Tony
5th May 2003, 12:22 AM
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/625
from http://www.nationalreview.com
That a Columbia University professor should publicly wish upon the U.S. military "a million Mogadishus" should come as no surprise. True, professor Nicholas De Genova's malediction at an antiwar teach-in is exceptionally despicable. But his loathing of this country is shared, as Daniel Pipes of Campus Watch has shown, by many Columbia professors. It is also of a kind, ideologically, with the anti-Americanism rampant among radical leftist academics throughout the country.
Although radicals are not necessarily a majority on faculties, their politically biased voices speak the loudest. They now control entire academic fields and indoctrinate untold numbers of students. The radical animus against this country worms its way into the minds of millions of people at home and abroad. It erodes the national unity we need above all in this time of war, and it lends moral support to terrorists and terror states.
For these reasons it is significant that De Genova is not just a "prof of something or other," as the New York Post dismissively described him. He teaches anthropology and Latino studies, which have produced distinguished scholarship but which are now largely co-opted by radicals. Professor Edward Said, also employed by Columbia, has greatly influenced these disciplines and others, such as English, history, and women's studies. Said, a radical Arab-American literary critic and a long-time activist for the Palestinian cause, has made a life's work of singling out and demonizing the West and America — in his words — "for imperialist attitudes from ancient Rome to Vietnam." American foreign policy, Said instructs, is driven by the West's "untrammeled rapacity, greed, and immorality."
While vilifying and refusing to acknowledge the achievements of America and the West, professors of Said's bent turn a blind eye toward the faults of non-Western cultures. Historian Keith Windschuttle observes that they exhibit a "kind of relativism not seen since the days of Lenin and Hitler when class-based and race-based hatreds were morally sanctioned by radical politics." Thus many radical academics cannot bring themselves to condemn cultural practices repellent to most Westerners, such as human sacrifice, cannibalism and female genital mutilation — for fear of demeaning the culture that fostered them.
This pattern of denial applies particularly to the events of 9/11 and the war on terror. In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, prominent professors of Middle Eastern studies excused away the growing threat of militant Islamism and terrorist attacks on American soil. Almost all of these academics simply refused to study such militancy — or even Islam itself! Prior to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, a Sarah Lawrence College professor accused "the terror industry" of fomenting an "irrational fear of terrorism by focusing…on far-fetched horrible scenarios."
from http://www.nationalreview.com
That a Columbia University professor should publicly wish upon the U.S. military "a million Mogadishus" should come as no surprise. True, professor Nicholas De Genova's malediction at an antiwar teach-in is exceptionally despicable. But his loathing of this country is shared, as Daniel Pipes of Campus Watch has shown, by many Columbia professors. It is also of a kind, ideologically, with the anti-Americanism rampant among radical leftist academics throughout the country.
Although radicals are not necessarily a majority on faculties, their politically biased voices speak the loudest. They now control entire academic fields and indoctrinate untold numbers of students. The radical animus against this country worms its way into the minds of millions of people at home and abroad. It erodes the national unity we need above all in this time of war, and it lends moral support to terrorists and terror states.
For these reasons it is significant that De Genova is not just a "prof of something or other," as the New York Post dismissively described him. He teaches anthropology and Latino studies, which have produced distinguished scholarship but which are now largely co-opted by radicals. Professor Edward Said, also employed by Columbia, has greatly influenced these disciplines and others, such as English, history, and women's studies. Said, a radical Arab-American literary critic and a long-time activist for the Palestinian cause, has made a life's work of singling out and demonizing the West and America — in his words — "for imperialist attitudes from ancient Rome to Vietnam." American foreign policy, Said instructs, is driven by the West's "untrammeled rapacity, greed, and immorality."
While vilifying and refusing to acknowledge the achievements of America and the West, professors of Said's bent turn a blind eye toward the faults of non-Western cultures. Historian Keith Windschuttle observes that they exhibit a "kind of relativism not seen since the days of Lenin and Hitler when class-based and race-based hatreds were morally sanctioned by radical politics." Thus many radical academics cannot bring themselves to condemn cultural practices repellent to most Westerners, such as human sacrifice, cannibalism and female genital mutilation — for fear of demeaning the culture that fostered them.
This pattern of denial applies particularly to the events of 9/11 and the war on terror. In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, prominent professors of Middle Eastern studies excused away the growing threat of militant Islamism and terrorist attacks on American soil. Almost all of these academics simply refused to study such militancy — or even Islam itself! Prior to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, a Sarah Lawrence College professor accused "the terror industry" of fomenting an "irrational fear of terrorism by focusing…on far-fetched horrible scenarios."