Mideast studies accused, By Rebecca Weisser, The Australian, November 22, 2006

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http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20797819-12332,00.html

IT is fortunate that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians and
not with the professors, claims Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz,
only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

“The current Palestinian leadership includes many pragmatists who
understand the need to compromise,” he wrote in The Case for Peace
(2005). “Many professors, on the other hand, have become so polemical,
so extreme and so opposed to Israel’s very existence that they
themselves have become significant barriers to peace.”
Complaints about an alleged pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bias in
Australian academe have been less highly charged than in the US or in
Britain, where during the past 18 months lecturers unions have twice
tried to impose boycotts on contacts with Israeli academics.

Yet claims of analytical failures, politicisation and intolerance of
alternative views in Middle Eastern studies departments in Australia
have coalesced this year with complaints in federal parliament and from
Jewish and Israeli lobby groups.

Allegations of bias in Australian universities were made in federal
parliament in August when Labor MP Michael Danby singled out Andrew
Vincent from Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle Eastern and North
African Studies and Amin Saikal of the Australian National University’s
Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.

“I grieve for the state of Middle Eastern studies in Australia and the
effect that some poor judgments and poor teaching have had on policy
decisions as it affects decision making in Australia,” he said.

Danby cited an article by Vincent in the April 8 edition of the
Macquarie University News in which he claimed that “the Israelis quite
possibly murdered Yasser Arafat who, despite all his failings, stood up
for Palestinian interests and refused to cave in to US and Israeli
pressure. His replacement, the hapless Mahmoud Abbas’s real task is to
provide security for the Israelis and to persuade his people to accept
the Israeli occupation of their land forever and without protest.”

In parliament Danby described the murder claim as “one of the most
bizarre conspiracy theories, which one reads only in the far Left and
conspiracy press around the world. That a serious university newspaper
would publish such nonsense and that a serious university faculty
teaching our students Middle Eastern studies would propagate this stuff
is staggering.”

Danby is not the only person to have read Vincent’s statements with
alarm. Colin Rubenstein of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs
Council said: “This quote shows not just that Vincent is squarely in the
pro-Palestinian camp but that he is consistently critical of
Palestinians who show genuine interest in reconciliation and
compromise.”

Vincent’s critics also note his call earlier this year for Hezbollah to
be delisted as a terrorist organisation and his reported statement in
1990 that Saddam Hussein had a legitimate case for invading Kuwait.

They also say that the speakers at Vincent’s centre are predominantly
anti-Zionist. This year Vincent has hosted Israeli post-Zionist Tanya
Reinhart and Bouthaina Shaaban, the Syrian Minister for Expatriates, who
spoke on the Syrian strategy for peace in the Middle East.

Syrian ambassador to Australia Tamam Souliman and left-wing journalist
and author Robert Fisk, who claims journalistic objectivity is “no
longer relevant” to the Middle East, also spoke. Rubenstein says:
“Vincent’s speakers reflect his hardline, one-sided view of the Middle
East. The problem is not specifically that he holds these views, but he
is not running a think tank for Hamas or the Syrian Government. He has
an obligation in a publicly funded institution to maintain balance and
objectivity.”

Rubenstein is also critical of the appointment this year of anti-Zionist
blogger Antony Loewenstein to the board of Vincent’s centre, which
includes Health Minister Tony Abbott and parliamentary secretary Greg
Hunt.

On January 27, Vincent was quoted in The Australian Jewish News as
saying: “We wanted a Jewish person on the board. We didn’t have any Jews
on the board and it seemed to be an absence.” Yet Rubenstein says
Loewenstein has no academic expertise on the Middle East and visited
Israel for the first time only recently to research his contentious
book, My Israel Question.

Greg Weinstein, president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students,
has received complaints about Vincent’s courses at Macquarie University.
He says: “Students have told us that he is unapologetically anti-Israel
but they are reluctant to speak publicly.”

Vincent responds that “Danby and AIJAC are lobbyists for the Israeli
Government and their view is that if you are not with us, you are
against us. My view is that I criticise everyone equally and I think
that it is the job of an informed academic to monitor the centres of
power.”

Vincent also says, “I think it would be terrible if universities in
Australia became like their American counterparts, being monitored by
McCarthyite organisations such as Campus Watch.”

Asked whether he would like to see the establishment of an Australian
Campus Watch, Rubenstein says: “It sounds like an idea whose time has
come, given the number of complaints from students.”

Danby’s criticism of the ANU’s Saikal highlighted his defence of Iran, a
country that provided $US350,000 ($455,000) to underwrite the
establishment of the ANU’S perpetual foundation in Persian language and
Iranian studies.

Saikal is on record as defending Iranian democracy, “which may not
accord with Western ideals but provides for a degree of mass
participation, political pluralism and assurance of certain human rights
and freedoms”.

Danby told parliament that Saikal ignored the “mass persecution of
minority religions, whether they are Zoroastrian or, in particular, the
Baha’i faith” and that (Iranian) President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad’s
threat to “wipe Israel off the map” did not accord with any notion of
human rights. Danby claims that Saikal’s centre is having a deleterious
effect on Australian public and foreign policy.

Alumni and associates of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at ANU
include Bob Bowker and Jane Drake-Brockman, Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade officers who faced heated questioning at the Cole
inquiry over their knowledge of AWB’s rorting of the oil-for-food
program, and Tom Harley, president, corporate development of BHP
Billiton Petroleum, who was questioned about his knowledge of shipments
of wheat by BHP to secure an interest in the development of Iraqi
petroleum.

Danby claims failures such as the AWB scandal are “the result of endless
one-sided propaganda by university faculties producing graduates who
move into DFAT and other organs of this Government with a one-sided view
of the conflict in the Middle East”.

Saikal was unable to comment, as he was about to leave for overseas.
However, he referred to a letter from ANU vice-chancellor Ian Chubb
published in The Australian on August 5, in which Chubb says: “In a
democracy, robust debate, including contributions from academics as well
as those who disagree with them, must be encouraged. It is an essential
part of the process of stimulating public understanding of the many
complex issues confronting humankind.”

Mideast studies accused, By Rebecca Weisser, The Australian, November 22, 2006

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Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is not-for-profit [501 (C) (3)], grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest, fact-based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines, and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.

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