In October 2006, the Brandeis Middle East Review and the Middle East
Forum at Brandeis invited me to speak at the University, and I
quickly accepted. The hosts and I selected the date April 23 and the
topic (“The Islamization of Europe?”), and everything appeared
settled.

But on Jan. 23, former President Jimmy Carter visited Brandeis,
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz quasi-debated him, and the
ensuing contention prompted the University to establish a closed
student-faculty committee to monitor speakers on the Middle East.
(This committee comes on top of an already existing committee the
provost created earlier in response to the “Voices of Palestine”
exhibit in Spring 2006.) Oddly, although my talk was to deal with
Europe, it was deemed to fall into the Middle East category and is
now on hold, pending this new committee’s approval.

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That’s bad enough. Worse was to read in the Justice on Feb. 6 these
remarks by University President Jehuda Reinharz: “I have a fear that
these people [Norman Finkelstein and myself] who are being invited
are weapons of mass destruction. “

Then John Hose, Reinharz’s executive assistant, further
elaborated: “These are people who tend to inflame passions, whose
mission is not so much discussion and education as it is theater, a
show. … If [students] want theater then it’s best to go to Spingold
[theater]. … But if you want serious discussion, there’s lots of
resources available for that already at Brandeis.”

I strenuously object to being lumped in with Finkelstein in any
fashion whatsoever. Finkelstein denies the Holocaust as a uniquely
evil deed, equates Israel with the Nazis, compares persons he
disagrees with to Nazis, justifies Hamas and excuses Muslim
antisemitism. For good measure, he adds, “I do not think there is
very much genuine grief among Jewish leaders about the Nazi
holocaust,” for they gained from what he calls “the Holocaust
reparations racket.” They “blackmailed Europe, got billions of
dollars and then stuffed their pockets, bank accounts and
organizations with the money.” Yoking me to Finkelstein betrays
Reinharz’s profound moral confusion – something especially
regrettable in the case of the president of a major university whose
moral judgment is in steady demand.

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The statements by Reinharz and Hose also prompt several questions:

1. How am I, exactly, a weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Reinharz? And
what do you mean by this phrase?

2. And Mr. Hose, have you taken a look at just who gets inflamed by
my speeches? On Jan. 31, for example, it was a bunch of Islamist
goons, and you can see them yourself on the three videos listed on my
Web site (www.DanielPipes. org), at “My Disrupted Talk at the
University of California-Irvine. ” After preventing me from speaking,
the leader of this group called for the state of Israel to be “wiped
off the face of the earth.” Your statement makes me wonder whose side
you are on – theirs or mine?

3. What, precisely, are those scholarly resources available at
Brandeis? Might Hose be referring to the University’s leading
specialist on “contemporary Islamic thought and practice” (the title
of her course), Prof. Natana DeLong-Bas (NEJS), an apologist for Al-
Qaeda whose depraved thinking was exposed in several recent articles
(including “Natana DeLong-Bas: American Professor, Wahhabi Apologist”
and “Sympathy for the Devil at Brandeis,” from frontpagemag. com)? Or
is he referring to Khalil Shikaki, a Crown Center fellow who has been
credibly accused of terrorist links and has a second-to-none record
in getting it wrong in his chosen field of Palestinian public opinion?

Looking at the larger picture, Brandeis has incurred a sorry record
when it comes to Israel in recent years – staging that “Voices of
Palestine” exhibit, hiring DeLong-Bas and Shikaki, appointing the
muddled Prof. Shai Feldman (POL) to head the Crown Center, permitting
an Islamist (Qumar-ul Huda) to serve as its Muslim chaplain and
setting up the Brandeis-Al- Quds University study-abroad connection.

Over the decades, Brandeis has benefited substantially from the
support of those concerned with Israel’s security and welfare. Sadly,
its record in this arena under Reinharz has strayed so badly that
already a year ago the Zionist Organization of America called
for “donors to reconsider their support for Brandeis.” So long as he
remains the University’s president, that strikes me as sound advice.

The writer is a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine
University and director of the Middle East Forum.

*The Brandeis Justice
February 13, 2007
http://www.danielpi pes.org/article/ 4275