[Reader-list] US "expert" opinion on Said, Columbia, academia etc

[Avishek Ganguly]

hi all

thought some you might be interested in this...just a
small sampling of what's going on here in a
not-so-small way...

avishek

(ps: i missed the msnbc telecast myself, but i believe
this is all copyrighted material...so i'm not sure if
we can cite any of this in any published news item,
thanks.)

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Columbia University Celebrates Edward Said
 © Daniel Pipes

MSNBC: Scarborough Country
April 16, 2003

You know every night we take a moment to highlight
examples of liberal elitism in a segment we call,
"There They Go Again," and tonight we're exposing an
Ivy League school for celebrating a 
prominent anti-Semitic scholar on its payroll.
Columbia University, there they go again.

Now Edward Said is a Columbia professor who just
happens to be the leading spokesman for the
Palestinian cause against Israel. Today Columbia's
celebrating the 25th Anniversary of his book
"Orientalism" and which he describes as "an
examination of the way the west perceives the Islamic
world." With me now from Philadelphia is Daniel Pipes.
He's a Director of the Middle East Forum and Director
of Campus Watch, which monitors and critiques 
the way Middle Eastern studies are taught on college
campuses.

I'd like to thank you for being here with us tonight.

DANIEL PIPES, DIRECTOR OF THE MIDDLE EAST FORUM,
DIRECTOR OF CAMPUS WATCH: Thank you Joe for the
invitation.

SCARBOROUGH: Let's begin. Let's talk about this
professor who's been caught on filming throwing rocks
at settlements and over into Israel and he allegedly
attempted to hit Israelis on the other side. Is this
guy a hate monger? Is this the type of guy we want 
our students to be learning from in America?

PIPES: No, Joe.

Edward Said is not just your ordinary professor. He is
first of all a university professor, meaning he's
reached the highest ranks at the prestigious
university of Columbia. Secondly, he is a demi-
god in the eyes of many academics. He has redefined
the study of the Middle East and other parts of the
world. He has to a certain extent redefined the study
of English literature and comparative literature. Thus
the jubilee celebration today of the 25th anniversary
of his book Orientalism.

For the rest of us not at the universities, this is
fringe figure who - as you suggested - is a leading
spokesman for not just the Palestinian cause but
someone so radical that he has turned against Arafat
for being too gentle on Israel.

SCARBOROUGH: That's unbelievable. Now he's written
this also about the United States. "The stones and
slings of young men are now offering courageous
resistance to a demeaning fate meted to them 
by Israeli soldiers armed by the United States,
policed by Arafat's apparatus with U.S. military and
financial aid." Excuse me Daniel,but doesn't this
sound like something that could come out of the mouth
of Osama Bin Laden.

PIPES: It certainly could and the trouble is that Mr.
Said's influence has been profound. I did an article
just a few weeks ago on, you may remember, the
"million Mogadishus" professor of Columbia [Nicholas
De Genova].

SCARBOROUGH: Exactly.

PIPES: He is a younger - a junior professor who a few
weeks ago at a teach-in at Columbia called for the
death of American soldiers.

SCARBOROUGH: What's wrong - let me ask you. What's
wrong with Columbia University where they let somebody
like Said teach there and they celebrate his teachings
and they also allow another professor to root against
America in their war in Iraq.

PIPES: Well, this in a way follows from your
discussion [in the previous segment] about CNN [and
its view of itself as not American but international].
They're too superior to feel patriotism for the United
States. These are internationalists who look at the
world from, you know, a kind of lunar position, you 
know, far away, no allegiances. They feel genuinely
distant from the United States. They don't like this
country very much.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. Let's look at some other people
that Columbia employs. Obviously a professor who
called for America's defeat in Iraq, a professor who
organized a Palestinian film festival that featured
several films calling for the destruction of Israel
and a professor who labels Israel a Jewish supremacist
and racist state. 

Now listen, I'm not on here defending Israel. I mean
if they were saying that - if the university was
saying that about any country that would be very
troubling. Is this something that's happening 
at Columbia University in particular or does it happen
in the elitist universities all over America?

PIPES: In general, I would say more at elitist
universities than at your average university and it
happens probably more at Columbia than at the others.
But it is representative of a trend, which is that the
universities in general are far left institutions. It
is my generation, the 60s generation, that has taken
over the universities and yanked them far to the left.

What's interesting now is that the students are
somewhat rebelling against this.

SCARBOROUGH: I wanted to ask you that question because
I read a New York Times article last week and it's a
great piece talking about that. Doesn't it make sense
if the media's turning around and Congress is turning
around, the presidency, that maybe these liberal
institutions may be moving a bit more to the middle 
politically?

PIPES: Not yet, Joe. They are dominated by the
administrators and the faculty who are generally on
the far left. But the students coming up are not quite
agreeing with that, so you have this interesting
reverse of roles. It used to be the students who were 
the radicals, the leftist radicals, and the faculty
were the centralists. Now to a certain extent it's the
reverse and we'll see where it goes. My hope is that
we can bring - we can bring back these institutions.
They are very important institutions for American
life. We need them to be centrist institutions again.

SCARBOROUGH: I agree with you Daniel Pipes. It looks
like the revenge of Alex Keaton. Thanks for being with
us.


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