and coming up with eloquentwell-reasoned arguments for the war.

Christopher Hitchens for example:

1. Did you support the invasion of Iraq?

Yes: I was an advocate before the fact, not a supporter.

2. Have you changed your position?

Not in the least: I wish only that Saddam had not been able to rely upon Russian and French protection and the influence of oil-for-food racketeers and other political scum.

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

The United States and its allies should continue to stand for federal democracy, while making Iraq a killing-field for jihadists and fascists and a training ground for an army that will need to intervene again in other failed state/rogue state contexts.

Glenn Reynolds throws in his intellectual weight

1. Did you support the invasion of Iraq?

Yes.

2. Have you changed your position?

No. Sanctions were failing and Saddam was a threat, making any other action in the region impossible.

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

Win.

And now Daniel Pipes explains the conservative mindset

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture.

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

That's right, he said icing.

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