Better Expertise Now in Hand

I remember a time when Marc Lynch was a junior professor blogging pseudonymously as Abu Aardvark at least in part because he feared negative consequences for his career (Campus Watch on other institutions exist for the sole purpose of trying to intimidate Middle East Studies professors out of expressing insufficiently hawkish political opinions) and occasionally having his ideas quoted by liberal bloggers. And now what's in my morning Tom Friedman:

“We have created a real case of moral hazard in Iraq,” said Marc Lynch, a Middle East specialist at George Washington University. “Because all the key players think the Americans are going to bail them out, they have no incentive to make any real concessions to one another.”

In the aftermath of 9/11 there were a lot of people out there in academia and in the government and to some extent in the think tank world as well who had a lot of knowledge to offer the country. Unfortunately, though, those voices mostly weren't heard by people who matter (many of them were, however, featured in the November 2002 Atlantic). Not just by the people running the government, but also by the broader community of opinion leaders including many left-of-center people. That we're seeing voices like Lynch's start to get heard in prominent fora like a Tom Friedman column is a good sign and I like to think the progressive blogosphere's played a role in making it happen.

Comments

Does the Atlantic deserve credit for publishing James Fallows? Sure. He's one of the sanest, most level-headed analysts around.

But let's not forget the same magazine has opened its pages up to some of the craziest of the crazies: Hitchens, Mark Steyn, Jeffrey Goldberg, Robert Kaplan.

Of course, some of this has to do with the fact that the magazine wants to be "balanced". But it's notably that the pro-war people the magazine publishes are several notches intellectually below the anti-war crowd.

Posted by Jeet heer | October 24, 2007 12:37 PM

"because he feared negative consequences for his career (Campus Watch on other institutions exist for the sole purpose of trying to intimidate Middle East Studies professors out of expressing insufficiently hawkish political opinions)"

For just 53 cents a day, the price of a cup of coffee, you too can sponsor a a Middle East Studies Professor, cowering in fear of other writers outside the academy who challenge their theories that Zionofascism is the root cause of international terrorism. Who will defend their rights to expose the Likud-neocon conspiracy to launch wars in Israel's interest, if we don't speak out now. Forget the Jenna 6, what about Juan Cole's right to teach at Yale University! These campus Jewish groups must be stopped.

Posted by Eli Lake | October 24, 2007 12:55 PM

I have to dissent on Hitchens. Yes, by all means, skip past his rants on the Iraq war. But his essays on almost any other subject are a treat.

Look up his old essays on Trotsky, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, David Irving, Conor Cruise O'Brien--or on his discovery as an adult of his Jewish origins, or his love of booze and cigarettes, for that matter.

The Atlantic publishes him because he is a superb writer, arguably the finest nonfiction prose stylist alive. His writing is old school, informed by a deep reading of literature (not peppered with allusions mined from Bartlett's, as you see from a fraud like George Will).

It's misleading and unjust to mention his name in the same breath as the likes of Mark Steyn, no matter how unhinged some of his recent political writings have been.

Posted by jbd | October 24, 2007 1:03 PM

Look -- Eli Lake, the notorious agent-of-influence for the Iranian government, showed up. Hasn't happened in a while. Add this to the absurd editorial in the New York Sun on Matt's post on Giuliani and "ethnic interests".

Matt - don't be modest. You can take credit for Abu Aardvark's success. After all, I take credit for your success.

Posted by Ikram | October 24, 2007 1:04 PM

"History department at U of I flunks test of political diversity
Mark Bauerlein

October 10, 2007
13 Comments

What does "diversity" mean at the University of Iowa?

Its nondiscrimination statement provides a roll call of categories: "The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination ... on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference." The listing is customary - except for the final entry. Most people haven't heard of "associational preference," and it never comes up in discussions of affirmative action, workplace harassment or other issues.

But last May the question did arise, and in response an officer in Iowa's Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity named Jan Waterhouse clarified its meaning: "Associational preference within the University policy has been interpreted to include political affiliation."

So why, then, does the history department in the university have 27 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans?"

"Noone is free until we all agree."
Harvard, 1948

"Really?"
Larry Summers, 2006

"Yes."
Harvard, 2006

"And that includes bloggers."
Harvard Grad cum Democratic lapdog, October 2007

Posted by Sk | October 24, 2007 1:11 PM

Sure, Hithchen's writing on culture is better than his foreign policy rants. Still, I think it's fair to say that his extreme views on the Middle East have started to infect all his writing, one way or the other. See for example his essay on Edward Said for the The Atlantic. And I say this as someone who loved Hitchens's essay collection "Prepared for the Worst" Sad to say, but Hitchens himself is now at the level of a Mark Steyn, as Hitchens himself seems to realize when he favorably reviews books by people like Steyn (or for that matter Andrew Roberts).

Eli Lake: do you honestly not see a problem with the way groups like Campus Watch have behaved? Scholars should be judged by their scholarship, which means by their peers. By any rational criteria Juan Cole is an outstanding scholar, whether you like his politics or not. He knows the languages, he's done the research, he's written the books and serious people know they have to take him seriously. (And I have to say his political analysis in is blog over the last few years has held up very well -- better I'd say than the New York Sun).

Similarly, I may not like the politics of, say, Harvey Mansfield or Bernard Lewis. But they've earned the right to teach due to their scholarly writings. If a left wing equivalent of Campus Watch tried to deny them jobs based on their politics, that would be as wrong as the actually behaviour of the real Campus Watch.

Is the concept of academic freedom really so hard to understand?

Posted by Jeet Heer | October 24, 2007 1:30 PM

The resistance against a small outfit in Philadelphia known as Campus Watch is perhaps the silliest cause, in a litany of silly causes, taken up the academic and net left. As best I can see it's an organization that quotes university professors saying outrageous things and then says, "look how outrageous this is." Can you name one example of a professor getting fired because of this group's activism? You can't.

My people would call the phony outrage over Campus Watch Chutzpah. Here you have a group of professors that would never give a scholar in the Bernard Lewis tradition a job, complaining that they themselves are being censored. It's like drug dealers complaining that some skateboarders are ruining their neighborhood.

As for Juan Cole, are you serious? Maybe his work on the Shiia of Iran is really first rate. I haven't read it. But his comparison of America in Iraq to France in Egypt is crackish. And this says nothing of his blog, which I understand he submitted to Yale as part of his curricula vitae. What analysis are you talking about that has stood up? His entry that Dan Senor ordered a two star general to arrest Sadr in 2004. Perhaps it was his blog post about how Israel starts its wars in the summer to avoid censure from American university campuses. Maybe it was Cole's slander of the Aipac lobbyists and Larry Franklin, when he accused them of treason before they were eventually charged with no such thing. Or perhaps you mean Cole's tireless advocacy for including the remnants of the Ba'ath party in Iraq in the government that replaced Saddam. I know, it must be Juan's trenchant analysis of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, assuring his readers that the Iranian president who sponsored a holocaust cartoon contest, did not really mean to threaten to destroy Israel. Serious people I know read his work aloud to their colleagues for morning giggles.

Posted by Eli Lake | October 24, 2007 1:58 PM

(Campus Watch on other institutions exist for the sole purpose of trying to intimidate Middle East Studies professors out of expressing insufficiently hawkish political opinions)

So how is it that you can claim that Campus Watch could monitor speech in the university, and Front Page Mag can do that, but you don't think that Feminists groups do that too?

Why is it bad for Campus Watch to do this, Front Page Mag to do this, but okay for Feminists Groups to do this?

Careful how you answer, because zuzu may call you out again for your male privilege.

In the meantime, I point you to http://thefire.org and free speech feminists like Wendy Kaminer and Nadine Strossen.

Posted by feh | October 24, 2007 2:20 PM

Jeet Heer:

"Sad to say, but Hitchens himself is now at the level of a Mark Steyn, as Hitchens himself seems to realize when he favorably reviews books by people like Steyn (or for that matter Andrew Roberts)."

Au contraire!

http://www.slate.com/id/2175903/

What sad is that some people on the left can't face facts. THey're stuck in a time warp or something. Hitchens seems to relish taunting somet on the left and he does it especially well. And of course some on the left can hold grudges better than anyone else so Hitchens comes in for regular abuse.

He is still well worth reading:
http://www.slate.com/id/2173112/fr/flyout

and his recent book was a bestseller which must gall folks like Mr. Heer.

Posted by Peter K. | October 24, 2007 2:45 PM

Eli,

Look, there are any number of points at which Juan Cole could be criticized, as is true of anyone who writes a lot. (For example, do you really want to be judged by the article you wrote smearing Mearsheimer and Walt by trying to link them to David Duke?) But the fact is he's a scholar and has been judged as such by his peers. (He certainly knows many more of the relevant languages than you or I do; because of our lack of the relevant languages the proper judges of his scholarship aren't you or me but his peers). The principal of academic freedom requires that his scholarship be the criteria by which he be judged when up for employment. The use of extra-scholarly criteria to hamper his academic career is disgraceful.

As to the worth of his blog, I'll just note that he's been a constant and often acute critic of the war in Iraq; the New York Sun has been a constant Pollyanna-ish cheerleader for the same war. From where I stand, Cole looks better than the Sun. I certainly take his ideas more seriously than what I find in the New York Sun.

As for Campus Watch, I'll simply quote something Daniel Pipes said in an interview with Salon: "I want Noam Chomsky to be taught at universities about as much as I want Hitler's writing or Stalin's writing. These are wild and extremist ideas that I believe have no place in a university." It seems obvious to me that this statement is radically at odds with the spirit of academic freedom. First of all, the writings of Hitler and Stalin should certainly be taught at universities, so students know what they are. Secondly, Chomsky's writings are nothing like Hitler's or Stalin's, as anyone who reads these writers will know. But Pipes doesn't want people to read Chomsky and find this out for themselves.

That's why people who take academic freedom seriously are horrified by Pipes.

Posted by Jeet Heer | October 24, 2007 2:53 PM

Steyn's recent book was also a best seller. Hitchens and Steyn are pretty similar, but Steyn has made some effort to be more substantial and more serious. Steyn has funnier one-liners (really really funny one-liners), while Hitchens is good at bombastic British outrage (which is inherently funny).

They're both entertaining. But it would be silly to take either seriously.

Posted by Barbarossa | October 24, 2007 2:57 PM

"His recent book was a bestseller which must gall folks like Mr. Heer."

No, actually it doesn't gall me. I like it when a serious writer makes the bestseller list. However, it does make me sad. In an ideal world, the bestseller list would have included "Prepared for the Worst", "Blood, Class and Nostalgia), "For the Sake of Argument", and "The Missionary Position". Instead Hitches made the bestseller list with one of his weaker titles, "God is Not Great".

I don't think my judgement here is completely poltical by the way. In the old days, Hitchen's prose was sinewy and pointed. Since about 1999 or so it's grown flaccid and flabby, although sometimes the old Hitchens flashes up.

Posted by Jeet Heer | October 24, 2007 3:00 PM

Re Juan Cole

1. Contrary to the assertions made in this thread, Juan Cole is an academic nonentity who is incompetent to even fill his current position at the Un. of Michigan, much less Yale University. See attached link.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/114225.html

2. Juan Cole is also a liar and apologist for President Amadinejad of Iran. See attached link from someone who is an admirer of his (Mr. Weintraub apparently has blind spots).

http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2006/05/juan-coles-iran-distortions.html

3. Juan Cole publishes articles in the left wing antisemitic web site counterpunch. When one gets into the pen with the pigs, one may emerge with a coating of mud.

Posted by SLC | October 24, 2007 3:21 PM

Au contraire!

http://www.slate.com/id/2175903/

I wonder how he'll square that with Doris Lessing correctly pointing out that in the great scheme of things 9/11 wasn't such a big deal, lol.

Posted by novakant | October 24, 2007 3:33 PM

SLC, just when I tought you had reached the acme of being disgusting, you become even more of a disgusting hate-strewing liar. You are a hateful degenerate maniac.

Posted by Jennifer | October 24, 2007 3:33 PM

Re Jennifer

Ms. Jennifer is still a poopyhead.

Posted by SLC | October 24, 2007 3:38 PM

Eli Lake is just as disgusting, so there is a disgusting contest. I am betting on a tie by Lake and SLC. Maybe SK.

Posted by Jennifer | October 24, 2007 3:40 PM

SLC, you lie with every word. A congenital liar and professional degenerate hater. Hate forever is what you are about.

Posted by Jennifer | October 24, 2007 3:43 PM

Our good friend SLC is an extremely helpful fellow and an excellent source of useful information.

Near as I can recall, he's been dead-flat-wrong on all 4,589 of his previous posts, which must be some sort of record. Thus, whenever he says anything about an issue or an individual, we can just prepend a "NOT" in front, and then reasonably assume that the "modified" claim is correct.

I vaguely recall that there may have been some Dr. Seuss character who also had this unique and helpful quality...

Posted by RKU | October 24, 2007 3:45 PM

Jeet,

If people want to judge me by my article asking David Duke for his thoughts on an academic paper that basically fancied up his preposterous Zionist Occupied Government nonsense, then so be it. In the end I take the word of the professors, that they don't hate all the Jews, and agree with Walter Russel Mead, they are just too stupid to know that they are making the same octopus arguments as notorious anti-Semites. I still laugh when I read nonsense about how charges of anti-Semitism is silencing people. You can read the Walt/Mearschiemer piffle anywhere you please. Apparently Ferrar Straus was willing to pay good money for their shoddy thesis.

But leaving that aside, Jeet, why are you such a shrinking violet?
Is Daniel Pipes a University Administrator? Does he chair a department somewhere? No, he does not. The people in charge of Middle East Studies say and do all kinds of crazy things. Take Joseph Massad, who attacked Azar Nafisi for writing about the oppression of women in Iran. Apparently he likes to dress down Israeli students in his classroom at Columbia. Making a film about this sort of thing is not McCarthyism, it's free speech. It's a way to divert attention from substantive critiques of the field, critiques the field would rather not deal with after 9-11.

And then there is Juan Cole, who every day it seems discredits himself on his blog. Why defend this vulgar clown? I think sometimes he is a Mossad plant, a mole sent onto the internet to discredit all the anti-Zionists. When people accuse small time public officials of treason with no evidence, and then say they are being censored when others call them on it. What is that? It's a kind of farce. Come on now. People who adhere to the core values of liberalism seriously should be horrified by this man.

Posted by Eli Lake | October 24, 2007 3:51 PM

SLC wrote: "Juan Cole is also a liar and apologist for President Amadinejad of Iran."

That's why Cole said (from the reason article you linked to):

"We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little shit gives."

He's an apologist for Ahmadinenjad? I guess that's why he calls him a 'little shit'.

It's laughable when the very articles you link to disprove your own point.

Posted by Sock puppet of the Great Satan | October 24, 2007 3:57 PM

It's a true measure of the scope and wealth of the wingnut welfare system that they can provide employment for a hack at the level of Eli Lake. True, he has to work for a publication read by fewer than four actual human beings, and with slightly less intellectual cachet than Final Call. But at least he doesn't have to take a job suitable for his level of ability, such as screaming at people in the street.

Posted by 23456 | October 24, 2007 4:05 PM

"fora" : I love it!

We can handle "media" and "data", why not "fora", "stadia", and "memoranda"?

:)

Posted by Chloe | October 24, 2007 4:09 PM

Re Sock puppet of the Great Satan

The fact that Prof. Cole is a liar and has deliberately tried to cover Mr. Amadingjads' rantings with a coat of whitewash is demonstrated in the Weintraub link. The fact that Prof. Cole is incompetent is demonstrated in the Reason article link.

Re RKU

To be badmouthed by an Israel basher like RKU is a great honor.

Re Jennifer

In addition to being a poopyhead, Ms. Jenifer is the leftwings' answer to Ms. (Mr.) Ann Coulter.

Posted by SLC | October 24, 2007 4:27 PM

The sad this is, Mark Steyn is actually a very good writer. His views are creepy and he doesn't seem that smart, but he's a helluva good prose stylist. Funny, sharp, all of those things.

Posted by too many steves | October 24, 2007 4:37 PM

Gaze upon SLC, Eli Lake, and see yourself in the free market future.

Posted by 23456 | October 24, 2007 4:39 PM

By the way, our host provided links to writings of Pipes which show a basic difference between the likes of Hitler and Stalin, and the likes of Pipes: some talk and do, others just talk. But the talk is pretty similar, I am sorry to say.

Unlike Pipes, Chomsky is not exhorting to perform a gentle ethnic cleansing by a combination of abject economic suffering (and whatever other suffering could be added short of genocide) and monetary bonuses. This is what you are reduced to, withount millions of followers. Gentle ethnic cleansing. (Actually, Stalin's atrocities did not have the character of ethnic cleansing, although they could have that effect. But he would not write tracts denigrating, say, Crimean Tatars).

Can someone explain the superiority of Reason over Counterpunch?

Posted by piotr | October 24, 2007 4:51 PM

Counterpunch: crazy leftists commies that want to destroy America that no serious liberal would associate with.

Reason: very serious and moderate libertarians that would never espouse policies that would destroy America that all serious liberals can discuss with ease. And befriend their authors.

See Katherine Mangu Ward and her libertarian and complete acquiescence to our modern surveillance camera culture. Loss of privacy? Not an issue for responsible, serious libertarians.

HTH.

Posted by feh | October 24, 2007 5:15 PM

SLC: Do you consider your post the product of reasoning? Juan Cole does not become a liar because you or a website you like says so. Juan Cole has shown that MEMRI is utterly unreliable as a source of anything in the ME: They, for example, can't properly translate Farsi.

Go back to the cave....

Posted by Matthew | October 24, 2007 6:30 PM

Eli Lake: I have read Russell Mead's swinish review of the "The Israel Lobby" in Foreign Affairs. The fact you cite it is more a statement on you than on the professors it criticizes.

For those readers who haven't had a chance to come upon Mead's steaming pile, let me give you an example: He repeatedly claims that the professors aren't anti-Semites but make arguments that historically have been made by anti-Semites. That is a coward's way of calling someone a bigot. I guess you didn't notice.

Posted by Matthew | October 24, 2007 6:36 PM

Re Matthew

What the hell does Memri have to do with anything. Hitchens quoted a New York Times reporter, Nazila Fathi who appears to have nothing to do with Memri. Mr. Matthew is a bigger asshole then Ms. Jennifer.

Posted by SLC | October 24, 2007 6:46 PM

The interesting thing is that, while the wingnut welfare system does have a place for a hack at the barely-literate level of Eli Lake, it does not have one for SLC. So there is a level of gibbering insanity that disqualifies you for employment.

At least, maybe it does. For all we know, SLC is Marty Peretz. Certainly the level of intellect and humanity is the same.

Posted by 23456 | October 24, 2007 7:51 PM

If I could just find the conspiracy which unites Haim Saban, Hamas, the USS Liberty, and a neo-Confederate anti-Copperhead movement, the combined beauty of the nut squad might exceed anyone's expectations.

Posted by El Cid | October 24, 2007 7:51 PM

Re El Cid

It's perfectly obvious, the Masons and the Illuminati are behind it all.

Posted by SLC | October 24, 2007 8:29 PM

I disagree with much of what Joseph Massad writes, but it's not true that he intimidates his students. From an article in The Jewish Week by Liel Liebovitz:

"But in interviews with four of the seven students who appear in the film, and more than two dozen others — mostly Israeli or American Jewish students who attended MEALAC classes over the last five years — a much different picture emerges than the one seemingly portrayed on screen.

The students most familiar with the MEALAC department, while noting that some professors are highly critical of Israel and its policies, defended the teachers as well within the bounds of academic give-and-take.

Most of the complaints on campus appear to be from pro-Israel activist students not in the MEALAC program, raising questions of where anti-Israel bias — which clearly unsettles some students — ends and intimidation begins, and who can best assess the situation.

"The class was an incredible experience," said Lia Mayer-Sommer, 24, referring to Massad's class titled "Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies."

Mayer-Sommer, an Israeli native, added that "it wasn't fun to be the only Israeli in class, but I never felt intimidated. Passionate, emotional, but not intimidated."

Shaina Greiff agreed. "I studied at MEALAC," said the 22-year-old Texas native. "I am a Jewish student, and I never felt intimidated or bullied or otherwise."

Posted by Peter H | October 24, 2007 11:10 PM

About Joseph Massad, I want to echo what Peter H. wrote and also add this. I don't need Campus Watch to read a critique of Massad's work. I've seen many, many very sharp critiques of his work on gay and feminist websites. These forums manage to criticize Massad without engaging in the sort of disruptive, anti-academic shenanigans that Campus Watch conducts. Again, the crucial difference is between those who believe in academic freedom (even of views they strongly disagree with) and those who don't. The goal of Campus Watch to silence people, not to push the debate forward.

Posted by Jeet Heer | October 25, 2007 12:44 PM

"Whenever people lament aspects of the Internet, they are most likely to lament the net's ubiquity of pornography. Only God knows, for example, how many kids, searching for some government information, typed in "whitehouse.com" only to be greeted by pornographic images (happily, the website changed hands in 2004). It is almost impossible to completely avoid such imagery even with filtering programs.

But there is something at least as awful -- and arguably more destructive -- that permeates the Internet: the lies, vitriol, obscenities and ad hominem attacks made by anonymous individuals on almost every website that deals with public issues."

Above quotation from an article by Dennis Prager at the following web address:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=8260D74E-70CD-4E45-B6CF-AB16285C5A2A

Posted by Mentat | October 25, 2007 1:01 PM