Islamic radicals have taken control of all red-blooded American, God-loving Middle East Studies Departments on college and university campuses across the U.S.
At least according to Daniel Pipes, neoconservative Middle East commentator, head of the Philadelphia-based think-tank, Middle East Forum, and creator of the notorious Campus Watch web site.
Pipes launched Campus Watch to crusade against “the intellectual failure of Middle East studies, the tendency toward political extremism, the intolerance of alternative viewpoints, the apologetics, and the abuse of power toward students.”
The site includes a compilation of reports (formerly “dossiers”) on offending professors, and a page inviting students to rat on suspected perpetrators.
Outraged, the Left shouted McCarthyism from every ivory-tower top, and immediately set up the also-dripping-in-tired-rhetoric CampusWatch-WATCH, which plays lip service to feel good, PC politics of the we’re so right, you’re so wrong variety.
But Left pomposity and Right ignorance prevent either side from understanding the current state of American academia.
It’s simply a marketplace selling ideas to the highest bidder.
Students pay big money to colleges and universities, in exchange for the chance to fawn over the academic equivalent of Hollywood celebrity: trendy specialists and their colorful displays of mental virtuosity.
For the most part, the tastes and preferences of students dictate the hiring practices of college and university departments.
This holds true for Middles East Studies departments, where the competition for high-caliber students revolves around the competition for the latest “isms.”
So, Campus Watch, if it seems like the halls of academia are stacked with America-haters just waiting for their chance to launch a classroom jihad (or just academics who think that Middle East studies are best left to those actually from the Middle East), it’s because students have increased their demand for such ideas.
Simple microeconomics. Perhaps someday Daniel Pipes’ East Philly hill of beans equation of Islam with fascism will serve as a close substitute for the meat and potatoes of Edward Said’s Orientalism.
In the meantime, the Left should ditch the whiny CampusWatch-WATCH in favor of Campus Market Watch.
If the Right can call out Middle East Studies departments, the Left can too.
But the Left can expand into other disciplines as well.
By keeping an eye on a wide array of professors and academic departments, Campus Market Watch can help steer students and funding towards colleges and universities where the ideas they demand the most are up for sale.
It may be the best marketing tool that Left Academia ever had.
