For three decades, left-wing extremists have dominated American academics, spouting odd but seemingly harmless theories about "deconstruction," "post-modernism," "race, gender and class," while venting against the United States, its government and its allies.

Only these ideas are not so harmless. The radical notions espoused in the classrooms and in campus demonstrations have recently had dangerous consequences. These are especially visible with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Consider some of the steps American professors took during 2002:

* Columbia University: Hamid Dabashi, a specialist on Iran, compared Israel's military maneuvers in Jenin (to prevent future suicide bombings) with the Nazi Holocaust. When one student protested his canceling class to attend a rabidly anti-Israel sit-in, he sneeringly replied, "I apologize if canceling our class in solidarity with [Palestinian] victims of a genocide . . . inconvenienced you."

Joseph Massad, a Jordan specialist at Columbia, spoke at that same anti-Israel rally, calling Israel "a Jewish supremacist and racist state" that, he proclaimed, "should be threatened." This is in addition to a talk with the inflammatory title "On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy" and a course that (students report) served as a soapbox for anti-Israeli polemics.

* SUNY-Binghamton: Robert Ostergard of the political-science department converted his course into an anti-Zionist platform. One guest speaker, Ali Mazrui, presented a lecture that a student called "a 45-minute diatribe against Israel" equating Zionism with fascism, Israel with apartheid South Africa and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with Hitler.

* Kent State University, Ohio: Julio César Pino of the history department published an ode to a Palestinian suicide bomber, lauding her courage and calling on Allah to "elevate your place in paradise."

* University of Oregon: In a course entitled "Social Inequality," the sociology department's Douglas Card reportedly called Israel "a terrorist state" and Israelis "baby-killers" and insisted that students agree with his view that Israel "stole land" on the final exam. One student said Card bashed Israel and Jews "at every opportunity."

* UC-Berkeley: The English department's Snehal Shingavi, a leader of "Students for Justice in Palestine," announced a course on "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance" with the now-infamous "warning" to conservatives "to seek other sections."

In brief, instructors routinely tout wild-eyed politics and openly wield their authority to indoctrinate students. At times, they even admit this, as in the case of Andrew Ross, the then-Princeton English professor who boasted in 1990 that he was using his position to radicalize "the children of the ruling class."

Not surprisingly, some interpret all this as implicit permission to harass Jewish and pro-Israel students. The result: a wave of verbal and physical attacks.

* At San Francisco State University, anti-Israel students physically threatened students marching for Israel while shouting phrases like, "Die, you racist pigs," and "Hitler should have finished the job," prompting the school's president to admit that he was never "as deeply distressed and angered by something that happened on this campus" in his 14 years there.

Even after this incident, pro-Palestinian students continued to use an SFSU-owned Web page to engage in Holocaust denial and accuse Jews of ritual murder.

* At Berkeley, anti-Israel students occupied a classroom building, leading to the arrest of 79 of them, including one charged with a felony for biting a police officer.

* At the University of Colorado at Boulder, students desecrated an Israeli flag and chalked anti-Semitic slogans on the main campus walkway.

* At the University of Illinois, they assaulted with rocks a home flying an Israeli flag, shattering the front window.

Although professors teaching Middle East-related courses are the most responsible for this degeneration on campus, others, too, are complicit. By indulging the Middle East specialists' radicalism and efforts at indoctrination, alumni, administrators, parents, other faculty, Education Department officials and state legislators effectively condone those activities.

The time has come for all these stakeholders to take back the universities as institutions of civilized discourse. This can be done only by ending the now-regnant atmosphere of extremism and intimidation. The place to start is by condemning and curbing the leftist activism that too often passes for Middle East scholarship

hi ive been to syria, israel, but never to the camps, few of us see what it is like but initfada has been going on for 30 plus years, poverty is econoomic for the israeli, lack of land for the palestinians , what the israel govt is doing with 3.5 billions us money is scandalous, they want them to die quietly , what I dont understand is why pc is dominantly allowing for state violence but is afraid to suppport and objective rebellion

me i personnally hope for the death of sharon, discovery of him filling his pockets, arab wealthz who give palestinans a country and 10 billion and then jordan will start shitting its pants instead of being caressed by the us

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum think tank.

The purpose of this organization is, in their own words, "to define and promote American interests in the Middle East".

Their mission statement includes "believing in strong ties with Israel, Turkey, and other democracies as they emerge", " working for human rights throughout the region" and "seeking a stable supply and a low price of oil while promoting the peaceful settlement of regional and international disputes".

Lovely bunch of contradictory goals... notice how the core of what they define as US interests (support to Israel & stable/cheap oil supply) is neatly packaged with noble pursuits (working for human rights & peaceful settlement of disputes).

They also "seek to help shape the intellectual climate in which U.S. foreign policy is made by addressing key issues in a timely and accessible way for a sophisticated public".

A lengthy definition of spin.

And to help all this opinion shaping, they created "Campus Watch", an outfit designed to intimidate anybody on campus criticizing an expansionist Israeli state.

Check it out by yourself:
http://www.meforum.org
http://www.campus-watch.org/

Pipes and his pal are right; extremists nuts are on campus. I can remember some of them from the 1960's and 1970's, when I was in college. Here are some of the things these nuts taught:
The abolitionists were loonies who thought ending slavery was more important than "holding together the Union."
A lot of the Nazis were really homosexual, so there must be a close link between being a Nazi and being gay.
The US was fully justified in rampaging through South Vietnam and bombing North Vietnam, because "we have to maintain our credibility."
Capitalism is the only social and economic system that is compatible with human nature, even though human beings lived for millions of years before the first capitalist societies were born.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson pretty much abolished poverty in the United States.
Israelis who set off bombs in 1948 were freedom fighters. Arabs who did the same thing twenty years later were depraved terrorists.
The Shah of Iran stood for progress.
Most corporations have the good of their employees at heart, and (this is from the 1960's) by the 1980's workers will have so much money and so much free time on their hands that they will need help in finding out what to do with it all.
British pirates who plundered Latin America in the 1600's were really "explorers" and "patriots."
The evils of slavery have been exaggerated.
Class conflict is not a good way to explain political and social conflicts; rather we should look at them as confrontations between "extremists on both sides" and "moderates." The latter group included Nixon, Johnson, the rulers of South Vietnam, Napoleon, Czar Alexander II, the Shah of Iran, President Marcos of the Philippines, and Nelson Rockefeller.
People wind up in the Harvard Law School or cleaning the streets mostly because of differences in individual effort and ability; class privelege has little or nothing to do with it.

What I can't understand is why good old Pipy boy didn't mention any of this nonsense.

ROTC kidnappers
Dow Chemical
Union Carbide
General Electric
The US Military funding apparatus
The Dept. of Agricultures Biogentically Modified Products funding apparatus
Monsanto
CIA recruiters/zombies
Coca-Cola
McDonalds
clothing outlets like Guess that use children as slaves
Clear Channel
Right wing owned fast food like Domino's Pizza
Many other criminal transnational corporations
Those who invite criminals and mass murderers like Kissinger et al onto campuses and award them honorifics.

Yes, there are too many extreminst on campus like the above. Just like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Brotherhood, the true face of terrorism in America, these extremists have the favor of a sheepish media and puppeteer right wing govt.

Ex-student evidently never attended class. Here's what is really taught:

All Southerners are racist still today.

Being homosexual is the pinicle of achievment in sexuality.

The US should immediately withdraw from Vietnam.

Communism is the only social and economic system that is compatible with human nature.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson pretty much abolished poverty in the United States.

Israelis (other-wise refered to as "Dirty Little JEWS) who set off bombs in 1948 were murders. Arabs who did the same thing twenty years later were freedom fighters.

The Shah of Iran was a murderer.

All corporations are evil. Period.

British pirates who plundered Latin America in the 1600's were murders. the natives were all peace-loving people who dwelt side-by-side with other tribes without any bloodshed for thousands and thousands of years.

The evils of slavery have been understated. For that reason, America owes black people a living for the next 100,000 years.

All class struggles should be ended by making all people world around equal; a class-less society.

People wind up in the Harvard Law School or cleaning the streets based upon their class status as it is directly related to wealth of the individual and/or his/her family; it has little or nothing to do with differences in individual effort and ability.

You were taught that stuff in the 1960's, eh? By professors who got their doctorates in the late 1940's or in the 1950's? That's a little, er, hard to believe. I guess the McCarthyites didn't do as good a job of sweeping the reds and pinks off American campuses as they thought they did. I'm sure that people like you and Ashcroft are preparing to do a better job this time around.

Oh, yeah. The members of the faculity in the 60's were all straight-laced. No Timothy Leary's out there at all. That's why the anti-Vietnam protests were so non-prevelant, because the faculity NEVER joined the students in protest.

That was sarcasm BTW, something one learned 2nd semester freshman yr. You know, that semester after you flunked out.

There were some real gun-toting extremists on campus in 1970; a number of them showed up at Kent State and Jacksons State and shot students down in cold blood; they were wearing the same kind of uniforms that Lieut. Calley and his crew wore. Other extremists could be found on spring break or after football games, engaging in drunken brawls which were excused with the cliche that boys will be boys. They were certainly extremist - extremely brainless.

Sorry to correct your ignorance, but Timothy Leary never led any political protests on campus. And the vast majority of faculty in those days were indeed quite straight-laced; many wore business suits to class and addressed students as Mr. or Miss So and So. By the way, I am an ex-student because I graduated a long time ago and then went on to earn two masters degrees and a Ph.D.

"went on to earn two masters degrees and a Ph.D."

Someone who learned more and more about less and less until now (s)he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

And it shows.

What do you teach, Prof, typing? ROTC drill instruction? Truck-loading classes for football players?
Courses on how to be a bureaucrat at the School of Public Administration or How to Get a Good Job at Enron By Kissing Behinds So You Can Make Lots of Dough Ripping Off Society? Or maybe you are an admissions officer - the guy who let George Bush into Yale under the Affirmative Action for Spoiled Brats program?

Don't worry about what I do. Just make sure that you and LeeRoy and Jamal don't wreck the garbage truck on the way to my nieghborhood. Lot's of people in my gated community have completed their Spring cleaning and are ready for you and your crew to come pick up those types of items that the underclass have to make last for years and years but we randomly throw away and buy new because we can. Don't be late or you won't get your customary pick of the items you want to take home..

...I scrub toilets in a Liberal Arts building. My fellow janitors call me "prof" as a joke.

Someone ought to flush you down the toilet.