...Harvard’s outreach training prompted K-12 teachers to design celebratory treatments of the life and teachings of Mohammad and the “revelation” and spread of Islam, with exercises calling on students to “appoint imams,” memorize Islamic principles, and act out prayer at a Mosque. According to Stotsky, if Harvard’s outreach personnel had designed similar classroom exercises based on Christian or Jewish models, “People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the A.C.L.U. would descend upon them like furies.”

Instead of training teachers in the history and contemporary challenges of the Muslim world, Stotsky concluded that Harvard’s outreach program was “manipulating” apolitical teachers with a “barely disguised” attempt to “shape...attitudes on specific political issues.” The lesson plans designed by K-12 teachers who participated in these Harvard-run seminars included exercises in which students were asked to watch newscasts and spot out instances in which Muslims were stereotyped as violent or barbaric. Lesson plans proposed discussion questions like, “Why have so many groups wanted to control the Middle East?” and “How might the history of repeated invasions influence the history of people in this area?”

Stotsky was taken aback by one of the key teaching resources pushed by Harvard’s outreach program: “The Arab World Studies Notebook.” The “Notebook” has been widely denounced as a “practically proselytizing” text offering uncritical praise for the Arab world. Stotsky calls it, “a piece of propaganda.” Even the Notebook’s editor, Audrey Shabbas, acknowledges that it’s purpose is to provide “the Arab point of view.” One analysis quoted by Stotsky says that the “Arab World Studies Notebook” is designed to “induce teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs” and to “support political views” favored by the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the Arab American Affairs Council). The “Notebook” even claims that Muslims actually beat Columbus to the New World, supposedly sailing across the Atlantic in 889. This is the sort of history being pushed on our K-12 educators by Harvard’s federally approved Center for Middle East Studies — at American taxpayer expense...